Bible Treasury: Volume N3

These significant and touching words fell from the lips of Mephibosheth, in reply to king David on his memorable return to the throne. They are words worthy of consideration, and afford true practical instruction for the heart and conscience; as they are no less fraught with encouragement to the believer. Those who have known in any measure what divine grace is, with the marvelous way God in wisdom and love has taken to express it, must ever find delight in the free and blessed action of David toward Mephibosheth. It is a God-given sample of it, not only in what grace bestows, but in what it produces. To show the kindness of God to him, belonging as he did to the house of Saul the king's enemy, was an act of pure grace. Hence was it the suited occasion to call forth both the feelings and resources of David in the hour of his power and glory.

It was not a little to inquire or search for any of Saul's house; but, when the king learned of the hidden one and his lameness, to send and have him brought into the king's presence declared plainly his determined purpose of kindness. Not only so; but he acted from himself according to his own gracious intentions. This was, both as to reception and position, not only worthy of the king but according to “the kindness of God” as already declared to the servant Ziba. That the recipient of such grace should bow in reverence and fear was befitting; yet it was only the happy occasion for the king to express his feelings and intention. “Fear not,” therefore, only began the tale of grace; for the restoration of forfeited land must follow, crowned with the consummate blessedness that the son of a wicked persecutor should eat bread continually at the king's table as one of his own sons. Such was the king's purpose made known and made good to the favored object of his grace.

Unworthiness is of course consciously felt by those on whom grace is bestowed; therefore elation, much less glorying in self, is quite set aside; so that Mephibosheth's confession, “What is thy servant that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am”? is the language (as of every heart morally) to the exclusion of pride and presumption. Hence to take the place and position at the table as a son was in character with the pure grace of the king. Naturally it would be considered needful and right to show by his conduct toward the king that Mephibosheth had proved himself a loyal and obedient subject; but this would have been in character with law-keeping and not according to grace, which brings into the place of nearness and fullest confidence.

How precious is grace, not only for what it bestows, but what it produces in the heart of its recipient The one acting in grace surely looks for the proper response to it, though never at the cost of weakening the bestowed blessing, but rather to deepen the sense of its fullness and blessedness. Moreover as the same God uses the occasion of deep need for the display of His grace, so He graciously and wisely orders as well as permits the circumstances for the response to it, as is strikingly seen in this case. The hour of David's royalty is followed by his dethronement and suffering. Absalom his wicked son steals away the hearts of the people; so that the true and only king has to take to flight, and by it the fidelity of all hearts is tested.

Mephibosheth is equal to the moment. Fellowship in the hour of suffering marked him, as much as his previously given place at the king's table. Not only were his resources placed at the disposal of the suffering king, but he carried his person in character with it. For he “neither dressed his feet, nor trimmed his beard, nor washed his clothes from the day the king departed until he came again in peace.” True, he had been misrepresented by Ziba, the lying deceitful servant, who was not slow to take advantage of his master's lameness to go and pour false things into the king's ears. Lying and deceit with outward pretension of devotion seemed most successful for the moment. Yea, a failing type of the true king may be overcome and taken in by it; but the meeting-day of disclosures must come sooner or later as is seen here. David returns, and the ever faithful Mephibosheth goes forth to meet him, when the truth comes out as to the false and the true servant.

Not only is Ziba righteously shown up to the king, and the faithful action and position of Mephibosheth confessed, but the true sense of the grace David had shown at the first had never left him. The same thoughts of himself as a dead dog governed him; yea, better still, his heart was full of unselfish devotion to the person of the king. Lands, when offered, were nothing to him; for he was absorbed in the person of the king, and the joy of seeing him and his rights established gave witness to the touching effects grace produced, to the delight surely of him who bestowed it. If the king too had hastily decided in favor of a false servant, now that he is rightly informed he assuredly learns, that the subject of past grace had not only been true and consistent during his absence, but that David himself was more than all beside. For in reply to offered divided land Mephibosheth adds, “Let him take all, forasmuch as my lord the king is come again in peace unto his own house.” The testing evidence as to the fidelity of his heart, and the record that proves it touchingly, remain.

In this day and dispensation of the sovereign grace of God, and not least at the present time of great pretension in religious profession and activity, it is not too much to say little is known of the place grace gives or what it should produce. The principle and character of grace is according to David and Mephibosheth, though surely of a higher order and infinitely greater in its extent; seeing that the holy and righteous ground has been once and forever laid for the display of it, at Calvary's cross, in and by the death of God's own and only Son Who by the “grace of God” tasted death. Such an expression of rich and sovereign grace must surpass the salvation it brings or the glory answering to it. Let this be understood, or at least taken in as God's own testimony, that death has been gone into with its claims as to sin completely exhausted by the Son of God, then all other wonders cease, or at least are nothing in comparison to it. God in love gave the Son, and the Son in love gave Himself, to die for sin and sinners; and this, when the world hated both the Father and the Son. This standing fact the scriptures most emphatically declare, as also that the One Who died has entered heaven; yea, after having once for all offered Himself as the one and only sacrifice for sins, He “forever sat down on the right hand of God.” No further proof is needed that the claims of truth and holiness have been met as to sin, and the glory of God everlastingly secured, seeing that the One Who did the mighty work is at rest at God's own right hand. The cross where sin was judged and the throne of God are together, so to speak, in the One that supplied the altar and now fills the throne.

Such a person and work with its blessed results may well form the basis for the full display of the rich and boundless grace of God. And it may truly be asked where and when can that grace be shown and applied, but in the same manifested scene of sin and sinners where Jesus was crucified? A condemned world, where man is under judgment and already proved lost and guilty, is therefore the sphere for the full and free activities of sovereign grace; when too every barrier has been righteously removed for the free outlet of the boundless love of God toward ruined man.

In the Epistle to the Romans, where the gospel of the grace of God is so richly unfolded, the words at the opening significantly declare it to be “the gospel of God,” and most assuredly concerning His Son Jesus Christ and Him risen from the dead, but no less true seed of David after the flesh. He it is in and through whom “the kindness of God” is now displaying itself, in Whom alone all the resources of God are treasured up in their all-sufficiency for the deepest need. This every servant and true exponent of the grace of God should remember and surely act upon; especially in this day when ways and means outside the written word and the paramount claims of the Lord are largely used under the deluding plea of the end justifying the means. To every true and obedient servant bearing God's glad tidings the words of the risen Lord are most instructive and salutary, in connection with the commission recorded at the end of the first three Gospels. For He clearly makes known in Whom all power is, also the sphere and persons for whom the gospel is intended, as well as the duly appointed agent of power by whom the testimony should be rendered and made good. This is most assuring and soul-strengthening when known and acted upon, viz., that the risen, exalted, Savior and Lord has all power given to Him in heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18); and that all the world is the sphere where the gospel is to be preached to every creature (Mark 16:15). Moreover, the Holy Ghost should be sent from heaven as the mighty power to preach it, to carry it on and make it effectual (Luke 24:47-49). Such is the grand secret for every faithful servant to know and act on in going forth from the presence of earth's rejected but heaven's accepted Savior, Lord, and King, to sound forth the news of God's boundless grace; not to an individual at Lodebar, but to begin at Jerusalem (in the place where Jesus was cruelly and unrighteously cast out and crucified) and thence to the ends of the earth, declaring free and full remission of sins through the name of Jesus, and this for His very murderers.

How lamentably true, as things on every hand testify to the fact, that very little is the precious grace of the gospel of God known or declared, notwithstanding its unmistakable clearness, particularly in the Epistle to the Romans! Yet there it remains in its world-wide blessedness for every poor sinner, whether Jew or Gentile; seeing that God declares all to be guilty before Him, “For all sinned and come short of the glory of God” None can escape; indeed, well that it is so, when God is acting in the fullness and freeness of His grace, infinitely beyond anything David did or could do in his day.

Divine wisdom and love devised and made a way out from guilt and condemnation to a place in Christ, with holy and happy liberty, not only lift but the Spirit of adoption received, crying “Abba Father “; and nothing short of this is the present action and display of sovereign grace.

A brief glance at chapters 3 to 8 of that wonderful Epistle will plainly show the starting point and landing stage in the ways of God! For in His matchless grace He now declares His righteousness, both in justifying the guilty, and also in divinely clothing those that believe in the blood of His Son in Whom alone redemption is. Not only is the righteousness of God fully manifested “unto” all, but it is “upon” all them that believe. No less is the question of the sins of the believer fully and finally settled, because the substitute on whom God laid them has been raised from the dead.

This the end of chapter 4, &c. clearly states, in that Jesus was “delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification.” Therefore His shed blood, His death and resurrection, may well give the solid basis and righteous means for the soul's present and everlasting peace with God, which is faith's title and portion. To stop here even would be but part of the sweet tale of grace, as to either full deliverance or suitability in life and relationship to God Himself. For the question of the nature common to all the race of sinful Adam has alike been raised, gone into, and decided, in order that life and liberty in Christ the last Adam might be known as a present portion. This, divine love both anticipated and provided for at all cost to itself; for the reign of sin must have its counterpart in the reign of grace, through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ.

(To be continued, D.V.)

Let Him Take All: Part 2

2 Sam. 19:30.

To close up therefore the sad moral history of a nature common to all of Adam's race was part of redemption's plan; that the power of sin as well as its guilt should be met. Thus not only is removed the burden of sins from the guilty conscience, but complete deliverance from the conflicting torment of the sinful nature which righteously deserves death. This Rom. 6 insists upon as already accomplished in the death of Christ, Who died for the believer's sins and to sin itself, thereby closing in death its state forever. “In that He died, He died unto sin once” for all. And such is the privilege of faith to reckon it as unchangeably true, whatever the contradictory experience consequent upon indwelling sin. No less is there complete deliverance from God's holy and righteous law, seeing that its righteous claims have no power over those who have already died. Hence the believer's triumph in the opening of chap. 8, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” What freedom from an evil nature and its fruit, introducing to the accompanying truth of a holy life in happy liberty, even life in Christ Jesus and hence completely beyond all judgment! It is a government fully exhausted in and by Christ's mighty sacrifice where sin met its entire and final condemnation. Those too having the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, are set free from the spirit of bondage and fear, having received the Spirit of adoption whereby they cry, “Abba, Father.” Such is the wonderful platform the soul is placed upon with God the Justifier, crowned with the emphatic and confirming words, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are children of God; and if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.” Thus life, relationship, and heirship with Christ crown the incomparable ways of the wondrous grace of God, which infinitely eclipses all that David bestowed, even to a place at the table as one of the king's sons. To be set before God in such holy dignity and relationship in view of sharing the coming glories with the appointed Heir of all things, the present link of co-heirship in suffering of necessity follows: “If so be that we suffer with Him, that we be also glorified together.”

Creation still suffering the consequences of sin, as well as the refusal of the One Who alone could free it from the bondage of corruption, it must of necessity involve those having life in Christ in suffering with Him until the day of coming glory, when creation will share the liberty of the glory of the Children of God. Blessed hope with its bright prospect for the heavens and the earth, in a day when a greater than Absalom will be no longer at large to blind and deceive. But the true David will be enthroned to reign in Jerusalem gloriously, and thence to the ends of the earth. Meanwhile it must be and is the hour of suffering in a twofold way, “with Christ” and “for Him.” Suffering with Christ is consequent upon a holy life possessed and enjoyed in a scene of sin, pain, sorrow and death; and suffering also both for His worthy name and for righteousness' sake. But alas! how largely the sensibilities of the divine nature are deadened as to the one! and how very little loyalty of heart and true-hearted faithfulness are manifested as to the other, notwithstanding all that grace has given and is able to produce! Remember too that it is only in this favored hour that any can so suffer. Let it be seen (either by angels or men) how far the love and claims of Jesus our Lord with the sense of God's abounding grace outweigh all besides, especially of this perishing world.

Participation in the sufferings of Christ consequent upon sovereign grace bestowed is seen in its fullest shape in the case of Saul the persecutor and hater of Christ; afterward Paul the apostle and servant of Jesus Christ. The riches of grace in surpassing mercy met his desperate case, not only in his full, free, and eternal salvation, but in making him one with Christ the risen and glorified Savior. Thus was he fitted for suffering, and from suffering he never swerved, from the hour of his conversion until his departure. Suffering in each form not only marked him, but the loving spirit of an undivided heart in keeping with the one who said, “Let him take all.” In life and service Christ Jesus was his motive and object, governed by the unerring word of God through the indwelling Spirit. Hence the language of his heart was uprightly expressed in its extent and purpose when he said, “For me to live is Christ.” Service evidently to its highest honor was kept subservient, his chief desire being that Christ should be magnified in his body whether by life or death. The sense of grace in service was not lacking to his devotedness in preaching Christ even among the Gentiles. Moreover he labored more abundantly than all others, although careful to add, “Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”

Tested too beyond any as to natural position and advantageous circumstances (ever expedient for personal provision and comfort), yet when measured by his Lord and Savior everything was dung and dross compared with His excellency. Not only in the first freshness of his conversion and service did he so count, but “I do count” all things but dross provided he had Christ as his gain. False servants in the spirit of selfish deceitful Ziba surrounded him; but he knew (and warned the saints he so loved) that their end was destruction. Alas! their god was their belly, they cared only for earthly things. Jesus the Savior in glory completely won his heart at the first; sustained him through pilgrimage and service; and at the end the same Lord Jesus absorbed his affection in the desire to have Him as his own precious treasure and portion. His love also for the church and the gospel was undiminished. He never shrank from suffering for others, as he received it in participation with Christ, so that the Person of the Lord was practically unrivaled: even heaven and all its precious things sunk in comparison with Him.

The lesson of such experience and devotedness remains as a voice for to-day, a day when church profession and outward zeal prevail. Nevertheless it is not according to knowledge, much less in spirit and character with divine grace in a God-exalted but world-rejected Savior. Indeed it may be asked where is the testimony of the descended and abiding Spirit maintained? where do saints own His presence and all-sufficiency for exalting the Lord and Savior and the precious gospel, so as to make manifest the effects in divine power and fruit according to those produced in the Acts of the Apostles? Nothing however has changed, except alas I the state of the church not faithful. See the position and action of the servants of the Lord, both true and false. Further, the humbling cry may be raised, most heart-searching to all; where is the life of Christ reproduced day-by-day according to the worthy Pattern and Object set forth by the apostle to the Philippians? Christ Jesus in His perfect humiliation here and His glorious exaltation above need to speak afresh to all hearts. Particularly those who truly desire to live and walk according to Him (the worthy and unchanged Pattern and Object), should remember that He not only bore the sins of His people but left them an example to follow in His steps. It is too patent that professors of Christ are legion, though alas! such as were in Sardis of old, who have a name to live but are dead. No less the church in Laodicea specially marks the closing age of assumption and indifference, where the Lord is seen outside (if in grace still knocking at the door). Inside the thoughts and sayings are that they are rich and increased with goods and need nothing; they know not that in the Lord's sight and judgment they are poor, wretched and naked. This must ever be the case when Christ is despised for salvation, life, and righteousness; and mere profession even of religion without Him takes its place.

Most humbling too is the fact, confronting us on all sides, that so many true believers, in the enjoyment of the free forgiveness of their sins and of eternal life in Christ, are content to swim with the stream, and give their presence if not a helping hand to that system speedily to be judged. Such heed not the plain binding word enjoined by the Holy Spirit, “A form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away” (2 Tim. 3:5). Those too, who did run well in the path of separation to the blessed name of their Lord (once content, however despised and few, with His all-sufficiency), seem sadly otherwise; they at least need to taste more fully the power of His presence Who deigns to be with those gathered to His name. May we ever recall the unchanging principle given to the believing Hebrew, amid much religious pretension and ritual, “Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach” (Heb. 13:13). Of this the most faithful need to be reminded, together with the timely and encouraging words, “Behold I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown” (Rev. 3:11).

At a time when so many reasons if not excuses are given to yield and go back to objects and ways once left, it is important that the ear should be closed to the voices of men, and listen only to the voice of the unfailing Shepherd, Who will ever lead and guide by His unerring word until He come. An undivided heart with the cherished sense of the boundless grace of God will by the Holy Spirit produce a fuller and more worthy answer to the One to Whom each believer owes everything, and thus be found in company with the gracious character of Mephibosheth and even the apostle Paul. God grant that the spirit of a true disciple with Christ in His rejection may be more faithfully desired and entered into by all His own, not only denying self in every form but following Him alone for Whom they are left here. May we be kept from ever seeking to separate present suffering and coming glory, knowing “If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him.” Let us be assured that there is nothing (and never can be) to compare with Him Who loved and died for each and all His own, that they may be with and like Himself to His own joy and their eternal satisfaction.

Be it so, Lord Jesus, now and forever for Thine own name's sake. Amen. G. G.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Zion vs. Jerusalem, Daughter vs. Daughters

Q. 1. How are we to understand “Zion” as compared with “Jerusalem”? “the daughter,” and “the daughters,” of Zion?

Q. 2. Col. 2:20; 1 Peter 2:13: pray explain.

R. C.

A.-1. Zion was literally the south-eastern height called David's city, as Moriah was the north-eastern one on which Jehovah's house was built. But Zion (Isa. 1:27) is often employed figuratively by the prophets and synonymously with Jerusalem as a whole. “Daughter of Zion” (as in Isa. 1:9) is a poetic expression for the inhabitants of the Jewish capital, and so for the people in general. “Daughters of Zion” (as in Isa. 3:16) would represent rather its female inhabitants. But we may add that it is nothing but ignorance to assume that Zion anywhere means the church of God even metaphorically. In Heb. 12:22, 23 it is no doubt contrasted with Sinai (18, &c.), that is, the mount of royal grace, with that of legal responsibility; but it is distinguished alike from the scene of glory on high, a living God's city, heavenly Jerusalem, and yet more from the church or “assembly of first-born ones enrolled in the heavens.” Nor is there solid ground to doubt that, as Rev. 7:2-8 points to a sealed number out of Israel's tribes, to be secured from providential judgment in a future day, so does chap. 14:1-5 to a still more honored complement of godly Jews, associated with the earth-rejected Messiah and blessed in that day. In both chapters, whether Israel or Jews properly, they are shown separately from the Gentiles, and grace will not forget them in the tremendous crisis at the end of the age. The heavenly redeemed are then and even before this seen symbolized by the crowned elders, who will have been with the Lord on high, and therefore manifestly distinct from any of them.

A.-2. The two are wholly distinct in their objects and aim; and hence there is no discrepancy possible.

Col. 2:20 asks, If ye died with Christ from the elements of the world, why as alive in the world do ye subject yourselves to ordinances? The apostle gives a specimen of these ordinances in the three prohibitions which follow, Handle not, nor taste, nor touch. This was Jewish legalism over again, consistent with a people in the flesh like Israel, or as he here says “living in the world,” but quite incompatible with the spiritual condition of the Christian as one who died with Christ: a privilege acknowledged and signified even in baptism. To revive such ordinances was not only carnal, but a contradiction of their position as having died with Christ.

In 1 Peter 2:13 we have nothing to do with these ζόγματα of earthly religion, which Col. 2 declares to have been nailed to the cross and taken out of the way. The apostle of the circumcision urges on the believing remnant, that their behavior be seemly among the Gentiles, and in subjection to every human creation or institution for the Lord's sake. This he explains as civil government: “whether to king, as supreme; or to rulers, as being sent through him for vengeance on evil-doers and praise of well-doers.” Christian Jews must not be refractory like their unbelieving brethren.

Q.-How are we to reconcile the Sept. version of Ex. 30:13, 15 with the Greek of Matt. 17:24? The latter seems double the former. X.

A.-It is an interesting result and evidence of the version being made in Alexandria, where the drachm had just twice the value of the Greek or Attic drachm. Hence half the former was the equivalent of the latter, which is intended in the Gospel, answering to the Hebrew half-shekel. Theophylact, Abp. of Bulgaria in the latter part of the 11th century, seems to have been ignorant that the stater, or shekel, found in the fish's mouth, was the tetradrachm of later Greek writers, as distinguished from a gold coin and a heavier silver one earlier known, both so-called. He says that some thought it to be a precious stone found in Syria. Singularly enough, Clem. Alex. and Origen, Augustine and Jerome, are all wrong in confounding the ransom tax with a civil due. But Hilary and Chrysostom were right; not so the Jesuit C. á Lapide, or the Lutheran J. C. Wolff, and down to Wieseler, though the Jesuit Maldonat, and J. Albert Bengel, with Hammond, and J. Lightfoot &c., had long pointed out the truth.

Isaac: 13. The Bride Called for Isaac

Gen. 24:34-49

This portion is entirely devoted to his intervention whom the father sent to fetch a suited bride for the son and heir.

“And he said, I [am] Abraham's servant. And Jehovah hath blessed my master greatly, and he is become great; and he hath given him sheep and cattle, and silver and gold, and bondmen and bondwomen, and camels and asses. And Sarah, my master's wife, bore a son to my master after she had grown old, and to him hath he given all that he hath. And my master made me swear, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife for my son of the daughters of a Canaanite, in whose land I am dwelling; but thou shalt by all means go to my father's house and to my kindred, and take a wife for my son. And I said to my master, Perhaps the woman will not follow me. And he said to me, Jehovah before whom I have walked will send his angel with thee, and prosper thy way, that thou mayest take a wife for my son of my kindred and out of my father's house. Then shalt thou be quit of mine oath, when thou shalt be come to my kindred; and if they give thee not, thou shalt be quit of mine oath. And I came this day to the fountain, and said, Jehovah, God of my master Abraham, if now thou wilt prosper my way on which I go, behold, I stand by the fountain of water, and let it come to pass that the damsel who cometh forth to draw, and to whom I shall say, Give me I pray, a little water out of thy pitcher to drink, and she shall say to me, Both drink thou, and I will also draw for thy camels—that she [shall] be the woman whom Jehovah hath appointed for my master's son. Before I ended speaking in my heart, behold, Rebekah came forth with her pitcher on her shoulder, and went down to the fountain, and drew; and I said to her, Give me, I pray thee to drink. And she hasted and let down her pitcher from her, and said, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also. And I drank; and she gave the camels drink also. And I asked her and said, Whose daughter [art] thou? And she said, Bethuel's daughter (Nachor's son) whom Milcah bore to him. And I put the ring on her nose, and the bracelets on her hands. And I bowed down and worshipped Jehovah, and blessed Jehovah, God of my master Abraham, who led me in a way of truth to take my master's brother's daughter for his son. And now if ye will deal kindly and truly with my master, tell me; and if not, tell me; and I will turn to the right hand or to the left” (vers. 34-49).

Is it not well to notice the immense place which scripture gives to him who was sent from the father and the son to make good the purpose of finding and bringing back the chosen bride? Various types present the bride in O.T. scriptures. In the last book of scripture (Rev. 19) the N.T. discloses her in her heavenly place before the millennium as the Lamb's wife and in the eternal state (Rev. 21:2), no less than as the holy Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God in her millennial relation to the nations and the kings of the earth (ver. 9). We have the type of Eve with her admirable characteristics as Adam's counterpart at the beginning of this book, and at the end we have the wife Pharaoh gave to Joseph when exalted to administer the kingdom in his rejection by and separation from his brethren according to the flesh. So we see also in Moses (Ex. 2) before the time came for their deliverance from the king and land of Egypt. Jacob goes off himself and marries in a way wholly distinct in Haran, and through Laban's craft has another palmed on him before he received the Rachel of his heart, who in no way prefigures the church but Israel, Rachel weeping for her children, but with hope for her latter end. Sarah too not at all sets forth the calling of the bride, but the mother of the child of promise. Ruth again is a special figure, but not of the church any more than is the object of the king's love in the Song of songs, the Psalms, or the Prophets.

Here is the unique figure of a bride not only called from a distant land in marked contrast with any woman of Canaanitish race, but by the extraordinary mission of the father's servant, the eldest of his house who ruled over all that he had, and with a most solemn pledge and charge, quite unexampled in any other case. And we have already drawn attention to the place it fills, for which no other marriage in scripture could furnish such a type as this. For it follows the death and resurrection of the son in the “parable” of chap. 22 as well as the death of Sarah, the figure of the covenant of promise and liberty in contrast with her who is in bondage with her children. Yet even she, the free-woman, disappears to leave room for the bride who is here called.

Again, how striking is the fullness of interest which converges on the trusty servant, and his absorption in caring for the father and the son! We have the whole ground traversed again before the bride's family, and bringing out purpose in the father for the son as nowhere else in this book or anywhere else of old, and devotedness most marked and exclusive on the part of him who was sent to effectuate it! Where is there an approach in another type of God's word to that personal presence and action of the Holy Spirit which distinguishes the church? The time, the place, the action, the personal interest, the grace in giving, the prominence assigned to prayer and worship, the absolute carrying out of the word or charge, are all in perfect keeping with that which it pleased God to represent here, and here only in the same fullness. Is this all, is any part of it, casual?

Examine the entire range of types (and there are not a few which bring out the object of Christ's love for heaven); but where is one which so fully and distinctively presents her calling, as Rebecca does? Again, where save here have we, closely connected with the bride, the living representative of that other Advocate, Who identifies Himself with the honor and the interests of the Father and the Son, in effectively gaining the bride, then in guiding and guarding through the many trials and the imminent dangers of the desert, safely to join the Bridegroom? How admirably he pleads for those absent, whose envoy he was! As he lost not a moment in engaging the damsel's heart for his master's son, so he hears of no delay in telling his errand to those who might naturally detain, if they did not deny. No picture in other scriptures is comparable with this if divinely intended, as we assuredly believe, to set forth, not merely efficient operation, but personal presence and care in the highest degree. And in no part of the O.T. was this so requisite and significant as in the scene graphically put before us here.

Priesthood: 6. The Priests

The Priests Consecrated. Leviticus 9:1-6

There is an “eighth day” here, as for the leper's cleansing in chap. 14:10-20. It was the day of circumcision also. These instances suffice to show that we do not wait till the millennial morn or even the day of our resurrection glory to enjoy the privileges which they severally express. They are ours in virtue of Christ risen and glorified Who has given the Spirit from on high, both for our communion and for our communication in testimony of His grace. No doubt in that day what is perfect will have come, and we shall know as we are known.

“And it came to pass on the eighth day, Moses called Aaron and his sons, and the elders of Israel, and said to Aaron, Take thee a bull calf for a sin-offering, and a ram for a burnt-offering, without blemish, and present [them] before Jehovah; and to the children of Israel shalt thou speak, saying, Take a buck of the goats for a sin-offering, and a calf and a lamb, yearlings, without blemish, for a burnt-offering; and a bullock and a ram for peace-offerings to sacrifice before Jehovah; and a meal-offering mingled with oil; for to-day Jehovah appeareth to you. And they brought what Moses commanded before the tent of meeting; and all the assembly drew near and stood before Jehovah. And Moses said, This [is] the thing which Jehovah commanded that ye should do; and the glory of Jehovah shall approach you” (vers. 1-6).

It was on that day which inaugurates a new and heavenly order of things, and looks on to the appearing of the glory. But our Lord has taught us in John 7:37-39 how it can bear on us now, were it even the last and great day of the Feast of Tabernacles, the closing scene of the Jewish holy year. For He Himself, rejected here, was about to be glorified, and the Holy Spirit was to be here as He never had been nor could be or work in virtue of His ever and all efficacious death. Hence all things are ours who now believe on Him and have received the Spirit, not things present only but things to come also. As at the beginning (8:3-4), all the assembly was there, as well as Aaron and his sons, and the elders of Israel. But first Moses directed Aaron to take a Sin-offering and a Burnt-offering, without blemish, and offer them before Jehovah. Then he was to bid the children of Israel bring their suited Sin-offering and Burnt-offering, with Peace-offerings for sacrifice before Him.

Thus it is not only for the ordinary days and their necessities, being what they were, that sacrifice and offering were needed. In view of that day and the glory to follow they are presented with all care and solemnity. Priests and people, all were made to feel that they are at least as requisite if we look on to glory; whether those who had the entry into the sanctuary, or those who were outside. On that sacrificial basis of divine righteousness all enjoyment of God hangs for heaven or earth, now or evermore. Without Christ and His work, no sinful man can stand, still less in view of the glory of God. For all sinned and do come short of the glory of God, as the apostle puts it in Rom. 3:23. When man fell by sin from innocence, earth was lost, and the question is of fitness for God's glory. The redemption that is in Christ Jesus alone can fit for such a place. But grace justifies freely by faith in Him. This gives it its title for faith to boast in hope of divine glory. Nor will its fruition cause any emotion to His own but of joy, thanksgiving, and praise.

Proverbs 8:1-11

In full contrast with evil, which is folly to the utmost, is the description of wisdom's ways as here brought before us.

“Doth not wisdom cry, and understanding put forth her voice? On the top of high places by the way, where paths meet, she standeth; beside the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors, she crieth aloud. To you, O men, I call, and my voice [is] to the sons of man. O ye simple, understand prudence; and, ye foolish, be of understanding heart. Hear, for I will speak excellent things, and the opening of my lips [shall be] right things. For my palate shall meditate truth, and wickedness [is] an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth [are] in righteousness; [there is] nothing crooked or perverse in them. They [are] all plain to him that understandeth, and right to them that find knowledge. Receive my instruction, and not silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold; for wisdom [is] better than rubies, and all the things that may be desired are not comparable to her” (vers. 1-11).

Here is no courting of the dark, no flattery of the heedless, no fair speech to seduce into foul deeds and illicit indulgence. The wisdom which has its root in the fear of Jehovah is above-board and earnest with man. “Doth not wisdom cry, and understanding put forth her voice? On the top of high places, where paths meet, she standeth; beside the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors, she crieth aloud.” John the Baptist not only bore witness to Jesus but “cried” (John 1:15). So did our Lord in the temple as he taught (John 7:28), and notably at the close of His rejected testimony (12: 44) in importunate love.

How often in the Old Testament as in the New we are reminded of divine favor to mankind I Not with angels but with the human race does God plead, that they may hear and live. “The life was the light of men.” So it is here when wisdom cries aloud: “To you, O men, I call, and my voice is to the sons of men;” nay more, it beseeches the weak and the unwise. “O ye simple, understand wisdom, and ye fools, be of understanding heart.”

There are objects of desire in men's eager eyes. Oh the ardor, when they learn that there is here a mine of silver, and a place for gold which they refine! Seas are crossed, and deserts are penetrated, swamps and mountains drear are crossed, heat or cold or famine is defied. And man puts an end to the darkness, and the utmost limit is explored. A shaft is opened far from human haunts: they are forgotten of the traveler, they hang afar from men, they swing to and fro. Out of the earth cometh bread, and underneath it is turned up as by fire. The stones of it are the place of sapphires; and it hath dust of gold: a path no bird of prey knows, nor vulture's eye hath seen, nor sons of pride have trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed over it. The engineer puts forth his hand on the flints; he overturns mountains by the roots; he cuts out channels in the rocks; and his eye sees every precious thing. He binds the streams that they drip not, and the hidden things he brings forth to light. But wisdom, where shall it be found, and where is the place of understanding? Man knows not its value; neither is it found in the land of the living. The deep says, It is not in me; and the sea says, It is not with me. Neither gold nor silver, nor precious stones as onyx, sapphire, ruby, topaz, with gold most fine, nor jewels can procure or equal it. Whence then comes it, and where is its place? For it is hidden from the eyes of all living and concealed from the birds of the heavens. Destruction and death say, We have heard its report with our ears. God understands its way, and He knows its place. And to man He said, “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding” (Job 28). Christ alone is its fullness.

Our exhortation encourages souls. “Hear, for I will speak excellent things, and the opening of my lips shall be right things. For my palate shall meditate truth, and wickedness is an abomination to my lips.” Where else can this be found? Outside the inspired word, religion makes men worse than if they had none, and substitutes demons for the true God. Here the writer can say with assurance, All the words of my mouth are in righteousness; there is nothing crooked or perverse in them. Man's uncertainty and fallen nature expose him to both if he sets up to be an oracle. Whereas God's words are all plain to him that understand eth, and right to him that findeth knowledge. Hence is the call, Receive my instruction, and not silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold; for wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not comparable to her. We can go no farther, now that the Son of God is come and given us to know Him that is true. For He Himself is the true God, no less than the Father, and He is eternal life. Compare John 17:3.

Gospel Words: Jesus Walking on the Sea

Matthew 14:23-33

Bright was the witness, as it is still, to the rejected Messiah. This glory is great, but He is greater still, Immanuel and Jehovah; and it shines out the more that men despise Him.

“And having dismissed the crowds, he went up into the mountain apart to pray: and when even was come, he was there alone. But the ship [or boat] was already in the midst of the sea, tossed by the waves for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them walking on the sea; and when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is an apparition; and they cried out for fear. But Jesus immediately spoke unto them. saying, Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid. And Peter answering him said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come; and Peter, going down from the ship, walked on the water to come unto Jesus. But seeing the wind strong, he was afraid; and beginning to sink he cried out, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand and caught hold of him, and saith to him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? And when they had gone up into the ship, the wind ceased. And those in the ship came and paid homage to him, saying, Truly thou art God's Son” (vers. 23-33).

Whatever His own title, and it was truly divine, our Lord had become man, and loyally maintained His dependence on God, of which prayer is a signal expression. It is peculiarly prominent in the Gospel of Luke where His humanity is most brought before us in all its lowliness and sympathy, in all its piety and obedience. And it has its due place in Mark's Gospel of His service. But the disciples on the tempest-tost sea were as distressed as their boat, and the wind was contrary, so that they toiled in vain at the oar. He waited long enough for them to realize their danger and their powerlessness, and came unto them, walking on the sea. Troubled at what they thought an apparition, they cried for fear, but immediately He bade them take courage. “It is I: be not afraid.”

Reader, have you never heard His voice? It sounds in the written word in His own tones of love and compassion. It is for you to hear and live by believing them. The blessing is expressly for faith to receive. When you, judging yourself for your sins, look to Jesus at God's warrant, remission is yours. You are reconciled to God and justified by faith. You are called thenceforth to walk as a child of God and sealed by His Spirit till the day of redemption, when your bodies will have the power of Christ's life, as your souls have now (John 5). All other ways and means are a delusion. Baptism and the Lord's supper are His institutions, most expressive of His death, and of your blessing thereby. But faith is by hearing, and this by God's word. He is best honored in His Son's honor.

No doubt the enemy stirs up storms of every kind to alarm and endanger the disciples; but what of that, if the Lord sees all with watchful eye and fails not to give His guardian presence? This will be true and sure for His Jewish remnant in days to come as well as then when He was on earth; so is it assured to the Christian and the Christian assembly now, however few they may be. He, Who has His way in the whirlwind and in the tempest, with the clouds as the dust of His feet, was there in the person of Jesus walking the waves to say, Be courageous. It is I: fear not. They ought to have known already that winds and waves obey Him, their Creator.

Peter yields a little intimation of what was at hand. He quits the boat at the word of the Lord, and goes to meet Jesus on the sea; as the church did gathered to His name, apart from the Jews and the Gentiles (1 Cor. 10:32). But he quickly displays the instability of his faith. To the Christian also Christ is all. If we look away from Him, we begin to sink as he did. What, if the storm raged and the waves rose ever so high? Had the sea been smooth instead of rough, could Peter have walked across it? But he saw the wind strong and began to sink, with the cry, Lord, save me. And the Lord's outstretched hand was the answer, though there was the loving reproof, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? Such is He to us now, faithful, gracious, and superior to all circumstances. But we have to walk by faith, not by sight. Yet if our faith fail, He does not fail to deliver.

By-and-by He will rejoin His Jewish disciples in their unequaled trouble at the end of the age, bespeak a calm which is not the church's portion while on earth, and bring at once the old ship into the desired haven. For heaven and for the earth, for the church as for Israel, Jesus is the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever. “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.”

1 Peter: Introduction

Not to the apostle of the circumcision but to him whom the Lord sent to the Gentiles was it given to make known the mystery, or secret of God, as to Christ and as to the church. Nowhere is it so much as named in Peter's inspired writings, though we know that it was revealed since redemption unto the holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. But Paul was the minister of the church (Col. 1:24, 25) as no one else was led to style himself. To him pre-eminently was the mystery made known by revelation, as to him was given this grace to evangelize among the nations the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to enlighten all as to what is the administration of the mystery, which from all ages had been hid in God Who created all things. Even the word “church,” inserted in 1 Peter 5:13 by the A.V. as by other translators, is an unfounded conjecture; and the R.V. rightly agrees with the correction, “She that is in Babylon, elect together with [you], saluteth you, and Marcus my son.” It was an individual sister, and the brother named.

The subject matter is the government of God, which is richly treated in both Epistles, but on a different side in each of the two. It is however God's government, not simply as saints of old knew it, but as it was modified by Messiah's advent and the accomplishment of redemption. Hence there is evident contrast with Israel's position under law, and the anticipation by faith of what it will be at Christ's appearing, making the necessary difference that those addressed are strangers and sojourners meanwhile, and hence holy sufferers on the earth, awaiting praise and honor and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. But while the First Epistle is occupied with that righteous government as applied to the Christian's path day by day as he hopes for the bright result at our Lord's revelation, the Second pursues it with solemn and detailed energy to the judgment of false teachers, rivaling the false prophets of Israel, and working no less corruption and destruction; and it goes on even to the day of God; by reason of which inflamed heavens shall be dissolved, and burning elements shall melt, succeeded by new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, even the eternal state. The judgment of the wicked was notably distinct in the Second, as the watchful care and eventual triumph of the saints in the First. But, so far from any antagonism or even dissonance, they are the complement of one another.

Accordingly we are told in the beginning of the First Epistle that the apostle Peter addresses “sojourners of dispersion,” which can mean Jews only, of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. But they were Christian Jews, and so described as “elect according to foreknowledge of God the Father by (or, in) sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and blood-sprinkling of Jesus Christ.” The Gentiles of this large region of Asia Minor were settled at home in it; Jews there were sojourners dispersed from the land of Israel. But the description appended, like the Epistle generally, shows that they were pilgrims in a higher sense as God's children and confessors of Jesus Christ. The Second Epistle (3) declares that it was written to the same persons. There is no ground therefore to claim for it a more catholic character than for the First. But “catholic” is a word greatly abused.

That both Epistles are divinely given and intended to profit all the faithful is unquestionable. But if for all saints, it is of interest and not without moment that we should recognize to whom they were written. That which the inspired writer himself says ought to be conclusive. But the learned no less than the unlearned like to have their opinions; and the late Dean Alford was only one of many who cite a number of verses, even in the First Epistle, to persuade us, notwithstanding the express terms of the address, that the apostle addresses himself to Gentile Christians as well as Jewish (for instance, 1:14, 18; 2:9, 10; 3:6; 4:3). Is it true then, that these passages furnish proof that his admonitions were directed to such as had been heathen, and were now converted to the faith of Christ?

Take now the first of these (i.e. 1:14); and where is the trace of a Gentile? Were not Jews, when begotten again to a living hope, to be as children of obedience, not conformed to former lusts in their ignorance but according to the Holy One Who called them, to be themselves also holy in all manner of living? What indication of previous heathenism is here? Ver. 18, far from pointing necessarily to Gentiles, emphatically supposes Jews only. For they beyond all had a mode of life handed down ancestrally, and all the more vain from their boasted knowledge of the living God.

Still plainer seems the Jewish appropriation of 2:9-10. It is true that the Jews by their unbelief and rebellion, their idolatry first, and finally by Christ's rejection, forfeited their special privileges. “But ye,” says the apostle, ye the remnant who believe, ye anticipate what the nation are yet to have “in that day” when they too believe. Ye who in your unbelief belonged to them as “not a people,” but now do believe, ye are “God's people;” ye who were not shown mercy, now became objects of mercy. And this is entirely confirmed by the verses which immediately follow. For they are exhorted, as strangers and sojourners in a yet higher way, to abstain from fleshly lusts, having their behavior seemly “among the Gentiles,” as an outside class of evil-speakers.

The next, chapter 3:6, offers no difficulty; for after setting forth Sarah's pattern of obedience, he tells the wives that they were become her children, not by mere flesh and blood, but by doing good and being not afraid with any terror. How does this imply previous heathenism? The last is 4:3; but it is a forcible reminder that in the days of their unbelief they had been morally as corrupt as the heathens. Living far off among them, they were guilty even of their unhallowed idolatries—a thing of course if they were Gentiles, but shameful in Jews. Not a word of proof is there in all or any of these passages that the Epistle goes beyond its address.

It ought not to be doubted that Peter was in Babylon, the literal Babylon on the plain of Shinar, when he wrote the First Epistle, according to the arrangement made in earlier days (Gal. 2:7, 8), that the gospel of the uncircumcision should be confided to Paul, and that of the circumcision to Peter, God working in each to their respective ends. There was no jar whatever, but happy fellowship, and it was marked by Peter's employing the same brother as his intermediary who had been Paul's choice on a remarkable occasion and a former mission. It seems not improbable that Peter's wife (cf. 1 Cor. 9:5) was the co-elect sister there whose salutation is given, with that of Mark his son in the faith (it appears). And we may feel assured that he would not associate with his own salutation that of one who had drawn out a memorable censure even of Barnabas, until confidence was restored, as the great apostle expressed it in Col. 4:10, Philem. 1:24, and 2 Tim. 4:11. If the apostle Paul was debarred at this time from visiting the assemblies which he had planted in these lands, the apostle Peter writes to strengthen his brethren, but with singular delicacy addresses those of the circumcision who were allotted to his care, but sends the letter by Silas the well-known fellow-laborer of the apostle to the Gentiles, who had founded the assemblies throughout this extensive region. Not a word implies that Peter had served in those parts, though Origen and Eusebius state so from a mistaken inference put as a, tradition.

It is scarce worthwhile to notice the strange error of many ancients and moderns that Rome is meant by Babylon. Even if the Revelation had been known when the Epistle was written, instead of long after, it is harsh to conceive a mystical term of prophecy introduced into a writing so simple and direct, yet more into a greeting of love. What can one think of the theologians who cling to that which in the end is fraught with unsparing judgment, in order to extract its support to the dream of Peter's episcopate in the metropolis of the Gentile world?

Kingdom of God: 4

In resuming the consideration of this subject, especially now in the light shed upon it by the New Testament, there are several facts and principles of God's ways which need to be borne in mind by us. In the first place, it was in the counsels of God that Messiah should suffer ere He reigned. Nor was this a truth which had been hid in God, as one of the secret things which belong to Him alone. On the contrary, the sufferings of Messiah form the subject of many a distinct prediction, and the theme of many a holy strain of lamentation; besides being prefigured by a great part of the Mosaic sacrifices and ritual. Thus had the law, the psalms, and the prophets, borne witness to the sufferings of Messiah: so largely indeed, that for any who, like my readers, are accustomed to view them in this light, it is needless to bring forward particular passages in proof of it. But to Jewish minds, prior to the accomplishment of the event, this was the deepest difficulty. It was, besides, a subject most unwelcome to the pride of the natural heart in them, just as it is still in us. Sufferings, which the holiness of God makes requisite on account of our sin, cannot but prove an unwelcome subject to hearts that have not been humbled under the sense of sin. Thus it was with the Jews, yea, even the disciples of our Lord themselves. Notwithstanding the plainest declarations on His part that He must suffer and rise from the dead, they seem not to have entertained a thought of it, until the event came upon them, and found them, despite all previous warnings, unprepared.

Then, further, it was foreseen of God, that the human instruments in effecting Messiah's sufferings and death, would be His own people, the Jews. It was foreseen, yea, and foretold, that instead of receiving their Messiah with open arms, they would reject and crucify (Psa. 22:16, compared with Zech. 12:10) their long-promised and long-expected King. It was also foretold that on account of this, instead of the kingdom being immediately introduced, their heaviest sufferings and longest dispersion should ensue on the rejection of Messiah. (See Psa. 69:19-28. Isa. 5:5; 6:9-12; 8:14-17; 28:16-22). Other like passages there are, too numerous to be quoted.

Again, notwithstanding the rejection of Messiah by Israel, and the judgments which were to come on them in consequence, it was distinctly and largely foretold in the Old Testament, that eventually Israel shall repent (see Hos. 5:15; 6:1, 2. Psa. 110:2, 3. Ezek. 20:43, 44. Joel 2:15, 18. Zech. 12:10-14, &c.); that, confessing and bewailing their sins, they shall anxiously look for Him Whom they once rejected, and that then He shall return, forgive their iniquity, deliver them from their Gentile oppressors, on whom judgments the most solemn and terrific shall be executed, and that then the long-foretold and long-expected kingdom of Christ shall be actually set up; His government openly and visibly extending over all the earth. These events form the great burden of prophetic testimony: as the apostle expresses it, summing up the whole in a few words, they “testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow.”

Thus far all is plain and clear enough. But the question arises, How is the interval between the rejection of Israel's Messiah and His return in glory to be filled up? “Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world.” If Christ be rejected by the earth, a place had been prepared for Him in heaven. “Jehovah said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” The sovereignty which is hereafter to be openly and publicly exercised on earth, but which could not be thus exercised then, because of Israel's unbelief and sin, was to be exercised by Jesus risen, and ascended, and seated at God's right hand in heaven. He had, while on earth, manifested the name of His Father to those who had been given Him, and after His ascension the Holy Ghost was to descend to enable them to bear witness to the name of their rejected Lord, and to preach repentance and remission of sins in His name among all nations.

The effect of this word, which began to be spoken by Jehovah, and was afterward confirmed by them that heard Him (God also bearing them witness with signs, and wonders, and divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost), was, that then, and ever since, there have been those on earth who own the name, and title, and authority of that Christ Who has been rejected by the earth, and is now actually at the right hand of God in heaven. As a matter of fact, historically, whole kingdoms have thus owned and do own, the name and sovereignty of Christ. It may be, and as to the mass undoubtedly is, true that it is only in word, in profession, that Christ is owned. Still the fact is there, that, as to the effect of Christ's first coming, whole masses of men profess to be Christians, i.e. to be subjects of Christ, recognizing His authority and governed by His laws. It is also true that amidst the mass there are many who do really know Him by the Holy Ghost; and it is of the utmost importance to see, as to all such, that there was a far deeper purpose of God than any which has yet been noticed—a purpose which He purposed in Christ before the foundation of the world, even that those who do thus really know Him during the present interval should be fellow-heirs and of the same body with Christ—His bride, His body—united to Him now by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and to be manifested with Him in glory when He returns. But this, important as it is, is not the subject of our present inquiry, though intimately connected with it. It is referred to thus explicitly here, lest any should suppose it was overlooked, or that, in distinguishing between it and the kingdom of God, its importance was in any way undervalued.

(To be continued, D.V.)

Bethany and Heaven: Blessed by Christ and in Christ

From the very beginning there have been (so to speak) stepping-stones in the ways and acts of God, unfolding Himself and bestowing blessing according to the purpose and delight of His own heart. True, the purpose before time, and the promise in time, most assuredly contain the very kernel of His intention in its consummate blessedness. Yet what a period with His marvelous dealings came between the prophecy of the woman's Seed, and the time when the angels celebrated His birth! No less for the promise made to Abram and the time when His seed, and all families of the earth should be blessed. Yea, how much did and will happen that is profitable to trace, before the heavens and the earth with their redeemed companies will celebrate the praises and glories of Him, of Whom it was said at His lowly birth, “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good pleasure in men!” So too respecting salvation, in purpose and results, how great the distance, from God's eternal purpose in Christ Jesus before time began, to present enjoyed salvation, as well as eternal glory with Him, when time shall be no more! It is in this way that the twofold character of blessing in relation to Christ and His own so sweetly unfolds ways of love and grace, when the position and action of Christ at Bethany is seen, and the new place of His own in Him in heaven is declared.

It was in the city of Jerusalem that the guilt of man completed itself by killing God's Son; and there too in matchless grace the risen Savior would have the tidings of repentance and remission of sins first preached. But His last act on earth was reserved for the favored and loved spot, Bethany, where it is written of Him and His disciples, “He led them out as far as to Bethany; and He lifted up His hands, and blessed them; and it came to pass while He blessed them, He was parted from them and carried up into heaven.” This departing act is recorded of Him, Who had so many times been refreshed by the loving hearts at Bethany, where He deigned to accept a welcome retreat, whilst in His own city He had nothing but scorn, contempt, and hatred. But how much had happened, between the uplifted hands of the departing One, and the recorded scenes and circumstances at Bethany! There Martha received Him into her house, where He so blessedly adjusted the place and value of her hospitality, as well as Mary's better choice of sitting at His feet and receiving His words, which He declared to be the “one thing needful.” Thus the perfect Teacher put His divine estimate on the precious word, so intimately associated with Himself, and pronounced the lowly place at His feet, more blessed than entertaining Him.

This lesson as to the mind of Christ speaks loudly to-day, showing the importance of being filled with the Lord's will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, before embarking in service. Further lessons follow in the love and power of Jesus at Bethany, when the favored home tasted the sorrow of sickness and death. Though Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, His love was now to be known in a new way, rather than in preventing or healing sickness; and their hearts were fully tested and finally gladdened by receiving Lazarus back, after death and burial had taken place. This infinitely surpassed yielding to their request to go at once and stay disease. “Jesus wept “; and after the unfathomable groan in spirit cried, “Lazarus coins forth,” crowned with the then unknown significant truth, “I am the resurrection and the life.” These had been hidden wonders; but now the fresh circumstances of Bethany call them forth, not only to live in their hearts, but to be lessons for to-day—what the heart and voice of Jesus the Son of God is, though now in the heavenly sanctuary. No less is it a sample of poor dead and buried Israel for that day when they, shall own Him Whom they then hated, and soon after crucified.

If John 11 sets forth such realities, we have in chap. 12. Bethany's provided supper on the eve of His betrayal and death, when the loved three were in their divinely appointed places: the raised Lazarus seated with Him, Martha serving, and Mary, who drank more of His spirit, using the choice reserved unguent to anoint His blessed person. It was a costly act of love spent upon Himself, in view of His burial, which, if misunderstood, He declared to be a memorial of her. This act may well illustrate the worship of an adoring heart; whilst we have Lazarus in his honored position, and Martha in her devoted service. We need not here dwell on the last solemn procession of the lowly Jesus from Bethany to Jerusalem. All else is but little in the light of the death at Calvary. There both man's awful sin, and the only death to meet it, together with the claims and the glory of God, found an answer.

Before the hands of an ascending Jesus could be outstretched in blessing, the divine sword must execute its holy righteous judgment upon Him Who had so recently raised His friend Lazarus, and allowed Mary to anoint Him. Yet Him Who knew no sin God made sin; and there the hatred of Israel unto death was eclipsed by the abandonment of God, so that grace and blessing might freely and righteously flow. But the streams of love and mercy had their outlet, in ways which the soul delights to trace, in adoration and praise, though conscious that the foundation of life and glory was laid, when Christ made peace by the blood of His cross. Jesus risen testifies to the divine satisfaction and triumphs of His death, though they are only gradually unfolded in their application and extent; still it is Himself Who is seen, and made known. Luke 24 touchingly speaks of the varied appearing to His own, who, if slow of heart to believe, were constrained to prove that it was Himself, the recently pierced and slain One Who was there to give peace and confidence, though henceforth to be known in fresh circumstances. Moreover, He again took the place of the perfect Teacher, and opened their still dark minds to understand the scriptures concerning His sufferings and death, as well as the glories to follow.

At this point it is, that He takes the last journey with His disciples, when “He led them out as far as to Bethany” to receive His parting blessing; and they worshipped the ascending Jesus, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. Here they reached Himself with all joy and blessing; as it will be the case with His earthly people, when He returns as their true Priest and King. Meanwhile heaven's side of things opens, according to love's eternal purpose, while Israel and the earth await His return.

To declare the action of God in fullness of blessing is reserved for the Epistle to the Ephesians. There not only the riches and glory of His grace are spoken of, but the One Who is the center of eternal purpose is raised from the dead and set in the heavenlies, far above all principality and power, as head over all things to His body, the church. It is He by and in Whom God will gather up all things that have been so scattered, and alienated from Himself by sin. Prior to all this, in the very start of this wonderful Epistle, are made known the present individual choice, blessing, and predestination of all who in sovereign grace belong to God's heavenly family. True, it is not the precious fact of being blessed by an ascending Jesus but of being blessed in Him, the Christ exalted in heaven; as it is written, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly [places] in Christ.” Added to this follow the holy nature and the relationship proper to it. Nothing is left out now that love is free to act in and through Him Who is the grand and glorious purpose of God; yet its fullness and blessing was pent up till after His sufferings and death as declared by Himself. “I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished”! Now not only is the One Who was cast into the sea of death the raised and seated at the right hand of God, but the Holy Ghost is come down to witness to His death and exaltation.

There and then it is that the truth of the gospel of God begins, advancing step by step from remission of sins and peace with God to known risen life and relationship with the Father, Who gave His only Son that we might be richly and fully blessed in Him. Little thought the favored few, who gazed on Jesus as He went up to heaven and were told by the angels of His sure return, that, between these two facts, they and all believers of this period should be blessed in Him in heaven by such an association made good by the Holy Ghost. True, it had been stated in John 1 consequent upon receiving Him, and the risen Son also said to Mary Magdalene, “Go to my brethren and say unto them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Yet it was left for further development before being fully revealed; so also was the truth of both the place and the blessing in Christ. If purpose and responsibility met in Christ, Adam's state of sin must be closed, and all such responsibility met and ended, before purpose could be declared and blessing bestowed. Thus, whether for complete deliverance or heavenly blessing, it is in and by Christ alone.

In the Epistle to the Romans the full question of responsibility is raised, and deliverance taught, through Christ's death and resurrection; to be in Christ is to be exempt from all judgment. Nevertheless it is to the Ephesians (the Epistle of purpose) the testimony is, that in Christ God the Father has blessed all believers with every spiritual blessing. It is not as for Israel of old, with earthly blessings in the land of Canaan, but with spiritual blessings in the heavenlies. It is important to notice the contrast of Jewish and Christian privilege; particularly when Christianity is made a system of earthly and worldly things to the cost of God's revealed purpose and His present action in Christ. The nature, the sphere too of the blessing, is spiritual and heavenly with which the good pleasure of God is bound up, He having predestinated them unto an adoption of sons unto Himself according to the good pleasure of His will. It is thus God the Father now speaks and acts according to the infinite worth of His Son, Whose work is the holy and righteous basis of it; as also His rejection and crucifixion is the occasion to bring out these heavenly realities. The Holy Ghost has been sent from heaven by the Father and the Son to declare and make good, not only the gospel of the grace of God, but the present heavenly blessing, the place of life and relationship in Christ. Would that faith were in holy exercise to receive and revel in the precious truth, whilst awaiting the return of our Lord to receive His own to Himself, and to take them where they are already blessed in Him. God grant it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ!

G. G.

The Mystery and the Covenants: 1

While it is of the utmost moment to remember that the death of Christ is the only possible basis of divine blessing in a world ruined by sin, yet has it pleased God, for the display of His divers perfections, to make many spheres, the center of which will ever be found to be His Son, Christ the Lord. Our wisdom will be to distinguish these things that differ; that so we may grow thereby in holy familiarity with all the ways in which the various glory of Christ is developed unto the praise of our God. So led, we shall be kept, through His mercy and unerring word, from the many and opposing currents of human feeling which strongly tend to distract us from the paths of His calm and happy guidance. His glory steadily kept in view solves all difficulties, and is the best answer to all questions of the due place for Enoch, Abraham, and other elders, as compared with the church of the first-born. Our secret of blessing is more and more to learn and adore the grace of Him Who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will. The Christian can understand and sympathize with the jealousy which takes fire at the idea of preaching any other gospel than that which an apostle preached; as if there could be salvation save by grace through faith, and that not of ourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast. But if we heard one quoting Gal. 1 to show that the very same thing was meant by the gospel there, by the gospel of the kingdom (Matt. 24:14), by that which was preached to Zacharias (Luke 1:19), to Abraham (Gal. 3:8), to Israel in the wilderness (Heb. 4:2), to Paul (1 Thess. 3:6), to God's servants, the prophets (Rev. 10:7), as well as by the everlasting gospel in Rev. 14:6, we should feel that εὐαγγέλιου and εὐαγγελίζω were unscripturally limited, through our conventional usage of the word “gospel” in English; and so the profit was missed of the distinct force in each of the applications of the term in the perfect word of God.

The truth of the case beyond question is, that the word “gospel” is used there in a far wider manner than is common with us, who confine it to the word of salvation through the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. In that sense, there can be none other; and such is the meaning in Gal., where the apostle utterly denies a different gospel which is not another. There can be none, save that of the grace of Christ, Who gave Himself for our sins. To insist even on so apparently slight a matter as the circumcision of a Gentile believer, as well as on his faith of Christ, is in effect to frustrate the grace of God; and so Christ is dead in vain. Make circumcision, along with believing in Christ, to be the necessary means of the blessing, and Christ is become of no effect to you. You have slipped from the only tenure of the liberty wherewith Christ emancipates. You may have become far more “religious.” You may rival the Jews in observing days, and months, and times, and years. You may have fallen into no outward immorality; but you have done that which is infinitely worse, for you are severed from the root both of real holiness and of salvation by Christ. “Ye are fallen away from grace.”

But, that the word εὐαγγέλιου (gospel) and the corresponding verb are applied in scripture to many other glad tidings, besides those of salvation through the death and resurrection of the Savior, is beyond a doubt to an unprejudiced mind. The scriptures, already referred to, set this at rest. It is true, on the other hand, that what is called the “promise” to Adam is really no such thing (Gen. 3:15). It was part of the judgment on the serpent; and, so far as it can be said to be a promise, it was such to the Second, and not to the first, Adam. As to all the promises of God, in Him is the Yea, and through Him the Amen, to God for glory by us (2 Cor. 1).

But the pre-evangelization to Abram, that all the nations should be blessed in him, is a very different message from that which the Lord in the days of His flesh commissioned the twelve to preach, when He said, “Go not in the way of the Gentiles.” Nor can the gospel of the grace of God, which now gathers Jew and Greek for heavenly glory, be rightly confounded with the everlasting gospel which the angel is by-and-by to preach, saying, “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment is come.” God will then send to the Gentile world the simple tidings of the bruised woman's Seed as the vanquisher of Satan, backed up by the message of judgment at the door. In fine as a question of salvation, there can be but one gospel; while in another and in its place an important sense, repeatedly enunciated in God's word, there are many glad tidings, whose several bearings must be admitted, if we would be wise in the dispensations of God.

These observations may suitably enough precede our more immediate subject. For though one admits the connection, but not strict identity, of the Abrahamic covenant with the new covenant, which is to be made with the houses of Israel and Judah, it is impossible to show that the “mystery of Christ” (Eph. 3) is included in the oath to Abraham (Gen. 22). The difficulty arises from not seeing the proper distinctive position of the church, body and spouse of Christ, as now being formed and gathered by the Holy Ghost (sent down from heaven) into union with Christ the Head in the heavenly places.

To explain—there are, besides types, many statements in the Old Testament which leave room for the church, and bear, upon some of its circumstances and destiny, and thus are, or ought to be, full of light to us, now that its calling exists as a reality. On the other hand, the Holy Ghost is express in Eph. 3, not merely that the church did not exist, but that it was not even made known in other ages to the sons of men, as it is now revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets. From the beginning of the world this mystery of Christ was hid in God. The Seed of the woman was no secret, neither was the Son of Abraham, nor the Son of David. As such, Christ had been plainly revealed and looked for by faith. The blessings of the new covenant were in no way hidden, and it was clearly made known throughout the Psalms and the Prophets that the Messiah was to be forsaken of God, and all His waves to go over Him; that He was to be wounded for the transgressions and bruised for the iniquities of His people; that reconciliation was to be made, and everlasting righteousness brought in; that the sword was to awake against the man who is Jehovah's fellow; that He was to die, rise, and be seated at the right hand of Jehovah. Not all nor any of these things was the hidden mystery, wonderful and precious truths as they are. They had every one of them been unambiguously declared in the oracles which were entrusted to God's ancient people. They knew that Messiah was to reign over a loved and loving people, judging the poor, saving the children of the needy, and breaking in pieces the oppressor. They learned that not only would there be every eternal blessing for the righteous under His beneficent sway, but that the Spirit of God was to be poured out upon all flesh. They heard that, not the Jews only, but the nations blessed through them, will then praise Jehovah, and seek to Him Who is alike the Offspring and the Root of David.

“Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, Jehovah our righteousness” (Jer. 23:5, 6). These truths are in no sense the mystery. From Moses to Malachi there was an unbroken stream of testimony to the mercy in store for the Jews, and also for the Gentiles, under the reign of the promised Messiah.

But, pursuing the same stream, it is equally evident that in all these arrangements of divine goodness connected with the earth, the Jews had secured to them, by the promise to Abraham, the first place. And that promise was irrevocable and inalienable. God would not repent of His gifts and calling; and certainly, in the promises to Abraham, it will scarcely be pretended that God gave no higher privileges to His friend than to the outside stranger Gentile. “In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” The nations are to be blessed in the Seed; but surely Gentiles are distinct from Abraham's seed, and the position of the latter superior to that of the former. But if it be so, they are not fellow-heirs and of the same body and joint-partakers of God's promise in Christ, whereof the Epistle to the Ephesians treats. It is another truth.

It seems incontestable then, that the privileges of the Abrahamic covenant are totally distinct from those involved in the mystery, the exact accomplishment of the one being in itself incompatible with the terms of the other. For if you make the nations to be blessed with the same privileges in all respects as the Jews, the marked honor and boasted prerogative of Abraham's seed is at once swept away as you reduce the standing of the favored people down to that of the most distant Gentile. But if it be still allowed that for the seed of Abraham is reserved by their faithful God the most exalted seat on earth, above (though encircled by) the nations blessed in them (all blessed in Him Who condescended to take and secure these promises as the true Seed); then it is clear that the oft-repeated promise to Abraham, which distinguished and elevated his posterity above all nations, is entirely and manifestly different from the mystery hid in God, Whose eternal purpose it was, but revealed only when the Holy Spirit came down, consequent upon the exaltation of Christ in heaven.

(To be continued, D.V.)

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Isaiah

The vision of Isaiah is here unrolled before us. What is the special design? One does not inquire whether the noblest and most comprehensive of the prophets wrote without a purpose. The question is then, judging by its contents throughout, what did God mean His ancient people, ourselves too who now believe, to consider His aim to be in the book? What does He teach in it as a whole?

Jerusalem and Judah have a marked prominence; but from first to last the holy seer was given to judge the moral ruin of Israel by the word of Jehovah and the future glory under the sway of the divine Messiah, when all the nations shall flow to the mountain of Jehovah's house. What could be more odious than sacrifices and offerings, new moons and set feasts, from rulers of Sodom and a people of Gomorrah? If we must reject the traditional delusion that Isa. 2 opens with the progress of the gospel, how can rationalist unbelief face the plain intimation that only by the judgment He will execute are the people to be restored; and this—not nationally only but also in their souls, that only thus will all the nations be brought into glad and willing subjection? What for so good and grand an issue has present experience to do with either outlook? Surely not the hypocrisy of the Jews, or the idolatrous iniquities of all the nations.

Yet such were the actual facts. What sign, then or since, of Jerusalem thoroughly purged or of the Gentiles learning war no more? No, the Holy Spirit led the prophet to foresee the “end of the age,” and the judgment of Jehovah's adversaries; neither the one nor the other as yet accomplished facts. He shall reign Whose right it is. In that day all pride shall fall, and every disorder be rectified; even each petty female vanity shall vanish (3). Yet it will not be by the gospel nor the church; but the Lord shall scour out corruption and violence by the spirit of judgment and of burning; and Jehovah will create over every dwelling-place the glory to be a canopy (4). Such is the introduction, each part ending with Israel's restoration, as does each larger section save the intermediary prove.

Then follows in chap. 5 a song of lamentation touching His vineyard, the house of Israel, and Judah the plant of His delight, followed by manifold woes on His people, which introduces the refrain of His anger not turned away, and His hand stretched out still, closing here with darkness and distress on the land and light darkened in the heavens thereof. After a striking parenthesis in chap. 6 followed up in 7 to 9:7, the refrain is repeated from chap. 6:8, till the end comes in the Assyrian who had been the rod of His anger (chap. 10:5), now to be punished and destroyed when the Lord has performed His whole work on mount Zion; “for yet a very little while, and the indignation shall be accomplished, and mine anger, in their destruction.” Deliverance comes by divine judgment. Who He is that makes good both is given in chap. 11 with Israel's song of joy in chap. 12. But the parenthesis which is occupied with Judah and David's house had already prepared for this. For His divine glory is seen according to John 12 in chap. 6; then in 7 His incarnation; in 8 His claim too as Immanuel to the land; and in 9, after the eclipse of His rejection, when Jehovah hid His face from the house of Jacob, His victory over the oppressor as in the day of Midian, when His glories are proclaimed. Thus the general course of judgment, as well as the parenthetic revelation of Messiah rejected but at last intervening for judgment of the foe, coalesce. Such is the remainder of the first section, ending in Jehovah's praise, and the Holy One of Israel great in the midst of Zion.

The second division consists of “burdens” or “oracles” of judgment from 13 to 23, ending with not the land only but “the world” languishing and fading away, and Jehovah punishing the high ones on high and the kings of the earth on the earth, but a fortress to the poor remnant of godly Jews, when the veil is destroyed that veils all the peoples, yea death is swallowed up in victory. Who can fail to discern the end of the age? For in that day shall be sung in Judah's land a song of victory; and a vineyard of verjuice no more, but of pure wine; and Israel shall fill the face of the world with fruit, as we read with much more in chaps. 25.-27. The end is full triumph for restored Israel, as throughout it appears briefly in each part. And how plainly the future is in view by beginning with Babylon and next Assyria! For historically every one knows this is not the order compare Mic. 5:4-7.

The portion that succeeds begins with “woe” to Ephraim, and “woe” to Ariel or Jerusalem, in chaps. 28 & 29, with moral “woes” going on to chap. 30 and in 31 on those that go down to Egypt for help: Jehovah alone avails. In chap. 32 is the contrasted reign of Christ and the Spirit poured out for that day on the earth, as already on the Christian for heaven. Chap. 33 is “woe” on the last spoiler, as 34 is the final slaughter in the land of Edom, which makes way for the wilderness and the parched land to be glad, indeed for all creation. And no wonder; for they shall see the glory of Jehovah, the excellency of Israel's God. The church, and all the glorified, will have a still more lofty and a deeper portion on high.

Then we have four prose chapters (36-39) of the greatest interest, evidently of prophetic type, and meant to brace together the two halves of this sublime prophecy by recounting the facts of Hezekiah's history, which begin with the blasphemous pride and the divine overthrow of the Assyrian, and end with the predicted removal to Babylon, occupying as it does large space in the unbroken stream of prophecy that follows. But even this interlude of external change would not have been complete without the inner revelation of the sickness unto death of the king, from which Jehovah raised him up (chap. 38), and which has its glorious counterpart in the infinitely greater Son of David, Who really died and rose again: the everlasting ground, not merely for the sure mercies of David toward Israel, but for all the divine' counsels of blessing for all saints, for heaven and earth, for time and eternity. But what is this to the higher criticism so called? Alas! it derides true prophecy and miracle, and has no revealed future of blessedness or judgment, confessing neither the Father nor the Son. Is it of God, or of the enemy?

The profound and majestic dignity of the latter half (vainly attributed to “the Great Unnamed”) is exactly suited to its more inward character, each section, though more secretly intimated than in the first half, centering in the Messiah. There are three distinct aspects in continuous flow. Chaps. 40 to 48 are the first where Jehovah redeemed His servant Jacob, adumbrated by Cyrus' overthrow of Babylon, and his proclamation of liberty and return to the captive Jew. “There is no peace saith Jehovah to the wicked “; which only a far greater than Cyrus will effectuate. The second consists of chaps. 49 to 57 where it is no question of idols judged in Babylon, as a chastening for the Jew but final and fatal for the heathen; but we have the still more impious and unbelieving guilt of the Jew in rejecting Jehovah-Messiah, with “no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” For this evil lies deeper and strikes at God Himself, not merely at His relative and continuous title as the God of ages, and governor of Israel. Lastly, the crown of blessing is to the end of the book, where faith in the Righteous Servant and His atonement changes unrighteous Israel; and the elect from them become His servants, not only delivered from every foe at the last extremity, but brought into unchanging joy and glory; no longer a curse, but at the end of the age an everlasting blessing to all families of the earth, as was promised at the beginning of their history to their first fathers.

Who but God could have inspired so far-reaching a plan, worthy of Himself and of His Son the Anointed! He, by unreserved obedience and infinite suffering in atonement, will deliver His people at last out of their manifold evil, wandering, and ruin, to become the ready servants of His good and holy will, and the honored instruments as well as objects of His mercy in the great day, when Israel shall be as stable before Jehovah as the new heavens and the new earth which He will create. How sad the unbelief which doubts that the zeal of Jehovah will do this, and much more! How blind those who fail to see the glowing and splendid testimony of all the vision of Isaiah to it all!

Take the Incarnation so clearly predicted in chap. 7, yet in chap. 8 a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to both the houses of Israel, while Jehovah hides His face from the guilty people, but has “disciples” given to the rejected Christ for signs, and for wonders, before the day of final victory and abiding joy. Then shall the nation be multiplied as in chap. 9 and say triumphantly—Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulders. And His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The Father of the age to come (or eternity), The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice henceforth even forever. Is the trumpet's voice uncertain?

Take again His atoning death in chap. 53 and the glories surely to follow, though we have to wait for the Jews to look on Him Whom they pierced before He is set on Zion, and reigns as Jehovah over all the earth. How honestly deny true, divinely given, foresight in broad and clear instances like these, early and later? Indubitable fairly as they are, they serve to attest all the others as to Babylon, Cyrus, & c.—any of which have furnished matter for critical cavil. But the orderly design also of the book, both as a whole and in each of its seven parts, points to its divine author though Isaiah.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Taken and Left; Thanks for Bread and Cup; Commendatory Letters; Crafty; 1PE 3:21

Q.-Matt. 24:40, 41; Luke 17:34, 35: “taken” and “left,” for what? A. W.

A.-” Taken” for judgment by the coming King; “left” for blessing in the kingdom. If the Lord had been here speaking of the church or Christian, the taking would have naturally pointed to being caught up to heaven. But the context proves decisively in both Gospels that He speaks of Jews in that future day of His appearing after the heavenly saints have been translated and appear with Him in glory.

Q.-Matt. 26:26, 27; Mark 14:22, 23; Luke 22:19, 20. Is it not clear that thanks should be given separately for the bread and the cup? And that reverence is due by doing so at the table? T. M.

A.-Though spirit is far beyond letter, it is sad to allow a slipshod way with the Lord's Supper. Even the Lord Himself, as all three Synoptic Gospels show, teaches by His action what is comely on our part. Nothing can justify irreverence or self-will. We have only to follow Him. As He took bread and gave thanks before breaking it, so He did with the cup. Why should any one depart from His example? Is it not habit, or carelessness?

Q.-2 Cor. 3:1. Commendatory letters, from whom? Z.

A.-From such as are known to have the assembly's confidence. If others took on them to write, what weight could they have? If a man wrote of contention or faction, the letter would represent his own bad state. We have the Spirit of God to guide by the word; but all is vain if we be unspiritual habitually, or carried away by prejudice or prepossession at any particular time.

To doctrine, as to discipline, the same principle applies. If a saint were of single eye, the whole body would be full of light. And all things when convicted by the light are manifested. The errors of a Christ born at a distance from God, of uncertainty as to possessed and known life eternal, and of a fabulous propitiation in heaven, distinct from Christ's expiation on the cross, are lies of the enemy; and “no lie is of the truth.” Nor will faithful men tolerate any of them, or whittle them down, or pretend that the light does not manifest them. It is grievous to know that any and all of these heterodoxies have excusers, who are more guilty and dangerous by their wicked sophistry than the misled. In such questions, it is “the eye” that is wanted, not “the light,” for this is quite clear.

Q.-2 Cor. 12:16. What means, “Being crafty I caught you with guile”? R. M.

A.-It is the low insult which “deceitful workers” insinuated among the Corinthian saints, to defame the apostle and exalt themselves. They dared to say that, if he did not burden them directly, he all the more craftily reaped what he could through Titus and others. None fall into such depths of baseness as Christian professors alienated and self-seeking. In short then, it is the language, not of the apostle, but of his adversaries, whom he exposes for our admonition; and he calls such words of his speaking “folly,” because it was not about Christ but himself, to which their iniquity compelled him,

Q.-1 Peter 3:21. What is really meant here? R. M.

A.-Christian baptism sets forth, not new birth, but salvation by the work of Christ. We are, as another apostle says, buried therein to His death; the virtue of which was proved by His resurrection. This a good conscience requests and receives. But it is carefully said, to avoid superstitious perversion, “not the putting away the filth of the flesh,” which was all that water could do, but what a good conscience as to God asks for, salvation by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For He was given up for our sins and was raised again for our justification. Thus have we acceptance in Him.

The Christian's Place in Ephesians and Colossians

In Eph. 1:6 our place is full grace in Christ; in Col. 1:13 it is present actual deliverance from the power of darkness and translation into the kingdom of the Son of His love. In the former all is seen from the point of view of God's eternal counsels before evil existed, the good which He proposed in Himself, though redemption was necessary when evil had come up, and the glory of God Himself, and the basis of our glory in that accomplishment of them, were made good in it. In the Epistle to the Colossians man in evil is the object of grace.

BY J. N. DARBY COLLECTED WRITINGS, 6/each vol.SYNOPSIS, 5/do.

THE CHURCH'S PRESENT HOPE, 1/paper, 1/6 cloth.

SANCTIFICATION, OR SETTING APART TO GOD, 3d.

OBEDIENCE, ld. PAUL'S WISH 1N CHAINS, ld.

WHAT DO I LEARN FROM SCRIPTURE?

GRACE, 4 a penny; 1/9 per 100.

BY W. KELLY
THE BOOK OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH, Svo. cloth, 7/6.
AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.
THE OFFERINGS OF LEVITICUS, 121710. cloth. 1/6.
THE HOPE OF CHRIST COMPATIBLE WITH PROPHECY, 3d.
THE PROMISE OF THE FATHER; AND THE BODY, 3d.
THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE Fullness OF THE SEASONS, Id.
UNITY, 2d. " BORN OF WATER AND SPIRIT," ld.
ISOLATION, 4 a penny; 1/9 per 100.
INNOVATION, id.; 3/6 per 100.

HYMNS revised in 1894, cloth, 9d.; Paste Grain, 1/6; Mor.,
from 2/to 4/-.
Large Type, cloth, 1/6; Paste Grain, 2/6; Mor. 4/to 6/-.
GOOD TIDINGS' HYMN BOOK, cloth, limp, 3d.
The above two Hymn Books bound together, cloth, 1/-.

HYMNS (29) for Christian Meetings, 2/per 100.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Isaac: 14. The Bride Called for Isaac

Genesis 24:50-53

We may observe how Eliezer acts with the decision given by a single eye. Not only have we prayer in the Spirit, and worship; but there is a walk singularly devoted to the will and word of his master who sent him on this mission for his son. On this he is exclusively set. It was quite outside the world and its objects. Eliezer will not swerve from his errand; he allows no need of the body to interfere with its being the first object before him: to it all other claims must bend.

“And Laban and Bethuel answered and said, The thing proceedeth from Jehovah: we cannot speak to thee bad or good. Behold, Rebekah [is] before thee: take [her], and go away; and let her be wife of thy master's son, as Jehovah hath said. And it came to pass, when Abraham's servant heard their words that he bowed down to the earth before Jehovah. And the servant brought forth vessels of silver and vessels of gold, and clothing, and gave [them] to Rebekah; he gave also to her brother and to her mother precious things” (vers. 50-53).

It is just so for the church and the Christian. The Holy Spirit given and indwelling acts by the Father's will for the glory of Christ Whose bride is the church, Whose member is every Christian. He is a spirit not of cowardice nor of indifference, but of power and of love and of a sound mind; above all He is given to be with us forever and in us to glorify Him Who glorified the Father.

Is it objected that this is to confound the Holy Spirit with the church and the Christian? It is really scriptural truth, not confusion. The objection flows from failure to discern that it is of the essence of the Spirit's action to merge Himself as it were in the object He employs or abides in. Hence every good fruit, of which He is the source and power, is set to the object's account. Indeed the case is equally true of those possessed by evil spirits. Thus the two demoniacs in Matt. 8:29 cried out, saying, “What have we to do with thee, Son of God? Didst thou come here before the season to torment us?” Still clearer is this quasi-identification expressed in Mark 5:2, where, when asked his name, the chief of the two answers, “Legion is my name, because we are many.” No less plainly does it appear in Luke 8:28, 29, where the possessed said, “I beseech thee torment me not;” and the evangelist continues, “For He had commanded the unclean spirit to go out from the man.” Hence we see how profoundly correct it is in the history that Eliezer, typifying the Holy, Spirit's action, should represent the church and the Christian also.

We can scarce fail to note too how God controls hearts as well as circumstances in pursuance of the design in hand. It is not that difficulties or dangers were lacking. They were many and manifold, to exercise faith in Himself Who in the face of contrary appearances knows all beforehand, and works all things according to the counsel of His own will. We have no reason to accredit the zeal of Laban and Bethuel for the divine glory; yet they fell in at once with what was set before them, confessing that the thing was of Jehovah which left them without a word to oppose. Their yielding at once, their recognition that Abraham's word was Jehovah's doing, drew out the fresh adoration of Eliezer.

Then follows the bestowal of proper bridal gifts of silver and of gold, with clothing, for Rebekah, as well as precious things for those connected with her. It will be found by those who investigate symbolic usage in scripture (for example in the tabernacle's construction), that, as silver answers to divine grace, so does gold to divine righteousness. This certainly is plain in the antitype of Eph. 4 where to each one of us, it is said, was the grace given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. “Wherefore he saith, When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men And he gave some, apostles, and some, prophets, and some, evangelists, and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints unto (or with a view to) work of ministering, unto edifying the body of Christ.” Could any type be more appropriate in this place? Here only, where it was so needful to complete the picture, it is given with marked care. Never were given gifts so distinctly flowing from the grace of God in Christ, and based on God's righteousness.

The power of Christ's victory will be fully and in many other ways manifested in heaven and earth another day. Meanwhile these gifts are the witness of His love to the Christian and to the church, delivered already from the enemy's power. He, the ascended Man, gave them to men; and this in virtue of His previous descent in humiliation the human victims of Satan's malice and of their own folly and sin. All is for the perfecting of the saints unto ministerial work and unto edifying Christ's body; all looks on to the bright future when Christ will present to Himself the church glorious, having no spot, wrinkle, or any of such things, but that it should be holy and unblemished.

Priesthood: 7. The Eighth Day

Now we have, not Moses acting as well as directing, but Aaron ministering as high priest of the Jewish confession. It was the inauguration of the priesthood in full standing.

“And Moses said to Aaron, Draw near unto the altar, and offer thy sin-offering and thy burnt-offering, and make atonement for thyself, and for the people; and offer the offerings of the people, and make atonement for them, as Jehovah commanded. And Aaron drew near to the altar and slaughtered the calf of the sin-offering which [was] for himself; And the sons of Aaron presented the blood to him, and he dipped his finger in the blood and put [it] on the horns of the altar, and poured out the blood at the bottom of the altar. And the fat and the kidneys, and the net above the liver, of the sin-offering, he burnt on the altar, as Jehovah commanded Moses. And the flesh and the skin he burned with fire outside the camp. And he slaughtered the burnt-offering; and Aaron's sons delivered to him the blood which he sprinkled on the altar round about. And they delivered to him the burnt-offering piece by piece, and the head; and he burnt [them] on the altar. And he washed the inwards and the legs, and burnt [them] upon the burnt-offering on the altar.”

“And he presented the people's offering, and took the goat of the sin-offering which [was] for the people, and slaughtered it, and offered it for sin, as the first. And he presented the burnt-offering, and offered it according to the ordinance. And he presented the meal-offering, and took a handful of it, and burnt [it] on the altar, besides the burnt-offering of the morning. And he slaughtered the bullock and the ram of the sacrifice of peace-offerings which [was] for the people. And Aaron's sons delivered to him the blood, and he sprinkled it on the altar round about; and the fat pieces of the bullock and of the ram, the fat tail and what covereth [the inwards], and the kidneys and the net of the liver. And they put the fat pieces on the breast pieces, and he burnt the fat pieces on the altar. And the breast pieces and the right shoulder Aaron waved, a wave-offering before Jehovah, as Moses commanded” (vers. 7-21).

Accordingly Aaron and his sons offered the calf as Sin-offering for himself, putting of its blood presented by his sons on the horns of the altar and the rest at its base, and burning the fat and the kidneys and the net above the liver on the altar; but the flesh and the skin without the camp as prescribed. But nothing is said here, as in chap. 8:14, of laying their hands on its head, though there is the same witness borne to Christ's sacrifice in the acceptance of the inwards as holy and precious on the altar, but the body reduced to ashes without as identified with sin. His work explains the seeming inconsistency but bright witness, that though He knew no sin, God made Him sin for us. Again, we should note, that atonement was not complete according to God without the Burnt offering as well as that for sin. This at once followed; and Aaron sprinkled its blood too, delivered by his sons, on the altar round about, and burned it all, piece by piece, with the head, on the altar, even the inwards and legs when washed, burnt on the Burnt-offering. It was for acceptance and not only covering sin. The very words for “burnt” in verses 10 and 11 are here as elsewhere pointedly different, as often noticed. Next, Aaron presented the people's offering, the young buck-goat for sin, then as Burnt-offering a bullock, as Peace-offering a ram, with an oil-mingled Meal-offering. Here each class of the Levitical offerings was represented on behalf of the people. They mean Christ in the fullness of His work and person as well as His grace. How lamentable to read what a good and learned man (as was Dr. Ch. Wordsworth) remarks on the chapter! “Since therefore even Moses, who had been employed to consecrate Aaron, did not venture to perform any priestly function after Aaron had been consecrated, it is evident that no one else might do so,” citing Heb. 5:4, Acts 19:15, Jude 11, as well as Ex. 29:11, and Num. 16:1-43. He would not have denied that all Christians have free access through the blood of Jesus into the holies, and that all saints can now through Him offer up a sacrifice to God continually, that is, fruit of lips confessing to His name. What could he himself or any one else do more priestly? Preaching or teaching is a different question, and neither of them is worship or priestly. When will men live above prejudice and learn that through faith of the gospel and in virtue of Christ's death there is a disannulling of a foregoing commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness (for the law made nothing perfect), and a bringing in of a better hope through which we draw nigh to God. Who on earth draws so nigh to God as the Christian? Two barriers once blocked the way: the comparative nearness of the Jew outwardly; and the absolute distance from God of the sinner, Jew or Gentile. But through our Lord Jesus we both have access by (ἐν) one Spirit unto the Father. The assertion of an earthly priest denies this rich and essential privilege of Christianity, little as they think it who are beguiled into sacerdotalism. “Rejoice in the Lord alway,” said the apostolic prisoner.

Proverbs 8:12-21

We are in a world dominated for the present by a subtle spirit of evil that has access to every heart. There is therefore constant need of a wisdom above man's. For the Christian it descends from above; it is Christ, God's wisdom no less than His power. Here, as being for Israel, the Holy Spirit presents wisdom for the earth. For the heaven and the earth belong to God Who in due time will expel the usurper and put all things under Him in fact and manifestation, as they are now in principle to faith. Meanwhile we have God occupying Himself with what is heavenly for His children, in the N. T. before the day arrives, as for His ancient people renewed to profit ere long by the. O. T. as here. “I wisdom dwell in prudence, and find out knowledge of reflection. The fear of Jehovah [is] to bate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth do I hate. Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom: I [am] intelligence; I have strength. By me kings reign, and rulers make just decrees; by me princes rule, and nobles, all the judges of the earth. I love those that love me; and they that seek me early (or, diligently) shall find me. Riches and honor [are] with me; durable wealth and righteousness. My fruit [is] better than gold, yea than pure gold; and my revenue than choice silver. I walk in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment; that I may cause those that love me to inherit substance, and fill their treasuries” (vers. 12-21).

The Christian, though a heavenly man, walks on earth, and both needs to, and can, avail himself of such words as these, coming under the moral government of God as his Father (1 Peter 1:17). Wisdom makes prudence its dwelling-place; and there finds knowledge, if not of witty inventions, assuredly of reflections, a better thing. Thus are subtle adversaries met by a wisdom and its resources deeper than every snare. Its base is that fear of Jehovah which hates evil, for which intellectual sharpness and craft are no match. For divine wisdom in the word forms the godly in obedience, not in the cleverness that outwits craft by profounder craft; for this would only dishonor God and sully the soul. Hence pride and arrogance on the one hand, and on the other the evil way and the perverse mouth, are hateful to God and His people. They are the ways and the words of self, far from Him Who leads in the path of obedience, and gives counsel and sound wisdom to those who wait on Him and keep His word; and with Him is not only intelligence but strength—all we need in this tangled and shifty scene.

None need wisdom so much as those in authority, the monarch in particular. “By me kings reign, and rulers make just decrees; by me princes rule and nobles, all the judges of the earth.” But this very language aptly discriminates the difference between O.T., and the N.T., that is the entirely new state of things under the gospel as compared with the law. For there is instruction in the N.T. only for subjection to authority, in the O. T. for those who wield it also. The Christian waits to reign with Christ, content meanwhile to suffer with Him and for Him. No exhortation, no principle, no fact supposes him exercising worldly power where Christ was rejected till He appears to judge the world. It was quite another condition before the princes of this age crucified the Lord of glory. But it is now a time of great and growing unbelief; and it is a hard trial for most believers to forego present power and honor. Indeed since the apostles passed away, the true heavenly glory of the Christian and the church has been well-nigh forgotten and ignored.

But wisdom goes out far beyond rulers and the great, even to all that seek and prize it. “I love those that love me; and those that seek me earnestly shall find ma.” So it ever is in divine pursuits. Those that are of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. God has no blanks for the real. Wisdom from Him secures riches and honor; not for the Christian of a material sort, but better far—durable wealth truly and righteousness. Its fruit is indeed superior to pure gold or choice silver. Wisdom walks in the way of righteousness. Not “leading” but “walking” is the point here. To reason, to common sense, it may seem utterly foolish; for it often entails loss, and sacrifice, and suffering. But “he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” Christ to us is the way; and Him we follow, whatever the case. Wisdom walks therefore in the midst of the paths of judgment, not outside them. And there only is blessing enjoyed, though it is not for the Christian in the basket and the store, in the bank or in stocks, but higher and unchanging.

Gospel Words: the Canaanite Woman

Matthew 15:21-28

It is in the First Gospel we find this most instructive incident, which reveals the Lord, not merely as minister of circumcision for God's truth, but as the display of His sovereign grace where God's curse lay, and Satan's power.

“And Jesus going forth hence retired into the parts of Tire and Sidon; and, behold, a Canaanite woman coming” out from those borders cried out, saying, Pity me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is grievously possessed by a demon. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and asked him, saying, Dismiss her, for she crieth out after us. But he said in answer, I was not sent save to the lost sheep of Israel's house. And she came and paid him homage, saying, Lord, help me. But he said in answer, It is not good to take the children's bread and cast [it] to the dogs. But she said, Yea, Lord; for even the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters. Then Jesus in answer said to her, O woman, great [is] thy faith: be it done to thee as thou wiliest. And her daughter was healed from that hour” (Matt. 15:21-28).

The Lord withdrew from the proud religionists of Jerusalem, who made void the law of God for the sake of their tradition. He also laid bare to the disciples that only the plants of His Father take root, while all that issues from man's heart is defiled and defiling. The sinner needs God's grace to save him. This is shown in the otherwise desperate case of the Canaanite, and her daughter sorely possessed of a demon.

Here may many a soul learns why the Lord does not accede to its appeal. Hers was deep and earnest; yet He answered her not a word. What claims on the Son of David had a Canaanite woman? When He reigns, there shall be no more a Canaanite in the house of Jehovah of hosts (Zech. 14:21). When the two blind cried early or late, saying, Pity us, Son of David, He touched their eyes, which were then opened according to their faith (Matt. 9:27-30; 20:30-34). But repentance has its place as truly as faith; and God will have the soul to judge itself aright. “Cursed be Canaan” is the word from of old; and yet was she not now asking His pity Who is to avenge and deliver Israeli How many to-day have said the words, “Father,... forgive us our sins”! Yet they too have received no answer; nor would they assert, any more than they believe, that their sins are forgiven. They have gone on ground wholly untenable. They are not His sons by faith in Christ. They are not born of water and Spirit. They stand on law, supplemented by ordinances. They are unrenewed, serving divers lusts and pleasures, a prey to the power of darkness. They do not cry to God in the truth of their estate, but imitate the language of disciples, which they might own they are not in heart. Have we not experienced it ourselves? Our state was below the Canaanite's.

The woman of Canaan evidently knew that no Israelite ever appealed to Christ in vain. She had faith in Him; but she had overlooked her own dismal position. Theirs were “the promises “; but what had she? Not promise, but curse. And He Who is the truth would have her feel it. Not so the disciples; they would have Him dismiss her. This was far from His heart. They disliked the discredit of her importunity, and wished to be rid of her. He meant to bless her; but it must be in the truth as well as the grace of God. For this He waited, and she as yet had no answer; but He answered them, “I was not sent save to the lost sheep of Israel's house.”

Now faith where real perseveres; and the woman came and did Him homage, saying, “Lord, help me.” He is indeed Lord of all: this is truth without assumption of privilege. To such an appeal He does reply, “It is not good to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs.”

Thus does His grace help her to see where she was lacking. The light of God shines into her heart; and she bows at once. For she said, “Yea, Lord; for even the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters.” She apprehends where and what she really was, and takes her true place before God. She had forgotten that she was not a “sheep” to claim the succor of Israel's Shepherd. She was truly a “dog” before Him, no better than a little dog or whelp. Yet while no longer hiding this from her soul but confessing it freely, she rejoins, “Yea, Lord; for even the whelps eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters.”

Oh! what refreshment did such faith give to our Lord Jesus! She savored the things of God. She appreciated, believed, and enjoyed the grace of which she was the object. And the Lord owned her “great faith,” and gave her all she wished.

How is it with you, dear reader? Have you learned that you are no better than a dog before Him? Or are you, while in your sins, claiming to be His sheep? Own yourself a sinner, and Him the only Savior, that you may be saved. He is the same Lord of all, and is rich unto all that call upon Him. Why should you stand without? A better voice than Laban's invites you to come in and be blessed. All depends on Him; but it is not yours save by repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Till then we have no known divine answer to our cry.

1 Peter 1:1

“Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ to elect sojourners scattered through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia” (1 Peter 1:1).

When James wrote his Epistle, as bondman of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, it was to the twelve tribes that were in the “dispersion.” It is a mistake to call this a “catholic” address, but it has an expressly large character for Israel; for it appeals to their utmost extent. So on a notable occasion the Apostle Paul says before the king Herod Agrippa, “Now I stand to be judged for the hope of the promise made by God unto our fathers, unto which our twelve tribes earnestly serving God night and day hope to arrive” (Acts 26:7). That hope hangs on resurrection, as the prophets indicated clearly, and the law too, rightly understood. Wherefore he immediately (ver. 8) speaks of God raising dead persons, as proved in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. God will thus be the doer and giver of all the blessing He promised; and Israel will have only to incline their ear and come to Him, from Whom they had so long departed, and by Whom they were at length for their apostasy dispersed among the nations. But by-and-by they are to hear, and their soul shall live; and He will make an everlasting covenant with them, the sure (the faithful or inviolable) mercies of David, in Him Who is the true Beloved, a witness given to the peoples, a leader and commander to the peoples far beyond the son of Jesse.

“The dispersion” is a phrase evidently familiar to the Jews, which first occurs in John 7:35, and clearly means the Jews dispersed among the Greeks or Gentiles. For the genitive here as often elsewhere expresses a dependence, not immediate but remote and external, as for instance μετ. Bαβ. removal to Babylon (Matt. 1:11).

But the Apostle Peter in this scripture prefixes two words before “dispersion” which necessarily limit the scope of that term. The first, “elect” points out restriction to individuals chosen of God. They were elect from among the Jews, as believing that Jesus was the Christ and Son of God; whereas their brethren after the flesh for the most part rejected Him. Those who believed were Christians.

Israel had enjoyed the privilege of being the nation chosen by Jehovah as no other people was; and they will in sovereign mercy be reinstated at the end of the age under the Messiah and the new covenant, to be blessed with richer favors and forever in that fast approaching day. It will be no longer a mixed condition as in the palmiest season of the past. “Thy people also (says Isa. 60:21-22) shall be all righteous, they shall inherit the land forever; the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified. The little one shall become a thousand, and the small one a strong nation: I Jehovah shall hasten it in its time.” So Daniel was told later, “At that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book” (Dan. 12:1).

But that time is not come. Out of the Jewish people, when the apostle wrote, God is choosing to a heavenly calling by the faith of Him Whom the nation rejected and God has glorified on high. They are His present election while the heavens receive the Lord Jesus. To these only does Peter here write; he does not, like James, address a larger circle, some even unconverted, throughout the twelve tribes. He writes only to Christian confessors of the Lord Jesus who had been Jews.

This last is made plain and certain by the second term, “sojourners,” when combined with the word “dispersion” which it qualifies. They were not the primitive possessors of these countries, nor simply “elect” from among its settled inhabitants. They were not only Jews scattered in those parts, but elect “pilgrims” or “sojourners.” This was a title of grace, as “dispersion” was of judgment. Their election in this case was bound up with the journey to the better country, that is, a heavenly. Originally Jews, they were now Christians. This entirely accords with the writer of the Epistle. Peter was an “apostle of Jesus Christ” as he here introduces himself; and as the gospel of the uncircumcision had been confided to Paul, so was that of the circumcision to Peter (Gal. 2:7). Hence it is to such that these two Epistles were addressed. Compare 2 Peter 3:1 with the verse before us. As this is certain, it is unbelieving to allow that any other statements can countervail. Even a man would not write so incoherently: why should men of faith think so unworthily of scripture? Can such persons hold divine inspiration?

It is the more remarkable, because, as we know, the churches throughout Asia Minor had been founded by the Apostle Paul and consisted largely of those who had been Gentiles. The delicate consideration of Peter is the more striking, because he directs his appeals throughout a part of that land to those Christian Jews who fell under his administration. Needless to say, his instruction in no way clashed with that which Paul had preached, taught, and written to them, whether Jews or Gentiles. None knew better than Peter how much the Jewish confessors of the Lord Jesus needed to be established in grace; none felt more than he how disposed they were on the one hand to boast in law and ordinances, and on the other to conform to the shameful ways of the Pagans who surrounded them. In his very address or the superscription he strikes the key-note. From the start he thus reminds them, that they were “elect” after a new sort, not national now but personal, and flowing out of the grace of God as Father for known association with Christ not on earth but in heaven. They were therefore but “pilgrims” meanwhile, where He was despised and rejected as a sufferer beyond all others in life (as He was alone and infinitely in His atoning death), that they too might by faith rejoice in sharing His sufferings as far as this could be.

For Peter was jealous over their souls with a godly jealousy, lest election might be severed from a deep sense of divine grace, and the spring be forgotten in claiming the issue. He therefore loses no time in saying plainly that not more surely are they “elect” than “sojourners.” Had he heard the Son of God, in pouring out His heart to the Father, declare that His own (and were they not His own?) were not of the world, as He was not? Had he forgotten the Lord's repeating, yet more emphatically, “Of the world they are not, even as I am not” (John 17:15,17)? Here it is a figurative expression, but the same truth. They were elect pilgrims. The world of man's home was not theirs, nor yet was Canaan, but heaven, yea the Father's house above. It was not Jewish feeling for the land of promise, but Christian hope in waiting for Christ and to be with Him where He is, and like Him glorified.

Therefore were they but sojourners here looking for glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, and called to gird up the loins of their mind, being sober, and setting their hope perfectly upon the grace to be brought them at that revelation. Practical duties are based on the new relationships of grace; and truth is the communicated knowledge of both. For it is a characteristic of Peter's method and style to blend all together informally and with fervor, so as to act on the renewed mind, exercising the conscience and the heart. If he has not the immense sweep of Paul in ranging through the counsels of God, if not his the penetrating into the roots of complicated questions and clearing the principles at stake, if a far-reaching and unfailing and subtle dialectic belongs to Paul beyond all others, to no one more admirably than to Peter was it given to strengthen his brethren pithily, earnestly, and affectionately, by the exhibition of Christ and His work, and by the constant application of God's righteous government, whatever be His grace too.

The names given of the lands, where were the Christian Jews addressed, call for little notice. It has been shown by others that it well suits one writing from the eastern Babylon, but not the little place so named in Egypt any more than the symbolic metropolis of the west. The lack of persons saluted serves to prove that Peter was little if at all known personally there, whatever might be the just weight of inspired letters from him. These various provinces had been the familiar scene of Paul's labors.

Kingdom of God: 5

The fact is, that the kingdom of God, which will exist manifestly in the millennial reign of Christ (treated of in No. 1), exists now in mystery, and is found wherever there is the acknowledgment, real or in profession only, of the name and authority of Christ, while He Himself is hid in God on high. It is within this kingdom of course, that the church has its existence at present. Nay, more; it is at present the only thing in the kingdom which is really precious to Christ; and we shall have to look at passages which, on this account, speak of the church, or rather of those who compose the church, as the kingdom. Still, it is not as the church that these passages contemplate it, and the kingdom itself is a much wider thing.

For full instructions as to the special or distinct place and blessedness of “the church,” we look in vain, except in the Ephesians and other Epistles of Paul. The kingdom of God, one would repeat, exists now in mystery, and comprises the whole sphere in which the name and authority of Christ are recognized, whether nominally or really, during the period of Christ's session at the right hand of God. There is, of course, a wide difference between a sovereignty exercised openly and visibly in the form and character of royalty on the earth (Jerusalem its center and the whole earth its sphere), and a sovereignty exercised from heaven by invisible agency and moral means, such as Christianity is now. This latter is the kingdom of God in mystery; the former is the kingdom of God as the Jews were taught by ancient prophecy to expect it, and as it will yet surely exist in the millennial age. Modified, however, even then by the introduction and co-heirship with Christ of the heavenly saints, for which room was made by Israel's rejection of their Messiah on the earth. When He takes the kingdom, it will be as the glorified Son of man; and the heavenly body, the church, now forming by the Holy Ghost, will be united with its Head in the administration of that kingdom, so that even then it will have the character of the kingdom of heaven.

As the open establishment of the kingdom is inseparably connected with the repentance of Israel and their reception of the Messiah, it pleased God, by the proclamation that His kingdom was at hand, solemnly to put to the test whether Israel was in a condition, morally and spiritually, to receive it. Accordingly the preaching of John the Baptist, and the earlier preaching of our Lord Himself and His disciples, was simply this, the announcing that the kingdom was at hand, and calling upon Israel to repent and believe the glad tidings. God knew of course, that they would reject the kingdom thus preached to them; and He had arranged everything accordingly. The kingdom they hoped for was to be put off on account of their unbelief; and the kingdom which was actually at hand was the kingdom in mystery, as it has existed from that time until the present.

Though God knew well that they would reject the kingdom, both in the rejection of its royal Heir and in the rejection of His fore-runner—though God knew this, I say—the responsibility of Israel was not thereby diminished in the least. All was ready on God's part; “the Child was born to Israel, the Son given,” Whose name was to be called Wonderful, on Whose shoulders the government was to be, and Who was to sit on the throne of His father David, executing judgment and justice forever. He gave full proof that to Him belonged these dignities and glories; and had they received Him, His reign would doubtless have commenced. But God knew that they would not receive Him. He knew they would crucify and slay Him, and He delivered Him into their hands to be thus crucified. But did that make them less guilty? Not in the least. The foreknowledge of God is one thing; man's responsibility is another.

God knew men would break the law; yet He gave it, that what was in man's heart might be manifest. God knew that Israel would, by their sins, forfeit the land of Canaan, and have to be scattered, as at present. He told them that He knew this before He brought them in. (See Deut. 31:16-21). Still, He brought them in. He knew that they would reject the prophets and messengers by whom He spake to them, and offered them forgiveness and mercy, if they would but repent. (See Ezek. 3:7-9). Nevertheless, He sent them, rising up betimes and sending. Was their responsibility diminished by God's foreknowledge of the manner in which they would treat the messengers of His mercy? Surely not. So when, last of all, He sent His Son, sent Him as the One born to be King of the Jews, He knew all that they would do unto Him. From the slaughter of the innocents by Herod, to the last taunt that was addressed to the holy Sufferer on the cross, God foreknew all.

Why should this hinder Him from presenting the kingdom to them, and offering them its felicities and its glories on condition of their repentance, any more than the foresight of their failure under any former test should have hindered Him from applying it? God would make manifest what man, what Israel, was, and so appealed to them in the most affecting way, through the medium of the hopes which, for so many generations, had been indulged by them as a nation—hopes based on the prophecies considered in our last. And they understood that Jesus claimed to be the One Whose coming was the object and center of their natural hopes. The superscription in Latin, and Greek, and Hebrew, placed over the cross by Pilate, told plainly enough that it was as King of the Jews He was rejected by the nation. Thank God, He did foreknow what they in the hatred of their hearts would do. Their sin has thus been overruled to our salvation; their fall has become our riches. In due time, when the church has been formed and perfected, and caught up to meet its Head in the air, when all the “mysteries of the kingdom” have had their accomplishment, Israel, as we have seen, humbled and broken-hearted, shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of Jehovah; and the kingdom shall be established manifestly and in power. “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!”

Let us look now at some of the passages in the New Testament which relate to this subject. We shall find them ranging themselves under one or other of these classes. 1. The passages which announce the kingdom in such a manner and in such connections as necessarily to awaken in the heart the thought of that kingdom of Christ, which we saw in No. 1 to be the great subject of Old Testament prophecy. 2. The passages which speak of the kingdom as it now exists in mystery, including all on earth that own, whether truly or in mere profession, the sovereignty of Jesus in heaven. 3. The passages in which the expression is limited to that which really and truly owns the name and authority of Jesus; the kernel, so to speak, which alone gives value to the shell. There may be a few others giving the general characteristics of the reign of God apart from circumstances altogether.

“In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying: “Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of Jehovah, make his paths straight” (Matt. 3:1-3). It is by no means certain that the phrase “kingdom of heaven” here would suggest to the mind of John the Baptist himself any other thought than that of Messiah's reign—the kingdom which the God of heaven was to set up. The passage quoted by the evangelist respecting him is one which clearly has not yet received its full accomplishment; nor will it, till “the times of restitution of all things.” “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: and the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed; and all flesh shall see it together” (Isa. 40:4, 5). There can be no mistake as to what kingdom it is that is depicted here. It ensues on the accomplishment of the whole warfare, and travail, and chastisement of Jerusalem (verses 1, 2); and in it Zion and Jerusalem have the office of bringing good tidings, and crying to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God” (verse 9).

Without doubt the kingdom of heaven was really to exist in a very different form before the arrival of this blessed period; but it was Israel's sin which afforded the opportunity, so to speak, for its existence in its present manner; and before it actually took this form, it was to be seen whether there was in them the heart to respond to these joyful tidings; and hence this mission of the Baptist. (continued from p. 8) (To be continued, D.V.)

The Mystery and the Covenants: 2

In this mystery the distinctions disappear which the Abrahamic promises maintain. Jew and Gentile are now made one and the same body, the body of Christ. For earthly blessing this could not be, because the oath to Abraham, it need scarcely be said, was inviolable. But this was a new and heavenly mystery, which in not the slightest degree interfered with the ancient pledges, and thus Gentile distance and Jewish nearness alike are now eclipsed by the glory of Christ exalted on high, and gathering out of Jews and Gentiles a body for Himself. “By one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free.”

Thus faith, eternal life, and saintship, though of the operation of the Holy Ghost, are not His baptism: those had been from the beginning; this was not until Pentecost. The disciples of Jehovah had as great, and even greater, privileges than any saints in previous ages; but they were not yet baptized of the Holy Ghost. Nay, even after His death and resurrection, they had not this blessing until the Lord had ascended on high. Risen from the dead, the Lord breathes upon the disciples, and says “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” This, I suppose, was the power of that life more abundant, life in resurrection, which He could now impart as the quickening Spirit. But it was not yet the baptism of the Spirit. For immediately before His ascension we find Him with them, and commanding them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which saith He, ye have heard of Me: for John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence (Acts 1:4, 5).

They had long believed in God's Son: they had eternal life, as well as whatever accession of vital energy may be supposed to be conveyed by His breathing on them when He was determined to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. That is to say, they had already as great, and (I think we may say) greater, privileges than any Old Testament saints had ever enjoyed; but they had not yet the promise of the Father. Jesus had to ascend on high, to go away, in order to send down the Comforter. The second chapter of Acts records this; and it is of great consequence to bear in mind, that while on the day of Pentecost many gifts of external testimony were imparted, this was neither all the blessing, nor the best blessing, which was given on that occasion by the glorified Lord.

Beyond all doubt, what the Jews saw and heard then was a witness to the reality of His presence Who was given; but the powers of the world to come are not identical with the promise of the Father. The χαρίσματα and the δωπεὰ of the Holy Ghost are not to be confounded: the former expression refers to those manifestations of the Spirit given to each for the profit of all; while the latter implies the Holy Ghost Himself as given to be in the disciples according to Jehovah's promise in John 14:16, 17. On that day began the accomplishment of the words their Master had spoken to them before He was taken up; they were then baptized with the Holy Ghost.

Turning to 1 Cor. 12:13, we see the consequence of this. “By one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit.” It is not therefore faith merely which introduces into this one body, the church; it is the baptism of the Spirit. No soul was ever quickened apart from the second Person, and enlightened otherwise than by the third Person, of the Trinity. But the Spirit, though He had from the beginning quickened souls and given faith, had not been sent down to baptize believers into one body before the day of Pentecost; and therefore this one body, the church, did not and could not exist, until the Spirit came personally to baptize. When the day of Pentecost was fully come, He was thus given, and not before; and therefore it is impossible, if we would adhere to scripture facts and language, to date the church, as a body actually existing here below, previously to that day.

We have exactly the same warrant for believing that the baptism of the Spirit began as a fact with the day of Pentecost (Acts 1:2), as we have for believing that the body of Christ commenced as a fact at the same epoch (1 Cor. 12). The word of God is precise as to both facts, treating the formation of the body as a thing contingent on His baptism; and therefore it is inconsistent, as well as incorrect, to admit the one and deny the other. “There is one body and one Spirit.” For the Holy Ghost, although He had always acted, and will ever act unto the end, was not yet given for this new and blessed work until Jesus was glorified (John 7). For Jesus is not the Lamb of God only: the same is He Who baptizes with the Holy Ghost (John 1). And it is expressly revealed in 1 Cor. 12 that, though there are diversities of gifts, of ministries and of operations, and though the manifestations of the Spirit are given to profit withal to each one (i.e. in the church), “all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to each man severally as He will. For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:12, 13). Is it not plain from thence, and from the entire context, that we are on ground totally new, which pre-existed nowhere? yea, which could not exist, until God made the crucified Jesus both Lord and Christ, and the Spirit was sent down as He never was until Jesus departed and sent Him?

Where, before Pentecost, do we see a body composed of Jewish and Gentile believers wherein the word of wisdom was given by the Spirit to one; to another, the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another, faith by the same Spirit; to another, the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; to another, the working of miracles; to another, prophecy; to another, discerning of spirits; to another, divers kinds of tongues; to another, the interpretation of tongues? Nowhere. But we can go much farther. We can say, not only that these characteristics, as they are here described, did not mark any previously traceable society, but that the “one body” was yet in the womb of the future, because the one Spirit had never baptized believers before the day of Pentecost. “For by one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles,” &c.

It is of all moment to say that it was by none of the ancient, and in this sense ordinary, operations of the Spirit that the one body was formed. From of old He had given faith and life, and all the holy and gracious paths of the elders were formed under His plastic hand. But the baptism of the Spirit was a new work, and without His baptism the one body could not be. It required His personal presence on earth; and this could not be till Jesus died, and rose, and ascended. The baptism of the Spirit and the body of Christ are indissolubly bound together; for by Him it is that we were all baptized into one body. Will any one, who admits the foregoing, dispute in the face of the chapter, and especially of verses 12, 13, 18, 27, 28, that this body is the church? If not, the entire question is ceded. The body of Christ is the peculiar privilege of saints baptized of the Holy Ghost after the ascension of the Lord Jesus to heaven. They constitute the assembly of God, in total contrast with the congregation of Israel.

This truth is entirely confirmed by a comparison of the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians which so peculiarly and richly dwell, the latter upon the glory of Christ the Head, and the former upon the blessedness of His body. But I would not at this time do more than refer to Eph. 4:7-16, and put the following questions: 1. Is it not beyond a doubt that the entire calling, framework, nature, walk, &c., of the body of Christ here detailed, are based upon the grand facts of accomplished redemption, of Christ's headship exercised from on high, and of the presence of the Holy Ghost here below? “Unto every one of us was given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore He saith, when He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts,” &c. 2. Have we not inspired authority for counting upon the continuance of all those gifts which are needed for the perfecting of the saints, &c., till we all come in the unity of faith, &c.? 3. Have we any scriptural warrant for supposing that this kind of ministry, viz. apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, will be continued in millennial times? And if not, is it not a collateral proof that the then state of things is wholly changed, for the body of Christ will be completed at the coming again of the Lord Jesus? In that day another work begins; and a different instrumentality, suitable to it, will be provided of God. So that though doubtless it belongs to future ages to realize in its fullness of blessing the oath of Jehovah to Abraham, yet is it evident, from the right scriptural answers to these questions, that the mystery of Christ is a glorious work of God sui generis, into which none was brought before the ascension, and none can be brought after the return, of our Lord Jesus Christ.

All can agree therefore, that God's promise to Abraham will operate first upon the houses of Judah and Israel, and afterward upon all the families of the earth, distinctively the restitution of all things. But that which is not generally seen, even by some spiritual persons, is that between the rejection and the owning again of God's ancient people, an entirely novel edifice is being reared upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets (of the New Testament), a building of which Jesus Christ Himself—having reconciled to God Jew and Gentile in one body by the cross—Jesus risen and glorified in heaven is the foundation corner-stone.

Previously, as all admit, there had been scattered children of God, hidden units among the Israelites and the nations; but their faith did not in any way break their Jewish or Gentile connections. They lived and died separately, though they might be believing Jews or Gentiles. But now Jesus had died, not for that nation only, but that also He should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad (John 11:51, 52). The blessings resulting from His death for that nation await the times and seasons fixed of God, when the Jews, or at least a believing remnant of them, shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of Jehovah; and God shall send Jesus Christ, who was fore-appointed unto them. Meanwhile the heavens receive Him; and it is precisely during His session there that the gathering in one of God's scattered children goes on, founded as we have seen upon His death, and effected on earth by the Holy Ghost.

This one body, we repeat, is the church or assembly of God, of which Christ is the Head and object, and of whose unity the presence of the Holy Ghost sent here below is the power. The life of the members of this body, no one can doubt, is hid with Christ in God; but those who possessed it were known as a manifested holy people, as separate (though in a different way) from both Jews and Gentiles, as the Jews themselves had been distinct from the Gentiles. This is the church parenthesis; and evidently it turns upon the baptism of the Holy Ghost come down from heaven, after Jesus had taken His seat as Head at God's right hand. Acts 1:5 is decisive that even the disciples themselves were not baptized of the Holy Ghost until Pentecost; while 1 Cor. 12:13 is equally decisive that what scripture calls the one body (i.e. the church) could not begin till the baptism of the Holy Ghost was a fact.

The Old Testament saints looked for a Savior, and their faith was counted for righteousness; for God ordained Christ Jesus a mercy-seat through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the passing over of sins that are past in His forbearance. But never had been propounded, to their faith that there was to be a body of Christ on earth composed of Jew and Gentile, all distinction being blotted out, and both built together for a habitation of God through the Spirit. Not only did they experience nothing of the sort in their day, but it was a secret which we know, on divine warranty, was from the beginning of the world hid in God. It was for the first time revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit, and in a pre-eminent way through Paul. Here it is that the post-apostolic Catholic church, the medieval Romanists, the Protestants, Lutheran or Reformed, the Moravians, the Puritans, and in short Christendom in general, have been profoundly in error.

(Continued from p. 13). (To be continued, D.V.)

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Jeremiah

The special object of Jeremiah's prophecy is no less evident than Isaiah's; yet is each as different in character and style from the other, as both are from Ezekiel and It was Jeremiah's lot to live and testify in the midst of guilty Judah hastening to utter ruin, and in the land for the most part during the crisis of its last kings of David's house. Instead of being the honored prophet of the king (save Josiah of course), and dear alike to monarch and people, he was a weeping Seer. It was not his to see his prediction accomplished in the sudden judgment which befell the most arrogant of Assyrian monarchs, who in his retreat of shame perished by the hand of his own sons before the vain idol of his worship. We have before us the greatest and most constant sufferer among the prophets; and this at the hand, now of kings, now of priests and false prophets, now of princes, and of the people, the chosen people; who, after their rebellious contempt during his life, regarded him as the chief of prophets, subsequent to his death.

No such immense sweep is compassed by the tender priest of Anathoth as in Isaiah's sublime vision with its rich and varied expression. But no book in the O.T. is so distinguished as this of Jeremiah, on the one hand by entire identification with Jehovah's indignant denunciation of Jewish iniquity and apostasy, on the other hand by self-sacrificing love to the end toward his countrymen who despised and hated him for his faithful rebukes and solemn warnings. Yet the wicked Jews were not so wicked even at last as the higher critics. “That generation” in the spurious 2 Macc. 2 represents him as appearing to their hero Judas Macc. as “a man with gray hairs and exceeding glorious, and a wonderful and excellent majesty to gird him with a golden sword:” an imposture singularly out of harmony with all that scripture tells us of this prophet of sorrows, troubles, and woes. Yet as he was given to proclaim not only the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by Nebuchadnezzar and the captivity in Babylon, but also at the close of seventy years the downfall of that great city and the first of the proper world-powers, even “that generation” was not so incredulous as the self-exalting and God-defying scribes of the last century and our own, who are audacious enough to deny all true prediction as they do all real miracle, just as they reject the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ and the future glory to be revealed.

Unbelievers may speculate about the Pentateuch generally, and Deuteronomy in particular; for nothing is easier than for sharp wits, armed by self-will, to conjure difficulties and doubts against books so ancient as they profess to be. But the prophet lived till the Four great Empires or the “times of the Gentiles” began, and extant human history more or less credible followed, to say nothing of monuments (spite of their vain-glory and too frequent lying), which confirm him in remarkable and unexpected ways. And as the authenticity of his writings cannot be justly questioned, so the punctual accomplishment of so striking a prediction deeply moved the Jewish mind. Thereby the saintly captive was led to look onward, not merely to the proximate and provisional return of a remnant to the land, but to the final and full and everlasting redemption of Jerusalem in the latter days.

Then Jehovah will turn again the captivity of His people Israel and Judah, who will possess (as they have not yet done) the land given to their fathers, and Jehovah will be the God of all the families of Israel. Yet it cannot be without the last and unparalleled time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it. “Behold, days come, saith Jehovah [not merely to “sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah,” not for destruction and affliction, but to build and plant them], that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.” It will not rest, as he declares, on man's weakness, but on divine grace. For Jehovah will put His law in their inward parts, and will write it in their hearts, and as He will be their God, so they His people knowing Him from the least of them to the greatest, and their sins remembered by Him no more.

But while Jeremiah labored and testified, he had the bitter lot of his worst enemies among those he loved and pitied and censured so profoundly. This incredulity of Jehovah's word was caused by their rebellion of will against Jehovah Himself, as it ever is, whatever men say or boast.

Nebuchadnezzar and his servants shone in honoring Jeremiah, in the most marked contrast with priests and false prophets and even kings Jehoiachim and Zedekiah. Nevertheless as a true lover of God's people in their lowest estate and their base ingratitude to him, instead of going to Babylon where ease and honor were assured, he preferred to suffer affliction with the most despised in the land, who behaved as ill as ever and against his inspired warnings carried him down into Egypt, instead of abiding in subjection to the Chaldean.

Who can doubt, whose ear is opened to hear, the specific design and unique place of Jeremiah's writings in the Bible? But, as before, a sketch of its parts is given in proof that the general estimate is only confirmed by the detail. Moral appeal to conscience in Jerusalem and Judah occupies the early half, or nearly so, chap. 1 being the prophet's inauguration as a young man. Nor is any fact more striking than the way in which the apparent disorder of the chapters as in 21-24, even in the Hebrew (to say nothing of the Septuagint), subserves the aim of God's Spirit by the truth. To characterize it as confusion among his writings owing to a violent death is a mere and arbitrary guess, which overlooks the moral purpose and design of God. Chap. 25 is a transition, declaring the providential judgment of nations, ominously putting Jerusalem and Judah in their forefront. In chapters 30-33 the entire people of God, all Israel, are promised restoration to the land with salvation (in its vital and blessed sense) in days to come, under a new covenant and the Messiah clearly announced to reign (as King in chap. 23:5), a Branch of righteousness unto David, as Jerusalem shall be called by the new name of Jehovah our righteousness. From chap. 34 to 38 is the word of Jehovah as to various kings of Judah, but not in historical order, save that they preceded the fall of Jerusalem; as those from 39 to 44 bear on what followed, 45 closing the section with the prophetic word to Baruch his amanuensis. The last series consists of predictions on foreign nations separately, as we may see also in the writings of Isaiah and Ezekiel. The last chap. 52 is expressly an appendix to the words of Jeremiah by the inspired editor. It is a most appropriate close of the prophecy and introduction to the Lamentations.

The Lamentations of Jeremiah

It is notable, but by no means an unprecedented thing, that the book, which more than any other breathes the distress of a pious and broken heart, is clothed in a markedly artificial form. God meant His people to share the prophet's lamentation; and its predominant shape occupied his heart who wrote, and theirs who pondered and remembered it all the more. Its five chapters are five elegies. Chaps. 1 & 2 have twenty-two stanzas or verses, answering to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and each stanza with three parts. In the third chapter the initial letter occurs for each of the three parts, when the prophet speaks personally of his own sufferings, as before and after chap. 3 he pours forth his groans over the destroyed city with all its glories. In chap. 4 each stanza consists of two parts, each verse beginning with the successive letters of the alphabet. Though chap. 5 has twenty-two stanzas or verses of two parts, the initial letters do not follow regularly. It is throughout a true-hearted confession of sins, “The crown is fallen from our bead; woe unto us for we have sinned! For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes have grown dim, because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate: foxes walk over it. Thou, Jehovah, dwellest forever; thy throne is from generation to generation. Wherefore dost thou forget us forever—dost thou forsake us so long time? Turn thou us unto thee, Jehovah, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old. Or is it that thou hast utterly rejected us—art wroth with us exceedingly?”

The book has then a place quite unique, from a heart which answered to the love of Jehovah for His people when they were most justly in the depths because of their sins and His chastisement, even to blotting them out from His land, city, kingdom and house. It is thorough self-judgment in the heart's solidarity with them and clinging in the face and experience of all to Him. Can we not discern what a gap for the Bible if we had not Lamentations? What will it not be to the godly in their last tribulation? Did the writer forget his own purchase (Jer. 32) in faith of the word? or his prophecy of Israel under Messiah and the new covenant? Assuredly not; yet none the less did he mourn the ruin of Israel, and that Jehovah should have grounds so valid for His severe chastisement.

Truth Absolute and Relative

There are truths absolute, so that it is impossible to lay too much stress on them in overstatement or exaggeration. Such are the facts about our Lord's person and work, His perfect Manhood, His essential Godhead, His infinite Atonement, and consequently the salvation which grace gives. These, it is needless to say, admit of no qualification whatever, although the veiling of Godhead in flesh be equally true. Obviously these stupendous verities can never occupy a secondary place. Take again another series of facts, as different as possible from the Incarnation, but alas! equally true, and liable to no extenuation—human sin and misery and responsibility. Nor may we exclude from this category truths like that of election, to reconcile which with man's responsibility ingenuity has tormented itself in vain; but which, we may rest assured, will one day be made clear to all, as they create no difficulty now to the spiritual. But all such truths are absolute, a quality to be predicated of every fundamental principle of revelation. It has nothing to do with the blessedness of the truths, but with their being illimitable. As we know, truth concerning Christ is as comforting and sublime as the facts of our fallen condition are saddening and humiliating. The one is indeed the remedy of the other. This, however, is not the point that is now pressed, but rather the absoluteness characteristic of some truths, as compared with others which are but relative.

Now there are other statements in the Bible that are only true, when not unduly pressed, and which may become positively dangerous, if divorced from a just perspective. And such, it would seem, is the case with what is said in scripture about the mother of our Lord. At first sight the language of Christ in correcting the woman who pronounced His mother blessed, might seem to be at variance with the language of Mary's own inspired song. Did she not say that from henceforth all generations would call her blessed? Yet here we see the Lord reproving undue, or at least exclusive, occupation with her, whom the angel Gabriel had greeted as highly favored [and blessed among women]. To superficial minds it might seem rather harsh to damp such generous homage. But the interpretation is perfectly simple. Mary was in the flesh most highly favored, singled out by a supreme distinction. It is even possible that, in a laudable desire to steer clear of Roman error, Protestants may have somewhat overlooked the signal honor of the Virgin, though this were doubtless to err, if to err at all, on the right side.

But our Lord evidently intended His hearers to understand that no mere emotional admiration of Himself or His words could take the place of faith and godliness and holy life. Rather blessed, said He, were those that heard the word of God and kept it. This is spiritual blessing, which is far beyond fleshly. Nor is it fanciful to suppose that the Savior was guarding against undue exaltation of the creature, to which the human heart is so prone, and which may perhaps have sometimes claimed to justify itself by those very words of the angel, recorded earlier in this Gospel. In short it is right to account Mary favored; it is grievously wrong to pay her honors due only to God; it is a mistake to forget that even spiritual blessedness exceeds any honor in the flesh.

It would probably not be difficult to furnish other examples of merely relative force in Biblical statements, which, taken with the proper safeguards, convey important and undeniable truth. The Lord Jesus told His disciples on one occasion that, if a man did not hate his father and mother, he could not be His disciple. None of course but a very literal mind (such are generally the most inaccurate) would be stumbled by this. To be “without natural affection” (2 Tim. 3:3) is one of the signs that characterize the difficult times of the last days. We know that “hate” is simply used in a forcible, as some say oriental, way to press home the fact that Christ must and will have supreme place in the renewed heart. And so with several other statements, on which it is unnecessary now to dwell. There are many dangers to beware of in interpreting scripture, but perhaps a bald literalness of mind is not the least. R. B.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Atonement and Propitiation; Prophetic vs. By Prophets; Angels

Q.-Lev. 16 &c. Does the Hebrew distinguish “atonement” and “propitiation”? Are there two different words? What distinction does the chapter present? It is known that ἱλασμὸς in the N. T. is translated “propitiation,” and in the Septuagint answers to “atonement.”

A.-The Hebrew word Kaphar (for the question) means to atone, or make atonement. So it is regularly; and Dent. 32:43, Isa. 47:11, Ezek. 16:63; 43:20; 45:15, 17, 20, are the same in substance, though the effect in some cases is meant, as pacified, purged, forgiven, merciful, &c. “Propitiate” would be just as good a rendering as “atone “; and no other word regularly expresses either but the one. There is however a real distinction definitely drawn in the chapter, not between atonement and propitiation, but between propitiation and substitution typified in Jehovah's lot and the scapegoat. The error which has so often been exposed in these pages is limiting propitiation exclusively to the use made of the blood by Aaron in the sanctuary. That theory necessarily involves the frightful error of denying that the offering of the slain victim is any part of the propitiation for our sins. What a slight on Christ's sufferings! For this monstrous theory is that propitiation was made “in heaven, and after death,” thus nullifying forever that great work of God by Christ's blood and death on the cross, and making it altogether dependent on another work “after death and in heaven,” instead of the type met before God in heaven by what Christ suffered on earth. “You hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh (not when He was out of His body) through death” (not after death and in heaven). Assuredly to be “reconciled” is grounded on propitiation, and presupposes it; but the truth is that Christ fully reconciled us in the body of His flesh through death. The ghostly work after death and in heaven is a ghastly fable, and calls for abhorrence.

Q.-Rom. 1:2-4; 16:25, 26. Why is it that in the first of the scriptures we read “by His prophets in holy scriptures,” and in the second, “by prophetic scriptures”? The distinction is slurred over and lost in the Auth. Version as well as the Revised: how do you account for the difference between them, which is so plain in the Greek? An old disciple.

A.-The key is given, as generally, by the context. God's gospel, or glad tidings, He had promised before; this was therefore through His prophets in holy scriptures. It centers in His Son, come of David's seed according to flesh, marked out Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by resurrection. While Jesus Christ our Lord then fulfilled the promises, He brought in deliverance from sin and therefore from death by power according to the Spirit of holiness, as even the O. T. prophets had foreshown. So far says Rom. 1:2-4. But 16:25, 26 goes much higher. For therein the apostle, without opening out the mystery or secret kept silent eternally as it had been, here tells the saints in Rome it was now manifested and by prophetic scriptures made known unto all the nations for faith-obedience, not by man's wit or imagination but according to command of the eternal God. The development of this hidden secret was mainly given to the Ephesian and the Colossian saints; but Paul's gospel as he calls it, yea the preaching of Jesus Christ in general to establish the saints in the faith, was in accord with it. Here therefore we necessarily pass beyond all the O. T. revelation, and are told, not of “the scriptures of the prophets” which is an incorrect rendering and a false sense, but of “prophetic scriptures.” These are in fact definitely distinguished from even all the prophets of the Old Testament, and refer solely to scriptures of the N. T. which reveal the secret of Christ Head over all things to the church which is His body. Never does the O. T. make this known, as the apostle declares here and elsewhere. Now it is revealed, and by prophetic scriptures (that is, the epistles, &c., of the N.T. generally) made known, not to Israel as the O. T. was, but expressly unto all the nations.

Q.-Deut. 32:8, 43, Psa. 97 (or-vi.), Heb. 1:6. Are not “angels” in the Sept. 5 of the first scripture text, and can this stand? Is it not so in the Psalm, cited in the N. T.? How are we to understand all this? H.

A.-The Epistle to the Hebrews quotes verbally from the Greek Version of Deut. 32:43, at least in the Vatican copy. The same truth is revealed in Psa. 96 (-7.) 7 substantially but as a direct address. There is therefore no ground for doubt that “angels” are meant and commanded to pay supreme honor to the Son as the risen and glorified Man, but none the less a divine person. Indeed if He were not so, worthiness as man and conferred dignity could not warrant the homage God claims from the highest creatures of heaven to His Son. “Gods (Elohim)” we find often applied to those who represent God as in government, or who are commissioned to announce and execute His will; as the Lord makes plain to the reader of John 10:34, 35. Thus there is no real difficulty. Idols must pass away, and the demons behind them be punished and put down. In that day all must bow in honor of Him Who appears to reign, Who is not more truly the Anointed (or Christ) of God than He is God Himself, and Jehovah. Whatever place He takes in humiliation or in glorious administration to the, glory of God, and for the blessing of creation, He is in personal title and divine nature as truly Supreme as the Father or the Holy Spirit. To think otherwise is to disown His true Deity.

Advertisement by J. N. Darby

COLLECTED WRITINGS, 6/each vol. SYNOPSIS, 5/do.
THE CHURCH'S PRESENT HOPE, 1/paper, 1/6 cloth.
SANCTIFICATION, OR SETTING APART TO GOD, 3d.
OBEDIENCE, ld. PAUL'S WISH IN CHAINS, ld.
WHAT DO I LEARN FROM SCRIPTURE? id.
GRACE, 4 a penny; 1/9 per 100.

BY W. KELLY The Preaching to the Spirits in Prison (Shortly).

THE Bowl OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH, 8VO. cloth, 7/6.
AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, Svo. cloth, 7/6.

THE OFFERINGS OF LEVITICUS, 12mo. cloth, 1/6.
THE HOPE OF CHRIST COMPATIBLE WITH PROPHECY, 3d.

THE PROMISE OF THE FATHER; AND THE BODY, 3d. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE Fullness OF THE SEASONS,

UNITY, 2d. " BORN OF WATER AND SPIRIT," ld.

ISOLATION, 4 a penny; 1/9 per 100.

INNOVATION, id.; 3/6 per 100.

PROPITIATION, and STRANGE DOCTRINE, each 6d. per dozen.

HYMNS revised in 1894, cloth, 9d.; Paste Grain, 1/6; Mor.,
from 2/to 41-.
Large Type, cloth, 1/6; Pa'ste Grain, 2/6; Mor. 4/to 6/-.
GOOD TIDINGS' HYMN BOOK, cloth, limp, 3d.
The above two Hymn Books bound together, cloth, 1/-.

HYMNS (29) for Christian Meetings, 2/per 100.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row,

Published Monthly,

Isaac: 15. The Bride Called for Isaac

Gen. 24:54-60

Very unusual in the type are the marks of a marriage altogether extraordinary in itself. After a long journey, and even without such a one, how strange to refuse to eat, before the errand was told! A distinguished commentator remarks that his story seems superfluous. Far from this, it was in perfect keeping with the business in hand: and every part of his narrative to the household conveyed grounds of the nearest interest and of the deepest moment.

If he was the father's servant and devoted to the son's honor, God in His covenant name was before his heart from first to last. He, Jehovah, it was Who had so greatly blessed; He directed his master in the oath exacted to take no daughter of the Canaanites for the heir, only from his father's house and kindred. If election thus dominated, providential mercy would control hearts and circumstances, as indeed was apparent throughout. Prayer was thus stimulated and promptly answered. The desired maiden came before he ended speaking in his heart, met every test with grace proper to her, and convincing to him that she was none other than the woman whom Jehovah appointed for his master's son. Her reply to his question about her parentage sealed the matter, so that he could not hesitate to bestow suited ornaments, and once more bowed down in worship of Jehovah. When they of the house acquiesced in its proceeding from Him and bade the man take Rebecca to be Isaac's wife, again the servant bowed down to the earth before Jehovah, and the gifts flowed yet more to the bride in particular, but abundantly to all the rest also. It is a unique scene in itself and in what it thus appropriately foreshadows.

“And they did eat and drink, he and the men that were with him, and lodged. And they rose up in the morning; and he said, Send me away to my master. And her brother and her mother said, Let the maiden abide with us days, at least ten; after that she shall go. And he said to them, Hinder me not, seeing Jehovah hath prospered my way; send me away to go to my master. And they said, We will call the maiden, and inquire at her mouth. And they called Rebekah and said to her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go. And they sent away Rebekah their sister and her nurse, and Abraham's servant and his men. And they blessed Rebekah, and said to her, Our sister, become thou thousands of tens of thousands; and may thy seed possess the gate of those that hate them!” (vers. 54-60.)

Simple and fitting is the figure of communion with which this account opens: how strikingly is this too in keeping with the church's calling! Never in point of fact could there be full communion of saints till the deliverance came to Christians through the efficacious work of Christ and the new relationships founded on it. Hence the picture given in Acts 2 from the day of Pentecost. “And they continued steadfastly in the teaching of the apostles, and the fellowship, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers” (ver. 42); “And day by day, continuing steadfastly with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home, they partook of food with gladness and simplicity of heart” (ver. 46). In the Lord's supper, it was the communion of Christ's body and blood; but it pervaded their new relationship even in the most ordinary things of earthly life. And no wonder; for as Christ was their life, so was the Holy Spirit power against the flesh, that faith and hope, peace and love, in active exercise might fill them with joy. Their associations were based on Christ come, and their crown was to be in His coming again.

He Himself so taught and set them. Compare Luke 12:21-38. Again, in the parable of the Ten Virgins we have the same principle modified by the Spirit's special aim in the Gospel of Matthew. It is in the middle or Christendom section of our Lord's great prophecy, the first part of which (Matt. 24:1-44) presents the future for the Jews to the end of the age, and the third (Matt. 25:31, &c.) that of the nations when the new age opens. Nor is it service in its corporate aspect as in the close of chap. 24, or in variety of gift as in chap. 25 it is the individual responsibility of the Christian, true or untrue; and its character is that thus, having taken their torches, they went forth to meet the bridegroom. For this nothing but the unction, the power of the Spirit, avails. The tarrying of the bridegroom became the test when all grew drowsy and slept. They all failed in the very aim which drew them out to Christ from every link of flesh or world. Where was their hope, if they no longer went forth to meet Christ? When the cry at midnight awoke them, the prudent alone resumed the early and alone right attitude. For they only had oil in their vessels; and, being ready, they joined Him at His coming, whilst the foolish went in quest of what they never possessed. How could such as these wait for His coming? Only those who had oil in their vessels. Alas! All failed in watching for Him, all fell asleep. But only the prudent had the Spirit's power and presence—oil in their vessels. The foolish had barely the torches of profession without His sustaining energy, and must be thus unready when Christ comes.

Only we have to bear in mind that the exigencies of the parable required, not the bride, but the train of maidens prudent and foolish, so as to represent Christendom; as the type demanded not such a retinue but the bride. Rebekah becomes now the prominent figure, as is the trusty servant of the father and the son, who here puts aside the natural feelings of the family. His one thought is to fulfill his mission. They would have her abide a while. He, the more he is prospered, will hear of the less delay. The bride has to decide the matter. “And they called Rebekah and said to her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go.” Her heart is made up.

So it is, so at least it ought to be, with her who is espoused as a chaste virgin to Christ; Whom not having seen she loves, on Whom, not now looking but believing, she exults with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end of faith, soul-salvation. What is country or kin or father's, house, or all other objects combined in comparison with her Bridegroom? What could she say but “I will go”? She falls in with Eliezer's zeal. This report was answered by her faith, hope, and love. Unhesitating decision was the result. She goes forth to meet the bridegroom; and the faithful servant who had won her heart to Isaac, continues his care, and guides her across the desert. “And they sent away Rebekah their sister, and her nurse, and Abraham's servant and his men,” with abundant blessings, short as they might be of her real position. But the picture is unmistakable. It is the bride, delivered out of the present evil age according to the will of God our Father, to belong to Him Who is in heaven, soon to join Him there, typified by the elect maiden who sets out on her pilgrim journey to meet the one to whom she is betrothed.

Priesthood: 8. The Eighth Day

Priesthood: the Eighth Day. Lev. 9:22-24

The closing verses have their own interest, after we were shown how the blessing of the future day with its manifestations of glory hangs on Christ's sacrifice. But there is no entering within the veil, no putting of the blood in the holiest as on the day of atonement. The blood is not carried beyond the brazen altar. It is the same blood and of equal efficiency, and in a far higher way, when we have that grand central type of Lev. 16. “22 And Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them; and he came down from offering the sin-offering, and the burnt-offering, and the peace-offerings. 23 And Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting, and came out, and blessed the people; and Jehovah's glory appeared to all the people. 24 And there went out fire from before Jehovah, and consumed on the altar the burnt-offering and the fat; and all the people saw it, and they shouted, and fell on their faces” (vers. 22-24).

On the day of atonement there was a manifested basis of sacrifice with singular solemnity. It was the one standing fast of the holy year, a sabbath of rest, where all Israel abstained from all work and afflicted their souls on pain of being cut off. It was the sole day in the year when the high priest entered the holiest where he put the blood of the bullock for himself and for his house, and the blood of the goat for the people; as he made atonement also for the sanctuary and for the tent of meeting. Then followed his confession of Israel's iniquities over the living goat's head, before it was sent away bearing them into the wilderness. The slain bullock and goat were carried outside the camp and burnt with fire.

In the first ministration of Aaron after the consecration, as our chapter records, there is the remarkable difference that the blood of the Sin-offerings whether for the priest or for the people was put, not within the veil, but on the horns of the altar (the brazen altar) and poured out at its base, and the fat, &c., as usual burnt thereon, as Jehovah commanded Moses. There was thus a signal difference on this occasion, not only from the statutes of Atonement-day in Lev. 16 but also from the requirement in Lev. 4 for sin, whether for the anointed priest (or high priest), or for the whole assembly. In either case the blood was sprinkled before the veil seven times, as it was also put upon the horns of the altar of fragrant incense, besides pouring out the rest of the blood at the foot of the brazen altar.

We are thus taught the external character of what was done on the day when Jehovah appeared to Israel. It was grounded on sacrifice, as it could not be otherwise. But there was no action in the holiest as in laying the basis of atonement, nor yet in the holy place as in making god the communion when interrupted. It was simply the acceptance of priest and of people, on the ground of which “Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them, and came down after the offering of the sin-offering and the burnt-offering and the peace-offerings.” They are here therefore enumerated in the order, not of Jehovah's point of view, looking at Christ (as in Lev. 1 and following chapters), but of man's need, where the Sin-offering takes necessary precedence, the Holocaust follows with its Meal-offering, and the sacrifice of Peace-offerings concludes the rite. The last two were for the people expressly; for God takes especial care for the weaker sort. It may be for a similar reason that the same emphatic phrase, which occurs in Lev. 6:26 in the law of the Sin-offering, is employed toward the end of ver. 16. “He sinned it (or made it sin).”

Then it is, that “Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting, and came out and blessed the people; and the glory of Jehovah appeared to all the people.” It is the union of the kingly with the sacerdotal dignity which is here indicated; for Moses was “king in Jeshurun” (Deut. 33). This took place within the tent of meeting, and was then manifested. It is not man asking as in the disastrous day that Saul was chosen after man's heart and the outward appearance. Nor was there really such a junction in after times. But here it was typically pledged by Jehovah; and it awaits its accomplishment in Christ for the earth in days rapidly approaching. “Thus speaketh Jehovah of hosts, saying, Behold, a man whose name is Branch; and he shall branch up from his own place, and he shall build the temple of Jehovah: even he shall build the temple of Jehovah and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne; and the counsel of peace shall be between them both” (Zech. 6:3; 2; 13).

How appropriate that at this point “there went out fire from before Jehovah and consumed on the altar the burnt-offering, and the fat pieces!” “Jehovah, he is God, Jehovah, he is God,” cried the people even in the day of their idolatrous apostasy, when He answered by fire, as He now proffered the sign. Christ is the true Melchizedek, and shall reign over the earth in righteousness and peace. The zeal of Jehovah of hosts will perform this; for the counsel of peace is between them both.

Proverbs 8:22-31

In these verses we have the plainest and the brightest testimony of this book to Christ's glory. Who can fail to discern that He is here viewed as the Wisdom of God? The personality of His Wisdom is as marked here as of the Life in 1 John 1. This suits God if it does not man.

“Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, before the earth was. When no depths were, I was brought forth, when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth; while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the beginning of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I [was] there; when he set the circle upon the face of the deep; when he established the skies above; when the fountains of the deep became strong; when he imposed on the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment; when he appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by him, a nursling [or artificer], and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; rejoicing in the habitable world of his earth, and my delights [were] with the sons of men” (vers. 22-31).

The remarkable truth here signalized is the Wisdom portrayed with Jehovah before creation, and not merely in that display of almighty power guided by wisdom and goodness. More than this attribution of eternal wisdom, as Jehovah's cherished companion before His works of old, a special object of His affection is carefully shown in mankind, even as He Himself was to Jehovah. This and this only explains why the earth should be so near and conspicuous an object to the love of God: often a theme of unbelieving wonder, if not for unworthy and thankless scorn.

“Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of His way.” There was Wisdom, not simply in Him but with Him, as is said of the Word in John 1:1:” the Word was with God,” just as surely as He” is God “; and such too is the account of Him as Life in 1 John 1:2, before He was manifested in flesh.” I was set up [lit. anointed] from everlasting, from the beginning before the earth was.” He was no creature of God, but was in being before His works. When depths were not nor fountains abounding with waters, He was brought forth; before mountains or hills were settled; while as yet He had not made the earth or the fields or the beginning of the dust of the world. He was there for the making and ordering of all, as He was before any. Nor did He thus precede the lower scene only, but the heavens which contain all. When Jehovah prepared the heavens, Wisdom was there; when He set the circle upon the face of the deep; when He established the skies above. When the fountains of the deep became strong, when He imposed on the sea its decree, that the waters should not pass His commandment; when He appointed the foundations of the earth: then was Wisdom by Him, a nursling [or artificer], and a delight He was, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in His habitable world; and His delights were with the sons of men. It is a grand, true, and highly poetic description, worthy of Him who was proclaimed in its season the Worthy One.

But whatever wisdom wrought on earth or sea, if the heavens declare the glory of God, and the expanse shows the work of His hands, there was a counsel deeper still, a love far beyond intelligence and power; and this we learn in the marvelous description. It is not the Wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, which was ordained before the ages unto our glory (1 Cor. 2:7). Nothing do we find of God's sovereign love in choosing out souls to partake of heavenly relationship. It is His good pleasure in men, to be effectuated another day by His Son becoming man and in that redemption which secures His glory and opens the way for all His dealings of grace. What we have here is no revelation of the secret that was hid in God till Christ rejected went back to God, and the Holy Spirit was sent to reveal it. But we have the inestimable purpose of God's goodness toward man plainly stated, and distinct from the election of Israel for the earth, or of the saints who compose the church for the heaven, and indeed for the universal inheritance with Christ.

Hence the force here of Wisdom being by Jehovah, His delight day by day, not only rejoicing always before Jehovah, but rejoicing Himself in the habitable parts of His earth, and His delights were with the sons of men. Though it be not Christ glorified on high, nor therefore our union with Him as His body, yet it is an expression of divine love in and toward man, far beyond what Israel ever realized, as it will be in the days of the kingdom here below when He reigns and all the families of the earth are blessed in Him. For it is divine delight in Him whose delights were and will be with the sons of men. Hence beautiful is the praise of the heavenly hosts at His birth heard by the lowly shepherds by night, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill in men “; beautiful in itself, and in their unjealous delight in His ways Who made men, not angels, the especial object of His complacency.

Gospel Words: Feeding the Four Thousand

Matt. 15:32-39

The miracle here does not merely attest again the divine Messiah's presence and power on behalf of His needy people. Each has its own characteristics for our instruction. Both prove His ready and almighty resources. Had each miracle appeared in a different Gospel only, the skeptics would have insisted on discrepant accounts; but God has cut off such an objection, because Matthew and Mark record both, Luke and John only the first of them. The miracle wrought twice signifies, if one may apply Joseph's interpretation (Gen. 41:32), that the thing is established by God, whatever be man's unbelief. The distinctions are marked, but in no way favor those of old who imagined a reference in the former to the Jew, in the latter to the Gentile. Both express Messiah's grace to the chosen people.

What then is the true difference? It is defined in detail, as well as in broad features. There were five loaves and two fishes in the first, seven loaves and a few fishes in the last, five thousand fed in one, and four thousand in the other; the surplus then filled twelve baskets, now seven. The very baskets employed had in each instance a differing appellation, meaning respectively a hand-basket and a creel, as expressed without confusion in each account, and maintained in our Lord's recall of both in Matt. 16. The larger distinction will appear presently, though it may here be added that the first was in the spring when the grass was green, the second some months later; and that in the second the crowd had stayed three days, whereas in the first we do not hear of more than one day.

“And Jesus, having called his disciples unto him, said, I have compassion on the crowd, because they continue with me already three days and have nothing to eat; and I would not let them go fasting, lest they faint in the way. And his disciples say to him, Whence should we [have] in a wilderness so many loaves as to fill so great a crowd? And Jesus saith to them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven, and a few small fishes. And he commanded the crowds to lie down on the ground; and taking the seven loaves and the fishes he gave thanks and broke, and gave to his disciples, and the disciples to the crowd. And all ate and were filled, and they took up what was over of the broken pieces, seven baskets full. And those that ate were four thousand men, besides women and children. And having let go the crowds he went on board the ship and came over into the borders of Magadan” (vers. 32-39).

On the first occasion the disciples took the initiative, and proposed the dismissal of the crowds to buy themselves food in the villages. Their faith was weak indeed. How sad to overlook His presence who was pledged to satisfy Zion's poor with bread! Even His call that they should give them to eat failed to awaken any sense of His fullness. So He took the provision they despised, and abundantly blessed it to the five thousand, and more; yet there remained over of the broken pieces twelve baskets full. Now this answers to the twelve apostles, being the number of full administration by or in man. But it was only a sign in His rejected testimony to Israel; and sending His disciples to go before Him to the other side, on dismissal of the crowds, He went up into the mountain apart to pray, the figure of His priestly place on high. After this comes the wondrous scene of Peter leaving the ship to join Jesus on the water, which is peculiar to Matthew, as alone expressive of the divine design by that Gospel, and having nothing like it on the second occasion.

Hera it is the Messiah yearning over His famished people. They were guilty; but He commiserated their distressful state, and gave His disciples a fresh opportunity of drawing on Him by faith. Alas! they were slow to learn. “Whence should we have in a wilderness so many loaves as to fill so great a crowd?” He was there, and full of compassion; but unbelief, even in believers, is ever blind. The seven loaves which He took and distributed through His disciples, and the surplus in the seven baskets here named, point to spiritual, not to administrative fullness. All was ordered of God, all is meant to teach man, if he has ears to hear. It is Jehovah-Messiah acting in His own perfection. Here there is no going on high to pray; nor is there a rejoining the disciples for the other side, when and where all who once rejected Him welcome Him and His beneficent power, as will be in the consummation of the age.

How is it with you, dear reader? Whatever engrosses you, whatever interests you, the first and deepest of all questions is, How are you treating Jesus? He is the Lord of glory, the Son of God Who became man to die for you. How do you regard Him? It concerns you now, and for all eternity. He died to save sinners; but the blessing is for those that believe. If you believe not who have heard His name, you are far more guilty than heathen who have not heard. God the Father resents all dishonor done to His beloved Son, and has given all judgment into His hands, because He is Son of man (John 5), to punish all men who despise Him. Is it not then of incalculable moment that you bow to Him Who will be your Judge by-and-by, if you refuse Him now as Savior? Remember that His judgment is eternal. Yet how righteous is it also! For the unbeliever in the gospel is not impenitent only but despises God's grace. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?

1 Peter 1:2

They were “elect,” then, “according to foreknowledge of God [the] Father, in (or by) [the] Spirit's sanctification, unto obedience and blood-sprinkling of Jesus Christ: grace to you and peace be multiplied” (1 Peter 1:2).

Israel was the elect people beyond any nation on the earth; but they were elect after quite a different pattern. This clearly appears in Ex. 6:2-4. “And God spoke to Moses, and said to him, I am Jehovah; and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name Jehovah I was not made known to them. And I also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their sojournings, wherein they sojourned.” The designations as such, were familiar enough previously; but the name was not given by divine authority as a title of relationship to count on, when God first revealed Himself as El-Shaddai to the fathers, next as Jehovah to the sons, of Israel. The true pilgrim fathers were thereby assured of His unfailing protection, weak as they might be, in the midst of the corrupt heathen they were destined to supplant; and the sons were through Moses to know Him as their unchanging Governor who made them a people of possession to Himself through all ages, He that was and is and is to come.

The Christian Jews, believing in Jesus not only Lord and Christ but Son of the living God, as our apostle first confessed Him, were chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. So had our Saviour unbosomed Himself in John 17 “I manifested Thy name to the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world: Thine they were, and Thou gavest them to Me; and they have kept Thy word....Holy Father, keep them in Thy name which Thou has given to Me that they may be one, even as we are O righteous Father, the world knew Thee not, but I knew Thee; and these knew that Thou didst send Me. And I made known to them Thy name, and will make it known; that the love wherewith thou lovedst Me may be in them, and I in them.” So on the Resurrection-day His message through Mary of Magdala was, “Go to My brethren and say to them, I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and My God and your God” (John 20:17). How immense the advance in the glory and nearness of the relationship revealed!

According to this form and reality of foreknowledge, then, is the Christian chosen. It was and is Christ's in the fullness of personal divine dignity; it became ours by grace through redemption. The name of “our Father that is in heaven” shone early through the Lord's discourses on the mount, as in Matt. 5-7, and in Luke 6 and elsewhere. But it was definitely and fully made our own by the Lord when risen; and thus the Holy Spirit leads our hearts now in joy and in sorrow. It is so that we are entitled distinctively to know Him, as Christ did perfectly. And it was in God's wisdom that the apostle of the circumcision should make it plain to the believing remnant of the Jews, as the apostle Paul did fully to Gentile believers.

Hence the “sanctification” or “holiness” here spoken of took quite another and far deeper shape. The elect people Israel had been set apart to Jehovah in an outward way. Individually and peremptorily they were circumcised in the flesh on the eighth day. Any other peculiar marks were, as the Epistle to the Hebrews declares, “carnal ordinances imposed until a season of reformation.” On the contrary the Christian, whether Jew or Greek, enjoys the Spirit's holiness; he is even born of the Spirit (John 3:6,8), and thus is the sanctification inward to the utmost degree. Accordingly such a one is “a saint” from God's first vital action spiritually in his soul. So Ananias instructed of the Lord goes to Saul, just converted, and at once accosts him as “Brother Saul,” before he was even baptized as he was immediately after; so it is in substance for every one that is begotten by the word of truth. The Spirit's activity is immediate and abiding, the ground of the practical holiness that ensues, which is but partial and relative; whereas what the apostle here introduces is a principle absolute, unfailing, and personal. In practice alas we must confess, with the Epistle of James, that “we all often offend.” Only unspiritual men flatter themselves otherwise. We too frequently need the active care of the blessed Advocate Whom we have with the Father (1 John 2:1).

Practical sanctification is a capital and constant duty for every Christian; and it is urged, as throughout the Bible, expressly in 1 Pet. 1:15-16. But in 1 Pet. 1:2 it is solely sanctification in principle, that is, in the life given by grace rather than in the walk which is bound to manifest it, as all the godly must readily own. “As he who called you is holy, be ye also holy in all manner of living; because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy.” But so to interpret the Spirit's holiness (or sanctification) here would necessarily dislocate the sentence, and could insinuate nothing but error destructive of truth, even the fundamental truth of the gospel. For what we are taught is that those Christian Jews were chosen, in virtue of the Spirit's sanctification, for obedience and blood-sprinkling of Jesus: the original spring, the necessary power and process, and the distinct result as a fact. If taken to mean holiness in practice, this would be before coming under the virtue of Christ's blood. In other words the error must follow, that practical holiness is the way to be justified by His blood; which might suit a besotted Romanist, but must be rejected by the least enlightened among Protestants. It denies the gospel of God's grace, and is at issue with all scripture that treats of the matter.

But if we understand the words to mean that the Spirit works in souls when born anew, to set them apart to God in this vital and indelible way, all is clear as well as consistent. For His setting apart is unto obedience and blood-sprinkling of Jesus Christ. We are thus sanctified, not externally but in the new life imparted, to obey as Christ obeyed and to be sprinkled with His precious blood. So the same Saul of Tarsus immediately, when converted, says, “What shall I do, Lord?” His heart's primary purpose is to obey; as our Lord Himself could say in His unique perfection, “Lo, I am come to do Thy will, O God.” The Christian is bent on the same character of obedience. It is not like a Jew, to obey and thus gain life, as under law; it is obeying out of life already possessed, because he believes on Jesus.

Even the order, which to some is a difficulty, strictly adheres to the truth. For converted souls in general, perhaps always, have invariably as the instinct of divine life this purpose to obey as Christ obeyed, not legally, in owning God's wondrous grace, before they can or do apprehend at all fully the efficacy of Christ's sacrificial work in blotting out all their sins. The interval may be ever so short where the gospel is distinctly proclaimed; but as this is far from usual, one can see that many a soul truly converted may struggle on for weeks or months or even years, without the comforting assurance that Christ's blood has made them whiter than snow in the eye of God. Saul of Tarsus again supplies an obvious illustration. Was there ever a more notable conversion? Yet was he three days without sight, and did neither eat nor drink: the plain sign of a deep work of self-judgment, in no way of distrust or doubt, before he entered into the settled peace of deliverance by faith of the gospel, which before those days he had only regarded with stern unbelief.

Unquestionably the allusion is to Ex. 24 where Holocaust and Peace-offerings were presented to Jehovah; and Moses took half the blood in basins, and sprinkled half on the altar. Then he read the book of the covenant and the people said, All that Jehovah hath said will we do and obey; and Moses sprinkled the blood on the people, and said, Behold, the blood of the covenant that Jehovah has made with you concerning all these words. The blood here was the special sanction of death, signified by the blood-sprinkling, in case of disobedience. With this ministry of legal condemnation for the sinner the apostle contrasts the Christian, sanctified by the Spirit from his starting-point, to obey as Christ did in filial love, with the immensely blessed addition of His blood-sprinkling, which cleanses from every sin, instead of menacing inevitable death if we fail. If this was the law wherein Jews boasted, that is the gospel of which Peter was ashamed no more than Paul. This resulting obedience, of which our Lord is alike example and power, is (in other words but the truest sense) our practical holiness; and it confirms in the strongest way the refutation, already ample, of the notion that the Spirit's holiness in this scripture imports the same thing. For it would really confuse the sentence and destroy the truth generally.

The fact is that theology in all the schools, Popish or Protestant, Calvinistic or Arminian, has somehow lost, and ignores, this most momentous truth of the Spirit's primary setting apart the renewed soul to God, even before and in order to justification and that obedience which is its inseparable effect. The only person my reading has lit on with any little inkling of its distinctness from the practical holiness which, as all the Reformed at least agree, follows justification, is the excellent and able Abp. Leighton. All others to the best of my knowledge slur over what they did not understand; and this is to say the least.

But I regret to add that none has more impudently tampered with this scripture, to suit his ignorance of it and his desire to uphold mere dogmatic views, than the famous translator and commentator, Beza, or Theodore de Beze. Dean Alford was bold enough sometimes in squeezing the text and its translation through too much confidence in German critics, and his own real desire to be candid, without sufficient knowledge of the truth or subjection to the divine authority of the written word. But even his occasional temerity shines in comparison with Calvin's successor in the college of Geneva. For I ask any competent scholar whether the ill-regulated wit of man could devise a worse or more shameless perversion of our text than his rendering, “ad sanctificationem Spiritus, per obedientiam,” &c. ἐν=ad! είς=per! Were it in Homer or Herodotus, one might smile at lapses so absurd on the part of a learned, able, and zealous Christian. But such a dealing with God's word is atrocious. Yet this flagrant error stands uncorrected in all the five folio editions of his Greek and Latin N.T. from 1559 to 1598.

Had Beza and other theologians been subject to scripture, they would have learned by grace that what the apostle of the circumcision here teaches is implied by the apostle of the uncircumcision in 1 Cor. 6:11, “But ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” Do men with the fear of God assume to correct the inspiring Spirit? Do they allow themselves the daring unbelief that they can alter the apostle's word, so as to avoid error and sustain their systems of divinity? It is clear that this greatest even of inspired teachers lets the Corinthians and all believers know, that there is a real and most vital sanctification to God which accompanies the first quickening of the soul, when we are born of water and Spirit, and cleansed from our natural impurity by His life-giving power, before we enjoy the blessed sense of God's justifying us through faith in Jesus and His work. The order of Paul therefore is as necessary and as exact as that of Peter, both conveying the same truth, which has dropped out of all the systematic divinity of all ages, as far as I know. The reader can also compare 2 Thess. 2:13. Holiness in practice remains intact, distinct, and imperative, to which justification gives its powerful impulse and cheer.

The Apostle here adds, “Grace unto you and peace be multiplied.” The nearest analogy in O.T. scripture, singular to say, is in Dan. 4:1; though the imperial penitent only says, “Peace be multiplied.” So Peter does yet more fully in the address of his Second Epistle to the same dispersed remnant of Christian Jews. It is characteristic of his fervor. James was content to write, “Greeting.” Paul usually says, “Grace to you and peace” though he almost always adds “from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” with “mercy” to an individual. Grace is the source, peace the outflow.

Kingdom of God: 6

After recording the baptism of our blessed Lord, the evangelist tell us that Jesus, having, “heard that John was cast into prison, departed into Galilee, and leaving Nazareth, came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—the people which sat in darkness saw great light: and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up. From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, Repent; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:12-17).

There is enough in the quotation here from Isa. 9 to remind any one of the kingdom to which Christ was born the heir; the well-known passage, “unto us a child is born,” &c., being closely connected with the verses here quoted. It was the announcement to Israel that with Him, Immanuel, they had now to do. Still, in the imprisonment of His forerunner there was a dark intimation of Israel's unpreparedness to receive Him; and accordingly He (not unwittingly, as it may be John had done, but in full intelligence of the meaning of the words) calls on them to repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Not simply the kingdom of David's royal Son seated on David's throne, but the kingdom of the heavens: the sovereignty of that same blessed Person in the form it was to take, consequent on His rejection by Israel, and exercised first after its present mode, while He Himself, rejected by the earth, is exalted to the right hand of power in heaven, and then by-and-by exercised openly over all the earth, but even then with a heavenly character and heavenly associations not naturally belonging to the kingdom of the Son of David. It is a kingdom, too, which has to be preached; instead of being at once set up in power, it is proclaimed by preaching.

Still, the preaching of the kingdom was accompanied by every demonstration of power. “And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease among the people” (Matt. 4:23). The result was, that His fame went throughout all Syria, and there followed Him great multitudes of people from Galilee and Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan.

In the presence of the multitudes thus attracted to Him by His preaching and the fame of His miracles, He addresses to His disciples the sermon on the mount. “Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven “; and again, “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” would apply equally to those who shall enter into and inherit the kingdom in manifestation (see Zeph. 3:12; Isa. 66:2, also 5, with the rest of the chapter), and those who are true members of it now that it exists in mystery. “Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth,” would only apply to the former class. Verses 19, 20 (of Matt. 5) show what the righteousness is that entitles to either. They do not show us how the righteousness which exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees is to be obtained, but they declare such a righteousness indispensable for those who would enter the kingdom. In chap. 6:10 the disciples are instructed to pray for the coming of God's kingdom; and in verse 33, to seek it in preference to all else. Chapter 7:21 distinguishes between profession and reality, and declares that to say, Lord, Lord, is not enough.

The whole discourse is a most solemn exhibition of the righteousness requisite for any to enter into the kingdom of heaven. The law of Moses described the righteousness which entitled to the land of Canaan; the sermon on the mount bears the same relation to the kingdom of heaven. Of course, it is in Christ only that either righteousness has been accomplished; and the righteousness He has accomplished in Himself is the gift of grace to poor sinners; we have no righteousness whatever to plead. Such will the poor afflicted remnant of Israel acknowledge themselves to be by-and-by, and they will enter into the kingdom, as it shall exist, in open manifestation; the righteousness of Him who died for them, that the whole nation should not perish, being their title thus to enter. Meanwhile, individuals have been taught by grace to see in themselves the entire contrast to all that the sermon on the mount presents, and have found in Christ the righteousness without which none can enter, even while the kingdom is in mystery; that is to say, viewing the kingdom as it consists of those who really know and own the supremacy of Jesus, and call Him Lord by the Holy Ghost.

In chapter 8:11 the faith of the centurion, commended by Jesus as greater than any He had found in Israel, draws from His lips the announcement “that many [such as he] shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” This must have been a solemn and startling announcement to Jewish ears. It distinctly foretells the admission of Gentiles to the privileges of the kingdom, while the natural heirs are excluded. And while this passage evidently refers to the yet future millennial kingdom (there being a place in it for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), we have to bear in mind that the kingdom has its heavenly as well as its earthly department. Of this we find scarcely anything in the Old Testament; and it was, in fact, the rejection of Christ by Israel that made way for the development of this purpose of God. It is now, while the kingdom of heaven exists in mystery, that these Gentile strangers are being brought from the east and from the west. But by-and-by, when the great purpose of God is accomplished, and all things both in heaven and earth are gathered together in one, even in Christ, these strangers will be seen sitting down with the patriarchs in the heavenly department of that glorious kingdom; while Israel, pardoned and restored, shall, with the spared nations, occupy the earth. The children of the kingdom who are cast out are, of course, those generations of Israel who have lived during the whole period of their rejection of Jesus.

In chapter 9:35 we find Jesus still continuing His blessed labor of preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. In chapter 10 He associates the twelve apostles with Himself in this work, charging them to go not into the way of the Gentiles, or any city of the Samaritans, but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. “And, as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (verse 7). But while this ministry of grace is thus continued, and even extended, the twelve are distinctly forewarned that they need not expect their testimony to be received. Fearful was to be the responsibility of the rejecters. It was to be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment than for them. Still, the apostles were to calculate on rejection. “The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord” (verses 24, 25).

It was to be their comfort amid all this, that whosoever confessed Jesus before men should be confessed by Him before His Father in heaven. “He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. He that receiveth you receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me” (verses 39, 40). For none such were to lose their reward.

(continued from p. 25) (To be continued, D.V.)

The Mystery and the Covenants: 3

God, by Isaiah, had predicted that upon the land of His people should come up thorns and briers, because all should be desolate until the Spirit be poured on them from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest. Christians may perhaps apply the spirit of this passage to the Pentecostal effusion; and for an indisputable application of a similar prophecy they may appeal to the authority of the apostle Peter in Acts 2. But it will hardly be disputed by the readers of these remarks that both predictions are to have a far more minute and complete fulfillment, when judgment shall fall on the Gentiles, and the divine favor, no longer veiled from the seed of Abraham, after long hours of thick darkness, shall shine out; when God will pour out His Spirit on all flesh, accompanied by literal wonders in the heavens and on the earth, and a mighty deliverance in Mount Zion and Jerusalem.

So, from Ezek. 36, it is plain that when Israel are thus sprinkled with clean water and have God's Spirit put within them, they shall dwell in their land, the increase of their fields shall be multiplied, the waste cities shall be filled with men, the land that was desolate shall become like the garden of Eden, and the heathen, or Gentiles, shall know that their God is Jehovah when He is sanctified in Israel before their eyes. Evidently here are blessings which were not given at Pentecost nor since. But the apostle cites the prophet Joel, to vindicate the wonderful effects of the presence of the Spirit from. Jewish cavil, proving that such an outpouring was no more than God had promised should come to pass in the last days.

On the other hand, there were blessings at Pentecost which will not characterize the future millennial outpouring of the Spirit, as there were other dealings common to His working in men's souls since the fall, such as producing repentance and faith. For instance, it is nowhere said in the scripture that the Holy Ghost will, in the new age, baptize Jew and Gentile into one body. The Jews are to enjoy the most marked supremacy. “And many nations shall go and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths. For the law shall go forth out of Zion, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem In that day, saith Jehovah, will I assemble her that halteth, and I will gather her that is driven out, and her that I have afflicted; and I will make her that halted a remnant, and her that was cast far off a strong nation: and Jehovah shall reign over them in Mount Zion from henceforth, even forever. And thou, O tower of the flock, the hill [Ophel] of the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come, yea the first dominion shall come, the kingdom to the daughter of Jerusalem” (Mic. 4:2, 6-8).

“Yea, many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek Jehovah of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before Jehovah. Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you; for we have heard that God is with you” (Zech. 8:22, 23).

The Psalms like the prophets abundantly show that the distinctions of Jew and Gentile, which have no place in the intermediate period (or church parenthesis), are to be renewed and owned of God once more here below. Now in the church they do not exist, because the church, though on earth during the process of its formation, is characteristically a heavenly body. So that the church of God, for such is the scriptural equivalent of the body of Christ, is not the common title of all saints from the commencement to the close of time, but the title proper to that special corporation begun at Pentecost, still perpetuated by the Holy Ghost Who was promised to abide with us forever, and completed at the coming of the Lord, when also all other saints who have slept in Christ shall arise, bearing the image of the Heavenly Man.

For I see no reason to doubt that the Old Testament saints will be made perfect when we are caught up to meet the Lord in the air; but this in no way interferes with what was said immediately before, that God has provided some better thing for us (Heb. 11). It certainly does not exclude a difference of glory between us and them. Again, that we shall sit down (Matt. 8) with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven is certain, but by no means inconsistent with the place of the church as the body and bride of Christ. For what is to hinder our enjoying other spheres of glory beside these which are specially our own? Retrospectively, as to our earthly course, it has been so. Heb. 11 descants on the faith, deeds, and sufferings of other saints, in days before ours, who were pilgrims and strangers on the earth; and Rom. 11 shows that we follow Israel, even as Israel again will follow us, as branches of the olive tree and the depository of God's witness and promises here below.

Again, the blessings of the new covenant the church enjoys, because we are one with Him Who is the Mediator, and the cup which He gave us to drink in remembrance of Him is the new covenant in His blood. Millennial Israel will enjoy the new covenant in a still plainer and more literal way; but proper heavenly glory with Christ is not reserved even for converted Israel in that day. To the church alone is Christ head over all things. It is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all. Thus all these privileges and responsibilities are clearly distinct from the place which, I fully believe, pertains emphatically to the saints now being called out of Jews and Gentiles—that of being baptized by one Spirit into one body, the body of Christ, as Eph. and Col. clearly prove.

Without doubt it does seem to evince an inadequate apprehension of the glorious person of Christ, to see nothing in Him more or higher than the mediation of the new covenant, and the accomplishment of promises, let them be ever so exalted. It is to leave out, not only what is supremely adorable in Him, but also that which is most precious in His grace toward the church. The entire Gospel of John, for instance, though doubtless recognizing the various positions which He deigned to occupy, is devoted as a whole to the exhibition of what was infinitely greater, His personal dignity. So the Epistles of Paul (although, wherever the occasion required it, they vindicate the promises and covenants given to Abraham from the exclusively Israelitish limitation to which some in his day would have restricted them) dwell as their main topic upon those treasures of grace in God's special dealings with the church, which are far above and beyond the patriarchal covenant or promises, while, at the same time, the church or Christian enjoys privileges in virtue of these Does this disparage Israel, or push from his place their great forefather Abraham, of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came? The answer is, that the church wears as her badge, “Henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we had known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more.” Our connection is with a Christ Who died for us and rose again. We are one with Christ in heaven. On earth, in the days of His flesh, Christ must have said, and did say, Go not into the way of the Gentiles. “But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who were aforetime far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” It is the accomplishment of no promise spoken to Abraham to make in Christ of Jews and Gentiles one new man, and reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross. One doubts not that God promised it before the world began (Eph. 3:6. II; 2 Tim. 1:9; Titus 1:2); but nothing of the sort was revealed in the Abrahamic promises, covenant or oath, which expressed no more than blessings here below.

The proper privileges of the church are rather the contrast, “in heavenly places” (Eph. 1:3), though all, heavenly and earthly, be secured in Christ, around Whom all the divine counsels revolve. So also it is clear that Christ, and not the oath to Abraham, is the channel of salvation. And if Christ were, as He surely was, the Seed, the true Isaac, He is very much more. What shadows are there, what typical personages, whose rays do not converge on Him, from Whom they derived all their brightness? It was a place He condescended to take, and not that which was His immediately and intrinsically. Even as regards the church it is the same: we are Abraham's seed as the consequence of being Christ's. “If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:29). To be the seed of Abraham is a privilege of a far lower order than those elsewhere disclosed (e.g. in the Epistle to the Ephesians) as characteristic of the church.

All agree that the finished work of redemption was the ground of still clearer testimony from the Holy Ghost. See Heb. 10. Yet let us not be mistaken. The work of Christ is finished for millennial Israel as much as for the church of the firstborn. But there is a vast difference indeed between their positions, though it be the same Jesus Who died for both, and the same Spirit Who appropriates the result of His death to each. Israel, like the church, will be born of the Spirit, and yet one is for God's glory on earth, as the other is for His glory in heaven. The sovereign hand of God has so ordered; and who shall say Him, Nay?

These considerations sufficiently prove the fallacy of the notion that the accomplishment of Christ's work was the hidden part of the mystery referred to in Eph. 3, although that was clearly necessary as a preparation for it. The truth is, as we have seen, that “the mystery of Christ” was unrevealed, not partially but as a whole, till the Spirit was sent down from heaven by the risen and ascended Lord; and this, not merely to render an inward witness more clear and vivid than heretofore, but to be the vicar of Christ, the ever-abiding Paraclete (John 14:16). To confound Him with the “strong consolation” of Heb. 6 is virtually, though not intentionally, to reduce the person of the Holy Ghost to the effect which He produces. The other Advocate is quite distinct from the consolation which He administers through enabling us to lay hold on the hope which entereth into that within the veil. And as Heb. 6 is referred to, it may be added, that the context is assuredly decisive, not only that the promise and the oath are distinguished by the Holy Ghost, but that they are the two immutable things whereon the “strong consolation “is based.” For when God made promise.... He sware... Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it (or interposed) by an oath; that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie,” &c. Nor can I conceive with what propriety God Himself, the pledger, could be called an immutable thing, in which it was impossible for God to lie; while the phrase is perfectly applicable to the promise and the oath.

Lastly, the admission of the Gentiles to certain dispensational privileges (Rom. 11) is most plain. But it likewise is so large and important a subject, that I must reserve it, if the Lord will, for a more extended inquiry than can be given at present. (Concluded from p. 28)

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Ezekiel

WE have traced the distinctive character of Jeremiah as compared with Isaiah, and the special design by each. Ezekiel (= strengthened of God), who was a priest like Jeremiah, has his characteristic differences. Here rationalism seems less irreverent. As Christ is not so openly predicted, they are more indifferent to question and deny the truth. If the orthodox were decided in confessing the millennial city and sanctuary in his concluding chapters, we should hear of their opposition and vapid theories to get rid of divine truths. For Christendom it is all ideal enough; and the neocritics can leave the visions of their coming glory undisturbed. Real and pronounced faith in others would soon awaken their enmity. But alas! when the Son of man comes, shall He find faith on the earth?

Now as Jeremiah prophesied long after Isaiah in the closing throes of the expiring monarchy of Judah, his mournful mission and messages from Jehovah lay up to the last in the land, till he was carried away by the unbelieving leaders of the remnant into Egypt. But Ezekiel was carried into captivity with Jehoiachin by Nebuchadnezzar, and given his place with others at Tel-Abib on the river Chebar. It was in the “thirtieth year” (he does not say of what epoch, but it would seem of Nabopolassar's era), the fifth of the Jewish king's captivity, that he saw the vision of ch. 1. It was the throne of the Lord Jehovah in unsparing majesty seen in Chaldea and judging Jerusalem and His sanctuary there. What a solemn change, not reigning, but vengeance on His house and city.

Here there appeared four living creatures, as a stormy wind issuing from the north, with cloud and a fire infolding itself, out of which indeed they came each with four faces and four wings, running and returning like lightning. But their four wheels too he beheld on the earth, and wheel within a wheel, with rims full of eyes, and the spirit of the living creatures in the four wheels. Overhead was the likeness of an expanse “as the look of the terrible crystal,” and above the expanse the likeness of a throne as of sapphire, and as it were a man above upon it. As the appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire, as the appearance of torches, so the man's likeness was as the look of glowing brass, as the appearance of fire within round about, and from the loins and downward the appearance of fire. It was at this time the suited display of Jehovah's glory, but in punitive judgment of Israel.

How strikingly different from the holy scene of the Lord in the temple, where Isaiah saw His glory with winged seraphim in attendance, and one touched the Seer's lips with a coal from the altar, that he might tell the people (who seemed so prospering in religion and all else) of the judicial darkness about to befall them and the desolation to follow, though a remnant should be spared for the unfailing purpose of Jehovah. How different from both the call of Jeremiah, with its lowly symbols, yet hallowed before his birth to be a prophet to the nations, to pluck up and to break down, and to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant. He too learned that out of the north should evil break forth on all the inhabitants of the land. Feeble and sensitive as he was, Jeremiah was to speak all Jehovah should command him; he was in their midst and tasted sorrows out of a full cup. Ezekiel is away from the land, which the divine glory visits judicially by Nebuchadnezzar. He, and not Jeremiah or Isaiah, is regularly called “Son of man” as Daniel but once. Hence it is not a dealing with conscience as with Jeremiah to restore; Ezekiel was to be dumb, and only to pronounce Jehovah's sentence. Yet is it constantly to Israel, or “the house of Israel,” or the like, he refers, when as a prophet His mouth is opened to vindicate Jehovah's casting them off. They were more hardened than the heathen who knew not God; and he had to speak whether they heard or forbore.

Chaps. 1 to 7 comprise the first division, the judgment that was sent on Jehovah's people. The next comprehends from 8 to 19 though with a subdivision at the end of chap. 11. The prophet was carried to Jerusalem in the Spirit that he might behold the abominations of all the remnant there, and especially in His house, which His glory visits in judgment. The city is also entirely given up, as well as the sanctuary. The last prince should go captive to Babylon, but should not see it, yet there die (chap. 7). Think of any but a profane scoffer here denying true prediction! It was not only in great events, but in a minute point like this, which seemed an enigma till the event made it as impressive as plain. And who were guilty? Not the king only, but the prophets, and the people down to the women in their petty ways (8). So were the elders, though they came and sat before Ezekiel (14). Famine, &c. must come to cut off man and beast; in such a crisis not even Noah, Daniel, and Job could deliver any but their own souls. The vine (15), being fruitless, was good only for fuel; such the doom for the capital. Jerusalem's father was Amorite and mother Hittite; Jehovah's love to win her she rejected; worse was she than Sodom and Samaria; yet would He establish His covenant with her forever (16). After a parable it is shown in 17 how Jerusalem's king despised Jehovah's oath and broke the covenant to utter ruin; but grace in the end is to Jehovah's praise. And chap. 18 declares that they need not complain of the old ground of national judgment: they would be dealt with each according to his works. This portion closes with a lamentation over the total ruin of the last princes of Israel in chap. 19

The third part goes hence to the end of chap. 23. Here Israel is again prominent, and sin from the beginning, and that, idolatry; but in the end He will purge out the rebels and work for His own name. It is Israel contrasted here with Judah's lot. A fresh threat comes from ver. 45 to the end; and 21 declares Jehovah's sword unsheathed against Jerusalem and the land of Israel because of the profane and wicked prince (Zedekiah) till He come Whose right is the crown: an allusion, we may presume, invisible to unbelieving eyes. Ammon shares the judgment (21). The prophet is to judge the bloody and unclean Jerusalem (22); and the fresh parable of Oholah and Oholibah enforces it in 23.

Chap. 24 is the utter rejection of Jerusalem; which the prophet is not to mourn; another contrast with Jeremiah who was unmarried; and as a sign, Ezekiel loses suddenly his wife whom he was forbidden to lament. It was in the ninth year of the captivity, as chaps. 1-7 pertained to the fifth year, 8-19 to the sixth, and 20-23 to the seventh. Chap. 24 leads to 25-32, which take up the nations around or within the land dealt with by the Lord Jehovah, but no longer in chronological order like the first half of the book: a fact instructive for other books, inasmuch as the neo-critics do not dispute our prophet's hand. The arrangement is due to no disturbing cause, but to God's design above man's thought (or want of thought) and care. Like Jerusalem, Ammon, Moab, Edom, and the Philistine shall know that He is Jehovah. So (26) shall Tire and her towns. This is pursued with wide and accurate minuteness as to its commerce in chap. 27, and in 28 for the prince and the king of Tire, with veiled reference to Satan's fall, the great world-ruler. The chapter goes on to Sidon's judgment, and closes with the assured restoration of Israel. The three chapters following contain Egypt's judgment under Nebuchadnezzar who had put down the rest.

Chap. 33 opens a new series by proclaiming individual responsibility henceforth, instead of national solidarity with their ancestors' guilt as in chap. 18. Chap. 34 gives their chiefs judged; and 35 Edom once more. But 36 is the work of grace inward and self-judging in Israel; as 37 is the nation resuscitated and united under the true David; ending with 38-39 the judgment of Gog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal (all the Russians), who attacks Israel when peaceful in the land, and perishes with all the nations which fight under that banner. This done, the Solomon type will be fulfilled Chaps. 40-48, the concluding series, furnish the grand picture of that day. In the visions of God Ezekiel is set on a very high mountain, on or by which was a city. But the primary object is the temple with its many chambers, into which comes the glory of Jehovah, the God of Israel. Therein the sons of Zadok shall minister to Him with burnt, sin, and peace offerings, as we find later the guilt and the meal offerings. A prince too of David's house represents Messiah (44.), with a portion for priests and prince. The first of the month and the last of the week are remembered; the Passover and the Tabernacles, but no Pentecost, no Atonement-day, no Red Heifer. Chap. 47 presents the beautiful sight of waters issuing from under the threshold of the house, which soon rise into a river that could not be waded through; a river of healing where death reigned, only with an exception to show that it is not yet the new heaven and new earth absolutely and eternally. It is the kingdom that precedes; and the division of the land for the twelve tribes is such as never has been more than any other part of this vision. And the name of the city from that day shall be Jehovah Shammah (Jehovah [is] there). The originality of Ezekiel, in God's special design, starts from Israel given up and judged of old, passing clean over the four Gentile empires or world-powers, till Jehovah takes up Israel (when this age ends) for His grand and unfailing purpose of blessing on all the earth. It is in no way typical of the church of God destined to heavenly glory.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Cleansing in the 12th and 18th Year; Heaven; Strangled and Blood; Deliverance

Q.-2 Kings 22 Chron. 34. How are we to reconcile the cleansing in the 12th year and in the 18th year? H.

A.-Both are true; and both speak of the cleansing which in Josiah's eighteenth year followed the discovery of the book of the law in the house of Jehovah. But 2 Chronicles alone adds the account of his earlier seeking after God ten years before, in the eighth year of his reign and the twelfth beginning to purge.

Q.-1 Chron. 21:6. What explains the apparent discrepancy between this and chap. 27:24?

II.

A.-There is no discrepancy. One text says, that Joab did not count among those that were counted Levi and Benjamin; the other adds the particular, that though he began to number, he finished not, and divine displeasure fell for it upon Israel; and the number was not put in the account of the chronicles of King David. All is harmonious; but the second is a fuller explanation.

Q.-Does Psa. 91:11, quoted by Satan, refer at all to the Lord? or are there not three parties implied in it? W.

A.-The godly one that relies on Jehovah in ver. 2, Who will surely deliver Messiah as in vers. 3-13, and is answered in vers. 14-16 by Jehovah.

Q.-Luke 15:18, 21. Why “heaven”? It is well known that the Chinese identify God and heaven, and worship heaven as a true deity? H.

A.-Heaven being Jehovah's throne, as earth His footstool, we can understand readily how that highest region of divine glory is associated with every thought of purity, love, and worship. But there is no identification with God. On the contrary, after naming heaven as the unsullied seat of His honor, in contrast with this wholly defiled earth of man's will and sin and lusts, the prodigal distinguishes “thee,” “Father.” Compare 2 Chron. 32:20, Dan. 4:26, Matt. 21:25 and Mark 11:30, 31, Luke 20:4, 5, John 3:27, &c.

Q.-Acts 15:20, 29. Are not “strangled” and “blood” separate prohibitions? and both distinct from “pollutions of idols”? But why is “fornication” joined with things so different? W.

A.-Meyer's view that the phrase, “the pollutions,” refers to the four particulars which follow seems to me untenable. The reason on which he argues (the absence of ἀπὸ before τ. π. has no force); for ἀπὸ is unnecessary any where after ἀπέχεσθαι, and is a doubtful insertion where some ancient MSS. give it. But there ought to be no question that “blood” means what is drawn out expressly from the animal for culinary use, and thus manifestly distinct from “strangled” where the purpose is to keep in the blood from flowing. Both are forbidden; for God demands that man shall by abstaining own that life belongs to Him. If any be so self-willed as to plead that they do not see or understand, let them own their ignorance and obey. It is not a Jewish or Mosaic statute only, but for man since Noah and the deluge (Gen. 9:4). “Things offered to idols,” though classed here like “fornication,” with the other two, as things which the heathen counted indifferent, are forbidden as evils unworthy of Christians (one might add, of men) apart from the law, which the Pharisaic party in the church strove in vain to impose on Gentile believers. But the decrees in no way meant to weaken the immorality of fornication, any more than the insult or indifference to the one true God in eating knowingly of pollutions of idols. The apostles were content here to determine, that none of these things is an open question to Gentile converts, but that, if they abstain from all these necessary things, they will do well.

Q.-Gal. 3:20: what is meant by “the mediator is not of one, but God is one”? D.

A.-It is the principle of the law on the one hand, and of promise on the other; which the apostle contrasts, in order to deliver the Galatians or any other souls from the dangerous error of mingling them together, as unbelief is prone to do. The legal mediator is intended, Moses, not Christ; and that office implies two parties: God demanding right, and sinful man wholly unable to render it. The law therefore cannot but be for sinners a ministry of death and condemnation, as we are told in 2 Cor. 3. It is wholly different with promise; for this rests on the sole and unfailing fidelity of God Who cannot lie. As God is the only party to promise in His sovereign and unconditional grace, all He promises comes to fruition. “God is one"; whereas under law man, being under obligation to perform and failing through sin, all his hopes thus come to nothing. God on the contrary accomplishes all in and by Christ, and hence to faith. And as in Him is the Yea, so through Him also is the Amen (2 Cor. 1).

Q.-Gal. 5:17, 25. Is “deliverance” all? Are we not after that to walk in the Spirit? W.

A.-Assuredly: to question it would be antinomianism, or systematic unholiness. We are called to walk in the Spirit by the faith of Christ, in confidence of His care, in habitual self-judgment, and in obedience of the word.

Q.-Have we any scriptural example for calling days of the week after the heathen usage? E.

A.-The only N. T. change from the Jewish “first of the week” is the Lord's day in Rev. 1:10. There is no example, we may presume, of the Gentile Sunday, Monday, &c. How could there be? “Easter” in Acts 12:4 should be “the Passover.”

BY J. N. DARBY COLLECTED WRITINGS, 6/each vol. SYNOPSIS, 5/do.

THE CHURCH'S PRESENT HOPE, 1/paper, 1/6 cloth.

SANCTIFICATION, OR SETTING APART TO GOD, 3d.

OBEDIENCE, ld. PAUL'S WISH IN CHAINS, Id.

WHAT DO I LEARN FROM SCRIPTURE?

GRACE, 4 a penny; 1/9 per 100.

BY W. KELLY The Preaching to the Spirits in Prison (Shortly).

THE B00% OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.
AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.
THE OFFERINGS OF LEVITICUS, 12mo. cloth, 1/6.
THE HOPE OF CHRIST COMPATIBLE WITH PROPHECY, 3d.
THE PROMISE OF THE FATHER; AND THE BODY, 3d.
THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE Fullness Of THE SEASONS, Id.
UNITY, 2d. " BORN OF WATER AND SPIRIT," ld.
THE MYSTERY AND THE COVENANTS ( Shortly).
ISOLATION, 4 a penny; 1/9 per 100.
INNOVATION, id.; 3/6 per 100.
PROPITIATION, and STRANGE DOCTRINE, each 6d. per dozen.

HYMNS revised in 1894, cloth, 9d.; Paste Grain, 1/6; Mor.,
from 2/to 4/-.
Large Type, cloth, 1/6; Paste Grain, 2/6; Mor. 4/to 6/-.
Goon TIDINGS' HYMN Book, cloth, limp, 3d.
The above two Hymn Books bound together, cloth, 1/-.

HYMNS (29) for Christian Meetings, 2/per 100.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly,

Isaac: 16. The Meeting and the Marriage

Gen. 24:61-67

How can one be surprised that the Holy Spirit dwells on circumstances such as those we have considered, if they prefigured the call of the bride the Lamb's wife? It is ever and justly a matter of the utmost spiritual interest for all but the thoughtless. What could this be to God if meant to typify the consummation of His Son's love to the church? What of wonder, love, and joy did He not intend for us who read it in the communion with His mind and His grace which faith gives to those so directly and deeply concerned? Here it is pursued to the close.

“And Rebecca arose, and her maids, and they rode upon the camels and followed the man; and the servant took Rebekah and went away. And Isaac had just come from Beer-la-hai-roi; for he was dwelling in the south country. And Isaac had gone out to meditate in the field, toward the beginning of evening. And he lifted up his eyes and saw, and, behold, camels were coming. And Rebekah lifted up her eyes and saw Isaac, and she lighted off the camel. And she said to the servant, Who [is] the man that walketh in the field to meet us? And the servant said, That is my master; and she took the veil and covered herself.

New Series. Vol. 3 No. 4. April, 1900. And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. And Isaac led her into his mother Sarah's tent; and he took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her. And Isaac was comforted after his mother ['s death]” (vers. 61-67).

Rebekah thus far answers more clearly than any other in scripture to the requisite type of the church; as Isaac we have seen to set forth in parable (according to the Epistle of the Heb. 11:19) the Son risen from the dead, as the Head of the church is and must be. This last section of the chapter carries out the analogy no less than all the rest. Her decision was simple and true. As the servant urged immediateness of departure, so, notwithstanding every otherwise strong tie of natural affection, the bride was no less unhesitating: “I will go.” There was a most unusual distance that separated, a long journey to be undertaken, dangers of many kinds to be faced, deserts to be crossed; and she was a young maiden under the guidance of one entirely new to her, with no face familiar along the road but of her damsels.

“And Rebekah arose, and her maids, and they rode upon the camels and followed the man; and the servant took Rebekah and went away.” What simple faith, and confidence in love, and hope abounding in her breast! There is no such combination of becoming affections' in any bride that one could name among the many we read of in the entire O.T. circle. Dependence on her conductor along the dreary way was what sustained her heart, looking on to him who was about to bring her into the enjoyment of the most endearing of all relationships. What ample and reliable reports the wise and trusty servant, we may and must assume, told her to wean her mind from looking back on her old home and fill her with worthy expectations of such a father and such a son as awaited her!

It is just so that the Holy Spirit deigns to form our renewed souls with the love of Christ, the grace of His life and His death, the glory that was His eternally as a divine Person, and His present exaltation as the risen Man and Head to the church over all things, His coming manifestation in glory when He will make good His title and subject all things even to Him, having abolished all rule and all authority and power, but never changing in that purpose or the nearness of love He has for His bride.

“And Isaac had just come from Beer-la-hai-roi; for he was dwelling in the south country,” the Negeb. It was Canaan, but that southern district of it which borders on the adjacent wilderness. There he went out to meditate in the field at the eventide. One cannot doubt what occupied the thoughts of that gentle, calm, contemplative spirit. “And he lifted up his eyes and saw, and, behold, camels were coming.”

But another also was quick to perceive as they neared the land of promise. For “Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel. And she said (or, had said) to the servant, Who is this man that walketh in the field to meet us? And the servant said, That is my master; and she took the veil and covered herself.”

Yes, the Bridegroom is coming! and the Spirit crying, Come ye forth to meet Him. It is good to work for Him; it is better far to wait for Him; nor is there any more needed guard or more precious guide and spring for us in the Spirit for our work than this blessed hope. We require it in a world of seduction on one side, and of destruction on the other, for purifying ourselves as He is pure; we require it even with consecrated and heavenly affection, however truly we believe on Him and His love, and ourselves love Him. Nothing can make up for this hope if it be lacking or even feeble. “I am jealous over you,” said the apostle “with a jealousy of God; for I espoused you to one husband that I might present you a chaste virgin to Christ.”

Rebekah covered herself with her veil; and the instinct should be sure to be for Him only. Thus shall all else be the truer and holier. And our Bridegroom has no such need to hear like Isaac what the servant had to tell; yet He in the communion of the Holy Spirit, one doubts not, takes all interest in her whom He loved as His own for heaven. He had His sorrows over the present death of Israel; but He even had hope in her end, if it be not rather her real beginning. But He loved the church, for which He gave Himself and will present her to Himself glorious.

Priesthood: 9. Failing and Judged

The Priesthood Failing and Judged. Lev. 10:1-3

Here we have a signal crisis in Israel, the utter ruin of the priesthood before God, however much and long He might bear with them in His long-suffering; as in Ex. 32 is seen the ruin of the people with even Aaron at their head.

It is alas! The humbling tale of man failing everywhere and from the first. So it was with Adam and Eve in the paradise of Eden when all around was good, and they themselves innocent. But the serpent tempted through the weaker vessel, and both fell through unbelief of God and His word. So, though in another way of shame, broke down Noah, after the mercy shown to him and his in the deluge. The governor in the earth renewed under sacrifice failed to govern himself, object of pitiful shame to some, but of scorn to others—his own near kin shameless and dastardly. Need one point out the blots on the fathers, or the sons of Israel? Cannot all see in the light of scripture the mournful dereliction of the kings, not only of and from the first but of the most honored, David and Solomon? And if divine patience forbore till “there was no remedy,” and world-power, on their ceasing for the time to be God's people, was given to the Gentiles, what became of the golden head, of the silver breast, of the brazen middle, and of the iron legs with the feet of iron and clay? Were they not all morally viewed as “four great beasts"? as empires lacking intelligence of God, and dependence on Him?

The Second man is the blessed contrast of them all and in every respect. He Who is both Son of man and Ancient of days, as Rev. 1 proves, will surely have dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages shall serve Him as no world-ruler ever made his own, and this an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away. Him too will Jehovah set as His king on His holy hill of Zion, great David's greater Son who played Jehovah false in naught small or great, and will judge uprightly but cut off all the horns of the wicked when the horns of the righteous are lifted up. He also shall build the temple of Jehovah, and be a priest upon His throne, with counsel of peace between Them both. The government shall be upon His shoulder Who had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth. For indeed unlike Adam that sinned, He had proved Himself altogether victor over the Serpent in the wilderness when without food for forty days, before He began His public service, and closed it holy, guileless, undefiled, not to swerve however He might suffer (as He did to the uttermost) under God's judgment of our sins on the cross unto God's glory, the perfect manifestation and deepest issue of divine love to us, lost as we were heretofore.

Let us turn from the adorable Lord to the priests just consecrated.

“And the sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, took each of them his censer, and put fire in it, and put incense on it, and presented strange fire before Jehovah, which he had not commanded them. And there went out fire from before Jehovah, and devoured them, and they died before Jehovah. And Moses said to Aaron, This [is] what Jehovah spoke, saying, I will be hallowed in those that come near me, and before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron was silent” (vers. 1-3).

Grace had wrought wondrously through righteousness just before. No token could match what was given in Jehovah's acceptance of the sacrifice. It was not only that the glory of Jehovah appeared to all the people. There came forth fire from before Jehovah, and consumed upon the altar the Burnt-offering and the fat; and when all saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces. Who should have appreciated this so signal mark of Jehovah's grace? The priests above all. They were the very men who even at such a time betrayed the unbelief and ingratitude of their hearts. The elder sons of Aaron took each of them his censer, and put fire therein and laid incense thereon, “which He had not commanded.” Oh, what contempt of fire from Himself! It was insulting to the divinely given supply and to the sacrifice it consumed. Strange fire, the ordinary fire of nature, was good enough for the incense in the sanctuary! It was heedless profanity, and heartless indifference to Jehovah's favor and glory.

Cain was the leader in that evil “way” against which Jude warns solemnly, as a woe that concerns Christendom. But he was in nature. The priests were not so much here in law as in grace, for such was sacrifice at least typically; and the circumstances were beyond measure awe-inspiring. But Nadab and Abihu turned their back on the Burnt-offering which the fire from Jehovah was consuming, and presumed to burn incense separated from the provision Jehovah had just given, from the sacrifice which gives man his only acceptance atoningly. If the priest's lips should keep knowledge, how much more should he draw near with reverence and fear! And this the beginning and bearing of the priests toward Jehovah! But Israel's God, and our God, is a consuming fire. “There went out fire from before Jehovah, and devoured them, and they died before Jehovah.” Their judgment was immediate and final; all the more awful, because it was in presence of His grace reigning through righteousness in the sign before all the people.

Grace was never meant to dispense with holiness, but to produce and nourish it. So we read in Titus 2:11, 12; and again our very chastening under His fatherly hands is declared in Heb. 12:10 to be for profit, in order to the partaking of His holiness. Without faith in Christ and His suffering work for our sins, all is vain; but with it we are exhorted to pursue peace with all, and holiness, without which no one shall see the Lord. It could not, ought not, to be otherwise.

“And Moses said to Aaron, This is what Jehovah spoke, saying, I will be hallowed in those that come near me, and before all the people I will be glorified.” If it be in His saving grace instructing and forming us in practical righteousness, it must be in judgment; and judgment will not be less terrible, because it may be hidden for the present. “Of some men the sins are manifest beforehand, going before to judgment; and some also they follow after.” In Israel, as an earthly people under Jehovah's public government, it was consistent to impress priests and people alike with a sense of Him with Whom they each had to do. God in no case can be a consenting party to His own dishonor. So we see at the beginning of the church's history in Acts 5.

Here in Israel “Aaron was silent.” So, we may perhaps say, was the Advocate with the Father, when Ananias and Sapphira lied to the Holy Spirit, and the indignant apostle was led of Him to pronounce sentence of death on the spot. Nor was it otherwise, though not so conspicuously at Corinth when many among the saints were weak and infirm, and not a few falling asleep. For there is sin unto death; and we too in this case are not to pray for life. We need spiritual discernment for such a thing.

Proverbs 8:32-36

The chapter concludes with a fatherly application to impress the blessedness of wisdom's ways on the young, but from Jehovah.

“And now, sons, hearken to me; and blessed are [those that] keep my ways: hear instruction and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed [is] the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favor of Jehovah. But he that sinneth against (or, misseth) me doeth violence to his own soul: all that hate me love death” (vers. 32-36).

When He Who was afterward to become flesh and dwell among us was brought (so distinctly for the O.T.) before the hearer of the written word, we can understand that His grace makes itself deeply felt and calls special heed to communications meant to deal with the inner man. They rise far above ordinary obligation; they are not clothed with the thunder and lightning of Sinai, nor do they consist of typical pictures which illustrated the provision of divine mercy, when men failed and would own their sins suitably, the shadows of the good things to come. A divine personality (the daily delight to Jehovah, whose delights were with the sons of men, who calls Himself, though set up from eternity, wisdom dwelling with prudence) appeals peculiarly to heart and conscience. For who does not feel the need of such guidance? Sons of men must be welcome to Him, and He because He is divine must be able to render Himself acceptable to them.

Doubtless the lack of known-forgiveness and of life eternal in the Son of God left much to be desired, which we enjoy through the gospel. But what clearly appears in such a chapter as this was an immense favor; and none need wonder at the exhortation which follows it up, that the “sons” should hearken. But such words, like those of our Lord on the mount, are meant to be done as well as heard. Indeed every one that hears and does them not can only be likened to a foolish man that built his house on the sand: great the fall when it comes; worse than if no house were built.

Here accordingly we are told that “blessed are those that keep my ways.” The glory and grace of Him Who deigns to point out the ways of wisdom act on living faith and make it energetic through love. Where faith is not, all else fails are long. “Hear instruction and be wise, and refuse it not.” How touchingly wisdom pleads while we only are the gainers! What can we add to divine majesty? The love of God delights in blessing; but blessing cannot be for sinful man but in hearing instruction from Him Who was made to us wisdom from above.

Again we have it applied to the individual. “Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors.” Here we have earnestness day by day and perseverance like a beggar in need that will not be denied, and waits in the face of what would discourage others less importunate. We find in the beginning of Luke 11 the value of prayer on His part Who prayed as none else did, and led a disciple to seek of Him to teach them to pray. But the Spirit of God at the close of Luke 10 makes us know the need of His word antecedently; that we may not trust our own reasonings or imaginations, instead of all resting on the groundwork of divine truth received in faith. Of this the blessed sample is Mary, who also sat at the Lord's feet and heard His word, and reaped endless and deep profit in comparison with her sister, Martha, who, loved of Him and doubtless loving Him, was cumbered with much serving, and hence anxious and troubled about many things. Mary's part is the good one which shall be taken away from none who value it.

“For (on the one hand) whoso findeth me findeth life and obtaineth favor of Jehovah.” So the prince of prophets writes: “Wherefore do ye weigh money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently to me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, and your soul shall live.” What better was known than “life” above that of nature through the faith of the divine word, and Jehovah's favor enjoyed also? It was not blessing in the city and in the field, or in the kine and in the flock, in the bucket and in the kneading-trough, nor even in being made the head rather than the tail. O. T. believers knew and possessed by grace the blessing, though far from that fullness which we have now through and in Christ.

On the other hand the way of self will is ruinous for the life that now is, and for that which is to come. It is just the path of sin. “And he that sinneth against me (wisdom) doeth violence to his own soul: all they that hate me love death.” There is not, nor ever was, true living, living to God, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Therefore it is that the just shall live by his faith. For faith comes of hearing, and hearing by the divine word. Outside the path of faith on either side are the ways of death, and many are those who take them in the pursuit of man's thoughts or present objects, of human religion or human irreligion, apart from the true God and Him in Whom He reveals Himself by His word and Spirit.

Gospel Words: the Transfiguration

Matt. 17:1-9

In the midst of His service of humiliation our Lord was for a little transfigured. It was not like Moses whose face shone from his nearness to the divine Presence. Our Lord was with His own here below. A week before He prepared them for seeing the Son of man coming in His kingdom. After it He takes with Him Peter and James and John his brother, and brings them up into a high mountain apart. “And His face did shine as the sun, and His garments became white as the light. And, behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah talking with them.” It is a miniature of His kingdom wherein will be the risen and changed saints with others in their natural bodies, and the Lord the center of all.

Yet it would seem that the divine aim of Moses and Elijah being there was to mark the surpassing glory of the Lord before Whom the chief representative of the law and the most honored of the prophets gave place and vanished away. The personal glory of Jesus is most conspicuous as elsewhere in this Gospel. He is Son of God and Son of man.

Peter counted it a great thing to see His Master with saints so renowned and glorious. “Lord,” said he to Jesus, “It is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, I will make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He made the natural but fatal mistake of equalizing all three. Yet he who had only so short a time before confessed His Master to be not only the Messiah, but the Son of the living God, ought not to have so erred. So easy is it to forget what flesh and blood never truly knows, what is revealed by the Father; just as then too he could not bear to think of His going to Jerusalem, suffering many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and being killed but raised the third day.

Here it was not the withering rebuke of the Lord Who knew that all blessing for man and glory for God, in a ruined world, hung on His rejection. It was the Father's voice out of the excellent glory. “While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and, behold, a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son in Whom I found my delight: hear ye him.” The Father then displayed His jealousy for the honor of His Son. He would not allow the law-giver or the law-restorer to be put on such a level. They were servants and to be honored in the place He set them. But His beloved Son!—there were His delights; and if Christ went down in love infinite to suffer as man, and as man to be exalted, the glory of the eternal Son was precious beyond all thought of man in His Father's eyes.

It is the Son Whom we are to hear. See how the great truth is attested in the Epistle to the Hebrews, both in chap. 1:2, and in chap. 7:25. Equally explicit is John 5:25 for quickening, and in John 10 for every day; and not only for the sheep led out of the Jewish fold but for other sheep, Gentiles, not of this fold. Dear reader, does not this reach to you? If the blessing is immense, what is the loss? And what must be the fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries and the indifferent? For Himself has said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give to them life eternal; and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.” On the other hand “he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.”

When the disciples heard the Father's voice, they fell on their faces and were sore afraid. They were far from knowing yet His love; but He, Who brought it in His own person, was at hand to strengthen their hearts. “And Jesus came and touched them and said, Arise, and be not afraid.” Not less now but more does Jesus cause His word to come home in the power of redemption to those that believe. And the God Who sent Him would fill us with all joy and peace in believing, that we may abound in hope in the power of the Holy Spirit. Is it thus with your souls? Can you say that you have heard the voice of Jesus by faith, and that you are “not afraid”? This is His will, not only for the three who then heard, but for all that believe the gospel of God. Perfect love casts out the fear that has torment, and creates the fear of reverence. It is the effort of the enemy to work on the conscious guilt of man that he may distrust the words of Jesus; it is the work of the Spirit from the beginning to efface it all. The entrance of that word dispels darkness before the light of God to the soul, and enables the heart to receive “Be not afraid.”

“Lifting up their eyes, they saw no one save Jesus only.” Visions were always rare; such a vision is unique. But for the heart's comfort, and the right direction of the eye, there is nothing to compare with having Jesus the Son of God to hear. So has God the Father ruled: “hear Him.” And He abides the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever, May we by faith look to “Jesus only.” It is not only at first that the soul may be saved by faith, but for every day and hour after we do believe. For the only right Walk is by faith, and the fight of faith is the only good fight, in which Jesus is the one unfailing Captain. Other fights we may have to our shame, where flesh is not judged, and Satan gains advantage for the moment. To Jesus then may we ever look, to “Jesus only.”

Lord Jesus as Revealed to Faith

John 6

The thoughts of men, even of such as had the word of God in their hands, come out in this chapter in singular and open contrast with the mind of God. “Man at his best estate is altogether vanity.” They wished to make Jesus a king, and this (though certain to be in due time according to the prophets), for their own ease, interests, and honor. He had made bread for them to eat in the wilderness. This they coupled, and rightly, with the promised Son of David in Psa. 132 He in a special way will provide His poor with bread. Literally and fully that day is not yet come: Socialism would antedate it.

But the salient point of this chapter, as of others in the Gospel of John, is to show that men, and even Israel, were in such a condition that no predicted blessing, no royalty even of David's Son, could of itself meet the depth of the evil and ruin. Consequently our Lord Jesus teaches all through, that there was incomparably more needed by man, infinitely more and better in God's love and purpose. It was not only that He was heir of David's throne; He is the Bread of life, which should come down from heaven and give life unto the world. David did not come from heaven; even the Messianic kingdom, to be established on Zion as its center, had nothing directly to do with heaven. But the Bread for man to eat and find life eternal is He that cometh down from heaven, which was in no sense true of David nor transmissible from him. Had our Lord been only the Son of David, He had never been the Giver of life eternal. The Son of David in the truest and fullest sense He is; and so the apostle calls Timothy to remember “that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel.” It might not be so according to the manner that others looked at the gospel from another point. But according to Paul's gospel the Son of David must not merely be born and live and die and reign, but must be raised from the dead. And why so? It is because Paul looking at the accomplishment of the promises, the glory attached to the Son of David, pressed more profoundly than any, that the door of death and resurrection would secure even those blessings and set them upon an immutable foundation. Much more, when it is not merely the accomplishment of promise, power, and glory in the kingdom, but God's moral glory and the deliverance of sinners. Then it is the communication of God's grace and truth to the soul, when the saints set apart to God by the power of the Holy Spirit are now brought into the communion of God's nature, love and mind, and made meet, not only for worship and witness of Christ, but for partaking of the inheritance of the saints in light. This is what the soul learns here: a divine Person come down from heaven, and become man that believing man may live (32-50).

Even so, the Lord further declares that not even His incarnation, beyond measure blessed and gracious as it is, could alone have secured all. He came down with life eternal in Him, and giving it to the believer, not of the Jews only but of Gentiles also—life to the world. For he that believeth on Him hath life eternal. But there was another and a most solemn test necessitated by the nature and character of God, as well as by man's total ruin. Therefore it is that He should not only come down from heaven as the bread of life, but give His flesh to be eaten and His blood to be drunk (vers. 51-58). Thus was He not only a divine Savior come down as man here below; but He was going to prove and display His grace even in death. And this is the central truth of the chapter. Therefore does He say, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you.”

No matter how men pay other honor to Jesus, it avails not. Set Him on any imaginable throne as the crowd here wished, it is nothing to the purpose, and is rejected by God and His Son. Jesus then as now refuses and spurns a dominion of the sort. If the thing be conceived at all, it must leave Him to be a king without a people. Such was the ruin, such the sin, that He could have no subjects, not even one nation meet subjects for Him. The King must sit upon His throne without a people! But this could not be so. He would die atoningly, Just for unjust. He comes not only to bring the best good, life eternal, unto us, but to efface righteously all our sins. What must become of the evil that we were and had done? He suffered “once” for us (it was enough), and in His sacrificial death He brings us out of our evil and makes us to be the holy and joyful and righteous possessors of everlasting life. All is of His grace.

There is thus no longer a barrier against the outflow of His love. Till His death, there was. He had as He said a baptism to be baptized with; and how He felt it! Till it was accomplished in His reconciling death, He was straitened. Could He show His love as He desired to do? The love was there: nothing in us ever created it in Him or in the God Who sent Him to save us, guilty sinners. Love, grace, filled His heart; but it was shut up and hindered from flowing freely and fully, till sin was judged in His cross. Now by His death (for without this all other obedience however perfect availed not), God was glorified even about sin itself! Only then and thus the love of God in respect of us was fully manifested (1 John 4:9, 10). And we who believe are its objects, and in mutual love, as vers. 11, 12 proceed to show.

The Lord give us to rejoice in such a Savior: not a mere royal Messiah, but an Incarnate and Atoning Savior to God's glory. It is indeed divine love proved in Christ's emptying Himself to become a man and a bond slave; and when thus, humbling Himself and obedient as far as death, yea death of the cross, that we might not only have life eternal in Him but our sins effaced in His death, and thus be raised up at the last day conformed to His glory in body like His own.

1 Peter 1:3

In grand terms from a glowing heart our apostle opens his letter after an address, as we have seen, of admirable suitability. It recalls the initiatory of a still greater apostle and the loftier theme of the Epistle to the Ephesian saints. But it is the deeply defined distinction between the two, notwithstanding this obvious resemblance, which gives the true key to both Epistles. He who fails to apprehend the different scope and the divine propriety of each betrays his own spiritual incapacity, and, if he imposes his ignorance on others, is nothing but so far a blind leader of the blind.

“Blessed [be] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ": so begins the letter, to the saints that were in Ephesus. He is the God of the Man, Christ Jesus; He is the Father of Him, His Only-begotten, eternal, and beloved Son. He blessed us accordingly in His sovereign grace as “God,” in His most intimate relationship as “Father.” Every spiritual blessing is conferred; not one fails. It is not natural blessing as on earth to Israel till by transgression they forfeited it. Ours is in the heavenlies where Christ is now glorified at God's right hand; and all is secured in His redemptive power by virtue of Whom all the universe subsists together (Col. 1:17). It is in Christ so as to be unchanging blessedness, in contrast with those who stood on the conditions of the law fatal to the sinful and fruitless.

No such wealth of privilege, no such heavenly elevation, appears in our text; yet does it announce what is equally momentous for the saint and for God's glory. Every other spiritual blessing had been in vain, if God's mercy did not beget us again, as our Epistle declares. There is no blessing more absolutely necessary for a sinner lost and ruined, with the old life depraved by inborn evil, habitual self-will, and incurable alienation from God. Hence the precious assurance of our apostle in words at first strikingly akin to those of the apostle Paul. “Blessed [be] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that according to His abundant mercy begot us again unto a living hope through Jesus Christ's resurrection out of [the] dead” (1 Pet. 1:3): an entirely new and divine life.

It is not as Jehovah for Israel, nor as Almighty God for the fathers. For us Christians God wrought more profoundly for His glory and for those who believe. It was in Christ's redemption in view both of the present and future on earth, and for heaven through all eternity. For He went down under God's judgment of sin, broke the power of sin and death, procured purification for sinners by His blood, and was raised again for the justification of believers. Every saint from the beginning had life in the Son of God: impossible to live to God, as all did, without life in Him. But now the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ wrought in a more triumphant way in Him Who as sin-bearer entered the dark portals of the grave which closed on all others, and so glorified God that He could not but raise Him from among the dead in the virtue of a life which death could no wise touch, so complete that henceforth we belong not to death, but rather death to us. Thus did God as here revealed beget us again through Christ's resurrection out of the dead. None could speak or know it till that mighty witness of redemption. It was not, nor could be true, till Christ was thus raised.

Truly it was “according to God's abundant mercy.” If death has no more dominion over the dead and risen Saviour, the believer receives a commensurate portion even now: so much so that were He to come from heaven for us, we should be changed in a moment into the likeness of the body of His glory. Mortality would be swallowed up of life without one dying. We should not be unclothed but clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.

It is therefore “unto a living hope” that God begot us again. “Lively,” though due to Tyndale and followed by Cranmer, Geneva, and even the Rhemish, is inadequate and misleading. Wiclif alone was right. We are viewed as pilgrims still on earth in our mortal bodies. We have left the Egypt world, and have crossed the Red Sea, and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus, instead of meaning death, is our cleansing from our sins; as His life is the spring of that filial obedience, which in Him is seen in absolute perfection. We are here not regarded in the height of the heavenlies, risen with Christ and seated in Him there. But Christ is raised for our deliverance, and we are ushered into the world as set free from the old house of bondage, and we traverse it as the wilderness, led of God on the way to the heavenly Canaan as Israel of old to the earthly.

It is accordingly under this aspect that the Epistle contemplates the Christian. He has to do with a God of grace, not of law for a Jew, and an object of His government here below, till the living hope is realized of being with Christ and in heaven. But that divine government for every day meanwhile is not of the chosen people as of old in earthly power and with deliverances to strike the eye and awe of the nations. A government of souls comes before us while evil is still prevalent in the world; but God makes all things, trials and sufferings of faith in particular, work together for good to those that love Him. As Christ's resurrection was manifestly the victory of the Saviour for His own over the enemy's power, behold Him on high to fill them with holy confidence that He will appear to their full deliverance and glory in due time according to promise.

In the Epistle to the Ephesians we find the present association of the Christian and the church with heaven in Christ. Here it is a living hope of reaching heaven through Christ in a glorified state by-and-by. Both aspects of the truth are of the deepest interest and importance: we are on earth redeemed, as pilgrims and strangers, going across a desert and waiting for Christ; we are also even now quickened together with Christ, raised together with Him, and seated in Him in the heavenlies. As the letter to the Ephesians treats all its topics on this footing from first to last, so does the first Epistle of Peter to the Christian Jews throughout open out to them divine life as theirs, aided by the sustaining power and gracious direction of God, to guide them through this dread and howling wilderness of the world.

Nor are there any proofs of the inspired mind of God finer or firmer than the details of divine truth thus discoverable to the soul dependent on God and honoring His word. Some of the indications, each characteristic of its own book, may appear as we dwell for a season on this or that; but what are they among the many more which remain to reward the diligent searcher into these oracles, nowhere deceiving, never dumb?

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Daniel

Have we clear and conclusive proof from its own internal evidence that the book is marked by special aim on God's part? Who can deny, as he weighs its testimony as a whole, that Daniel is, as no other, the prophet of “the times of the Gentiles”? There is a valuable but curt confirmatory witness in the later book of Zechariah subsequent to the Babylonish captivity. But neither there nor in all could be gleaned from every other prophecy put together any real ground of comparison with the pious captive Jew who was called in God's providence to the highest position of counseling rule, not only at the Babylonian court under its mightest monarch, but in the Medo-Persian which succeeded to the days when Cyrus reigned sole and supreme.

While Israel was thus manifestly” Lo-ammi (not-my-people),” as the book indicates throughout, the striking fact is also disclosed of a provisional state for the Jewish remnant in the land, spiritual intelligence in a few, unbelieving blindness in the mass. This is revealed in chap. 9:24, &c. as coming into collision with Messiah the Prince, and His being cut off, without having anything (i.e. of His Messianic rights), and its ruinous consequences described thereafter “even unto the consummation,” which is not come. But it also recurs in chap. 11:36-12:7, where we read the details of that consummation, when the same unbelieving generation of the Jews, who rejected long ago the true Christ, will receive the Antichrist to his and their shame and everlasting contempt. So the great Prophet Himself warned those of His day in John 5:43, before either of those awful catastrophes immeasurably more momentous, whatever rationalists think or say, than all the “decisive battles” of the world.

The unity of the book is now admitted even by most advanced freethinkers, save a few eccentrics of no weight. In the first half, having the historical form, Daniel is spoken of, and the Gentile chiefs are prominent (especially the first and greatest), though only the prophet could interpret. In the second half the prophet only has the visions as well as interpretations, which refer to “the saints” and “the people of the saints” in a way which the first did not. The best answer to caviling skeptics is to read and believe “Daniel the prophet,” as the Lord of all designated him.

Chapter 1 is a preface, from Jerusalem losing the direct government of God (who set up meanwhile Babylon in a fresh imperial position), down to the first year of Cyrus. Chapter 7 has also a conclusory character in the judgment of the Gentiles up to the deliverance of Israel. From chapter 2 to 6 Gentiles are prominent in an exoteric way. From chapter 7 to the end, only the prophet receives and communicates the mind of God intimately on all, with the glory of the Son of man and His saints on high, but His people here below. We may therefore call this half esoteric. What had so immense, as well as intimate, a range of truth in keeping with Maccabean times? It is true that the Syrian king's furious persecution of the Jews, and his profanation of worship, find a marked place in the course of the book; but where it does, plain indication is given of a greater power and a worse evil typified thereby before “the end of the indignation.” What sad belittling of an inspired book to make that king, audacious as he was and cruel, a blind not only to the final actor in that sphere, but to others on an incomparably larger scale, who are all to come under divine dealings at “the time of the end” —a time which assuredly is not yet arrived Chapter 2 conveys the interesting and important fact that “the God of the heavens” acted by a dream on the first Gentile head of empire, to show the general course of dominion then begun till its extinction: an image gorgeous and terrible, but gradually deteriorating as it descends, and closing with great strength and marked weakness also. Then He sets up another kingdom—His own, after destroying not only the fourth empire in its last divided condition of the ten toes (which did not exist when Christ suffered or the Holy Spirit came down) but the remains of all from the first—the gold, the silver, the brass, as well as the iron and clay. Only when judgment was executed does the “little stone” expand into a great mountain and fill the whole earth. It awaits His second advent.

Here, as is well known, the rationalist coalesces with the ritualist in teaching the self-complacent chimera of an “ideal Israel,” the church or Christendom. Yet in the church is neither Jew nor Greek, but Christ is all. It is the body of the glorified Head; and its calling is to suffering grace on earth, awaiting glory with Christ at His return. Crushing to powder the image of Gentile empires is in no way or time the church's work. The once rejected but now exalted Stone will do it, as He declared in Matt. 21:44 and in other scriptures. But the literal Israel will be then and there delivered, and become His earthly center in power and glory. Such is the uniform witness of the prophets. We need not begrudge this to the remnant of Jacob then repentant; for we are called to far brighter glory with Christ in heavenly places. But, whether believed now or not, the first dominion on earth shall surely come to the daughter of Zion in that day, for as long as the earth endures.

The intervening histories in chapters 3-6 are in the fullest accord with the predictions of Daniel, two of them general (3 & 4) and two particular (5 & 7, as we shall find the prophecies are also); but none of them in fact refers to the peculiar scourge in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes. In not one is there a trace of Hellenism imposed on the Jews. Not even in Belshazzar have we the least real likeness to punishing recalcitrants against the gods of Olympus.

The aim of chapter 3 is to show how the Gentile entrusted with imperial power by God used it, deeply impressed as he had been by the lost secret which none but the Hebrew captive could interpret. Alas! man being in honor abides not; he is like the beasts that perish. So it had been with Israel under law, with Judah, and with David's house. New-fangled idolatry on pain of the most cruel death was the first recorded command of the Gentile world-power: a religious bond to unite by that act the various peoples, nations, and tongues of the one empire, and thus to counteract the divisive influence of gods peculiar to each of these races. But such a universal test gave God, thus ignored, the occasion to prove the nullity of that idol and of every other, and the total and manifest defeat of supreme power even by its own captives cast into the fiery furnace, be it ever so heated. How grave the public lesson read to the Gentile empires, were not man as forgetful of God as he is bent on his own will!

The next chapter (4) is no less general, and the more impressive as the deepest humiliation was inflicted by God, after His slighted warning, on the same haughty head of imperial power. Nebuchadnezzar had ascribed all his glory to himself, and got debased, as none else ever was, to the bestial state till “seven times” passed over him. After that he “lifted up his eyes to heaven,” a repentant and restored man owning the Most High, no longer like the brute but morally intelligent. It is childish to lower or restrain to the Seleucid prince a lesson he never learned. It is infidel to doubt the facts of this chapter or of the preceding one. It is blind not to recognize that chapter 3 looks on to the deliverance of faithful ones (not “the many”) at the end; as the next does to the day when the Gentile shall have a beast's heart no more, but will bless the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth: the character of the divine display when this present evil age terminates. What connection had either with the loathsome foe of the Jews, Antiochus Epiphanes? Nothing could be more telling than both displays of God's power during the “head of gold” “till the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” It is Satan's work to disbelieve them; and a nominal Christian is far more guilty now than a heathen of old if he help Satan against God and His word.

The special aims of chapters 5 & 6 are of no less serious moment. Neither the one nor the other represents or resembles Antiochus Epiphanes. In chapter 5 we see dissolute profanity eliciting a most solemn token of divine displeasure on the spot, and judged by a providential infliction that very night. Monuments or not, the word of our God shall stand forever. Nothing more dangerous than to trust anything or one against scripture; and what can be more sinful? What avail the brave words of men enamored of Babylonish bricks, cylinders, etc.? Let them beware of the snares of the great enemy; not even resurrection power broke Jewish unbelief. In chapter 6 man was by craft set up for a while as the sole object of prayer or worship, which brought on its devisers the sudden destruction they had plotted for the faithful. What bearing had this, any more than the chapter before, on the grievous scourge of Antiochus Epiphanes? They evidently prepare the way, for the judgment of the future Babylon in the one (5), and for that of the Beast in the other (6), as given in the Book of Revelation, where both are shown to perish frightfully though with difference.

Next follow the more complicated communications of God's mind about the four “Beasts,'' the last especially, much fuller and more intimate than in chapter 2. The movement of heaven is disclosed, and God's interest in His people, and particularly in the sufferers for His name specified “as saints,” and even as “saints of the high places.” The dream of Nebuchadnezzar, condescending as it was to him and awe-inspiring in itself, contained no such vision of glory on high, no such prospects for heaven or earth, no such display of divine purpose in the Son of man.

But as in chapter 2, so yet more in chapter 7, the last and most distant empire, the fourth, is much more fully described than the Babylonish then in being, or the Medo-Persian that next followed, or the Greek that succeeded in its due time. For we have a crowd of minute predictions of an unexampled nature, the many horns in the last empire at its close, the audacious presumption and restless ambition of its last chief; who from a small beginning governed the rest, and, not content with trampling down the saints, rose up in blasphemy against God and His rights. But this calls forth summary and final judgment on all, with the action of heaven in establishing the everlasting kingdom of power and glory here below.

Such a revelation fundamentally clashes with the canons of the Higher Criticism, and demonstrates, if believed, their utter futility. Hence we can understand their efforts to get rid of the unvarnished truth Daniel sets before us in this vision. The attempt to separate the Median and the Persian elements, so as to make them respectively the second and third empires, is desperate and unworthy. Chapter 5:28 was explicit beforehand as well as chapter 6:8, 12, 15; and afterward chapter 8 demolishes such contradiction of scripture. The bear in chapter 7 answers to the ram in chapter 8, which had two horns, the kings of Media and Persia—not two Beasts, but one composite power expressly. The leopard, therefore, with its four heads answers to the goat of Greece, for whose great horn, when broken, four stood up in its stead. The fourth Beast, different from all the Beasts before, is none other than the Roman Empire; which has ten horns in its final shape, after which, when further change comes, divine judgment falls in a form without previous parallel (7:11, 12).

If we let in, as we are bound, the further light of the Apocalypse, where we cannot but recognize the same “Beast” which Daniel saw in the fourth place, we gain the fullest certainty from chapter 17 that the seven heads were successive governing forms, of which the sixth or imperial head was in being when John saw the vision (ver. 10); and that the ten horns were contemporary, for all receive authority as kings for “one hour with the beast.” It is preparatory to the last crisis, when they make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them (vers. 12-14). This is also decisively shown in verse 16, “And the ten horns which thou sawest, and [not ‘on’] the beast, these shall hate the harlot,” etc., as they also give their kingdom to the “Beast” until the words of God shall be fulfilled. This, accordingly and absolutely, disposes of the attempt to make the “ten horns” mean only ten successive kings; so as to apply the list to the Seleucidae, and make it appear that Antiochus was the little horn of Dan. 7, who got rid of the three last of his predecessors. Such a scheme is mere perversion of scripture, wholly dislocates the chapter, and deprives us of the only true interpretation. For this supposes a divine interposition at the end of the age in judgment of the Roman Empire, revived to fulfill its complete destiny and to be judged by the Lord Jesus at His appearing.

The first empire had a simplicity peculiar to itself. The second or Medo-Persian had dual elements; and so has the symbol two horns, of which the higher came up last. The third or Macedonian after its brief rise had four heads, of which two are noticed particularly as having to do with the Jews in the details of Dan. 11. The fourth empire, beyond just doubt, is the Roman, diverse from all before it, and distinguished by the notable form of ten concurrent horns, ere its destructive judgment by a divine kingdom which supersedes all, alone truly both universal and everlasting. Then shall the saints of the high places have their grand portion, surely not to eclipse the Son of man (as these sorry critics would like), but to swell the train of His glory Who is Heir of all things.

None but the Roman Empire corresponds with the feet of iron and clay; none other furnishes an analogy to the ten toes in one case and ten horns in another, the only true force of which is ten kings (subject to the violent change indicated) reigning together. Nor can any power that ever bore sway be so truly compared to “iron breaking and subduing all things,” or a most ravenous nondescript brute with great iron teeth, which “devoured and brake in pieces and stamped the residue with the feet of it.” The entrance of the Teuton clay indicates the brittleness of independent will (in contrast with the old Roman cohesive centralism); which, as it broke up the empire in the past, will culminate in the tenfold division of the future, on that revival of the empire which is presupposed in Dan. 7 before judgment falls, and is distinctly revealed in Rev. 17. This is a trait wholly absent from all previous empires, as well as from the Syro-Greek kingdom, which never was an empire nor approached it.

As the revival of the Roman Empire is so momentous a fact of the future and for “the time of the end,” it may be well here to point out its clear and conclusive evidence in scripture. On the showing of Dan. 2 and 7 the fourth or Roman Empire is in power when the kingdom of God comes, enforced by the Son of man. But the Revelation explains how this can and will be. In chapter 8:1-10 is seen the “Beast” emerging once more from the sea or revolutionary state of nations, having seven heads and ten horns. These last have been ever held to identify it with Daniel's fourth empire. Again, the seven heads, now appropriately added, can only confirm it; for (explained as it is in Rev. 17:9, 10) this description applies to no known empire so significantly as to the Roman. Only we have to observe an absolutely new fact in connection with the healing of that one of his heads (the imperial, as it appears) which had been wounded to death: that the great dragon (who in chapter 7 is declared to be Satan) gave him his power and his throne and great authority.

Pagan Rome was evil exceedingly, and had its part in the crucifixion of the Lord of glory. The same Roman empire will reappear at the end of the age, energized by Satan in a way neither itself nor any other empire had ever known. This gives the key to its extreme blasphemy and defiance of the Most High, as well as to other enemies; because of which the judgment shall sit and the dominion be taken away by the wrath of God from heaven, when the Beast with its hosts dares to make war against the Lord descending in power and glory. The horns will then act as of one will with the “Beast” that is then present to give imperial unity. For still more clearing the intimations of chapter 8, chapter 17:8 is most explicit: “The beast that thou sawest was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss and to go into perdition.” Again, at the close of the verse, “Seeing the beast, how that he was, and is not, and shall be present.” (See also verse 11.)

The “Beast” without the horns was under the Caesars and their successors. Horns in their varying numbers were without the “Beast” in the middle ages and onward: “The beast was, and is not.” But the wonder of the future is that the Beast, before the closing scene, is to arise not only out of the sea but with the far more awful symbol, “out of the abyss,” the prelude of perdition. Here, again, the consistency of the truth asserts itself. To none but the Roman Empire can these predictions apply. To Alexander's empire they are irrelevant; how much more to a mere offshoot of it! No, it is the empire that rose up against the Lord in humiliation, which, blinded and filled by Satan's power, will make war with the Lamb when He comes in glory to its appalling ruin.

Chapter 8 is manifestly of a character and scope more circumscribed than the general prophecies of chapters 2, 7. Yet it is none the less important for its design, because it takes up only a special part; but all alike conduct us to the catastrophe at the end. As this we have seen to be evidently true of the great general visions of the book, so is it equally of the particulars; which circumstance exposes the fallacy of identifying the objects. All come into collision with divine judgment; but they are distinct in character as in fact.

Here, then, we have the second empire of Medo-Persia assailed overwhelmingly by the third or Greek kingdom of Alexander the Great. How any upright mind can fail to apprehend this from the simple reading of the text is hard to account for. The great horn was broken when it became strong, and in its stead came up four notable horns. Out of one of these four kingdoms rose a little horn which became exceeding great, and also meddled peculiarly with the Jews and the sanctuary. It is a deplorable lack of intelligence to confound this oppressor with the little horn of chapter 7. The one was as manifestly the ruler over a part of the Greek empire in the East, as the other from a small beginning arrives to be the chief of the Western empire. Both are to be excessively impious and wicked, both surely punished by God beyond example. But to confound them is to lose the difference of the actors at the close, even wholly opposed as they are to each other, though both inflict the worst evils on the chosen people. Now there is the less need of many words here, as it is agreed that the vision in its later part from verse 9 does set forth the Seleucid enemy of the Jews and of their religion. And it would appear that verses 13, 14 apply to his defilement of the sanctuary and suppression of the daily offering.

As usual in Daniel and elsewhere in scripture, the interpretation not only explains but adds considerably, and in particular dwells, not on the typical Antiochus Epiphanes, but on the final antitypical enemy in the same quarter at the latter day. It is weak to pretend that the awful end predicted for the infamous personage of the future in this chapter and at the end of Dan. 11 could be fulfilled in the death of Antiochus Epiphanes, terrible as it was in the estimate of Greeks as well as Jews. Thus the real prediction of his history in the preceding verses of the same chapter 11 up to 32 does not dwell on it as comparable with that of him who is found “at the time of the end.”

For the prophecy goes on to the consummation, when God interferes in unmistakable power. Hence the angelic interpreter would make Daniel know “what shall be at the end of the indignation.” Who can say with the smallest show of truth that this was in the days of the impious Syrian or of the Maccabean resistance? “The end of the indignation” will only be, when Israel are truly repentant and God has no more controversy with His people. Nor should this surprise any one who reads the scriptures in faith, for all the prophets look on to that happy time. The real person before the mind of the Holy Spirit at the close is one who will “stand up against the Prince of princes,” but shall be “broken without hand” in a way far beyond its type in past history. A gap, therefore, necessarily occurs in every one of the prophecies. In no instance is continuity unbroken. Enough is said to make the general bearing plain; but in every case the Holy Spirit dwells on the final scene which connects itself with the subject matter before us; because then only will the judgment of God decide all absolutely and publicly, and introduce the kingdom of power and glory that shall never pass away.

Dan. 9 has its own peculiarities. Those who contrast this book with other prophecies, as lacking the predominantly moral element, only prove their own blindness. In no prophecy is it more conspicuous; and the same chapter which so profoundly tells out to God a heart that identified itself with the sins and iniquities (“we have sinned,” &c.) of the men of Judah, and of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and of all Israel near and far off, but with the most earnest intercession, is precisely the one that, as he prayed, received from God a prediction in some respects the most striking and important of any in scripture. Here even rationalism cannot but own that the promised blessings of verse 24 belong to the Messianic hope, when the 490 years really close. Thus it shares, with every other prediction in the book, the mark of going down to the end of the age; when the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled, and God sets up His kingdom in Christ by judgments executed on all lawlessness, Jewish or Gentile. But here, where Jeremiah's seventy years are referred to, with the provisional return of a remnant from Babylon to rebuild the city and the sanctuary, we have not only Jehovah the Lord God of Israel addressed, but also Messiah's first advent and cutting off. This interrupts the thread of the seventy weeks, as it naturally must; and an undated vista of desolation follows. For it clearly includes Messiah's rejection, and leaves nothing but the destruction of the city and temple, and a flood of troubles on the Jews. There evidently comes the break. Messiah's death was “after” the sixty-ninth week=483 years. Then follows the desolation determined, and to the end war, outside the course of the “weeks” altogether, as it is hardly possible for a serious man to deny.

The last week remains for the close, without fixing any connection or starting-point, save that the Roman “prince” (whose “people” came and destroyed Jerusalem) will, at the time of the end, make covenant with “the many,” or mass of faithless Jews, for a week or seven years, and will in the midst of it cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease. That is, he will put down the Jewish religion, contrary to his covenant; and “because of the protection” [rather than the overspreading] “of abominations” or idols, which take its place, a desolator shall be, even until the consumption and that which is determined to be poured on the desolate, i.e. Jerusalem. The desolator seems to be the last north-eastern enemy, as the Roman prince is he who is so prominent in Dan. 7, where we saw the times and laws given into his hand for the same last half week, or three and a half times.

Instead of this plain, worthy, and homogeneous interpretation, what do the neo-critics say? “There can be no reasonable doubt that this [the cutting off of Messiah] is a reference to the deposition of the high priest, Onias III., and his murder by Andronicus (B.C. 171) “; while the rest is turned to Antiochus. Of course, all is chaos among these critics. The design is to pervert the prophecy, from Christ's death and the burning of their city and the flood of desolation, to those murderers. The precise scope is clear if the interruption of the series is observed in the text, with the future hearing of the last week. If this be true, it is a death-blow to the “higher critics,” and an unanswerable proof that the true Daniel wrote it; who here distinctively brings in the awful truth of Christ's rejection, which has deferred the world-kingdom till His second advent; while the disasters of the poor Jews are shown, not only till the Romans destroyed their city and temple, but at the end of the age when they meet their worst tribulation, before deliverance comes for the godly in that day, as it surely will.

The last three chapters are also a particular prophecy, chapter 11. being exceedingly minute, to the fierce dislike of such as think for God, and would dictate to Him if they could. There is a rich variety in scripture, and not least in the prophetic word. Our place is to bow to God and learn of Him. Unbelief sits in judgment of Him Who is worthy of all trust and adoration. Now chapter 11, peculiar as it may be, demands and deserves our fullest confidence, whatever say the scorners. It was in the third year of Cyrus that the revelation came to Daniel. Three more kings were to arise in Persia-Cambyses, Pseudo-Smerdis, and Darius Hystaspis; then the fourth, richer than them all, Xerxes, who, when waxed strong by his riches, should stir up the whole against the kingdom of Javan or Greece. This gives the fitting gap, which necessarily must be, unless an uninterrupted thread were inserted: a thing unprecedented in such cases, for the gap we have seen to be regular.

The next personage is the Macedonian chief, who repaid the blow intended by Persia. No unprejudiced man can avoid seeing Alexander the Great in verse 3, or his divided kingdom in verse 4, which introduces two of those divisions, the kingdoms of the north and the south, and their conflicts which follow. Again, it is clear and certain that in verses 21-32 we have a full account of him who more than any hated the Jews and their religion. The skeptical theory is, that a patriotic Jew in his day personated Daniel of ancient renown in the exile, and converted the past history into professed prophecy up to that time. But the fact stands opposed that, when Antiochus Epiphanes is dropped, verses 33-35 give a protracted state of trial which ensued long for the Jews, when their old foe had ceased from troubling; and that the text expressly declares their trial was to go on to “the time of the end.” Here, therefore, is the great gap implied in accordance with the other predictions of the book, and even with the same principle on a smaller scale between verses 2 and 3 of this very chapter as already pointed out and undeniable.

Then from verse 36 we find ourselves confronted with the last time. We are told, not of a king of the north or of the south as before, but of “the king,” that final wicked one whom a prophet so distinguished and early as Isaiah presents in chapters 11:4, 33:33, 57:9 under the same ominous phrase. He is the Anointed's personal rival reigning in the land according to his own pleasure, and thus fully contrasted with Him who only did His Father's will. It is an energetic sketch of one exalting himself against every god; whereas Antiochus Epiphanes was devoted to the gods of Greece and Rome. Though speaking impious things against the God of gods, he is to prosper “till the indignation be accomplished” —God's indignation against His guilty people (as Isaiah also spoke), another proof of days still to come. The Palestinian prince (which Antiochus Epiphanes was not, but king of the north) will have no regard for the God of his fathers, namely, Jehovah (for he is an apostate Jew), nor the desire of women (Messiah, the hope of Israel), nor any god (i.e. of the Gentiles); which last it is absurd and false to say of Antiochus Epiphanes. In truth it is the long predicted and then present Antichrist, supplanting Christ, denying the Father and the Son, coming in his own name, and received by those that refused Him who came in the Father's. His and their destruction is shown elsewhere. But here the prophet turns to the old struggle of the kings of the north and of the south, both being as opposed to “the king” as to each other: an incontestable proof of the folly, first of fancying Antiochus Epiphanes here, and next of denying that these events, believed or disbelieved, are set forth as the prophet's prediction of the last future collision.

Observe finally, what accumulation of proofs Dan. 12 affords of these events to come, which of themselves refute the petty scheme of seeing only Antiochus Epiphanes up to the end. For when the last king of the north perishes by divine judgment, a divine intervention on behalf of Israel is assured “at that time.” Sorely will the Jews need it, for they will be passing through this their last and severest tribulation. But, unlike their calamitous history for long centuries, “at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.” It is no mere policy nor prowess, but mercy for the righteous. Hence the appropriate figure of many of the sleepers in the dust awakening, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. So Isaiah (26) and Ezekiel (37) employed the same figure of resurrection for the uprising of Israel nationally, but with the rejection of the unrighteous, as our prophet plainly indicates.

The result, then, of this brief survey of the book, assailed by neo-critical unbelief, is to show that their scheme is unfounded from first to last; and that it overlooks the grand scope of Gentile empire, both exoteric (2) and esoteric (7). In this so inconsiderable a ruler as Antiochus Epiphanes could have no place, still less be the culmination of all in bringing on the divine extinction of the entire system of Gentile empire, and hence in restoring Israel under conditions of blessing and glory which will change the world's history.

Plainly no such time is arrived. When Christ came, the fourth empire was in power; which will also play its part against Him at His second advent, as the New Testament carefully and clearly reveals. His cross laid the basis for reconciling, not believers only, but all things also in due time. Meanwhile in the world “the times of the Gentiles” proceed, and “the indignation” against faithless Israel. The gospel is indeed sovereign grace toward all, and upon all that believe, and the church is Christ's body for heavenly glory. But the world-kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ is not yet come, nor can it come till the seventh trumpet is blown. Even in the particular prophecies of Daniel, where Antiochus Epiphanes is referred to (chapters 8 and 11), the book itself teaches us to look on from his evil to a greater and worse antitype expressly bound up with “the time of the end,” which in no way applies to the Seleucid king.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Priest's Work Typical of Our Lord's?; MAT 13:30, 1CO 5:13, 2TI 2:21 Hang Together?

Q.-Ex. 28; 29 Was the anointing, consecrating and sanctifying of Aaron and his sons, to minister in the priest's office, typical of anything that had to take place before our Lord entered upon His priestly work?

If so, of what does the oil speak?

Of what was the killing of the ram of consecration a type?

Had what they typified to be fulfilled before our Lord became High Priest? J. S.

A.-If the querist were to read what has already appeared in the “B.T.” (New Series), 2 290, 306, 324, 338, 354, 370 (1899), as well as the papers regularly following in 1900, he would find much more ample discussion than in a brief answer now. But the Epistle to the Hebrews is the inspired warrant for regarding the Aaronic priesthood as typical of our Lord's exercise of office in heaven, and of those who are His as His house on earth. At the same time contrast is pointed out as clearly as analogy. So it must be with One Who is Son of God and Son of man in a sense and personal dignity beyond all others, as chaps. 1, 2 were meant to show as a starting-point. Hence also Psa. 110 is introduced as early as chap. 5 to indicate that, if the exercise be yet Aaronic (within the veil, on the ground of a completed atonement by blood), its “order” is according to Melchizedek (everlasting and intransmissible, not successional like Aaron's).

But the sanctifying, anointing, and consecrating typified what was found in our Lord or accomplished by Him in order to His priestly function. 1. The oil here as elsewhere speaks of the unction from the Holy One, the Spirit given to Him before, to us since, redemption. 2. The slaying of the ram of consecration, like every other sacrifice, typified Christ's death, each in its own special point of view, but all fulfilled in that wondrous fact. 3. They were fulfilled here below, though the value was recognized instantly in heaven and forever, before our Lord was addressed by God as High Priest, or entered on His heavenly office in due form and glory.

Q.-Matt. 13:30, 1 Cor. 5:13, 2 Tim. 2:21. How do these scriptures hang together? B. A.

A.-The first speaks of evil professors of the Lord, who are not our objects of extermination, but living in the field of the world till judgment falls at the end of the age. The second commands the wicked man to be at once put out of the church. The third provides for the day when the professing church sanctions vessels to dishonor, from which the faithful soul is bound to purge himself. Thus only can he be a vessel to honor, sanctified and meet for the master's use, prepared unto every good work.

by J. N. Darby
COLLECTED WRITINGS, 6/each VOL SYNOPSIS, 5/do.
THE CHURCH'S PRESENT HOPE, 1/paper, 1/6 cloth.
SANCTIFICATION, OR SETTING APART TO GOD, 3d.
OBEDIENCE, ld. PAUL'S WISH IN CHAINS, ld.
WHAT DO I LEARN FROM SCRIPTURE? d.
GRACE, 4 a penny; 1/9 per 100.

BY W. KELLY
The Preaching to the Spirits in Prison, cloth, 1/6.
THE BOOM OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH, Svo. cloth, 7/6.
AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, Svo. cloth, 7/6.
THE OFFERINGS OF LEVITICUS, 12mo. cloth, 1/6.
THE MYSTERY AND THE COVENANTS, 3d. each.
PROVIDENCE AND FAITH, &I. a dozen.
BRIEF HINTS ON TIIE PSALMS, lid. each.
HINTS ON ISAIAH, 5d. a dozen. DANIEL THE PROPHET, 2d.
PROPITIATION, and STRANGE DOCTRINE, each 6d. per dozen.

HYMNS revised in 1894, cloth, 9d.; Paste Grain, 1/6; Mor.,
from 2/to 4/-.
Large Type, cloth, 1/6; Paste Grain, 2/6; Mor. 4/to 6/-.
GOOD TIDINGS' HYMN BOOK, Cloth, limp, 3d.
The above two Hymn Books bound together, cloth, 1/-.

HYMNS (29) for Christian Meetings, 2/per 100.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly,

Isaac: 17. The Heir

Gen. 25:1-6

We may not now meditate on all this closing scene of Abraham's life, for we are occupied with Isaac. Yet it presents not a little of interest in itself, and in its bearing on eastern races who are to play their part in the glorious days of the future kingdom as they have in the past. Whatever tradition says otherwise, Keturah was not a bond-maid like Hagar, nor was she mother of the promised seed, but of six sons born to the father of the faithful.

“And Abraham took another wife, and her name [was] Keturah. And she bore him Zimran and Jokshan and Medan and Midian and Ishbak and Shuah. And Jokshan begot Sheba and Dedan; and Dedan's sons were Asshurim and Letushim and Leummim; and Midian's sons, Ephah and Epher and Enoch and Abidah and. Eldaah: all these [were] Keturah's sons. And Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac; and to the sons of the concubines that Abraham had Abraham gave gifts, and, while he yet lived, sent them away from Isaac his son, eastward to the east country” (vers. 1-6).

To none was Abraham indifferent, nor the God of Abraham who will remember them in the coming era of earth's joy and blessedness. But Isaac has a place altogether distinctive. To the rest Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, to whom he “gave all that he had.”

Thus Isaac stands before us typically as the manifest heir of all things (Heb. 1:2). This title of course belongs only in its full sense to Jesus the Son of God. As the Creator of all, it is meet that He should inherit all (Heb. 1); and through redemption and purchase (Heb. 2) He will take all in the day of displayed glory, as the exalted Son of man. He who humbled Himself as none else ever could is beyond all crowned with glory and honor: though now given, we do not yet see all things put under Him. But unseen of man He has already this supremacy in place and title according to Psa. 8:6 (7) thrice referred to in the N.T.; a supremacy so universal that He only is excepted Who subjected all things to Him. God left nothing unsubjected to Christ, as attested by His actual seat on the throne of God, the Father's throne. But this is quite distinct from the intimation of Psa. 110:2, &c. when the Lord will reign on His own throne and actively subjugate all the enemies whom Jehovah will have made His footstool. For the Lord it is who shall rule in the midst of His enemies and strike through kings in the day of His wrath. It is an evident contrast with all He is doing now at the right hand of the Majesty on high, where till that day He sits during this day of salvation by grace.

It is seasonable to recall here the specific use in the Epistles made of the citation from Psa. 8, where the glorious result of the Son of man's humiliation, announced there for Israel's instruction and joy, is set in the full light of God's final revelation. 1 Cor. 15 fixes the time and the condition. It is when not only Christ is raised from the dead, but they that are Christ's at His coming. The resurrection of the saints precedes the kingdom there described as dealing with all the enemies, even to annulling death, last enemy though it be. It is the proper work of the risen Man, Who, when all things shall have been actually subjected to Him, will Himself be subjected to Him that subjected all things to Him, giving up the kingdom to Him that is God and Father, that God [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] may be all in all.

In Eph. 1:22 the same words are applied to Christ in His present exaltation as given to be Head over all things to the church which is His body. It is not here the risen Man, with those raised at His coming that are His, reigning to the subdual of the last foe, but the mystery about Christ and about the church, the mystery in unique greatness of Christ set over all things heavenly and earthly, and the church united to Him in that supremacy after the nearest sort, He the Head, she the body.

Heb. 2:5-9 completes the divine picture. Here the words from Psa. 8 are again employed to show that the glorification of the Lord Jesus is the pledge of their future fulfillment as a whole, when all things shall be seen put under Him. Also the habitable earth to come is not for angels to reign over. All the universe will be put under the Son of man, as surely as we see Him already crowned.

Thus we have in the last scripture the blessed fact on which Christianity depends that the once-suffering Son of man is exalted to the highest seat in heavenly glory, the assuring proof that in due time all things shall be seen, as they are not yet seen, to be put under Him. Next, the intermediate scripture lets us know that meanwhile the church is made one with Him, as the body with its Head, sharing His exaltation over all things. Hence the delay; because, as we are all aware, the body is being now formed while He is seated and waiting in the heavens. The first scripture accordingly explains that at His coming we shall be raised and like Him, in order to join the risen Lord in reigning with Him over all things, when He undertakes to reduce to subjection all the enemies which are made His footstool. For He will not reign alone. He, the Heir of all things, has joint-heirs; as it is written in Rom. 8, the Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are children of God; and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with [Him], that we may be glorified together with [Him]. For as Heb. 10:12, 13 shows, after having offered one sacrifice for sins, He in perpetuity sat down on God's right hand, from henceforth expecting till His enemies be made a footstool of His feet. Having suffered all and done all for His friends, He will then trample down His foes, while His own reign with Him in glory.

Priesthood: 10. Priest Above Grief

The Priest Above Grief. Lev. 10:4-7

Our relationships whether with God or with man determine our duties. The more intimate they be, the call is proportionate. Jehovah had chosen Aaron and his sons to draw nigh to Him, as none could even of the tribe which had charge of the sanctuary. Therefore would He be sanctified in the persons so privileged, who must walk consistently with holy nearness. If they became through any cause insensible to His majesty, He would not fail to make them feel that they had to do with One Who never slumbers or sleeps, dwelling among the sons of Israel, after having brought them forth out of the land of Egypt to walk among them as Jehovah their God. If the priest forgot what is due to Him, what could be expected of the people? There must be on the one hand no respect of persons: God cannot abdicate; on the other the priest typically stood for Christ Who acted for man with God in His grace. And what can be more heinous then to despise grace? In the most solemn way the elder sons of the high priest had profaned the name of Jehovah. Now “if one man sin against another, God will judge him; but if a man sin against Jehovah, who shall intreat for him?” Even Aaron held his peace.

“4 And Moses called Mishael and Elzaphan, sons of Uzziel uncle of Aaron, and said to them, Draw near, carry your brethren from before the sanctuary out of the camp. 5 And they drew near, and carried them in their vests out of the camp, as Moses had said. 6 And Moses said to Aaron, and to Eleazar and to Ithamar his sons, Uncover not your heads nor rend your clothes, lest ye die, and lest wrath come on all the assembly; but your brethren, the whole house of Israel, shall bewail the burning which Jehovah hath kindled. 7 And ye shall not go out from the door of the tent of meeting, lest ye die; for the anointing oil of Jehovah [is] upon you. And they did according to the word of Moses” (vers. 4-7).

Even in circumstances so unexpected and appalling, all things must be done decently and in order. The guilty priests forthwith perished for their profanity before the sanctuary; and the Levites, their near of kin, must carry them forth out of the camp. And so they did in their vests. It was all the more an affecting and impressive sight. We do not hear the like in any other instance; but this was only right in presence of a sin so unexampled and heinous.

Nor was this all. Moses proceeds to lay an injunction on the priestly family, which was followed up afterward in detail (chap. 11), and worthy of all heed. The priests of Jehovah were liable to the ordinary sorrows of humanity; and their office, as we have seen, laid them open to peculiar dangers from which others were exempt. But their position of nearness to Jehovah precluded them from the usual manifestation of grief. The occasion was a crucial one, and the word plain and imperative. Natural feeling might plead loudly; but what had nature to do with nearness to Jehovah in the sanctuary? It was He Who deigned to bring them nigh to Himself. Only grace conferred such a title. They were in themselves sinful men, and deserved to be far from His presence like others. What possible claim had any sinner to draw near Him?

It is true that the sanctuary as a whole and in all its parts was significant of what God is in Christ. In the holiest the ark and its covering mercy-seat, with the veil; in the holy place the golden table with its twelve loaves, the golden stand with its seven lamps, the golden altar of incense, and the screen of the door as well as the hangings, and the very sockets, boards, bars and pillars, to say nothing of the anointing oil, or the cloud that covered the tent of meeting and the glory that filled the tabernacle. But what did any then know of their meaning? Even now that the true light already shines, how few saints read all or any of these things aright?

But this they all had heard and sung, from the passage of the Red Sea, “Who is like thee, Jehovah, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?” If they understood not that the sanctuary and its vessels and appurtenances spoke only of what God is to His own in Christ, and what He is for them to God, they could not be ignorant from Sinai, that fear was owed by all, and that holiness especially befits the priests that draw near to Jehovah (Ex. 19:11-25). “Thy testimonies are very sure: holiness becometh thy house, O Jehovah, for evermore” (Psa. 93:5).

The Hebrew in the charge to Aaron and his sons Eleazar and Ithamar is open to the question, whether it means letting the hair loose, or uncovering their heads; for both were signs of mourning. The A.V. prefers the latter, the R.V. the former. Certain it is that the command forbids any such token of grief in those who drew nigh to Jehovah. He claims and must have on their part what is due to His presence. If the death of Christ was the basis of all blessing there, the death of the first man can have no place before Him. The sorrows and horrors of sin are supplanted by the witness, as yet unbelieved by man, of grace reigning through righteousness unto life eternal by Jesus Christ our Lord. Divine righteousness shines in the sanctuary.

Yet, far from suppressing grief in others, the whole house of Israel were encouraged and expected to bewail the solemn fact before all, the burning which Jehovah had kindled. Nature is there allowed to vent its feelings.

Again, the priests were forbidden to go out from the door of the tent of meeting on pain of death; for the anointing of Jehovah was on them. They were not their own but His; and they had that unction which pointed to the gift of the Spirit, and is absorbed in God's will and glory.

Proverbs 9:1-6

Here it is not wisdom in eternal relations, or in founding and building up the earth, preparing the heavens, and imposing on the sea the decree that the waters pass not the prescribed limits; yet withal delighting in the sons of men. Here the fruit of these delights appears. Wisdom acts among men.

“Wisdom hath built her house; she hath hewn out her seven pillars; she hath slaughtered her slaughtering [or, sacrifice], she hath mingled her wine, she hath also furnished her table. She hath sent forth her maidens; she crieth upon the summits of the high places of the city, Whoso [is] simple, let him turn in hither. To him that is void of understanding she saith, Come, eat ye of my bread, and drink of the wine I have mingled. Forsake follies [or, simplicities] and live, and go in the way of understanding” (vers. 1-6).

We had wisdom's cry in the preceding chapter, her active testimony that her voice might be heard. Here we have much more; for Jehovah strenuously and elaborately adopted means for the well-being and true enjoyment of man, so ready to turn aside and perish in the ways of the destroyer.

Hence, and in Israel when in possession of the land under Solomon it was above all conspicuous, that Jehovah drew public attention to His commandments as the sole wisdom and condition of blessing on the earth. This is what Moses yearned for, as their entrance there approached, that the surrounding peoples might say, Verily this great nation is a wise and understanding people: for what great nation is there that hath God near to them, as Jehovah our God is in everything we call upon Him for? And what great nation is there that hath righteous statutes and ordinances, as all this law which I set before you this day?

Only more is said in Solomon's day, and by the king in this book where wisdom is personified so admirably by the Spirit who had the Son of God in view. And who so well could introduce the figure of wisdom's house as he who was given to build the house for Jehovah's name, a settled place for Him to abide in forever? Yet how much the past or the present says to the contrary! as indeed Jehovah warned was to be because of their apostasy, even to a proverb and a byword among all peoples.

“Wisdom hath built her house.” Nowhere on earth was there a suited habitation. She could find no dwelling, but has prepared one for herself; for wisdom had to promote the entire life and the most intimate relations and the habits of every day. Hence the necessity for “her house,” to which she liberally invites. “She hath hewn her seven pillars.” There is a completeness of support exhibited in none other, and due to the divine aim herein sought.

Then the provision is no less bountiful. “She hath slaughtered her slaughtering, she hath; led her wine, she hath furnished her table.” How could it be otherwise if divine love undertake to entertain worthily of God? There is no more intelligible or common figure of communion than that which is expressed by eating and drinking under the same hospitable roof. So the Lord repeatedly set forth the welcome of grace in the gospel; so He signifies our feeding on Himself by faith to life eternal; so He instituted His supper for our habitual remembrance of Himself till He come. It is presented here that His people might know the pleasure Jehovah took in their enjoyment of wisdom as He revealed it.

But there is more. “She hath sent forth her maidens; she crieth upon the summits of the high places of the city, Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither.” Wisdom had her messengers, who are fitly represented as maidens whom she dispatched on the errand of loving-kindness. But she spares no pains personally; for there she stands on the loftiest vantage ground, whence she may invite. And who are the objects of her appeal? Not the rich or great; not the wise or prudent; but “whoso is simple, let him turn in hither.” God is ever the giving God when truly known. He may test man for special purpose; but as God loves a cheerful giver, so is He the most liberal of all Himself; and so wisdom here makes known. “To him that is void of understanding she saith, Come, eat ye of my bread, and drink of the wine that I have mingled.” In the world that is, such generous unselfish love is unknown, and hence the need and value of reiterated welcome.

Still in the same world admonition is requisite, and the word follows, “Forsake simplicities [or, follies] and live; and go in the way of intelligence.” Wisdom does not admit of inconsistency. If received notwithstanding our folly, it is that we may become wise according to a wisdom above our own; and this is truly to “live” where all else is death, and, as living, to walk in the way of intelligence, looking up to Him Who is above, and not as the beasts that look down and perish.

How blessed for us that to those that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is God's power and God's wisdom! And how fitting that he who was of old endowed with wisdom beyond all others should be the one to reveal in the O.T. Him Who is that wisdom in His own eternal Person!

Gospel Words: the Lunatic Son Healed

Mark 9:17-27

What a contrast with the manifestation of the excellent glory on the mountain was the actual state of man even in the favored people here below! Jesus the Son of God was there; yet that the disciples knew not so by faith, as to avail themselves of His victory over the enemy!

“And one of the crowd answered and said, Teacher, I brought unto thee my son having a dumb spirit; and whensoever it taketh him, it teareth him, and he foameth and gnasheth his teeth, and is withering away. And I spoke to thy disciples that they should cast it out; and they were not able. And answering them He saith, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I bear with you? Bring him unto me. And they brought him unto Him; and when He saw him, straightway the spirit tore him, and falling on the ground he wallowed foaming. And He asked his father, How long time is it that this hath come to him? And he said, From a child. And often it cast him both into fire and into waters to destroy him; but if thou hast any power, help us in thy pitifulness toward us. But Jesus said to him, If thou hast power (is) to believe: all things are possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child cried out and said, I believe: help mine unbelief. And Jesus, seeing that a crowd was running up together, rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, Dumb and deaf spirit, I command thee, come out of him and enter no more into him. And having cried out and torn [him] much, it came out, and he became as if dead, so that the most said, He is dead. But Jesus laying hold of him by the hand raised him up; and he stood up” (vers. 17-27).

It was indeed a mighty deed: and so it fell to our Gospel above the others to give most details. There are differences in the evil spirits; and only to prayer and fasting did the kind in question yield. The lack in that respect was grievous in the Lord's eyes. The distressed parent did not despair, and turned from the failing disciples to Him Who never fails. How humbling when believers thus dishonor their Lord “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I bear with you?” This was the overwhelming fact. That the crowd, that the scribes, should have no faith, was bad enough after such ample witness of the gracious power of God in His Son, servant of all need in man, marked out from the first in doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil. Did He not give the twelve, and more than the twelve, authority over the unclean spirits? How was it then that these put shame on His name by failing to draw on Him?

“Bring him unto Me” says the Savior. Even so, He lets all see the depth of the child's need, the malicious power of the enemy. He manifests His interest in all that dismays the heart of man. He inquires, not as if He did not know the reins and the heart, but that the tried soul may learn the reality of His compassion. He teaches the feeble suppliant that the question of power turns on faith; for faith God will have, whatever may be His own grace. What possible good morally could power insure without believing? On the other hand, all things are possible to him that believes. So even the disciples had to learn; and the father, through his necessities believing the lesson at once, tends to the right way under the Lord's guidance. “I believe: help mine unbelief.” How wholesome for the believer to feel and own his unbelief!

How is it with you that read these words? Have you found out what a deadly thing is unbelief? Have you received the declaration from God that you till brought to Him live in the lusts of your flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and are by nature children of wrath, even as the rest of mankind? Judaism did not hinder this of old, whatever its great privileges; nor does Christendom now with its still greater advantages. And has Satan no power over such as are dead in trespasses and sins? Do not such walk according to the age of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience? If men but saw by faith, they would discern themselves thus in a plight more appalling than that of the lunatic child under the power of the dumb and deaf spirit. For in itself it was for the life that now is; whereas Eph. 2:1-3 describes for both time and eternity.

But the Lord, as He wrought in power then, is also the Deliverer according to the rich mercy of God and the great love wherewith He loves. God is now showing the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus, as He assures us He will in the ages to come. Let me, following the apostle, entreat that you receive not the grace of God in vain; for vain it undoubtedly is, if you have not faith in God through our Lord Jesus for your own soul as a guilty sinner, powerless in yourself before Him. But He hearkens to the cry of need and distress; yea He sends His word and works in manifold ways to make souls sensible of their ruin, that they may cry and He may answer in the glad tidings of His gospel. Now too it is a day of salvation; and the casting away of Israel is the world's reconciliation. For their fall is our wealth, their loss is our rich gain.

How awful then for men in Christendom to live only for present enjoyment, money, ease, honor, power, like the heathen who know not God! He Who for sins suffered unutterably, not from man only, but from God's judgment on the cross, is the Author of everlasting salvation to all those that obey Him; and faith in God's testimony to Him is the beginning of that blessing which shall never end. Oh, take heed, and put not off the call of grace, which you may not hear again! The spirits, now in prison and awaiting, not another deluge, but everlasting judgment in the resurrection of the unjust, once heard the Spirit of Christ in Noah's preaching while the ark was in preparation. Beware lest you, who have heard a far fuller expression of divine mercy in the gospel of Christ, frustrate the counsel of God against yourselves. For God is not mocked in the end, however men cheat themselves in thinking that He heeds not their words and ways now. To-day if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation, throughout the day of the temptation in the wilderness.

1 Peter 1:4-5

The scope of our Epistle excludes, as we have seen, the great truth unfolded in that to the Ephesian saints, that we are already blessed in the heavenlies (ἐν τοῖς ἐπουπανίοις) in Christ. This is connected indissolubly with the mystery of God's will, which gave Christ, set there above the highest creatures, as Head over all things to the church, the which and which alone is His body. Accordingly we await an administration of the fullness of the seasons or set times, when God will head or sum up all the universe in the Anointed Man, the things in the heavens and those on the earth, in Him in Whom also we were given heritage.

We have no such elevated relationship revealed here, nor is the boundless inheritance of all creation in this Epistle predicated of us or even of Christ. The inheritance here is simply “in the heavens” to contrast it the more distinctly with that which was Israel's portion in the land of Canaan. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ begot us again unto a living hope through resurrection of Jesus Christ from out of dead persons. It was a hope therefore superior to the inroads of death. If He died, it was that our sins should not bar us from bliss with Him, inasmuch as His own self bore them in His body on the tree; and He rose that we might enjoy His victory, as well as profit now and ever by His suffering once for sins.

But the apostle pursues the inspired aim yet more definitely into the future— “unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and unfading, reserved in [the] heavens for you, that are being guarded by God's power through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in a (or, the) last season” (1 Pet. 1:4-5).

Thus Christ risen and gone on high (instead of taking His seat on the holy hill of Zion, and the scepter of righteousness over Israel and the nations) has changed the outlook for the believer meanwhile. He too looks by faith on Christ where He is, and awaits the part which the gospel pledges to him in heaven. It is an inheritance which no corruption can destroy, which no defilement can sully, which resists all the withering of time. In itself, in its purity, and in its freshness, it will abide unchanging. It stands in virtue of Him Who not only created all originally but Who has reconciled, and will more widely still by His blood (Col. 1:20; Heb. 9:23).

The inheritance in view is in no way enjoyed now, but “reserved in the heavens for you.” Who can doubt these words were meant to raise the eyes of these believing Jews especially, and of the readers in general, above “glory dwelling in our land,” as in Psa. 85:9? Yet the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and to those that turn in that day from transgression in Jacob, when (as surely as Jehovah said the word) His Spirit and His words, according to His covenant, shall not depart from them from generation to generation, from henceforth and forever. But beyond just doubt, neither the closing promise of Isa. 59 nor the glowing vision of Isa. 60 and of all that follows to the end of the book speaks of an inheritance “reserved in the heavens” for those who now believe in the gospel. It is Israel and the glory predicted for the earth, though rising up in the last two chapters to “new heavens and a new earth.” The promise is there applied to Jerusalem; but it furnished the ground for Peter in his Second Epistle to look onward to its fulfillment in the largest sense, when the kingdom shall give place to the eternal state, and God shall be all in all. Before that, will be accomplished, inchoatively at least, Israel's full part in that which shall never know change or eclipse.

The language here recalls Col. 1:5, where the apostle Paul speaks of “the hope that is laid up for you in the heavens.” The saints there, as here, are regarded as on earth, instead of being seen in their present heavenly association with Christ. It is hope anticipating the glory on high, not as already seated together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus, as in Eph. 2:6. Only Peter was not given like Paul to tell the saints in the Epistle to the Colossians, that as they died with Christ and were raised with Him, and thus had done with ordinances for men as alive in the world, so they were to seek and mind the things above where He sits, not those on the earth. Indeed our apostle (as we see in 1 Pet. 2:24) rises no higher than our death to sins in a practical way, which is true and important, not at all to the doctrine in Rom. 6 of our death with Christ to sin, which is the root, and not merely the manifest effect or offshoot. Every shade of difference proves how grievously those err who think that scripture speaks loosely.

For such a thought really betrays the spiritual ignorance of such as presume to judge it; when in fact they, however great their erudition outside (it may be), have need to be taught the elements of the beginning of the oracles of God, and are become such as need milk rather than solid food.

The hope of such an inheritance reserved for them in the heavens was most cheering. But in thinking of themselves and the wilderness through which they pass, they needed and have another source of blessed comfort you, says he, “that are being guarded by (or, in) God's power.” What more suitable, what more precious and welcome, than such a divine assurance? The inheritance was kept or reserved for them in the heavens. This was just what was wanted, while they were on the earth waiting and learning self as well as God, and suffering for righteousness' sake or, still more blessed, for Christ's name. But, as proving their own weakness and men's hostility and Satan's active malice, they were constantly exposed to difficulties, trials, afflictions, and dangers. Hence their need to be meanwhile guarded all the way through. And so they are garrisoned by God's power. And if God be for us, who against? Is He not immeasurably more than all?

Still God has His means; and this the Apostle proceeds next to tell us. It is “through faith.” Nor can any means for a saint on earth compare with faith. For it beyond all others honors God and the word of His grace, needing dependence on the good Shepherd by the Holy Spirit, who is sent here and dwells in the Christian, to guide into all the truth, and thus glorify Him by receiving of His and announcing or reporting it to us. Thus is it “by God's power,” but “through faith” which gives Him His due place, and keeps us in our place of confidence in Him according to His word. For we walk through faith, not through sight (2 Cor. 5:7). It was not so that Israel marched through the wilderness, but guided visibly by the cloud or the pillar of fire. The Christian now, whether a Jew or a Gentile, has to walk through faith, of which the Lord Himself was the blessed pattern and perfection.

But the end is also added: “unto [or, for] salvation.” In our Epistle, as often in the Pauline Epistles, salvation does not stop short of the final result. See Rom. 5:9-10; 8:24; 1 Cor. 5:5; Heb. 1:14; 7:25; 9:28. Hence when our Apostle speaks of what is now given and enjoyed, he discriminates it as “salvation of souls” (1 Pet. 1:9). Otherwise he connects salvation with the full victory of Christ even for the body; which therefore must look on to the future day.

This is entirely confirmed by the context. Here for instance it is a salvation “ready to be revealed.” This is quite characteristic of our apostle. For the truth which runs through the First Epistle in one form, and the Second in another, is the righteous government of God as made known in Christ to the Christian. John is occupied with eternal life in the Son of God; the issue of which will be the Father's house where He is, and we are to be, at His coming to fetch us there (John 14:2-3). 1 John 3:2-3, adds that if it or He is manifested, we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is. The apostle Paul was given, more than any, to make known how the saints are to be changed and caught up to be with the Lord; so as to be brought with Him when that day begins (1 Thess. 3:13; 4:13-17).

Thus Peter points to the revelation of salvation in the day of Christ's appearing; because not till then will be the establishment of the kingdom in power and glory when the earth and the earthly people shall taste its blessed effects. Grace will be shown in the richest way by the Lord's coming to receive us to Himself that we may thus be with Him in the Father's house: all are caught up alike, as the Apostle Paul shows, into the same home of love. But there is no manifestation of righteous government in this; in the revelation to the world there will be in the highest degree. For in His appearing and kingdom each will be seen as having received his own reward according to his own labor. And the Lord, the righteous Judge, will render in that day the crown of righteousness, not to the faithful servant only who was already being “poured out,” but also to all who love His appearing. Then too will Satan be excluded not only from the heavenlies but from the earth. Then will come the world-kingdom of the Lord and His Christ, and not only recompence to the righteous, but destructive retribution to those that destroy the earth (Rev. 11:15).

Peter also lays great stress on the fact that Christ has so completely wrought redemption to God's glory that nothing calls for delay, save the long-suffering of God that is still bringing souls to repentance. Otherwise salvation is “ready” to be revealed “in a last season,” as Christ is “ready to judge living and dead” (1 Pet. 4:5). Both belong to that day of manifestation, when evil shall be put down, and judgment, instead of miscarrying as so often now, shall return to righteousness. Never more shall the throne of wickedness claim fellowship with Jehovah. “For He cometh; for He cometh to judge the earth.” Those who mind earthly things cannot love His appearing, which will establish the new divine order of righteous government wherein Jehovah alone shall be exalted.

Kingdom of God: 7

I could not doubt that this preaching of the kingdom of heaven by the twelve, interrupted by the definite and utter rejection of Christ on the part of Israel, will be resumed in days yet to come, and that it is to this resumed testimony that much of Matt. 10 has its most definite application. See particularly verses 18, 22, and 23, compared with Matt. 24:6, which evidently speaks of the final sins and sorrows of the house of Jacob. The rejection of Christ by Israel has not only made way for the existence of the kingdom of heaven in mystery, but also for a far deeper mystery, viz. the church and its union with its Head in glory. When this is completed by the rapture of the saints, in order to the marriage of the Lamb in heaven, God will resume His dealings with His earthly people Israel, and with the Gentile as such. Witnesses will be raised up to proclaim this gospel of the kingdom to both Jews and Gentiles, and scarcely will they have finished their testimony ere the Son of man shall come. (See Rev. 11; also 14:6, 7.) Any who wish to pursue this subject, I would refer to the papers already published in “The Prospect,” entitled “The Testimony of the End,” and “On the Gospel by Matthew” (particularly the remarks at the close), which throw much light on this deeply interesting inquiry.

In chapter 10:11 John the Baptist is declared by our Lord to be as great as any that had been born of women. The Savior affirms, nevertheless, that the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. John had but announced its approach. The least of those who actually enjoy the blessedness of that reign of heaven is in a position more blessed than John's. Our Lord then adds, “And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence; and the violent take it by force.” Instead of its being an ordered and established system, into which men had been introduced at their birth, and in which all that was required of them was to walk obediently to the laws and ordinances then existing, it was a kingdom preached as at hand, and the question was of entering into it. Such too was the total failure of man under the old system, and the rancorous opposition of his heart to the new kingdom and its accompaniments, that it was only at the risk, or even cost, of everything that any one could enter in. It was only by bursting asunder every tie, doing violence to all the dictates and interests of nature, that any one could enter in. It was grace undoubtedly, that supplied the energy and fortitude thus to hate father, mother, brother, sister, houses, lands, yea, and a man's own life, for Christ's sake; still, this was the way in which grace led a man to act. And those who did not thus value Christ and the kingdom He proclaimed above everything besides, so as to abide the loss of all things for His sake, proved themselves unworthy of it, and failed to enter it.

Matt. 12:28 has been noticed already.

Matt. 13, having been the subject of distinct consideration in a paper proceeding from the pen of one so much better able to expound it (see “The Prospect,” vol. 1, page 121), it requires the less notice here. It is, however, as any one may see, a chapter of the deepest importance in connection with our present subject. Israel's rejection of Messiah being fully manifested in chapter 7, where we find that His brightest miracles were attributed by the Pharisees to Satanic power, our Lord pronounces on them the solemn sentence which closes His statements respecting the unclean spirit gone out of a man and walking in dry places, who in the end returns with seven others worse than himself, so that the last state of such a man is worse than the first. “Even so,” says our Lord, “shall it be also unto this wicked generation.” He further disowns all His natural links of relationship with the Jewish people, all the ties of kindred which, as the seed of David according to the flesh, united Him to them. “Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?” He inquires. “And he stretched forth his hands toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother, and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” It is immediately after this that He speaks the seven parables, which we find in chapter 8; the whole affording to us full instruction in the mysteries of the kingdom of the heavens.

The first parable is not a representation of the kingdom, but of the work by which the kingdom is formed. It is the basis on which all the other parables in the chapter are founded. “Behold, the sower went forth to sow.” Israel had been the vineyard of Jehovah of hosts, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant. (See Isa. 5) But now that all His care in planting and cultivating it was repaid with nothing but wild grapes, He was about to execute the long-threatened judgment, and give it up to the destroyer. Hence it is not now the care of a vineyard, but an entirely new beginning. “The sower went forth to sow.” The details of the parable are well known. The seed falls on four descriptions of ground; in one only does it bring forth fruit. Striking picture of what the various results of the preaching of the word have been! How futile the hope, that because the gospel testimony was to be everywhere proclaimed, universal blessing would be the result! It is true that the Sower went forth to sow. This was not to be confined within the limits, nor to be occupied with the culture, of the Jewish vineyard. Gentiles as well as Jews were to hear the word of the kingdom. Yea, it was to be preached every where. But with what varying results And how small, when compared with the aggregate, the result in blessing! May we hearken to the admonition: “Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.”

The disciples inquire of our Lord His reason for speaking to the multitudes in parables. His answer is most important. “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.” He thus declares the period to have arrived which had been long foretold by the prophet Isaiah. “Sanctify Jehovah of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling, and for a rock of offense, to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many among them shall stumble, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken. Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples. And I will wait upon Jehovah that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him” (Isa. 8:13-17).

Surely, Jehovah of hosts was now beginning, in the most definite sense, to hide His face from the house of Jacob, when to the disciples it was given to know the mysteries of the kingdom, which were hidden from the multitude. “Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples.” Our Lord quotes another prophecy of Isaiah, which was now receiving its accomplishment. “And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive. For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.” These words, quoted from Isa. 6:9, 10, are connected there with what follows. The prophet says, “Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, and Jehovah have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.” The Savior's quotation from this passage is significant; it decides that this predicted period of Israel's desolation is the period during which the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven have their existence and development.

To the disciples our blessed Lord explains the parable of the sower, and speaks another—that of the wheat and tares. This He gives as a representation of the kingdom of heaven. “The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field.” I need not quote the parable at length. The Savior explains it also (after speaking two others in the presence of the people) to His disciples. The field, He says, is the world. He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man. The good seed are the children of the kingdom. The tares are the children of the wicked one. The enemy that sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age. The reapers are the angels.

Let us consider these things for a moment. We have seen in the first parable that though the sowing is universal, the fruit—the result in blessing—is partial and limited. Here, in this second parable, Satan himself turns sower. The field is indeed the world; but the scene of Satan's operations is not here so much the world at large where the seed has been sown, but part of it where the seed has got root and is growing up. It is the introduction, by Satan, of positive evil, where the Son of man had wrought blessing. The good seed here is not the word, It is explained to be “the children of the kingdom.” The tares also are not false doctrines (though it may be by these that Satan works), but evil persons. “The tares are the children of the wicked one.” In a word, what we have here is the corruption of Christianity. And we are assured most definitely that when this effect of Satan's enmity and man's supineness (“while men slept the enemy sowed tares”) has once been accomplished, it will not be set aside till the harvest at the end of the age. Then the tares are to be gathered together first in bundles to be burnt, and the wheat gathered into the barn.

Then there is another point. When the Lord speaks of the tares and the wheat as thus growing together, as they are doing at present, we must view this as representing the condition of things, as a whole, between His first and last coming, without taking into account the fact that, during that time, generation after generation, both of the righteous and wicked, die off—that there is constant succession—incessant fluctuation, altogether different from that from whence the image is borrowed; seeing that, in the natural world, the very same seed that is sown in one month springs up and is reaped in another. But, on the other hand, when we actually come to the time of harvest, then we must lose sight of the past generations, rising and dying one after another, in constant succession, and look alone at the generation alive at that time.

(continued from p. 42)(To be continued, D.V.)

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Hosea to Micah

Does the group of the so-called Minor Prophets differ from all the other component parts of Holy Scripture? Or is each of them characterized by its own special aim, and a peculiar contribution to the sum of divine revelation? Let us examine them, however briefly, one by one, though in time they were gathered for convenience into a single volume by the Jews.

The drift of Hosea, though in style terse and abrupt to obscurity, is sufficiently clear in the main to any attentive believer. He announces in chap. 1 the fall of Jehu's house and of Israel's kingdom, under the symbolic children Jezreel and Loruhamah. A still more awful doom was intimated by Lo-Ammi, when the ruin of Judah should leave Jehovah without a recognizable people. Yet the chapter does not conclude without the assurance, (1) that in the place where Lo-Ammi was said, sons of the living God should be said (which Rom. 9 applies to the call of the Gentile and to privileges higher than Jewish); (2) that the two houses of the divided people shall be gathered together with one head (Messiah without doubt in a day yet to come). Is not this so? 1 Peter 2 applies the end of chap. 2 to the Christian Jews even now. It is plain however that the end of both chapters contemplates as a whole what is not yet in terms fulfilled. Chap. 3 fills up the gap with a graphic sketch of the long interval during which the people abide without privilege, civil or religious, and yet without idolatry, before their blessed restoration at the end of the days. Such is the first section.

The second part is a series of expostulations, entreaties, menaces, and lamentations over the beloved but guilty people, distinguishing the sons of Israel from Judah's in danger; and testifying not only the loss of priestly place as a whole (4:6), but priests, people, princes, all objects of divine displeasure and judgment (chap. 5). Chap. 6 breaks out into a touching appeal, that they might repent; as chap. 7 has to pronounce woe, because even when they howled, they cried not to Jehovah in heart. Chap. 8 therefore is the trumpet blast of coming destruction on Israel and Judah.

Yet in chap. 9 what tender pleading over Ephraim, about to become a wanderer, wherein the prophet was a snare It was no new evil, but since Gibeah: what could be but cutting off Israel's king and the Assyrian their king (chap. 11)? What a contrast with Jacob, as chap. 7 draws out! Nevertheless He declares that He will ransom them from the power of Sheol, and redeem them from death.

Accordingly the last chapter (14) provides words of confession, and of return to Jehovah from iniquities and creature help, with His own blessed and blessing promises, which shall be made good as surely as He spoke them through the prophet.

Joel remarkably differs from the general sweep of Hosea; for he concentrates attention, from a then famine (chap. 1) on the northern army to perish in spite of its menaces between the eastern and the western seas. After that will come not only fullness of outward blessing but the divine Spirit poured out upon all flesh, and in Jerusalem shall be, no ruin nor danger more, but deliverance in every sense (chap. 2). For in those days Jehovah will enter into judgment with all the nations in the valley of Jehoshaphat on account of Israel. The apostle Peter was beyond controversy justified in vindicating the effusion of the Spirit at Pentecost as of this character, and in no wise creaturely excitement (Acts 2:16). But he is far from intimating that it was the fulfillment of the prophecy; which did not contemplate the formation of the church, or the going forth of the gospel to all the creation, but the earthly glories of the Messianic kingdom for Judah and Jerusalem, as shall surely be in due season. So the apostle Paul applies it in Rom. 10, to the salvation of Jew or Gentile now, stopping short of citing the promised deliverance in mount Zion and in Jerusalem.

Who can fail to discriminate the work assigned to the herdman or sheep-master Amos of Tekoa? No competent person can deny the beauty and force of his style or the fresh originality with which he pronounces Jehovah's punishment on the nations which surround His people, and the surprising fact that Judah and Israel fall under it also (chaps. 1:2). Indeed chap. 3 lets them together learn that, because they were known as none else, therefore He should visit them for their iniquities. But He would do nothing without revealing it to His servants the prophets. Do professing Christians believe either of those words of His? “Hear this word” begins 3, 4 & 5, all of them warnings to His guilty people, whose false worship was the mother sin of all other sins. Chap. 6 is a woe on their self-security and luxury, like Gentiles who know not God. Now would the Lord Jehovah, who repented of destroying judgments at the prophet's intercession, take the measuring-line in hand and desolate the people and king (chap. 7), as in chap. 8 the end is shown coming on Israel, and the land darkened in the clear day. Chap. 9 reveals the Lord standing (not on a wall) but on the altar for judgment still more overwhelming. Yet, while He declares that He will shake the house of Israel to and fro among all the nations, He says not the least grain shall fall. Nay more, He will raise up David's fallen tabernacle, and build it as in days of old to the downfall of their spiteful foes; He will pour on them earthly blessing without stint; and when He plants them in those days on their land, they shall no more be plucked up. These glorious realities await repentant Israel.

Obadiah calls for few words, not only because it is so short, but because its distinctive aim is most unmistakable. Edom is the object before him, and the judgment which the Lord Jehovah would inflict on its jealous and rancorous hatred of His chosen people. Their pride had deceived them; their fastnesses should not screen them: Jehovah will bring them down. Their boasted wisdom is in vain, as well as their might. Their malice was aggravated, as against “thy brother Jacob,” and “in the day of his disaster.” But in the day of Jehovah upon all the nations shall be deliverance on mount Zion, and it shall be holy; and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions. Can anything be plainer than the specialty of our prophet? or that he looks onward to the triumphs of the last days, when saviors shall come upon mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau, but the kingdom shall be Jehovah's in a form and fullness never yet known on the earth?

He who does not see Jonah's distinctive place must have singularly little teaching. Indeed it is himself or what befell him that is the prophetical sign, though the prophetic message, short as it is, must strike us as addressed to the Gentiles in Nineveh. The history is a great and instructive type throughout; and this is no mere idea but truth taught by our Lord.

Chap. 1 tells us of Jonah charged to cry against the great city because of its wickedness. Strange to say, he a true prophet flees west when bidden to go east. But Jehovah sent a mighty tempest on the ship sailing to Tarshish; and Jonah slept below, while the mariners cried each to his god, and vainly struggled on. At length they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah, who, as they knew, fled from Jehovah's presence, and he frankly bade them cast him overboard as their only safety. This reluctantly and with prayer to Jehovah they did; and the sea ceased from raging to their deeper fear, which issued in a sacrifice to Him and vows. But Jehovah prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, who was in its belly three days and nights, the sign of Christ (Matt. 12).

There he prayed as in chap. 2 owning salvation to be of Jehovah, who commanded the fish to vomit out Jonah on the dry land. And the word of Jehovah came to him the second time, bidding him to go and preach to Nineveh what He should say. Jonah both despised the Gentiles, and feared that Jehovah might repent Him of judgment if they sought His mercy; and where then would be the glory of a prophet of Israel, when his Yea became Nay? The figure of death and resurrection opens the door of grace to the lost. If Christ for the time be lost to the Jew who rejected Him, grace works to save Gentiles. Jonah does his errand now (chap. 3); and they repent at his preaching from the king downward, the very beasts covered with sackcloth being denied food and drink that they might cry out; and God repented of what He threatened.

This even now Jonah revealed (chap. 4) and wished to die rather than his word should fail and Nineveh abide. But here was the truth so needed by Israel as well as Jonah. Hence the gourd, that sprang up under the hand of Jehovah Elohim to shelter the narrow-hearted and self-occupied prophet, withered under the worm He prepared to this end, so that Jonah fainted under the heat, and again wished to die. Then said Jehovah, Thou hast pity on the gourd... and I, should not I have pity on Nineveh, the great city, wherein are more than 120,000 persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?” Yes, He is the God of all grace, the God not of Jews only but of Gentiles also, whose mercies as the faithful Creator are over all His works. What Jew, what Rabbi, had ever allowed such a book within the sacred canon, if God had not written it for the purpose?

Next comes a still more brilliant seer: the word of Jehovah that came to Micah the Morasthite, a contemporary of Isaiah, concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. It is composed of three chief divisions, ushered in by a call to listen, “Hear, ye peoples, all of you; hearken, O earth, and all that is therein” (1:2); “And I said, Hear, I pray you, ye heads of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel” (3:1); and “Hear ye now what Jehovah saith,” &c. (6:1). Can the least discerning of believers fail to apprehend its distinctive character?

It opens with the imminent fall of the northern kingdom because of its transgression, but goes on to the punishment of Judah also and Jerusalem. “Of late my people is risen up as an enemy.” “Arise ye, and depart; for this is not the rest, because of defilement that destroyeth, even a grievous destruction” (chap. 2:8, 10). The people and their prophets were alike wicked and rebellious. As chap. 1 has a predictive sketch of the Assyrian foe coming against Jerusalem, so does the end of chap. 2 present Him Who will effectuate Jehovah's purpose of deliverance and blessing for the remnant of Israel at the end.

In the next section he appeals to the chiefs, warning them against the prophets that cause Jehovah's people to err. If they cried, Peace, without a vision or light from God, Micah could say that he was filled with power by the Spirit of Jehovah to declare unto Jacob his transgression and unto Israel his sin. Heads, priests, prophets were only building up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with unrighteousness, while veiling iniquity under the privilege of His name. Zion and Jerusalem should come to utter desolation (chap. 3:9, 12). But this is followed in chap. 4 by the glowing picture with which Isaiah begins his chap. 2. Only Micah, instead of going on to the overwhelming judgment of the day of Jehovah as there, predicts the going to Babylon as Isaiah does in his chap. 39. Thence he turns to the closing scenes where many nations gather against Zion, which is told to arise and thresh many peoples: judgment awaiting its sure fulfillment, when the first or former dominion shall come to her.

This gives occasion for announcing a still deeper reason for putting off blessing and the giving up His people for a season. Awful to think and say, they should smite the Judge of Israel with a rod on the cheek (chap. 5:1)! And a parenthesis reveals Him born at Bethlehem, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting. His rejection was their own rejection, till God's counsel comes to birth; when the residue of His brethren, instead of merging in the church of God as now, shall return unto the children of Israel, and the kingdom be displayed in power and glory before all the world. And the prospect is beautifully described to the end of this part.

The third section is a most affecting call to hear Jehovah's controversy with His people, in spite of His goodness to them from the beginning and through the wilderness into Canaan. It is not offerings but righteousness He values. In the face of iniquity, deceit, and violence, of family bonds turned to enmity all the more evil and destructive, the prophet waits on Jehovah with confidence of deliverance and vindication. And he looks through the desolation that must intervene because of Israel's sins to the restitution of all things in the latter day, when the nations shall be ashamed of all their might, and lick the dust. “Who is a God like Thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He retaineth not His anger forever, because He delighteth in mercy. He will turn again and have mercy upon us; He will tread under foot our iniquities. And Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the seas. Thou wilt perform truth to Jacob, loving kindness to Abraham, which Thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old” (chap. 7:18-20). In denying God's faithfulness to Israel and monopolizing the earthly promises, Babylon has shown herself, as in all else, faithless to the true place of His church, in present and future glory with Christ.

Work for the Lord

The simple inquiry, recorded as the first utterance of Paul to our Lord (“Lord, what wilt thou have me do?”) is the duty and expression of every one distinctly awakened to the claim Christ has on him. This inquiry cannot be too earnestly instituted, and the reply to it rigidly attended to. The inquiry is the offspring of a soul sensible that the Lord has entire and full claim on me, without the knowledge which authorizes it. The soul feels “I am taken out of the world, and I am given to Christ, and hence I look to Him for my place and future occupation in it.” If we are given to Christ “out of the world,” it is evident that it is He alone who has the right to determine our way and course in the world.

I could not say, if I believe that I am given to Him “out of the world,” that I have any right to re-occupy any place or engagement which I had previously held in the world. True, He does not require or permit me to infringe on any legal lord under whom I was held before I was given to Him. But, excepting where the rights of others would be compromised, I am Christ's bondman. Vested legal rights are not to be compromised, because of my being given to Christ. But I am Christ's bondman; and necessarily if I am, both from duty and inclination, my inquiry ought to be, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?”

The more I own and realize the relationship between us which now exists through grace, the more simply and continuously will this be my whole-hearted cry to Him. Now if it is, I will of course accede and attend to whatever He may intimate to me, and this only. That is, the heart true and devoted to Him, making this request, will wait on Him for guidance and counsel. It would find no real satisfaction in being anywhere or doing anything which was not according to His mind. Our place and our occupation here would be only determined by the pleasure of Him whose we are and whom we serve. Any departure from the tie or rule of this relationship would sensibly interfere with the mutual satisfaction therein known. There would be a break in upon, and a disturbance of, the true order of life, and the blessings connected with it.

Nothing so simple and nothing so important in our walk down here! I belong to Christ, and I find it His pleasure and my happiness to do nothing but as He desires and instructs me. I live where He likes, and I do what He likes. If we did this, there would be no mistakes one side or the other. But we do make mistakes on both sides: on one side at one time, and on another side at another time. At one we plan out work for ourselves; and at another we do none at all.

Now the first is the most difficult to deal with, simply because the counterfeit deceives one; and hence, while it is comparatively easy to convict the Martha that she is unwisely occupied, the work seems so right and necessary, that it appears almost impossible that there could be any plan in it. Nothing so deceives and leads astray as the conscience working at a distance from Christ. For instance, if I feel in my conscience that I ought to be Christ's servant (true enough, I am His bondman); but if I am not near Him, if I am not in His confidence, and I begin to do something to satisfy my conscience, there is no doubt I am doing it legally, and not as simply suits Him. It is to make myself easy and satisfied. When this is the case, I do not consult what He would like me, to do, but I do what I think best to be done. It is not His pleasure guides me; it is my own mind, as to what is suitable and proper. It may be quite necessary, as Martha's service; but Martha was evidently thinking of the services which were incumbent on her to render, and not governed by the pleasure of Christ.

Here is where we fail, undertaking to serve where it is in a degree creditable to ourselves, or we get disappointed (if we are true-hearted) because we have not the acknowledgment of His pleasure. How can He acknowledge what we have undertaken and done to satisfy our own conscience, and to please ourselves therein? It is evident that when I am occupied with services (however useful and necessary, which I have undertaken of myself, feeling that they devolved upon me), that I must lose the sense of His presence. Sitting at His feet, Mary-like, is lost and neglected. There is no growth of soul up into Christ. Self is in the service from beginning to end. It is most blessed to work for Christ, it is fruit-bearing; but if my work engrosses me more than Christ, there is damage to me, and I am not working for Him. “Without Me ye can do nothing.” If I am really working for Christ, and growing up into Him, sitting at His feet is the natural posture of my soul. Whenever you find any one serving without sitting at His feet, you may be assured they are Martha-like. When any are sitting at His feet, hearing His word, they will not be behind in true and pleasing service.

If you begin with serving (as many do now-a-days), you will never sit at His feet; whereas if you begin with sitting there, you will soon serve wisely, well, and acceptably. The serving quiets the conscience, and the sitting is overlooked and neglected. The enemy gains an advantage; for it is at the sitting the conscience is more enlightened, and the pleasure and mind of the Master are better known. Hence there is damage done, and loss is sustained by the soul, when service pre-occupies one to the exclusion of sitting at His feet, or where service is most prominent.

I never met with any one making service prominent who knew what it was to sit at His feet. But, thank God, I know indefatigable workers who enjoy sitting at His feet above any service. And it is clear that they who sit most at His feet must be competent to serve, and most in His confidence, which after all is the clue to all efficient service. J.N.D.

Courtesy of BibleTruthPublishers.com. Most likely this text has not been proofread. Any suggestions for spelling or punctuation corrections would be warmly received. Please email them to: BTPmail@bibletruthpublishers.com.

Fallen Angels: Review

The title of this strange book is given below, enough to indicate its folly, though written by an educated man without faith or the fear of God. Think of any one seriously, and in his very preface, citing Byron, “What are we, and whence come we? What shall be our ultimate existence? What is our present?—are questions answerless, and yet incessant.” Like the volume generally, it is the issue of Egyptian darkness. The Bible answers every one of these questions with unerring certainty, at least for all who believe in Christ, Whom the anonymous author levels to our plane, though owning Him perfect, and asks, “why should we not also have lived before! like our Type”? and why should we not ascend to heaven? Citing John 3:13, he has no scruple in contradicting scripture when he asks, Is not this saying true with regard to Enoch and Elijah? A believing child ought to know that they were caught up. But Christ alone “went up” in His indefeasible title, He only as He says Himself. But what is this to unbelief?

So again he speculates that man sinned before he was born, “and that that alone can account for the statement that we were born in sin!” Was there ever greater infatuation Adam and Eve were not born at all, still less born in sin; but having sinned before being parents, they transmitted the taint to the race. This is a fact that explains the truth to all believers. God created an innocent pair, who did sin and left the sad heirloom to their children. Can anything be simpler or more satisfactory? Not men as such, but believers are called “pilgrims” in scripture. The faithless are of the world, and at home on the earth.

What matters that which Pythagoras and others fancied? or the fathers dazzled by them? What of Buddha or Brahma? John Milton was an Arian, and much injured by heathen ideas. What worth or weight is due to mere poets on such a theme? And how unworthy to cite J. S. Mill's blasphemy, asking if his conclusion is unnatural?

In chap. 9 we come to the point: “Why should it be regarded as preposterous that we should be descended from angels—now children, as it were, of our former selves?” Does not the author know that the only scripture, which is believed by many grave and intelligent Christians to reveal such an abnormal departure from the divine landmarks, is Gen. 6 confirmed by the allusions of 2 Peter 2 and Jude? and that this frightful anomaly, root and fruit, disappeared in the Deluge? But it is truly preposterous to imagine that our souls have any such source. Gen. 2 attributes the soul of Adam, and consequently of the human race, to the direct inbreathing of Jehovah Elohim. Of man only is this written; and thereon depends the immortality of his soul. See in Prov. 8 the specialty of man's place as the delight of Wisdom, Himself Jehovah's delight for all eternity. And what a comment on it is the Incarnate Word, the Life Eternal, and the Light of men! This accounts for the divine interest in man and the earth to God's glory.

It is not true that “the one absolute definition of the Almighty, self-existent, supreme Being is, that he is Love.” The apostle John, who beyond all treats of this, is careful in 1 John 1 to report to us that He is Light. It is only in chap. 4 of the same Epistle that he tells us He is Love. Light is the essential purity of His nature, which makes everything and one manifest; Love is rather the energy of His nature, which goes out in active goodness. To leave out Light is to conceive a false god who can let off sin and sinners easily, not the True Self-existent One, Who is Love also. Christ is His image in both respects, as He was and is very God, no less than the Father and the Holy Spirit.

False utterly is it that the Lord Jesus is “the Brother of the fallen angels “: surely a shameless speaking for God, without warrant of scripture, nay against it. For it is expressly shown in Heb. that on the one hand, since the children were partakers of blood and flesh, He also Himself in like manner took part in the same, and that on the other, He does not take up angels but takes up the seed of Abraham (or the children spoken of, those who believe). Hence He became man to die for men; He did not become an angel to die for angels. The grace of God appeared accordingly that brings salvation to all men, though unavailing if they believe not; but not a word of God speaks of salvation for angels. The holy angels do not need it; the fallen ones await their everlasting doom. They were not tempted like man and have no Savior, no Mediator, like Christ Jesus a Man.

It is mere recklessness to affirm that angels and men are of the same family, or to infer it from angels being called men, as appearing in human guise. Can anything be more a fallacy than that the two appellations are used indifferently? How absurd to reason, from Satan's being called “the god of this age,” that we must be “of his kind”! But enough: has not a book so baseless and wild received sufficient notice? The anonymous writer is not one of the fallen angels. The door of repentance is still open for him (as we may thank God), not for them.

Intermediate State

Dr. Sanderson imputes untruth to a fixed state at death, and hence to two classes only. He retrogrades like not a few to pre-reformation error, now rampant among Ritualists. The error is deeper still; for it is to reject the Lord's teaching e.g. in Luke 16:19-26. It is therefore infidel as to the full light of Christianity. The resurrection and the judgment-seat of Christ have their own importance; but the blessedness of the faithful and the wretched and suffering state of the wicked at death are none the less true, because more awaits the coming of the Lord Jesus. It is a crass mistake that paradise is not in heaven, and that the spirits of the Lord and of the converted robber did not go there when disembodied. Ascension means the Lord going up in body, as well as in spirit and soul. It is certain from Rev. 2:7 that paradise is also the scene of future glory after resurrection. The giving of crowns is only in “that day.” Every saint departs to be with Christ. Even Dr. S. does not dare to dispute where He is and sits on His Father's throne. His book, of which it is the main object to treat this truth as untruth, convicts himself of deplorable ignorance under the garb of uncommon pretension and real contempt for the revealed truth of the gospel. Such men know neither the total ruin of those who refuse to receive Christ, nor the present deliverance of all who believe on Him. Like the Romanists, they prefer the dimness, uncertainty, and doubts, characterizing a quasi-intermediate state between faith and unbelief. Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.

BY W. KELLY The Preaching to the Spirits in Prison, cloth, 1/6. THE BOOK OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH, 8vo. cloth, 7/6. AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.

THE OFFERINGS OF LEVITICUS, 12mo. cloth, 1j6.

THE MYSTERY AND THE COVENANTS, 3d. each.

PROVIDENCE AND FAITH, 5d. a dozen.

BRIEF HINTS ON THE PSALMS, lid. each.

HINTS ON ISAIAH, 5d. a dozen. DANIEL THE PROPHET, 2d. PROPITIATION, and STRANGE DOCTRINE, each 6d. per dozen LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Isaac: 18. Abraham Dead and Isaac Blessed

Gen. 25:7-11

We have seen the death of Sarah followed by the call of the bride. It was no longer to be “our mother,” free as she was, but the type of the church, the Lamb's wife. The dead and risen Heir of all things has a spouse called out from the world and brought into that which figures the heavenlies. The mystery or secret is great, says the apostle, “but I speak as to Christ, and as to the church,” its two parts. Though the grace and the glory were intrinsically His only, yet are we called all the more to rejoice; for we delight that the worth is His alone, and this gives all our security to God's glory.

Now we have another weighty and honored link of the past removed.

“And these [are the] days of the years of Abraham's life which he lived, a hundred years and seventy years and five years. And Abraham expired and died in a good old age, an old man and full, and was gathered to his people. And Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in Ephron's field, son of Zohar the Hittite, which [is] before Mamre, the field which Abraham bought of the sons of Heth: there was buried Abraham, and Sarah his wife. And it came to pass after Abraham's death that God blessed Isaac his son; and Isaac dwelt at Beerlahai-roi” (vers. 7-11).

Here it is the depositary of promise who departs this life. For many years what had there been of divine moment to record? He was given, comparatively long before, a great place in sending his servant, honored and trusted in the highest degree, to call and conduct the God-appointed bride for his son. And the son was not only in a new standing since the day of Moriah but exclusively associated with the heavenly land. Promise now, like covenant before, fades away before the brighter light of the mystery and its special relationship. The progenitors of many nations who had Abraham as their father as to the flesh were born, owned, given suitable gifts, and while he lived sent away, that Isaac might abide the undisputed heir of all that he had. Now in a good old age Abraham too must expire and die. The new things were to receive their honor without a rival.

Little is said of Abraham's funeral, save to mark the link with Sarah's grave, of which the Holy Spirit made so much in chap. 23. It had its just place for loving remembrance. Faith looks onward to the true hope for “the elders” also. It is the resurrection from out of the dead, which will be the portion of all the righteous departed. Groundless is the unbelief which imagined them in gloom, insensibility, or any other lack, unworthy of His grace Who watched in love over their feeble pilgrimage for His name here below. The love of Him Who in due time became flesh and died for their sins and ascended on high in resurrection life was no transient thing but eternal. Still their resurrection at His coming, so as to be not only with Him but like Him where He is, will be a blessed accession for them as well as for Him to God's praise; and for this they wait in assured hope and full of glory.

As things were, there could be no spiritual sympathy between Isaac and the others who boasted to be of Abraham's seed. But it is here told us that “Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him in the cave of Machpelah,” in the field Abraham had purchased of Ephron, where Sarah lay already. The son of the bondmaid was in no way forbidden thus to honor his parent. “Cast out” he must be and was in presence of the child of promise; yet fleshly relationship has its place, and the son of the free in no way disputes it, but is gracious. The feelings of the two before God may have been as widely different as spirit and flesh, by which they were respectively characterized; but there at least around the grave they were together in the sorrow of bereavement, and in loving memory of him who was gathered to his people, “the friend of God.”

The conclusion of the statement here vouchsafed is that after this God blessed Isaac, the son of the deceased patriarch; and that he dwelt at Beer-lahai-roi, the well of the living one that seeth me. Thus Isaac left alone (of the fellow-heirs before him of the same promise) has this marked distinction—God blessing him: a precious reality in a world of curse through sin; and this not in the general form which was extended to those that sprang from Abraham, but as the heir. But there is the remarkable fact noted that he dwelt at the spot first designated by a fountain of water in the wilderness, where Hagar was found of Jehovah's angel, who told her of Ishmael's birth and singular destiny. Indeed He is a God that sees, as surely as He lives. But how different the path which awaited Ishmael and Isaac Here Jehovah heard Hagar's affliction; here God blessed Isaac, already blessed on a still higher plane and with better blessings in hope.

Priesthood: 11. Priest to Be Above Excitement

The Priest to Be Above Excitement. Lev. 10:8-11

We have seen how the priest is called to respect the presence of God supremely, even if death touch ever so closely: Jehovah will be hallowed in those that come near Him. None can enjoy this privilege without the obligation it involves. Not only is sense of bereavement allowed, but bewailing is enjoined on all others even where it was the evident stroke of Gad. For He abides in His own majesty above sin and its effects; and those chosen to minister in the sanctuary must yield witness to that nearness by their bearing according to His will.

They were no less warned against all natural excitement in the performance of their proper functions. Permissible at other times, it is strictly precluded from the sanctuary. The injunction is remarkable as the first to Aaron after his consecration.

“And Jehovah spoke to Aaron, saying, Thou shalt not drink wine nor strong drink, thou nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tent of meeting, lest ye die: an everlasting statute throughout your generations, and that ye may put difference between the holy and the unholy, and between the unclean and the clean, and that ye may teach the sons of Israel all the statutes which Jehovah hath spoken to them by the hand of Moses” (vers. 8-11).

Literal as the prohibition was to Aaron and his house, it has of course a large and momentous meaning figuratively to the Christian. “Wine and strong drink” cover the wide circle of all incentives to fleshly exhilaration. The most refined are as much proscribed as the gross, and manifold are its kinds which lie between. The first man in his evil or its consequences, its sorrows or its joys, has no right to intrude into the sanctuary.

There is One, and but One, Who suits God's presence; but He is the Second man. It is the offering of Himself for us which fits us for it. His sacrifice is our sole, our sufficient, and our perfect title to draw near; and this is most pleasing to the God Who gave and sent Him expressly for this end, though for others worthy of both. Therefore God would have us filled with His praise when we thus approach. Have we not boldness to enter into the holies in virtue of the blood of Jesus, a new and living way which He dedicated for us through the veil, that is to say, His flesh? Nor this only; for we have Himself there, a great priest over the house of God. We have thus the same object of delight as our God and Father. What communion! The Holy Spirit too, Who beareth witness with our spirit that we are His children, is our power of worship; as it is written, we worship by God's Spirit, and boast in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in flesh (Phil. 3:3). Does He not abide in and with us forever for this as for all else? It is heavenly joy.

But for this very reason fleshly pleasure, human gratification, earthly satisfaction, natural joy, all that answers spiritually to the effect of wine or strong drink on those who thus indulge, is abhorrent to God's presence. There is, there ought to be, joy in the Holy Spirit. And so the Ephesian saints were exhorted to be filled with the Spirit, speaking to themselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with their heart to the Lord, giving thanks at all times for all things to the God and Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. God cannot but be jealous that the Holy Spirit be honored here as Christ is on high; and the Spirit is here to glorify Christ. Yet praise should be holy.

But it is easy to be excited by a multitude keeping holiday, by a grand building with religious associations, by music pathetic or overpowering, to say nothing of the display of wealth, rank, or fame. Even if one begin in the Spirit, how readily one may slight the divine thanksgiving and praise by admiration of the singing or even the music Fine appeals may be a feast to the taste, and eloquence may fire the spirit; but these excitements, what are they but veritable drafts of wine and strong drink? They are alien to the sanctuary and forbidden.

Nor is this only aimed at, but its consequence. The priests were charged to “put difference between the holy and the unholy, and between the unclean and the clean.” No doubt here was a question of meats and drinks, of ordinances of flesh, as Heb. 9, 10 calls them in (accordance with Israel's standing as an outwardly holy people). Equally sure is it that we as Christians are sanctified by the Spirit to obedience and sprinkling of Christ's blood, which imports a far deeper and higher holiness typified thereby. Excitement would unfit for spiritual discrimination. Practical life would thus be ruined as well as worship. It was not so that the apostle sought the Corinthians, as he tells us in 1 Cor. 2. Nor did he gratify Athenian vanity by his appeal in Acts 17 but spoke to conscience.

So here we see the type pursued in this abstinence, “that ye may teach the sons of Israel all the statutes which Jehovah hath spoken to them by the hand of Moses.” Still more is spiritual abstraction needed for the vast and profound range of Christian truth.

Proverbs 9:7-12

THE chapter began with wisdom, or the wise woman; the Holy Spirit turns aside to point out how disappointing it is to instruct the scorner—a very aggravated form of evil, though increasingly common as Christendom hastens in its unbelief and moral ruin to judgment.

“He that correcteth a scorner getteth to himself shame; and he that reproveth a wicked [man], a blot to himself. Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee; reprove a wise [man], and he will love thee. Impart to a wise [man], and he will become yet wiser; teach a righteous [man], and he will increase learning. The fear of Jehovah [is] the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy [is] understanding. For by me thy days shall be multiplied, and years of life shall be added to thee. If thou art wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself; and [if] thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear [it]” (vers. 7-12).

Every scripture, we know, is not more surely God-inspired than profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for discipline that is in righteousness; but we need wisdom to apply it. Faith needs not only the word but the God Who gave it to direct the heart and mouth livingly; and for this we have by grace the Holy Spirit's guidance. So the apostle commended those who watched over souls to God, as well as to the word of His grace. While the simple and unintelligent are invited, the foolish must be shunned and the way of understanding followed. Then freely we are warned against meddling with the scorner. To correct such is vain: they willingly put on you shame. Let them alone, said the Lord to the disciples. You may only gain a blot in reproving a wicked person. They have a deeper need—to be born again. Where no life is, hatred is the result. There is no wisdom in reproving a scorner, more than in giving that which is holy to the dogs or in casting your pearls before the swine. The upshot may be that they will trample the misdirected word under their feet, and turn and rend you.

Now the Christian has the gospel to urge on the heedless; but this is the glad tidings of what God has done in Christ for him, wicked as he may be, to bring him to Himself. Thus all is harmonious. Correction and reproof are for those who have an ear to hear, that they walk not inconsistently with their profession. Hence we are told here to “reprove a wise man, and he will love thee.” A wise man may not always pursue the path of wisdom; he may need reproof. A fool is one who never hears, though always ready to find fault. A wise man listens and weighs; when he recognizes what is of God, he will love you.

Another thing which distinguishes wisdom is the appreciation of what is good and helpful. Egoism is necessarily unwise and evil, because man is sinful, and God is unknown and untrusted. It is self-satisfied and refuses to learn, having no distrust of its own dark, selfish, and sinful state. On the other hand, “impart to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase learning.” It is not the great that are wise, nor does age of itself understand judgment. Every good giving, and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with Whom can be no variation nor shadow of turning. Dependence on God is our only right attitude habitually, and hearing from one another what approves itself to our conscience as His truth; for we are members of one another, and He despiseth not any, let him be ever so lowly. But He hateth the proud and will punish the scorner.

The secret of it all is plain. “The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom; and the knowledge of the Holy is understanding.” Creature intelligence is of no value for the soul, for eternity, for relationship with God. It begins, and must begin with fearing Him, the True and the Good, the Righteous and the Holy. There is repentance no less than faith, and therefore trembling at His word, the direct reverse of judging it and trusting in self, justifying ourselves instead of God. But growth belongs to life in our present condition; and growth is by the right knowledge of God, Who has communicated it in His word for this purpose, The Christian readily knows why “Holy” should be in the plural, without allowing that it means “holy things.” The knowledge of such things is not the intelligence that grows from the enlarging knowledge of God.

The pious Jew addressed looked for long life here below through divine favor. As things were, much might come in to modify this, as we see in Josiah and many another. But when divine principles have their just and unimpeded result, every word will be fulfilled, as when Christ reigns over all the earth. We Christians have a far different calling now and look for a higher glory. Nevertheless we can say and do believe that piety is profitable for everything, having promise of life, of the present one, and of that to come.

It remains true also that “if thou art wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself; and if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it.” God remains in changeless majesty; but in His righteous judgment, each shall bear his own burden, and reap as he sows, from the flesh corruption, from the Spirit life everlasting.

Matthew 11:28

These are not the words of a mere man, but rather of One, Who, however lowly, always spoke as befitted Him, Who is both God and man. They are in short the words of a divine Person speaking with divine authority. There are no words like them save His own, search where we will in the records of antiquity. And it is needless to say that the same may be asserted of the sayings of all moderns. No doubt we are in less danger of overestimating those who have lived near our own time, with whose foibles too we are perhaps somewhat acquainted. Such do not loom large to the imagination through the mists of time. But for all their detachment from our familiar scrutiny, and our consequent tendency to put the very highest value on their words, no statements of the great men of old can match, nay, even approach, the divine definiteness, the calm majesty, of our Savior's utterances. It is not that poets and philosophers, particularly the poets, did not say wise and true things sometimes; but obviously their whole attitude was different. Their language was speculative, tentative, and unauthoritative, whenever it went beyond a doubtless often eloquent lamentation over man's impotence.

Such were not our blessed Lord's words. Nay, while it is undoubtedly true that the writings of a Paul or a Peter or a John are, as parts of scripture and inspired by the Holy Ghost, equally authoritative, at the same time every believer must feel the peculiar charm that attaches to the words of our Lord, even over the rest of the Bible. One might add too that the peculiar solemnity of His warnings must be similarly felt. In truth, whether it be words of gracious entreaty or of solemn warning, all is, so to speak, “raised to the highest power,'' if one may be permitted a mathematical expression. “Never man spake like this man.” Hence the exceeding perplexity of such as cannot but own the majesty of our Lord's words, but yet refuse to bow to Him as God manifest in the flesh. Hence the appellation of “Enigma of the ages” that some thinker has given to Him. No enigma is He to those that believe, that acknowledge Him to be “the true God and eternal life.” Rather is it an enigma that men should hear such words, should be told of such a Savior, and not bow to Him Truly life itself is an enigma apart from Him. He alone unlocks the mystery of what a great poet called “this unintelligible world.” He proves Himself, as one as said, the true key because it fits every ward of the lock. He also lights up what were otherwise so dark, and “makes life a lucid story.”

Now nowhere are our Lord's words loftier than in this very verse. He holds language that no mere man might dare adopt. I am aware that an able writer, recently deceased, whittled down the words to mean a mere receipt for taking life calmly as if Christ had said, “Take life as I do; do not worry; do not resent circumstances.” No doubt all this will result practically in proportion as the Christian follows his Master, and takes His yoke upon him. But it is absurd as well as profane so to limit the meaning of this sublime appeal. Nay, it is a divine call as serious as it is gracious and blessed: blessed for him, who accepts; most serious for such as refuse. Remark that we have not here so much the divine Mediator. Indeed that all-important function of the Lord Jesus, so infinitely august, and the basis of all, is not the special point; but our Lord bids the weary and heavy-laden to come to Himself. “Come unto Me.” For to come to Him was to come to God. The whole meaning is there. And so He goes on, “And I will give you rest.” There is a special emphasis on the “I,” impossible so to give in English save by the living voice, but which by a simple device of language, familiar to every scholar, is apparent in the Greek original. There is the same stress, eight times, I think, repeated, in the well-known “Sermon on the mount,” where the Lord contrasts the limited spirituality of the Mosaic dispensation with His, with God's, uncompromising holiness.

The details of the gospel are not here of course. Cavilers, alas! have not been slow in trying to represent apostolic doctrine as an after-thought, and as not in the mind of Christ. Never was there a greater mistake or a more serious one. The answer is simple. I give it in the words of an able divine, “Christ did not come so much to preach the gospel; He came that there might be a gospel to preach.” R. B.

Gospel Words: Fish and the Temple Tax

Matt. 17:24-27

What had the Lord said in John 8? It is the Son only Who, being free in the highest sense, sets free those who are His disciples abiding in His word. All else, however boastful, are but slaves of sin, the lowest of all slavery. The slave passes; the son abides forever; but this he derives solely from the eternal Son, though not without faith in the truth which He in grace tells out, as indeed He was it and came that we might hear and receive it. “Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

So here what ineffable grace “Lest we cause them to stumble, go unto the sea, and cast a hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and having opened its mouth, thou wilt find a shekel: that take and give to them for me and thee.”

Now it is His omnipotence that is proved; for what else could make itself forthwith obeyed by a fish passing through the paths of the sea? Who but God in man could or would have caused it to rise to Peter's hook with a silverling in its mouth of the exact amount for the temple? Whom but the Son did it befit to say in His grace, lest we cause them to stumble"... give to them for me and for thee”? The grand truth is breaking through the clouds of a self-destroying Israel and Judaism, that the Son was emptying and humbling Himself, not only to rescue, but to associate with Himself every one that believes in Him. What grace!

This association, as the gospel tells, is based not only on the divine glory of His person, but on the accomplishment of an everlasting redemption. This He found, as Heb. 9 declares, by His own blood. And as it is attested by His ascension glory, so it is the glad message sent to you, my dear reader, if you have not already received it unto salvation. This, and no less, it bears, and, on God's authority and in His love, assures to every sinner who repents and believes the gospel. God is thus honoring His Son, as well He may; for He and He alone perfectly glorified Him, even as to sin on the cross, as before in all respects.

Oh! persevere not in that unbelief which is the most radical and hateful of all evils. Listen no more to the ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan: why die the second death? Christ is the way, the truth, and the life: are you so infatuated as to prefer the pleasures of sin for a season, and make shipwreck for eternity? Can it be that you turn a deaf ear to Him Who suffered once for all for sins, and will not come to Him that you may have life?

The New Testament presents no miracle more striking and instructive than the one before us. Its place too in the First Gospel and there only is precisely appropriate, if the Holy Spirit meant here to bring out the divine glory of Christ, along with His grace in associating the believer with Himself; when, rejected as He is by the Jews, the church and the kingdom of the heavens should replace the things even promised by new things.

“And when they came unto Capernaum, those that receive the half-shekels came to Peter and said, Doth not your teacher pay the half-shekels? He saith, Yea. And when he entered into the house, Jesus anticipated him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? The kings of the earth, from whom do they receive toll or tribute? from their sons or from other folk? He (or, Peter) saith to him, From other folk. Jesus said to him, Well then the sons are free. But lest we cause them to stumble, go unto the sea, and cast a hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and having opened its mouth, thou wilt find a shekel: that take and give to them for me and thee” (vers. 24-27).

Peter, like most disciples and like all naturally, was slow to distrust himself and to wait on the Lord and His word. He was quick, being zealous for the law, to assure those who took the redemption money (not the tax-gatherers so repulsive to Jewish feeling) that his Master was the same. He did not when questioned bear in mind, either what the Father had revealed to Him of the Lord's personal dignity (chap. 14), or of the glory conferred on Him for the coming kingdom (chap. 17): Jesus was too good an Israelite to neglect the heave-offering to Jehovah, the atonement for the soul! Peter forgot that Jesus was the true temple of God and the true God of the temple; he knew not yet that the visible temple was doomed, as ready to vanish away. He still savored the things that are of men.

The Lord therefore anticipated him on entering the house by the question, From whom do the kings of the earth take toll or tribute? from their sons, or from other folk? He could not but answer, From other folk; and the Lord rejoined that therefore the sons are free.

The Lord had just shown His omniscience, as He showed every creature subject to Him. He proved to Peter that He knew what had not reached His ear. He graciously corrects His servant's mistake and leads him once more into the truth. He was God, the Son, equally with the Father and the Holy Spirit; but He speaks and acts in perfect grace; as indeed otherwise where could Peter or we be? He says, Then are the sons free. On Him, Who alone is the Son eternally in personal right and title, depends the blessedness of the sons. We are by grace sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus, not Peter only but now, once Jews or Gentiles, all God's sons, all one in Christ Jesus; and because sons, God sent out the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So that each can hear, Thou art no longer a slave but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.

1 Peter 1:6-7

Thus the new life imparted, as abundant as the mercy that begot us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Christ from out of the dead, has a result no less worthy of the God and Father of our Lord. It is for an inheritance incorruptible in itself, undefiled by evil, and unfading in its beauty. It is not on earth as Israel looks for their portion, but reserved in heaven for saints who in their weakness are being guarded in the midst of difficulties and dangers through faith unto salvation, founded on a sacrifice even now accepted, and therefore ready to be revealed, even for the body, in a last season which will manifest the grand purpose of God.

The Apostle now turns to the marked and peculiar characteristic of Christianity which stands contrasted with the hopes of Israel: the co-existence of exceeding joy, whilst passing through keen sorrow of ever so varied kinds. It will not be thus, when Jehovah reigns, the world is stablished that it cannot be moved, and He judges the peoples with equity; when all creation is in harmony, the heavens glad, the earth rejoicing, the sea and its fullness loudly responsive, the field and all that is therein exulting, and the very trees of the wood singing for joy (Psa. 96). While the Lord Jesus abides hidden on high, the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now, though its earnest expectation waits for the revealing of the sons of God (Rom. 8); as their revealing depends on the manifestation of the Lord (Col. 3).

Then, and not before, will come the restitution of all things (Acts 3), when God who sent Jesus the first time for the redemption (by blood) of His heirs will send Him again for redemption (by power) of the inheritance, both heavenly and earthly (Eph. 1:10). Then Zion shall never more taste sorrow or shame; and stiff-necked rebellious Israel shall be meek under Jehovah and David their king, their backsliding healed, themselves loved freely, when He will be as the dew to them (Hos. 3:14), and they in the midst of many peoples as dew from Him, as showers upon the grass, a blessing that tarries not for man nor waits for the sons of men (Mic. 5).

But though by faith we behold Jesus, Who has been made a little lower than angels on account of the suffering of death, for the same reason crowned with glory and honor, now we do not yet see all things subjected to Him, as they will be seen when His world-kingdom comes (Rev. 11:15). Meanwhile sufferings prevail during the present time; and Satan, though known to faith as judged in the cross of Christ, is the ruler of this world, the god of this age blinding the thoughts of the faithless to the end that the illumination of the gospel of the glory of Christ Who is God's image should not shine forth. Hence the Christian has the part of Christ, rejection and suffering both for righteousness and for His name. “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Cor. 15:19). How different from the day when “great shall be the peace of thy (Zion's) children. In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far from oppression, for thou shalt not fear; and from terror, for it shall not come near thee.” “Behold, they may gather together, but not by me: whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall because of thee.” “And nations shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising” (Isa. 60:3). “For that nation and kingdom that will not serve Thee shall perish” (Isa. 60:12): “Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; for Jehovah shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended” (Isa. 60:20).

Undoubtedly these are highly figurative expressions; but they are figures expressive of Israel's blessings in the days of the future kingdom when Jehovah shall be King over all the earth. In that day shall Jehovah be one, and His name one (Zech. 14:9). Then idols of silver and gold shall be consigned to the moles and to the bats (Isa. 2:20). And peoples shall flow to the mountain of Jehovah's house; and many nations shall go and say, “Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His path; for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among many peoples and reprove strong nations afar off; and they shall forge their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning-knives: nation shall not rise against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Mic. 4:1-3).

In these scriptures is a true foreshadow of the coming kingdom, but in no sense applicable to the Christian. For he now, though having peace in Christ, shall have tribulation in the world, called to suffer hardship as a good soldier of Christ; he knows, that if we endure, we shall also reign with Him, while wicked men and impostors wax worse and worse deceiving and deceived. As our Apostle says (1 Pet. 2:20), “If when ye do well and suffer, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable (or, grace) with God.” Such is practical Christianity in contrast with the coming kingdom, contradicted alike by the principle and the practice of Christendom. It is therefore the more imperative to dwell on the truth and expose the departure from it for His glory and the walk of faith.

Again we have, in a general application, what the apostle of the Gentiles says of Christian service in the still fuller and more emphatic terms of 2 Cor. 6:4-10. If Paul knew it above measure in his ministry, he like Peter calls on every Christian to be “as sorrowful (or, grieved), yet always rejoicing.”

“Wherein ye exult, now for a little (if it is needful) put to grief in manifold trials, that the proof of your faith, much more precious than gold that perisheth though proved by fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at [the] revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:6-7).

To connect “wherein” with the last season seems poor in comparison with the glorious result generally. It is even misleading, if it be so taken as to deny the Christian's title to exuberant joy even now in the portion God has given us in Christ. Never will there be a work to surpass, yea or to match, what has been already wrought in the cross. Nowhere else such a concentration of what otherwise must be irreconcilable, majesty and humiliation, holiness and mercy, righteousness and sin, love and hatred, Satan apparently victorious but really and forever vanquished, man at his utter worst, God in His fullest grace, Jesus at the lowest point of obedience, yet glorifying God absolutely even as to sin, all issuing for the believer to God's glory in a perfect acceptance and an everlasting deliverance, with the reconciliation of all creation to come. “Wherein ye exult.” What else can we feel through grace? If we believe, we do not wait for the day of sight to participate in this exceeding joy, which breaks forth in thanksgiving and praise. In that day it will without doubt be unmixed with suffering and sorrow. The weakness of the mortal body will be no longer, but incorruption, glory, and power: so thoroughly shall we all be changed at Christ's coming. There is no scripture, no sound reason, however hostile, to deny present exultation as a proper characteristic of the Christian even now; or this, as the precise meaning here intended by the apostle.

But it is accompanied by being “put to grief” as a needed passing trial in God's government, while the exceeding joy may and ought to be habitual. For this rests on accomplished redemption and life in the power of resurrection, on the grace and truth which came through the Saviour. These abide unchanging for our souls, whereas the grief is definite; as the very tenses of the verb and of the participle imply, no less than the facts warrant from which both affections cannot but flow. Hence “now for a little” qualifies of course the aorist participle, and in no way our actual exultation as unbelief in effect would make it. This is still more distinctly taught by the brief clause “if needful,” or “if there is need.” How considerate and good! For the Father of spirits deals thus for our profit to the partaking of His holiness. No discipline at the time seems of joy but of grief; but afterward it yields peaceable fruit of righteousness to those that have been exercised by it. So we read in Hebrews 12:10-11.

Nor is Peter's doctrine really different: “for a little at this time, if there is need, put to grief in manifold trials,” or temptations. So triumphantly says Rom. 8:34, It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather raised, who is too at the right hand of God, who also intercedeth for us: who shall separate us from the love of Christ? tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? These were heavy trials, but by no means all; for indeed they are many and manifold. But if we do not know what we should pray for as is fitting, the Holy Spirit Who dwells in us intercedes according to God Who hears Him; and we do know that all things work together for good to those that love God, to those that are called according to purpose.

Only as Hebrews 12 looks for a good result now, our text points to yet more by-and-by, as it says, “that the proof of your faith, much more precious than of gold that perisheth though proved by fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory in the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

Thus the Apostle contemplates the wilderness and our journeying through it. In the type this began for Moses and Israel with a song of exultation; and if Israel failed to continue thus, it is no rule for us, for (or, concerning) whom God foresaw some better thing; and what happened to them is written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come. The worshippers once purged have no longer any conscience of sins; and no wonder. For Christ by one offering has perfected forever—in perpetuity—those sanctified, as Christians are. The wilderness is pre-eminently the scene of temptation. There the heart is put to the proof. All the more needful is it, that in passing through we cherish confidence in God's love to us. There we find by these trials how weak we are, and alas! it may be, careless, light, and unfaithful. We are sifted like Simon Peter, but have the Lord pleading for us as for him that our faith fail not. For this is the desire and aim, that the proof of our faith might be found to praise.

Note again that praise, honor, and glory are connected with Christ's revelation. His coming to receive and take us to the Father's house is supreme grace; in His revelation will be the appraisal of fidelity and reward accordingly. Both assuredly will be verified; but righteous government is quite distinct from sovereign grace.

Kingdom of God: 8

AND these only will be dealt with in that day of Christ's coming. These only, I say, seeing that the wicked of former generations will not then be raised from their graves, but will be reserved for judgment after the thousand years are expired (Rev. 20:7-15). The risen saints of God, on the other hand, will have been caught up to heaven before the week opens (1 Thess. 4:16-18). This then, I believe, quite determines who the wheat are at the time of the harvest, namely, the Jewish remnant—the righteous ones on the earth at that time.

In this parable, and the explanation of it, the term “kingdom of heaven” is evidently used in its widest sense, as including all who nominally own the supremacy of Christ during His absence from the earth, whether they be wheat or tares, false professors or true subjects of Christ. At the time of the end, when the kingdom passes from its present mysterious state to that of open manifestation, all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, shall be gathered out of it. After that, the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father, the heavenly department of that glorious kingdom as it shall exist after the return of Jesus, when all things shall be gathered together in one (even in Him), both which are in heaven and which are on earth. Blessed prospect! May the brightness of it cast a cloud upon all earthly glory in our eyes, beloved; and may we look for and haste unto the coming of that day of God, in which this heavenly luster shall crown all those who have been the companions and followers of Jesus in His tribulation.

The two parables of the mustard seed and leaven would seem to represent the kingdom of heaven in the same large and outward aspect as that in which it is viewed in the parable of the wheat and tares. There is no doubt that, to an intelligent or instructed Christian, it must appear evil that Christianity, which, in its earliest and purest days, was the object of universal obloquy and scorn, should come to bear a character and occupy a position in the world represented by the emblem of a great tree—the symbol in prophecy of worldly magnificence and power. (See Dan. 4; Ezek. 31 &c.)

Still, it does not seem as though it was the evil of this which the parable of the mustard seed sets forth, so much as the great external fact that what was at its beginning so small and so despised should eventually become great in the earth, and afford shelter to those who were originally its opposers. (Compare ver. 32 with ver. 4). The parable of the leaven appears to be our Lord's answer to the inquiry which may well arise in the mind: By what sudden convulsion, by what unlooked for event, is this change to be accomplished? The answer is, that it is not by any mighty convulsion or sudden change, but by a process thus represented: “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.” This wondrous transformation of what was, at its outset, the weakest and most despised thing on earth, to the state in which Christianity now exists around us, associated with everything of earthly power and glory, was to be effected by a slow, gradual, imperceptible process like leaven working in meal.

These four parables, be it remembered, were spoken to the multitude. They all describe great facts which, as such, the natural mind can recognize. The preaching of the word, with its varied results—the corruption of Christianity and the continuance, to the end, of the evil when once introduced, as well as the judgment by which, at the end of the age, it will be purged out—the growth of Christianity from its once despised and feeble condition as respects the earth, to a state of earthly splendor, power, and glory—the silent, gentle, gradual character of the process by which this last result has been brought about—all these are historical facts which are not only capable of being recognized, but which, as far as they have gone, have been recognized by mere natural men. The explanation of the first similitude, and the last three parables themselves, were spoken to the disciples apart from the multitude; thus indicating, as another has taught, that there were secrets in them which it required a spiritual mind—the intelligence and affection of a disciple—to appreciate. How blessedly perfect is God's precious word!

The two unexplained parables—that of the treasure hid in the field, and that of the merchantman seeking goodly pearls—would seem to teach us, that within the external sphere to which the four parables already considered apply themselves, there was something hid which was at once so precious in Christ's estimation and so beautiful in His eyes, that for the joy of possessing Himself of this treasure, this pearl, He could gladly forego for the present all His Messianic rights and glories, and go down into the very dust of death, selling all that He had to buy it. Can we fail to be reminded by this of that wonderful word, “Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it... that He might present it to Himself!” It is true that in the work by which He accomplished the purchase of this jewel of His heart, He also laid the foundation, and the only foundation, for the future glories of His kingdom, when He shall reign in peace over all the earth. He bought the field which contained the treasure; and thus the field is His for all the display of His glory and the accomplishment of all the purposes of God as to it. But His motive—that for the joy of which He, for the present, could forego the assertion of His titles and the revealing of His glory—was the possession of the hidden treasure, the goodly pearl! Oh, what intensity of love, what devotedness and unsparingness of service, become those who are taught of the Holy Ghost that Christ has thus loved and thus given Himself for them May our hearts better know the overwhelming power of the grace of Christ thus displayed!

The parable of the net presents us with the discrimination, at the close, between all this which has really been the object of Christ's heart and of God's purposes throughout, and that which has been throughout this mysterious period outwardly associated with it. The thought of the beloved brother, whose paper on Matt. 13 has been more than once referred to already, commends itself greatly to my own soul, viz. that this discrimination is of two kinds: first, as on the part of the fishermen who gather the good into vessels and cast the bad away; secondly, as on the part of the angels who do not concern themselves about the good here at all, but sever the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire. Might we not gather from this that, in the intention of God, there was to be a separation? first, morally by His Spirit, of those in and by whom He acts—and there the object is to gather the good into vessels (it is separation to God, and according to His mind and heart); then, finally, there is a process of judgment in which the angels are the executioners, and the wicked the objects, who are “cast into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

This closes the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. From the era of this judicial separation, whether viewed as in the parable of the wheat and tares, or as in this parable of the net, all is in open manifestation: the righteous shining forth as the sun in the heavenly kingdom of their Father; the Son of man openly exercising His royal power in His kingdom below, out of which all that offends and them which do iniquity have been gathered.

“Jesus saith unto them, Have ye understood all these things? They say unto him, Yea, Lord. Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, is like unto a man that is a householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.” The Lord grant that, by the Spirit, these things may occupy our souls; and above all, that He, Himself, Whose grace and glory are so touchingly displayed in every aspect of them, may become more and more the one object of our hearts.

The next mention of the kingdom of heaven is in chapter 16:19, where our Lord says to Peter: “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

There are three remarks which may be made as to the connection in which “kingdom of heaven” here occurs. First, it was clearly what had not then commenced. The kingdom had been preached by all the apostles as at hand, as well as by our Lord and His forerunner. But Peter was to open the kingdom, as we know he did at Pentecost, to the Jews, and in the house of Cornelius to the Gentiles. Secondly, the kingdom, the administration of which was thus entrusted to Peter, is clearly not the millennial kingdom treated of in No. 1, and which is still future. Thirdly, it is distinguished from the church, by our Lord Himself, in the passage before us. He says: “Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” &c. Those who by faith entered in, when the kingdom was opened whether to Jews or Gentiles, became members of the church of God; but “the kingdom of heaven,” as we have seen in chapter 8, includes tares as well as wheat; and it is likened to the mustard tree, the leaven, and the net, as well as to the treasure and the pearl.

“Verily, I say unto you, There be some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in His kingdom (ver. 28). This is plainly another thing. This is the kingdom in which the Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father, with His angels, and reward every man according to his works. A specimen, a sample, a foreshadowing of the glory of this kingdom, Peter, James, and John were privileged to behold a few days after these words were spoken. A comparison of the passage with 2 Peter 1:16-18 will show that this was the sense in which they saw the Son of man coming in His kingdom. It was a type or pledge, a revelation even to their senses of what the glory of that kingdom will be; not the kingdom as it exists now in mystery, but as it will exist in open display by-and-by.

Instead of taking the kingdom thus and introducing it at once, we have in the close of chapter 17 an affecting display of the depths of humiliation to which Jesus stooped. In chapter 18, we find this to be the rule for disciples in the kingdom as it now exists in mystery. The disciples ask, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus answers by calling a little child and setting him in the midst of them, and saying, “Verily, I say to you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Wondrous, blessed lesson! That he who willingly becomes the least is really the greatest in the kingdom of heaven! None so great as the Holy One Whose words we are listening to! And who can stoop so low as He did? As for us, in taking the low place, we do but take our own. He thought it not robbery to be equal with God, and yet made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant. Oh! that the mind which was in Him might also be in us.

One lesson as to the spirit and conduct befitting this kingdom of heaven we have had already in chapter 18. The close of it presents us with another. Humility at the beginning; grace and forgiveness of trespass at the end. For another view of the parable at the close of this chapter, see the paper before referred to, page 130, in vol. 1 of “The Prospect.”

Matt. 19:12 speaks of an extraordinary measure of separation to God, for the kingdom of heaven's sake, on the part of some. It is, I suppose, the carrying out, through grace, of the principle of Matt. 11:12 to the utmost possible limits, in certain special cases where there was not grace only, but special gift and power for this end. (See 1 Cor. 7:26; also verse 17 of the same chapter.)

Matt. 19:14 would connect itself with the passage already touched upon in chapter 18:3. Verses 23 and 24 would show the need of that violence, through grace, which is the subject of chapter 11:12. It was a question of forsaking all and following Christ—a Christ Who was not about at once to ascend the throne and wield the scepter of His father David, but Who was first to be rejected and crucified. The riches and honors of this world were such a hindrance to any one who had them, in thus following a rejected Christ, that nothing could overcome it, or enable any one to overcome it, but the almighty power of God. “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

It is upon this that Peter asks a question, to which our Lord gives a twofold reply, “Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee: what shall we have therefore?” What Peter states is a fact. He and his fellow-apostles had really forsaken all to follow Christ; and this our Lord in His first answer owns. But evidently there was something of self-importance and self-gratulation at the bottom of Peter's question, “What shall we have therefore?” It was something of the same spirit as had suggested the inquiry in chapter 18, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Peter's question would intimate that none could ever evince the self-devotion which they had evinced, or have the claim on Christ which they had. It is as though he would make Christ debtor to himself and his fellow-disciples. “What shall we have therefore?” This our Lord meets in the parable which follows. First, however, let us look at His promise to Peter and the rest. “And Jesus said unto them, Verily, I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Peter asks, What shall we have therefore? and our Lord replies, That is what you shall have. But is it not as though He added, Do not suppose that you are the only persons who have forsaken, or who will have forsaken, all for My name's sake, and who shall be rewarded in the kingdom? “And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life."(continued from p. 74)

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Nahum to Malachi

Chap. 5 Divine Design.—27. Nahum Malachi

As Micah on a small scale noticed both Babylon and the Assyrian which Isaiah presented much more fully, Nahum is occupied only with Nineveh and its chief before the world-powers were ordained. For such was the order historically, as prophetically it will be the inverse. (Compare Isa. 13 and 14 with Mic. 4:5) For what answers to Babylon, the imperial Beast or fourth empire revived for judgment at the consummation of the age, will meet its doom before the Assyrian comes up with the external nations for final destruction when Israel shall be owned of Jehovah; but the reign of righteousness and peace is not yet fully established. Who can deny the special place designed for Nahum as to Nineveh, any more than the peculiar task given to Obadiah as to Edom?

Nahum was a Galilean like Jonah; and if the latter was sent long before to warn the haughty Gentile, and on repentance to defer the judgment in divine mercy, the former was given, on its raising its head still more proudly, to pronounce Jehovah's indignant vengeance, however slow to anger; for He is as great as He is good. In vain went forth out of Nineveh one that imagined evil against Jehovah, a counselor of Belial. He will make a full end—trouble shall not rise a second time; as Sennacherib proved, his yoke broken, His people's bonds burst, out of the house of the Assyrian's god, graven and molten images cut off, and his grave prepared. The scourge finally past is followed by the enduring peace of His people (chap. 1).

What more superb than the lifelike graphic sketch of the dashing in pieces (chap. 2)? But all ends, not in Jerusalem taken, but in Nineveh and its palace melting away in its own rivers which burst the gates, the converse of Babylon's later fate. The lair of the lions would be an utter ruin, instead of a terror (chap. 3). Nineveh was no better than Thebes, or No-Amon; there is no healing of her breach.

Habakkuk begins by complaining of the evil in Jehovah's people, when he is reminded of the marvelous work He wrought in using the Chaldeans in their proud self-seeking energy to chastise them. This turns his complaint against the wicked swallowing up one more righteous, and withal sacrificing to his net and burning incense to his drag (chap. 1). Can any hesitate to own distinctive design here?

The prophet waits for His word, and Jehovah's answer comes so plainly that the runner may read it. The just shall live by his faith, before public deliverance is given. If God is patient, His people may well be. All the iniquity was seen and felt: retribution would come at an appointed time. The peoples labor for the fire, and the nations weary themselves in vain. For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah (not of the gospel, which appeals to faith now for heaven), as the waters cover the sea. The Babylonian capturing would be to no purpose any more than their famous building; and their intoxication of others for deceit as of themselves would end in shame, like their idolatries: Jehovah is in His holy temple above, whatever the state of His house on earth. Silence! (chap. 2)

His prayer follows in chap. 3 and the power that will make itself seen, heard, and felt, rises for his soul, as he recalls His deliverance of old, though but partial, as He had only Israel in view, not yet Messiah and the new covenant. He anticipates the triumphant lot of Israel, as is already seen, no less than the downfall of their foes; but he ends with the faith that waits, though not a sign meanwhile appears (chap. 3).

Is Zephaniah one whit less distinctive? Is he not beyond mistake occupied from first to last with the day of Jehovah on Jerusalem? But the land and the Jewish remnant are fully in view for that day. The reign of the last pious king did not hinder or defer it; for the general advance in evil revolt would be all the surer when that check vanished. Divine judgment must clear away all offenses that righteousness by grace may flourish. Hardly any truth is more repulsive to haughty and lawless Christendom than the Lord's unexpected dealing with the living, though every one in word confesses that He is coming to judge the quick as well as the dead. Who can wonder that idolatrous Jews decried it? It is the becoming answer of our prophet to all questions. If Jehovah must judge His people, all the world must bow, no nation can escape. What Nebuchadnezzar did was but the earnest of a great and complete judgment; yet Jehovah could not but begin with His land, people, and city, as in chap. 1.

In chap. 2 a remnant is looked for, the meek, that they may be hidden in that day which overtakes the guilty mass. There is indeed and for the same reason the doom of the Philistines, of Moab, and of Ammon. But not the neighbors only; He will famish all the gods of the earth: and Assyria with its great city Nineveh shall fall into desolation.

Chap. 3 returns to Jerusalem unsparingly. But from ver. 8 he shows Jehovah rising to pour His indignation upon the nations and kingdoms in all the earth. Then will He turn to the peoples a pure language that they may all call on Jehovah's name and serve Him with one consent. And His dispersed shall return, suppliant and accepted, afflicted and poor, but unrighteous and deceitful no more. Assuredly it is a day yet future, when none shall make them afraid. From ver. 14 he calls on the daughter of Zion to exult, Israel to shout. Jehovah is their king and in their midst, having taken away their judgments and cast out their enemy. “He will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love; he will exult over thee with singing.” Praise and fame He will make in all the lands of their shame when He gathers and turns again their captivity before their eyes. It is wholly distinct from the gospel or the church.

The three prophets that remain were after the Return, and thus differ from all before. The house of God, lowly as it might be, was a great test for their lukewarm state. Haggai was sent to awaken their zeal: not God's providence, however it might work, but Jehovah's word. Difficulties arose; and they left off to build. It was not the time, said they. “Is it time for you to dwell in your wainscoted houses, while this house lieth waste?” replies the prophet, as he points out how their efforts came to failure under His hand Who bade them, “Consider your ways.” But there were who heard Zerubbabel and Joshua, and others of opened ear; and Jehovah's messenger declared on His part, I am with you, saith Jehovah; and they came and worked for Jehovah's house (chap. 1).

Near a month after the word came to such as had ears to hear, abating any disappointment from comparison with the house in its former glory: Be strong, for I am with you. “For thus saith Jehovah of hosts: Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry [land]; and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come; and I will fill this house with glory, saith Jehovah of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith Jehovah of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, saith Jehovah; and in this place will I give peace, saith Jehovah of hosts (vers. 6-9).” Could any answer be more assuring or glorious? Some believed it then, we may trust, to their blessing: do men who call themselves Christians believe it now? Whatever measure of application it had when Christ came the first time, Heb. 12 leaves no doubt that its fulfillment awaits the second advent. It may be observed how carefully the house is viewed as one till then. Render therefore as in the Sept., “the latter glory of this house,” not “the glory of this latter house.” It has unity in His eyes.

The third message turns on holiness according to the law. Things ordinary are not sanctified by the touch of what is holy; though the holy becomes unclean by contact with defilement. Such the prophet declares this people and every work of theirs—unclean. Yet they are told to consider from this day that, instead of smiting as before, Jehovah would bless them (vers. 10-19).

On the same day came a fourth word, in which Jehovah says, “I will shake the heavens and the earth, and I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations, and I will overthrow the chariots and those that ride in them, and the horses and their riders shall come down, every one by the sword of his brother,” vers. 21, 22. It is the judgment of the quick, or at least that part which relates to the nations that gather against Israel; it is after the destruction of the Beast and his vassal kings and armies whom the Lord destroys by His appearing. Zerubbabel seems taken as a shadow of great David's greater son in the verse following. A strange critic would he be who fails to discern Haggai's special place, and a faithless one who questions his divine inspiration.

No less distinctive is the work given to Zechariah, who alone approaches in his earlier visions to the apocalyptic character of Daniel among the four so-called greater prophets. But unlike Daniel he is occupied with Jerusalem, and launches out in his later visions to the open and magnificent scenes of universal glory under Jehovah-Messiah for all the earth. If all peoples and all the nations assemble against Jerusalem even in the day of Jehovah, He will go forth and fight with them and smite all their adversaries; and it shall be that all that are left of all the nations which came up against her shall go up from year to year to worship the King, Jehovah of hosts, and to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. It is the day of His manifested supremacy in the midst of Israel, and clearly as yet to be fulfilled. What circumstances among the returned remnant gave the prophet an existing groundwork? Did the book come from God? or is it a human dream? That the writer could begin with prose, and rise to poetical style when called for later is no great marvel.

After aggrieved appeal in the preface of chap. 1:1-6, the youthful prophet saw (as in the rest of the chapter) the vision of the administering powers of the three empires under the symbol of red, bay, and white horses; for the first empire had passed away and the provisional return to the land had already been a fact for some 18 years. Next he saw four horns, powers which had scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem, as well as four smiths to cast out those Gentile horns. Chap. 2 presents a man with a line to measure Jerusalem; for if Jehovah was jealous over the feeble remnant, He also looks on to the time when He would be the glory in their midst; and a song quite as lofty as any afterward follows. In chap. 3 is solved by grace the question of fitness for His presence, though the high priest represents also their responsibility meanwhile. But the Branch or Sprout is promised, Who will be the true Stone of Israel, when their iniquity shall pass away, and communion shall abound. The vision of order and holy power in testimony follows in chap. 4, in its measure of light then, but complete only when He reigns Who combines royalty and priesthood. Chap. 5 gives two visions of judgment which must be: the flying roll against iniquity in Israel toward man and toward Jehovah; and the ephah with the woman (this is wickedness, or demoralizing idolatry) carried off to Shinar, its source, for its dwelling-place. After the vision of the four chariots in chap. 6, representing the external powers in divine providence, comes the word of Jehovah on the occasion of gifts from those of the captivity, to make crowns, one of which was to be set on Joshua, again looking on to the Branch Who should build the temple of Jehovah emphatically, bearing the glory, sitting and ruling upon His throne, a priest thereon, when the counsel of peace should be between Them both. What believer can mistake the special design of this?

Chaps. 7 & 8 seem transitional. Such fasts as those in the captivity would not do: Jehovah claimed righteousness and mercy, not oppression and evil-mindedness, for which He had scattered them. Returned to Zion He would restore and bless to the full, as He will yet. Fasts will yield to feasts; and peoples come to Jerusalem as they never yet have done, whatever the application of intermediate condition then.

Then we have “the burden of the word of Jehovah” in chap. 9. Not only will He defend His house against surrounding foes, but Zion's King will come in humiliation, notably and to the letter fulfilled, but going on to the day when Ephraim, as well as Jerusalem, shall behold His judgments issuing in peace to the nations and dominion everywhere. How could such a future be before the prophet without kindling the fire of hope so assured? And this is pursued through chap. 10.

But in 11 comes a change to pathos and grief, as Christ's rejection passes before his spirit, and the retributive usurpation of Antichrist. Then another “burden” is heard concerning Israel; and besieged Jerusalem becomes a burdensome stone, as never yet, “to all peoples.” (chap. 7:3); and David's house and Jerusalem's inhabitants shall be objects of grace in true repentance; and a fountain to cleanse those who may look to Him Whom they pierced shall be opened in that day (chap. 8). Then shall the very names of idols, and prophets with the unclean, pass out of the land; and Christ is again recalled, wounded in the house of His friends, albeit Jehovah's Shepherd, the Man Who is His fellow. Scattering is thence justly predicted, though not without protection for the little ones. But again we are in presence of the final crisis (8, 9), which is too plain in chap. 14 save for obstinate unbelief. There is a final capture of Jerusalem in part when all the nations join to assail it; but Jehovah then decides all. (Compare Psa. 48 Isa. 29 & 66). Subjection to Him is the glorious and blessed result.

The brief prophecy of Malachi has its specific moral traits, exactly suited to Jehovah's final call to the Jew in view of His messenger to prepare the way, and of the Lord suddenly coming to His temple. He denounces irreverence, corruption, fraud, and profanity in the returned, but looks for a remnant, and is sure of divine faithfulness to purpose and promise. Jehovah's name shall be great among the nations when His kingdom comes. What is Israel now? What the priests are as in chap. 2. All hung on Jehovah's coming; but He will judge as well as purge (chap. 3). Meanwhile those that fear Him have the resource of His name and shall be His peculiar treasure; as He will discern the wicked too. For His day comes as a furnace for the wicked, but with healing for those that are His, who also shall tread down the wicked. It is for Israel in that day, not the heavenly church, though we should profit by all the word (chap. 4). Thus He recalls the law of Moses, and promises Elijah before that day, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and of the children to their fathers, lest His coming should bring not blessing but curse, as the first man entails.

by W Kelly

The Preaching to the Spirits in Prison, cloth, 1/6.

THE BOOK OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.

AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.

THE OFFERINGS OF LEVITICUS, 121110. cloth, 1j6.

THE MYSTERY AND THE COVENANTS, 3d. each.

PROVIDENCE AND FAITH, 5d. a dozen.

BRIEF HINTS ON THE PSALMS, 10. each.

HINTS ON ISAIAH, 5d. a dozen. DANIEL THE PROPHET, 2d.

STRANGE DOCTRINE, 6d. per dozen.

GOSPEL WORDS, nine series, each No. 1/per 100.

HYMNS revised in 1894, cloth, 9d.; Paste Grain, 1/6; Mor.,

from 2/to 4/-.

Largo Type, cloth, 1/6; Paste Grain, 2/6; Mor. 4/to 6/-.

GOOD TIDINGS' HYMN Boox, cloth, limp, 3d.

The above two Hymn Books bound together, cloth, 1/-.

HYMNS (29) for Christian Meetings, 2/per 100.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Isaac: 19. The Generations of Ishmael

Gen. 25:12-18

In scripture family connection is noticed by the Holy Spirit according to the well known principle stated by the apostle (1 Cor. 15:46): not first that which is spiritual, but that which is natural. As we have had the progeny sprung from Keturah, and Isaac in his distinct place, so now we have the sons of Ishmael before the line of promise.

“And these [are] Ishmael's generations, Abraham's son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah's bondwoman, bore to Abraham. And these [are] the names of Ishmael's sons by their names according to their generations: Ishmael's firstborn, Nebaioth, and Kedar and Adbeel and Mibsam and Mishma and Dumah and Massa, Hadar and Tema, Jetur, Naphish and Kedemah. These [are] Ishmael's sons, and these their names in their villages and in their encampments, twelve princes according to their peoples. And these [are] the years of the life of Ishmael, a hundred and thirty and seven years; and he expired and died, and was gathered to his people. And they dwelt from Havilah to Shur which [is] before Egypt, as thou goest toward Assyria. He settled (or, died, lit. fell) before all his brethren” (vers. 12-18), or, it may be, “to the east of all his brethren.”

Flesh has its privileges speedily. Already was the beginning of what Jehovah's angel prepared Hagar to expect, “I will multiply thy seed exceedingly that it shall not be numbered for multitude.” Jehovah hearkened to her affliction, and could not forget Abraham. Ishmael was to be a wild-ass man, his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he should dwell before or in face of all his brethren (chap. 16:10-12). This too, as we may easily find out, has been precisely fulfilled from the beginning till now. But yet more minutely as a proximate fact, the pledge of all to follow, in chap. 17 had God said, “For Ishmael I have heard thee: behold, I will bless him, and will make him fruitful, and will very greatly multiply him. Twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation” (20). So it was now. They are enumerated in their order, as later (chap. 28:9) we read of Ishmael's daughter Mahalath, Nebaioth's sister, whom Esau took to wife, besides those of Canaan.

For scripture clearly shows us the government of God providentially, and outside His covenant, in the same books which reveal the dealings of His electing grace. Nor is it the Jews only who are prone to overlook it. Unbelief rises up against God in this as in all else. Yet His word abides worthy of all trust to whatever it applies. No more graphic a sketch was ever drawn than is given of Ishmael's posterity in the words cited. “Who hath sent out the wild-ass free? or who hath loosed the bands of the onager? whose house I have made the wilderness, and the salt land his dwelling-place. He scorneth the tumult of the city, neither heareth he the shoutings of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth for every green thing” (Job 39:5-8). Such exactly are the Bedouins. No sober Christian supposes a perpetual miracle as to Ishmael, but that what God said of that race is as sure as what He said of Israel, no less than of Babylon, Medo-Persia, the Greek power, or the Roman.

No skeptical ingenuity then avails to shake the certainty that Ishmael's singular lot stands revealed from early days. The meaning of Gen. 16:12 is as plain as it is striking, and as applicable to-day as for thousands of years past. This is not true of any other notable people. Compare the Egyptians, the Assyrians, or the Israelites: what differing changes have they not each and all experienced? How little if at all has the Bedouin altered? Cushites have settled here or there in Arabia, or passed across the Arabic gulf to the opposite coast of Africa. Joktanites in varied lines may still abide, especially in the South and the West; but their characteristics are by no means akin. The stamp of Ishmael is unmistakable in the North and East, as well as elsewhere; and the wild-ass marks him indelibly now as of old. Exceptions there may have been in the long tract of ages that have elapsed, but mostly affecting the nomad Arabs, in Yemen far more than where they pitched their tents, but also as to Mecca and Medina; as well as for a while in the North. But these seizures are allowed to have been temporary and local. “The body of the nation has escaped the yoke of the most powerful monarchies; the arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey and Trajan, could never achieve the conquest of Arabia; the present sovereign of the Turks may exercise a shadow of jurisdiction, but his pride is reduced to solicit the friendship of a people, which it is dangerous to provoke and fruitless to attack.”

It is easy to say that the obvious causes of their freedom are inscribed on the character and country of the Arabs. But God only could and did reveal their course from their earliest progenitor. The same unbelief which attributes Christianity to natural causes seeks to explain away the interest God felt about Abraham's offspring, even outside His covenant, and His expression of it in His word. The believer enjoys His communications and is grateful to the enlargement of heart and mind, as unbelief reaps darkness increasingly and death. It is good to own Him, Who is not only the Highest and only true God, but our Father in that gift of His love, His written word: whatever be its subject matter, it is worthy of Himself. And if in the O.T. He speaks of outward things and His moral government, are we not to appreciate His condescension?

Priesthood: 12. The Priest's Due

The Priests' Due. Lev. 10:12-15

The next direction is positive rather than negative; it expresses, first, the communion of the priests, of the high priest and his sons, as far as this could be with the offerings to Jehovah; then of their families. Eating is the well-known sign of fellowship, as none can deny.

“And Moses spoke to Aaron, and to Eleazar and Ithamar his sons that were left, Take the meal-offering that is left of Jehovah's fire-offerings, and eat it with unleavened bread beside the altar; for it [is] most holy. And ye shall eat it in a holy place, because it [is] thy due and thy sons' due, of Jehovah's fire-offerings; for so I am commanded. And the breast of the wave-offering and the shoulder of the heave-offering ye shall eat in a clean place, thou and thy sons and thy daughters with thee; for thy due and thy sons' due [are they] given of the sacrifices of peace-offerings of the children of Israel. The shoulder of the heave-offering and the breast of the wave-offering shall they bring with the fire-offerings of the pieces of fat to wave as a wave-offering before Jehovah; and they shall be thine and thy sons’ with thee for an everlasting statute, as Jehovah commanded” (vers. 12-15).

As the priests were those chosen for the services of the sanctuary, their failures and their dangers were measured by that standard in a way peculiar to themselves. Again also had they privileges, or dues, in which others could not share, suitable to such as drew near into the divine presence. The measure for an Israelite was what Jehovah claimed from man; for the priest, there must be fitness for God. Certainly no less than this is the holiness of the Christian; for he is a priest more really and fully than Aaron himself, for whom the office was but shadowy and ceremonial. Christ is the truth; and as in all other respects, so evidently and expressly in priesthood for the heavens now, as by-and-by for the earth also when He sits on Zion's throne. He therefore makes priesthood as real for the Christian as sonship is, though unbelief in Christendom makes the priestly place a vague name for all but the clergy.

Thus is confounded priesthood with ministry, which is in its worst form to repeat the gainsaying of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Of this imposture the Epistle of Jude declares the woe and end. But unbelief cannot alter or efface the truth; and Christians are shown in the N.T. to be the only persons on earth who now exercise priestly functions. They, having the only Great Priest over the house of God, are exhorted to approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, “sprinkled as to our hearts from a wicked conscience, and washed as to our body with pure water” (Heb. 10:21, 22). Who but they have the entrance with boldness into the holies in the power of the blood of Jesus? For any minister to claim this as the title, and the exclusive title, of his class, is to convict himself of presumptuous ignorance and profanity. It is meddling with Christ's rights, and His grace to His own.

Christ as the Burnt-offering rose up wholly consumed to Jehovah. Man was in no way to partake: “It shall be accepted to make atonement for him” (Lev. 1:4). “The priest shall burn all on the altar” (9). With Christ as the Meal-offering or Oblation, it was different; for here it is He as alive in flesh and obedient in holy love, yet offered up to Jehovah. Of the fine flour with the oil, but all the frankincense put on it, the priest took his handful, and burnt it on the altar to Jehovah. The remainder was for Aaron and his sons, who were the priestly company and symbolize “all the saints” here below. “Most holy” as it is, and thus rebuking all thought that adheres to lowering the Word become flesh, it was priestly food. Jehovah has the memorial thereof, a Fire-offering no less than the Burnt-offering; but the priest partook of the rest. If Jehovah had His delight in that blessed life of absolute devotedness to His will, have not we who believe and know ourselves brought to God, purged from every sin, the privilege of enjoying that oblation in peace and thanksgiving?

But it was to be eaten “in a holy place,” as only the priests partook of it, not even their families. It is only in God's presence that we can enjoy in communion what Christ was each day on earth and all through to God: elsewhere we reason or imagine, and in either way must sully what is “most holy.” Only the power of the Spirit enables the believer to appropriate Christ thus without mingling his own thoughts. For none rightly know the Son but the Father; and before Him we presume not, but receive what He gives in unfeigned faith and worship. All the frankincense was for Jehovah.

On the other hand while ver. 13 restricts the remainder of the Meal-offering to the eating of the priests “in a holy place,” ver. 14 opens participation in their portion of Peace-offerings, for their sons and daughters to eat freely, but “in a clean place.” For this they had the wave-breast and the heave-shoulder. In Lev. 7 we see a more widely extended fellowship; for the offerer and his guests had the remainder as a feast. Thus Jehovah, the offering priest, the priestly house as a whole, and the offerer with his company had each the appropriate part, in a communion large and varied, yet nicely ordered of God. Christ in His fullness answers to its every part, the striking contrast with the first and sinful man in his narrow selfishness or vain lavishness. Only “cleanness” was indispensable. “As he who called you is holy, be ye also holy in all conduct, because it is written, Be holy, because I am holy.” The simplest believer, however unintelligent of his high and holy privileges, is responsible to cleanse himself from every pollution of flesh and spirit, in order to enjoy it. Grace when believed produces vigilance in our new responsibilities as God's children; when forgotten or abused, admits of license and leads to lawlessness.

Proverbs 9:13-18

In full contrast with wisdom, and quite distinct from the scorner, is “the foolish woman.” Here we have the picture of herself and her ways, her guests, and their end. Only we must not think that the folly in question means a feeble intellect, but rather the absence of care or thought, of heart or conscience, toward God, which Satan fosters in benighted man. “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God,” and therefore neither seeks nor calls on Him. This at the last is antichrist. Here it is “the foolish woman,” the state of things that entices, fleshly corruption rather than the haughty antagonist that sets it up.

“The foolish woman [is] clamorous; senseless (or, simplicity), and knoweth nothing. And she sitteth at the door of her house, on a seat in the high places of the city, to call those that pass by who go right on their ways. Whoso [is] simple, let him turn in hither. And to him that is void of understanding she saith, Stolen waters are sweet, and the bread of secrecy is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead [are] there, [that] her guests [are] in the depths of Sheol” (vers. 13-18).

Wisdom pleads for Jehovah and therefore in the true interests of man, no less than for the divine glory. The foolish woman is zealous only for the indulgence of sinful pleasure, regardless of all consequences. Yet it is remarkable how similar are the thoughts and words the Holy Spirit uses in speaking of each. Not that wisdom is “clamorous” as is folly; but she does cry and put forth her voice, for understanding is hers, and the immense value she has to communicate from God and for Him, no less than to man. She does not sit on a seat or throne at the door of her house. But she yet more than folly stands in the top of high places by the way, a cheerful giver, who knows the ample resources for all that come. Not so the foolish woman. What house had she built? No pillars had she hewn out. She had neither beasts to kill, nor had she mingled wine, nor furnished her table, like wisdom with a heart delighting in good and in doing good where need abounded, and dangers are without end, and evil beyond measure.

Wisdom had her maidens to send forth, as she herself cried; for she was earnest to win for Jehovah and warn from Him, and sought the highest places of the city. Folly had no such maidens, any more than the generous provision of wisdom. Maidens indeed! She might well be ashamed and blush if she could before maidens, as they would assuredly blush for her words and ways. Yet both are represented as making appeal in terms of strong resemblance, but how opposite their wish and aim! “Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither” (vers. 4 and 16). And it is to be remarked, that the foolish woman in particular addresses her call to those that pass by, who go right on their ways. What malicious pleasure to lead such astray!

The difference comes out strongly in what wisdom, as compared with folly, says to him that is void of understanding. “Come, eat ye of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled. Forsake follies, and live; and go in the way of understanding.” All was open, sound, holy and unselfish on wisdom's part. How sinister the speech of the foolish woman “Stolen waters are sweet, and pleasant is the bread of secrecy.” But the appeal of wisdom needs grace to make it palatable; her rival's invitation is just suited to the dark heart of man as he is. He relishes that which shuns the light. He enjoys what is prohibited, and can only be snatched guilefully or by cunning; he suspects what is given freely, and cannot understand the greatest good as a matter of grace. Wisdom's gifts are therefore distrusted and despised; folly's call to stolen waters is as sweet to fallen nature as to drink them, and the bread of secrecy is as pleasant in prospect as to the taste.

How solemn when the curtain is drawn enough to let us see the dread reality! “But he knoweth not that the dead (or departed, shades) [are] there; that her guests [are] in the depths of Sheol.” As the language about wisdom rose in the chapter before into a living and glorious person, an incomparable object of delight to Jehovah, and with no less incomparable delight of love going out to the sons of men, so here chap. 9 ends with a more awful view than is at all usual in the O.T. of the lot that befalls those that lend their ear, and follow the tempting words of the foolish woman. What a contrast with leaving off folly and going on the way of intelligence!

Gospel Words: the Deaf and Stammering Man

Mark 7:32-37

This is one of the two miracles peculiar to the gospel of Mark, the other being the cure of the blind man of Bethsaida (chap. 8:22). They both illustrate the prophetic service of the Son of God. He had come to the lake of Galilee.

“And they bring to him [one] deaf and hardly speaking, and they beseech him to lay his hand on him. And having taken him away from the crowd apart, he put his fingers to his ears; and he spit and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven he groaned, and saith to him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the bond of his tongue was loosed, and be spoke aright. And he charged them that they should tell no one; but the more he charged them, the more abundantly were they publishing [it]. And they were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well; he maketh both the deaf to hear and the speechless to speak” (vers. 32-37).

The minute accuracy of the Holy Spirit in recounting Christ's miracles is admirable. This case differs from others, in that the sufferer is not said to have been absolutely mute, but to have had an impediment of speech, or speaking with difficulty, as well as deaf. Nevertheless the Lord takes especial pains with him. The manner reveals the divine Servant's grace. There was no question of His power. Ordinarily He healed all that needed it in a moment, no matter how extreme, as when an unclean spirit was the cause of the dumbness rather than physical inability or defect. Here He was pleased to manifest His tender interest in detail, and His compassionate love no less than His power to heal. He does much more than what those besought who brought the patient to Him. Putting the hand on the needy one was the usual sign of blessing; and less than this, a word, would have been enough, if so the obedient Lord had seen fit to God's glory.

But He took him aside from the crowd apart. For here it is not the crowd He thinks of, any more than the haughty scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem. Just before He had met the desperate need of the Syro-Phoenician on behalf of her demoniac daughter on the borders of Tire and Sidon. Now He had come through the midst of the borders of Decapolis, where, as the prophet had long before predicted, light was to shine for a despised remnant when darkness brooded over the mass with city and temple dead to the rejected Messiah (Isa. 9:1, 2). So apart from the crowd He took the deaf man, and put His fingers unto, if not into (as the preposition may mean according to the sense required), his ears. But more than this; having spit, He touched the tongue of the stammerer.

He marked in both acts how all depended on bringing Himself personally to bear on the actual wants. He who wrought was man, but no less was He God, the Son incarnate and on earth, in His pitiful love serving God and man. It was not only that He applied what came from within Himself to the man's tongue, but looking up to heaven He groaned, and saith to him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. Power truly went out of Him, and love was its spring in devotedness to God Who is as truly light in His nature as love is the character of its energy, which His own service was manifesting. And thus, if He deigned to touch the man so intimately, He looked up to heaven whence He came in a love that abides unchanging and above all evil, yet groaned in deep sense of it, whilst He said to him, Be opened.

The afflicted man was but an emblem of the state of Israel, unwilling alas! and unable through unbelief to hear God, or to speak out their own misery and His praise. But as brought to Him he set forth the remnant on whom light dawned in a region and shadow of death. And “straightway” (a word so characteristic in the Gospel of His service) his ears were opened, and the bond or tie of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke aright. If the unbelief of the people and its chiefs made their blessing impossible, the poor of the flock prove the all-suffering of His gracious power, and reap the great blessing of faith, be it ever so small. And the love which so wrought will encourage a remnant in a future day, who will re-commence the Jewish history in the land, till it become a strong nation in that faithfulness which is unwearied and will never forget the promise.

For the present all was vain; and He charged them to tell no one, but the more He did, the more a great deal were they its publishers. Yet, true as it might be in word, it was not faith in the heart, but rather extreme astonishment. Even so what a comment on Christ's service “He hath done all things well; He maketh both the deaf to hear and speechless to speak.”

But how is it with you who now read God's testimony to Jesus His Son? Have you heard His voice? For He still speaks in His word; and they live who hear Him; and they follow Him, for they know His voice. Amidst the Babel tongues of Christendom they know it, and there is none like it; for it reveals to their souls God, and God as Father in quite a new way proper not to man even innocent but to the Son already come Who has given us understanding that we may know Him that is true. Truth is in none other; but He is not only the truth, but the way and the life. “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house.” His word cannot deceive, His word only; and what He has done is according to the same perfection: above all is that work which He wrought on the cross, by which we that believe have now received the reconciliation.

1 Peter 1:8-9

The Apostle explains how it is that the Christian is enabled to exult in the midst of trials ever so severe, yet never allowed but where need calls for them at the present time and for a little while. For assuredly, if God's power acts as a garrison round His saints whilst they pass through the world, it is no less energetic in controlling every hostile influence, whatever be the malicious wiles of the adversary the devil. Hence can we boldly say, we know that all things work together for good to those that love God, to those that are called according to purpose. Yea we glory in the tribulations also, knowing what under God is the blessed result both here and hereafter. All the blessing along the way turns upon having Christ as the object before our souls.

“Whom, having not seen, ye love; in whom, though not now seeing but believing, ye exult with joy unspeakable and glorified (or, full of glory), receiving the end of your faith, salvation of souls” (1 Pet. 1:8-9).

When the kingdom is manifested in power and glory at the revelation of Christ, when Jehovah will punish the host of the high ones on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth, wherewith His sore and great and strong sword He will visit leviathan the fleeing serpent and leviathan the crooked serpent, and will slay the dragon that is in the sea, He will in Zion make unto all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And there He will swallow up the veil that veils all the peoples and the covering that is spread over all the nations. He will swallow up death in victory. And the Lord Jehovah will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the reproach of His people will He take away from off the earth; for Jehovah hath spoken.

But now there is the contrast which the N. T. everywhere proclaims, as in the opening, and, we shall see, throughout this Epistle; where it was a special aim to instruct the Christian Jews, lest their old Jewish expectation might mingle and lead to disappointment. For we who believe in the rejected but glorified Christ have to do meanwhile with “the mysteries of the kingdom of the heavens” (Matt. 13:12), as the Lord told the disciples. “To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God” (Mark 4:11). As a whole, and in its varied parts, it was a secret for which the chosen people was unprepared, looking mainly for the display of righteousness, when Israel shall blossom and bud, and they shall fill the face of the world with fruit, and Jerusalem shall be called Jehovah's throne, and all the nations shall be gathered there, to the name of Jehovah, to Jerusalem; and as they shall walk no more with stubborn heart, so shall both houses of Israel be gathered in one, and Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim. And no wonder, for Satan shall be bound in the abyss, and Jehovah-Jesus shall be King over all the earth, nor this only but as the Head over all things heavenly as well as earthly.

With the glorious prospect for the universe in ages to come Christianity stands in striking contrast. For the devil, as our Epistle shows (1 Pet. 5:8), walks about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. It is a wilderness world still, instead of blossoming abundantly and rejoicing with joy and song; and the glory of Jehovah is not yet seen, the excellency of our God, as all the earth in that day shall be filled with His glory. The saints are the very souls who are put to grief, as need arises, in manifold trials. At the same time they are entitled to deeper joys than the displayed kingdom can afford. And here, as the fact had been clearly stated according to experience in the light of the truth, the Apostle explains the rich and unfailing source. It is Jesus, the crucified; yet He is not here but risen, yea glorified on high. He is thus the key to all.

“Whom having not seen ye love.” What a difference from the ordinary occasion of human affection, nay more, from the promise to Israel in that day! “Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty” (Isa. 33:17). “Thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into thy lips. Therefore God hath blessed thee forever... Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever; a scepter of equity is the scepter of Thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows” (Psa. 45:2,6-7). It is not only His reign of beneficence in power and majesty; but at least Jerusalem begins with looking on Him whom they pierced, and mourning as for an only son, a firstborn. Yet appears their Deliverer when their danger is at its extremity, and their bitterest self-reproach is swallowed up in their loving gratitude for Him whose faithfulness to them no evil on their part could overcome.

Good as their portion will be, that of the Christian is far better. And here the Apostle does not even notice the peculiar circumstances of such disciples as beheld the Lord in the days of His flesh. He does not say, “we who saw Him then,” but “ye” as addressing those of the dispersion, just like the bulk who believe the gospel. “Whom having not seen ye love.” Nevertheless it was a vast deal that He had come, the obedient and dependent Man; God's faithful Witness, manifesting the Father, as we read of Him in the Gospels; accomplishing redemption, and now at the right hand of God above. Hence the Lord pronounced the least in the kingdom of the heavens greater than the greatest before it; and the Epistle to the Hebrews says that God provided or foresaw “some better thing for us.”

It must be admitted, as to the words before us, that whatever the love the elders cherished for the coming Messiah, it could not have had that impulse and strength which was given by the power of His infinite grace acting on renewed hearts, as they followed His steps, and hung on His words, and delighted in His ways here below. The Lord could say, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see. For I say to you that many prophets and kings desired to see the things that ye behold, and did not see them, and to hear the things that ye hear, and did not hear them” (Luke 10:24). But it is plain that even that wondrous privilege was beneath the mighty accession imported by His death, and resurrection, and ascension, especially when the Holy Spirit was given to apprehend all fully and to bear witness accordingly.

Therefore those who yearn after a Messiah seen on earth know not how much it is to know Him dead, risen, and glorified, even for the deepest profit in tracing His recorded ways on earth. For it is in this light that His every word, step, and act is best understood and enjoyed. There His love shines at its fullest; and we love, because He first loved us, and assuredly love Him beyond all. Now it is in this way that the Apostle could say characteristically, “Whom having not seen ye love.” It is just so the Christian loves Christ. He knows His love, as none before Incarnation could know, and beyond all during His ministry. He knows it in His humiliation, in His suffering unequaled and above all comparison in His rejection and cross. He begins, though he never saw Him here, with learning its depths, where those who followed Him on earth closed their difficulties, and passed into spiritual understanding, when He was raised from out of the dead. None has such vantage ground for loving the Lord Jesus as the Christian. Even the apostles loved Him all the more when they emerged from Jewish wraps and veils into that state of light and liberty.

The next clause only confirms the superior blessedness of Christianity: “in whom, though not now seeing but believing, ye exult with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Our Lord has conclusively ruled that believing has a value beyond sight. “Because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed they, that have seen not and believed” (John 20:29). It is just the difference between the Jews when their blessing comes, and the Christian yet more blessed morally now; and what will it be then? As heaven is above earth. Hence it is evident that as Christianity deepens love, so it purifies and strengthens faith. The elders in its power obtained witness; but how immensely the scope of faith is enlarged when the secrets of God are no longer hidden but revealed as now to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit!

Well may the Christian then “exult with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” It is so characteristic that our Lord represents its very starting-point in the reception of the prodigal son. For God as such is glorified in that cross of Christ which is its foundation, and He is also as Father in the love of that relationship. “Bring out the best robe and invest him; and put a ring on his hand, and sandals on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it; and let us eat and be merry. For this my son was dead and has come to life, he was lost and is found.” God Himself has His joy in the grace that brings such salvation. What sanction for its object and all that have tasted of like mercy! And as we are called to grow by the knowledge of God and His Son, so also to rejoice in the Lord always, and in everything give thanks. Shame on us if we do not now exult with joy unspeakable and glorified, seeing that in the glory is He on whom our blessedness depends. No doubt we boast in hope of the glory of God; but our best, our perfect, security for it is that He is there, entered as forerunner for us.

In accordance with the exultation to which we are even now entitled, while looking on for its perfection when we are glorified, it is added, “receiving the end of your faith, salvation of souls.” We shall not receive salvation of the body till He comes for whom we wait; but we are not waiting for the salvation of souls. This the gospel announces with all plainness of certainty. Christ has wrought such a work for it that no addition could make it more complete in itself or more efficacious for him that believes. He is not like the earthly priest standing to renew what never could be finished. When He had offered one sacrifice for sins, He in perpetuity (or without a break) sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till His enemies be made the footstool of His feet. Whatever else He may do, He has nothing to do for cleansing the worshipper. For by one offering He has perfected in perpetuity those that are sanctified; His seat there proclaims it.

But we are told by one who denies this present fruit of Christ's work to be here meant, that the word κομιζόμενοι quite forbids the sense of “present realizing,” and in every one of the references it betokens the ultimate reception of glory or condemnation from the Lord. Is this true? The texts are 2 Cor. 5:10, Eph. 6:8, Col. 3:25, 1 Peter 5:4, 2 Peter 2:13; which in fact disprove the strange allegation. For indisputably the first is from its nature only a future scene with which the aorist subjunctive falls in. The second and third not only presuppose that day but are expressly the future tense, like the fourth. The fifth is a future participle, whereas in the contested case of our text it is the participle of the present tense, and the context confirms that it is now. “Joy one cannot speak out and glorified” may be and is pleaded for a future sense. But will it be really so in that day, when perfection is come? When we know as we are known, will utterance fail as now?

“Glorified,” or full of glory, is no doubt an unusual word; yet to attribute this also to a joy too big for our present power of expression seems just to suit the fervor of the Apostle. Christ on high its source might readily clothe the Christians' joy with that character of glory before they themselves are there. Soul-salvation, before our bodies are conformed to the body of His glory, is a worthy end of our faith to receive now; for beyond all controversy the outer man follows the inner, and God never disappoints the believer of his hope. Salvation “of souls” too by its restricted application fittingly lends itself to what the believer receives now; whereas for the future the Apostle does not so qualify “salvation,” as we have already remarked.

Kingdom of God: 9

Peter was not to suppose that to sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel, was the only reward that the glorified Son of man will distribute at His coming. The fact is, that Peter himself, and the other apostles, as members of Christ's body, of His flesh, and of His bones, coheirs with Him and with all who are His members thus, will inherit a higher place of glory than the sitting on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Peter would, as it were, have made our compact with our Lord; and had he been excluded from all that is not comprised in the promise here made to him, there are glories in which he would not have shared, which fall to the lot of us poor sinners of the Gentiles. Peter was to understand that there would be others to be rewarded besides the apostles; yea, and he was not to suppose that because the apostles were first in order of time, their reward would necessarily be greater than that of those who came after them. “But many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first. For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder,” &c. (20:1-16). If we seek to make the Lord our debtor, we must not complain if we find that He gives us barely what we agree with Him for, and gives quite as much to others who enter the vineyard almost at the close of the day. The “kingdom of heaven” is clearly distinguished here from “the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of His glory.” It is in the kingdom of heaven that the service is rendered—the labor accomplished—which meets its reward in “the regeneration,” when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of His glory.

The request preferred by the mother of Zebedee's children, in verses 20, 21 of this chapter, is another expression of the same spirit which our Lord had been correcting in the parable of the laborers. The blessed Savior assures them that they shall drink of His cup and be baptized with His baptism; but the place they shall fill in His kingdom He leaves to His Father's will. He takes occasion from the whole to put in contrast the ways of the Gentiles, of which these disciples so much savored, and the ways of His kingdom in its present mysterious state. He, the King, came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many; and what but to tread in His steps can become those who are the subjects, during His rejection, of the kingdom of heaven.

The beginning of chapter 21 presents us with a little pledge of that future kingdom which awaits our Lord, when the whole nation shall say, what the multitude of the disciples then said: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord; hosanna in the highest!” Full proof was given at once, however, that the nation was not ready for that kingdom then. The very cries of the children in the temple who said Hosanna awoke the indignation of the chief priests and scribes: “they were sore displeased.” The kingdom could not therefore be then set up in power, and the glory of it be introduced. Nevertheless a kingdom had come nigh to them; and our Lord, by the parable of the two sons, to whom the Father said, “Go, work to-day in my vineyard,” presses on His hearers the solemn truth that the publicans and harlots were more ready to go into the kingdom of God than the most religious people of that day.

In the next parable, verses 33-44, Jesus takes a review of all God's dealings with that nation. He had let out His vineyard to husbandmen, and sent, time after time, to receive the fruits; but of His servants they beat one, and kill another, and are now about to slay the Son and Heir whom the owner of the vineyard had last of all sent, saying, “They will reverence my Son.” What can be done to these husbandmen by the Lord of the vineyard? Even they themselves answer: “He will miserably destroy these wicked men, and will let out His vineyard to other husbandmen, which shall render Him the fruits in their seasons.” How solemn the reply of Jesus! “Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes? Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.”

All hope of Israel's present reception of the kingdom, as promised to those of old time, being thus cut off, our Lord goes on in chapter 22 to present another likeness, or comparison, of the “kingdom of heaven” which was to intervene between that crisis and the one yet future, when the Son of man shall be revealed, and sit upon the throne of His glory. A marriage feast made ready by the king in honor of His son, and His servants sent out to invite the guests, is a different thing from a vineyard let out to husbandmen, and the servants sent to require the fruit. But alas! the heart of man has no worthier answer to the grace and goodness of the one than to the just and righteous claims of the other. They make light of the invitation, and spitefully entreat and slay the servants who are the bearers of it. This fills up the measure of their iniquity, and the king sends forth His armies (the Romans) and destroys those murderers, and burns up their city. But is His grace to be disappointed, and His table unfurnished with guests? No: the servants are sent out into the highways to gather together all, as many as they find, good and bad, and in the end the wedding is furnished with guests. Precious testimony of the grace which now gathers us, irrespective of what we are, to share the feast and enjoy the blessedness which God, of His own grace, and for the honor of His Son, has prepared for us! One solemn word there is at the close of this parable (may our hearts deeply and fully learn it!), that, even as the freeness of the invitation is all the warrant we need to enter, so surely, if that has reached our hearts and wrought effectually there, the wedding garment will be worn by us as our only title to sit at the table. Christ will be all our confidence, all our hope. It is this that distinguishes between the real and the fictitious, the true and the false, in the kingdom of heaven.

In chapter 32:13 the Lord denounces a fearful woe upon the scribes and Pharisees, because they will not enter this kingdom of heaven themselves, and because they do what they can to hinder others from entering in besides.

The remaining notices of the kingdom, and parables respecting it in chapters 24, 25 and 26 of this Gospel, have been already so fully discussed in the paper on the Gospel according to Matthew, page 121, vol. 1 of “The Prospect,” that I would simply refer the reader to its contents, and here, for the present, close my remarks. It may be that, if the Lord should tarry, opportunity may be afforded of going through the other Gospels also, noticing any points of difference in the light in which they present the kingdom, as compared with this Gospel of Matthew; and touching upon the passages in the Acts and Epistles too. But this is in our Father's hands. May He, of His grace, make all our inquiries into His precious word effectual to the sanctification of our souls, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake! Amen. (concluded from p. 92)

The Principles Displayed in the Ways of God Compared With His Ultimate Dealings: Part 1

It seems to me that the examination of the great principles, which God has brought out in His ways in the history given us in the Bible, would facilitate the intelligence of His ultimate dealings with men and the understanding of their prophetic announcements, the accomplishment of which will be the establishment in power of the principles which God has already displayed and taught historically in His dealings of old. I send you, therefore, some thoughts upon the progressive development of these principles. In the very outset of creation we have one of the last importance, which also gives in figure the ultimate results of God's ways in His dispensations towards men, a kind of exhibition of ἀρχὴ τῆς θεωρίας, which is to be τέλος τῆς πράξεως.

Adam was created in the image of God, and was set to rule over the works of God's hands, the center of a vast system subordinated to him, and over which he had universal dominion. He was, says the apostle, the image of Him that was to come; and the same apostle takes the eighth Psalm, which, in the letter of its application there, would be limited to the first Adam, and applies the universality of its terms to the full dominion of the Second. No doubt the dominion of the Second Man is far more extensive than that of the first, because, having Himself created all things, He is to inherit all He has created. But it is not the less true that the first Adam, as image of God, as center of the system in which he was placed, as having dominion over the creation by which he was surrounded, was the image or type of the Lord Jesus, Son of man, head over all things. Other accessories enlarge this resemblance. Eve, partaker of a lordship to which she had no right of her own, but which she enjoyed as one with Adam, is the liveliest picture of the church, and so used beautifully by the apostle in Eph. 5. According to Rom. 5, we have also in Adam fallen, the head of a race involved in his sin and all its consequences, as in the Last Adam, when righteousness was accomplished, the head of a brotherhood or family which participates in all that He is as the head of it in the presence and sight of God.

I pass over the time before the flood, whose general character offers a sad contrast to the time when righteousness dwells in the new heavens and the new earth, without a government to maintain it and make it good against the opposition of an adverse nation or the weakness of a failing one. Neither the one nor the other can properly be called “dispensation.” They are both another world from that in which we live.

With Noah we begin the course of dispensations, or of the manifestations of the ways of God for the final bringing out of the full glory of Christ. These ways regard the earth and are founded, so far as they are conferred blessing, on the sacrifice of Christ. Enoch indeed had been taken out of the midst of a corrupt world and had a heavenly portion, while he testified of the judgment of the world, out of which he was called, by the coming of the Lord with His saints, a very remarkable anticipation of our portion in Christ. But Noah was preserved through the deluge, to begin a new world, of which he was the head and chief.

The name Noah is expressive of the rest of the earth, comfort concerning the work of men's hands, because of the ground which Jehovah had cursed. Three especial features accompany and characterize this position: the sacrifice which turned aside the curse; the restraint of evil; and the pledge of secured blessing to creation while earth lasted. But, as regards dispensation, Noah was the head of a new system where evil was, but where evil was to be restrained, and the curse relieved under which the earth groaned.

The next important principle brought out is calling and election. The earth was not only now corrupt and violent—it had departed from God. It had not liked to retain God in its knowledge, and served other gods. God, in sovereign election, calls Abram to follow Him apart from the world; and separation from the world, for the enjoyment of promise by faith, becomes the divine principle of blessing. Abraham is the father of all them that believe. He has to quit all on the supreme claim of Jehovah—country, kindred, and father's house, for a land only in promise, which God would show him. Brought there, he has still to walk by faith in patience, not yet inheriting the promises. When in possession of them in pledge, in Isaac he has to give them all up, as held in the present life of Isaac, by unquestioning confidence in God, to receive them in the power of One Who raises the dead.

We have election, call, promises, by which the believer is a stranger in a world departed from God. To this we may add the distinct principle of receiving the promises by the power of God in resurrection. This special position made Abraham to be in a peculiar manner, the father of the faithful, of all them that believe; the father of many nations before God, in Whom he believed, the heir of the world. The detail of the promises, whether of the blessings of the nations, only given in Gen. 12, and confirmed to Isaac in Gen. 22, or of a numerous seed according to the flesh, and of the land of Canaan, are not properly our subject here.

The latter leads, however, to the next important step in the ways of God, the formation and deliverance of a people from the power of their enemies by judgments and an out-stretched arm, by which they were set apart as a people of dilection to God on the earth. Israel's coming up out of Egypt is, I need not say, the event in which this was prefigured. Long subject to hostile and oppressive Gentiles, and particularly at the close, when God was about to deliver them, His arm (Who had already given the blood of the Lamb as the safeguard against His righteous judgment) delivered the people with a power which none could dispute, executing judgment on the proud enemies who oppressed them, and defied His majesty. Joseph and his Egyptian wife had given meanwhile the remarkable type of a rejected Christ exalted on high and his Gentile bride, who had made him to forget all his affliction and his father's house.

But Israel's deliverance gave occasion to the introduction of an entirely new principle, not the prefiguring the ways of God, but the putting of man to the proof on the revealed principles of what he ought to be, and that, when thus delivered and brought near to God, as a favored people guarded of Him, with every motive and means for walking before Him Who had thus borne him on eagle's wings, and brought him to Himself. In a word, the law came in. Immediately broken, Israel is anew, through intercession, placed under it as a condition, with the added revelation of all the graciousness and goodness of the character of Him under Whose government he was placed, and Who would act in that government on the principles thus revealed. Still he was placed under law, and held the blessings under the condition of his own obedience. This, as the apostle states, came in by the bye, added because of transgression, till the Seed should come to Whom the promise was made. The law in itself could do nothing but convict man of his incompetency. But it gave in general the principle of a rule of God's will, to be written afterward in the heart of His earthly people; in obedience to which, maintained in their hearts by God, they would enjoy the blessing conferred by Him on His people on the earth. But on the principles of government declared by God to Moses, and announced in Exodus, the people were placed on the mediation of the priesthood under the immediate government of God. The priesthood was there to maintain the blessing if there was failure (where it was not departure from God or sinning with a high hand); and Israel, in obedience, would have had their peace flow like a river.

But Israel, incapable of walking by faith and trusting God even when the blessings were immediately consequent on obedience, prefers being like the nations, and demands a king, when God was his king. However, this gave occasion to the revelation of another principle of God's ways with men, the establishment of royalty in Zion, a royalty whose sway should extend much farther, and in which the Gentiles should trust. However, royalty is established and in Zion, and that by grace, after the failure and ruin of the people, through disobedience to God, under His immediate government. The priesthood itself loses its place, and the faithful priest is to stand before God's anointed. The king is now the anointed of God. The principle of this royalty is on one side the throne of Jehovah (Solomon is said to sit “on the throne of Jehovah”), and on the other, it is strength out of weakness. See Hannah's song. It is the reestablishment of Israel in blessing, when hopelessly ruined, by the means of the rejected, but God-fearing, King, Who delivers them from their enemies and subdues the heathen. This re-establishment by royalty has a double bearing, the blessing of the people after their ruin, by the deliverance wrought, and their re-establishment in accepted worship after the guilt—the temple after Shiloh—and that in a peculiar manner in grace, after the numbering of the people. There were three stages to this royalty: when rejected entirely in Israel; when the ark was placed by David on Mount Zion—the energy of victory in connection with the assured covenant, but not yet the blessing of peace: after this the third state, which was Solomon's. Christ, I doubt not, has filled up, or will fill up, all these: the rejected, the victorious, and the peaceful King. In general, we have the important additional principle of a human, ordained king, in a royalty established by God over His people, said to be seated too on Jehovah's throne. This, as we know, in man's hands failed, like all the rest, and gave rise to another and large modification of the principle of royalty, the confiding the power of universal dominion, wherever the children of men dwell, to man on the earth. This was sovereignly conferred beyond the limits of Jewish promise and dominion, acquired by no faithful service in suffering, but divinely bestowed by the God of heaven. This also fell, and more than fell. Substituted for the Jewish royalty, it united with the Jews and their ecclesiastical rulers in the rejection of the Son of God and King of the Jews, one of which titles, in its lowest acceptation, is the character in which, above all descent from David, though that be at the same time true, Christ is to have the heathen for His inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession, and the other of which expresses evidently His title among the Jews as the anointed, the Son of David. We have thus far all these features:

Adam, center of the earthly system under God. Noah, head of the earth blessed after the curse, restraining evil.

Abraham, called by election out of the world, to which promise was annexed.

A people redeemed and formed as such, as belonging to God on the earth.

The law, the rule of the people so formed, and the path of blessing as the will of God.

The royalty of Israel in the family of David. And the royalty of the Gentile world, sovereignly conferred by the God of heaven.

All these will be made good in Christ, in person, or for His people. He is the Second Adam, the head of the earth restraining evil after the curse, the chosen one separate from the world in Whom all the promises are Yea and Amen; the head and uniter of redeemed Israel, the true vine, the son called out of Egypt, the one in whom the law was magnified.

These two facts will also have their accomplishment hereafter in His people: the Son of David; and the head of the Gentile world established such by the sovereignty of God.

Hence all this progress of development closed with the rejection of Him in Whom all was to be accomplished.

(To be continued, D.V.)

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Matthew

Chap. 5 Divine Design.—28. Matthew

A new language, the characteristically Gentile one i.e. the Greek, marks outwardly a still deeper inward distinction in what is commonly the New Testament. Its basis is the Son of God come, who has given all who believe, Jew or Greek, an understanding that we should know Him that is true. The gospel therefore goes out freely to every creature, and the children of God are gathered in one by the Holy Spirit; whilst the Lord, ascended to heaven, promises to come and receive His own, before the day of His appearing when the kingdom shall be set up over the earth in visible and indisputable glory, and Christ's supremacy be manifested over all creation heavenly and earthly which the church shall share as His bride. Hence God is revealed as He is in light and love; man is laid bare as wholly evil and lost; provisional dealing and probation yield to grace and truth come in Jesus Christ, Who, rejected of man and the Jews especially, accomplished redemption, and brings in the new things according to the hidden but eternal counsels of God, before He will resume His relations with Israel in fulfillment of His promises to the fathers and the blessing of all families of the earth in the restitution of all things, of which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets since time began.

In the first Gospel the Holy Spirit has for the distinctive object, as shown in its contents, to set forth Jesus as the Christ or Messiah, according to promises and prophecy; Son of David, Son of Abraham, in an especial sense; yet rejected by the Jew no less but more than by the Gentile, and so proclaiming Himself Son of man to suffer for mankind, and be exalted to heavenly and universal glory. The mysteries of the kingdom of the heavens meanwhile are disclosed to faith, and the church, part of a mystery still greater, is built on Him, the Son of the living God, before He returns as Son of man in power and glory.

Hence chap. 1 furnishes His genealogy in the Messianic point of view, down from the roots of promise and royalty in three series of fourteen generations, in which the few women named carry the manifest significance of grace to Gentiles and the grossest of sinners. It is Joseph's line from Solomon, which was legally essential; though due care is taken to mark His birth of “the virgin” of that house by the Holy Spirit, according to Isa. 7, Emmanuel, and Jehovah or Jah in His very name.

In chap. 2 magi from the east are seen coming to pay homage to the born King of the Jews; but they learn Bethlehem to be the birthplace, as Micah had predicted long before. An Idumean under Roman authority then ruled Jerusalem; and king and people were troubled at the tidings. But the strangers are angelically warned as well as Joseph, to defeat the designs of Herod, and thus also to accomplish Hos. 11:1 and Jer. 31:15. The return to dwell at Nazareth, despised as it was, fell in with the prophecies that such was to be Messiah's lot.

Chap. 3 presents the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of Jehovah. It is John the Baptist saying, Repent, for the kingdom of the heavens path drawn nigh: a testimony to Christ's coming to baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. But Jesus stoops to be baptized, and is owned as Son by the Father, while the Spirit descends on Him visibly. The Trinity now revealed.

In chap. 4 we have Jesus tempted by the devil forty days and after that in three special ways, but victorious. Then when John was delivered up, the Lord's Galilean ministry begins, as in Isa. 9:1, 2, and the call of the earlier disciples, with a general summary of His teaching and preaching which attracts from far beyond that province, of His healing all sickness and disease, and of His power over demons.

Then in chaps. 5-7 He on the mount lays down authoritatively the principles of the kingdom in contrast to the law, with the manifestation of the Father's name and the suited word, concluding with the security of the obedient, but the sin and vanity and ruin of mere profession.

Chapter 8 displays the reality and character of Jehovah's presence in Christ here below: (1) the Jewish leper, (2) the Gentile centurion, (3) Peter's wife's mother, (4) the fulfillment of Isaiah 53:4, (5) the scribes and the disciples, (6) the tempest rebuked, and (7) the demoniacs delivered. In chap. 9 is shown the growth of unbelieving hatred and blasphemy brought out by (1) the paralytic forgiven, (2) the tax-gatherer called, (3) the question of fasting, (4) the ruler's child raised, (5) and on the way the flux of blood healed, (6) the two blind given to see, and (7) the dumb demoniac to speak.

Thereon, deeply pitying the distressed and scattered sheep of Israel, He bids His disciples pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers; and in chap. 10 He sends forth the twelve with authority like His own over unclean spirits and diseases, but as yet only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (not to Gentiles or Samaritans), preaching the kingdom, as John had preached and Himself. He prepares them for enmity and tells them that their task will not close till the Son of man be come, while He assures them, not only of the Spirit's aid, but of honor and reward before His Father.

In chapter 11 Christ testifies to John, instead of getting due testimony from him; shows that the kingdom calls for decision at all cost but is well worth while; reproves the caprice of “this generation;” and warns the cities unrepentant in the face of the powers displayed, but bows with gracious confession to the Father, Who bid these things from wise and understanding men, yet revealed them to babes. He not only sees but announces a higher glory and a deeper grace opening out than if Israel had received Him after the flesh.

After the rest given to faith, chap. 7 opens with the lesson of the sabbaths perverted to deny His glory Who is Lord of the sabbath as of all, and with the resolve of the Pharisee to destroy Him. The Lord retires, heals still, but charges them not to make Him known. He bows to His rejection. In another and deeper way would the divine counsel be made good, as Isa. 42 declared. So, when a blind and dumb demoniac was healed and the Pharisees attribute His power to Beelzebub, He warns of the blasphemy against the Spirit that shall not be forgiven, pronounces the last state of “this evil generation” to become worse than the first, and owns His true relationship henceforth to be, not with mother and brethren after the flesh, but whosoever shall do the will of His Father Who is in heaven.

Accordingly in chap. 8 the Lord expounds in seven parables (beginning with His new work as the Sower of the word and in six following similitudes) the mysteries of the kingdom consequent on His rejection and going on high. The first took in His work before the kingdom was set up in the heavens, and was spoken outside like the next three. The interpretation of the wheat field spoiled by darnel was given within the house like the last three. But, whatever His words or works, the Jews stumbled at the stumbling-stone, His person.

In chap. 14 we see the state morally no better but rather worse. Yet if the Lord withdraws, His compassion to Israel is unabated. He heals their diseases, satisfies the poor with bread as the true and royal Son of David, dismisses the multitude, and goes up the mountain to pray, the picture of His present work on high. But when the disciples are tempest-tossed with the winds contrary, He rejoins them, and the wind ceases, and those in the ship pay Him homage as God's Son. And now He is recognized and welcomed in His beneficent power.

Chap. 15 is the Lord's judgment of earthly religion proud in the poverty of tradition, with an unclean condition inwardly, whatever the zeal in washing of hands. On the other hand, if a Canaanite under curse cried for mercy against a demon's oppression, would Jesus deny her? He vindicates her faith, while He renews His labor of love in despised Galilee, and abundantly blesses the provision of the poor as the true Son of David.

In chap. 16 none the less does the Lord denounce the hypocrisy of a generation seeking after a sign, while blind to all set before them so fully. No sign should be given but that of Jonah's death and resurrection, opening the door to Gentiles. If men said this or that, Simon Peter confesses Him Christ, the Son of the living God, as revealed of the Father. And the Son also gives him a new name, declares that on this rock He will build His church, and confers on him the keys of the kingdom: two distinct, yet connected, systems of blessing to replace Israel. Thereon He announces His suffering, death, and resurrection, and calls on the one that owns Him to deny self, take up his cross, and follow Him.

Chap. 17 is a miniature though divine display of the kingdom, but Christ meanwhile declared Son of God, Who is to be heard, not law and prophets. Yet here below the disciples fail through unbelief; whereas Christ, proving Himself Lord of all, takes as yet no glory here, but associates His own with Himself in grace.

Next in chap. 18 He enforces humiliation in love as befitting His own in the kingdom; and in the church grace to win the wrong-doer with the sanction of heaven on their acts rightly done. The parable from ver. 23 teaches that such as professedly had forgiveness, but outraged its spirit, have all their guilt renewed to their ruin.

Chap. 19 shows that, while God's constitution of man is right, grace reveals better things to those that share Christ's rejection, and that God encourages fidelity by due reward. It ought to be plain that there are no thrones for the apostles till the regeneration when the Lord comes in glory. Those “enthroned” meanwhile are not their true successors, but affect Gentile grandeur.

Chap. 20 begins with the other side of God's rights in a parable maintaining His sovereignty. But the Son of man's path lies through shame and death, and there is no other way to glory, though the disposal is His Father's. The danger is from a fleshly mind, which is no better than a Gentile's: the Son of man on the contrary came to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

The Lord had now entered on His last journey to Jerusalem; and the healing of the two blind men near Jericho begins the final presentation of Himself Who knew the end before He began (20: 29-34). In chap. 21 He accomplishes Zech. 9:9, purges the temple, and defends the children's Hosannas with Psa. 8. The curse on the fig-tree was the sentence on the people, full of show but without fruit; and when the religious chiefs ask for His authority, He puts a question to their conscience. When they shirk the answer, He sets out one parable that shows them to be worse than the tax-gatherers and the harlots; and in another He describes God's dealings with the rebellious people, even to His own rejection in death. They themselves must own (ver. 41) their just destruction; on which He cites Psa. 118:22, and connects with it not only the removal of the kingdom of God from them but the effect of both His advents, now their stumbling on Him to be broken, by-and-by His falling on them to be scattered as dust. They knew what He meant, but as yet feared to do their will.

So in chap. 22 the Lord adds in a parable what grace has done and is doing, with the effects for the unbelieving, not only providential judgment which fell on Jerusalem, but that for each at the end and forever. Then come the Pharisees with the Herodians about the tribute, and the Sadducees about the resurrection, and the lawyer about the commandments, all answered to their confusion; after which the Lord puts the question of questions for a Jew (as indeed for any). Faith alone answers; but they had none; and there they are to this day.

In chap. 23 the Lord, while owning the law's authority (spite of the falseness of those who administered it), calls His disciples to the lowly position He had taken as their pattern; and He Who began with “Blessed, blessed,” now ends with “Woe, woe.” How their evil did not cease with His cross but went on against His servants, we know too well. But even here in declaring the inevitable retribution, He cannot close without a door of hope in the last verse (39).

Chaps. 24 and 25 are His great prophecy on the mount, beginning with the Jews, and ending with the Gentiles in 25:31 to the end. Between the two (from 24:45 to 25:30) is the part that deals with the Christian profession. This takes therefore the general unrestricted form of three parables, since the link is with Christ Himself, not with the land or the people of Israel: the house. bondman faithful or wise, or evil, respectively characterizing Christendom in comprehensive responsibility; the ten virgins, foolish or prudent, manifested by the reality or unreality of the hope when judgment falls; and the bondmen trading with His goods, good and faithful on the one hand, or wicked and slothful on the other, in individual responsibility. The sheep and the goats represent the true and the false, not in Christendom, but among all the nations in the end of the age, tested by the testimony of the King's “brethren” during that crisis, while the heavenly saints are with Christ on high before He appears, and they with Him, in the same glory.

In chaps. 26, 27 we have the unutterably solemn and touching scenes of the Lord's earthly close. The Lord announces it; the chief priests and their associates plot; the last anointing is done for His burial; the traitor covenants; the Lord directs the paschal feast and eats it with the disciples; He institutes His supper; He goes out to Olivet, and He enters on His agony in Gethsemane; and then becomes the willing Captive, as later the Victim. The mock trial before Caiaphas follows; and Peter denies, and Judas in remorse casts down his silver in the sanctuary and commits suicide. Pilate condemns the Holy One and releases Barabbas. Jesus is crucified, “the King of the Jews “: for this alone is Pilate firm. All rail, even the robbers. He dismissed His spirit; and the veil of the temple was rent, and the earth quaked, and the rocks rent, as there had been supernatural darkness around the cross when the Messiah made sin was abandoned by His God. But if men designed otherwise, He was with the rich in His death, as the prophet said so emphatically.

Chap. 28 tells of Him risen. What availed the keepers or the seal? And the angel, before whom the guard trembled, bade the women not fear, but tell the disciples He was risen and would meet them in Galilee, the familiar ground of His ministry. And so it was amid fear and joy and doubt: He Himself appeared and confirmed it, whatever lying Jews and bribed Gentiles pretended. There too He gave them His commission. “All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth. Go ye, disciple all the nations, baptizing them unto the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo! I am with you all the days, even unto the consummation of the age.” Here may be seen what supersedes Israel till the age is ended. When the new age comes, they will be owned and blessed as the head of the nations. The first dominion will be Zion's. Even during that period (for such is the consummation of the age, not a mere epoch) there will be a suited state of transition. Till then discipling proceeds; and disciples are to be baptized to the name, not of Jehovah, but of God fully revealed as now—the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Observance of Christ's injunctions follows, with the assurance of His constant presence: a condition quite distinct from His millennial reign in manifested power and glory.

Surrounding Us

Q.-Heb. 12:1: how seeing, or surrounding? M.

A. We are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, not spectators of us, but giving testimony in faith; but the call is to look away from all else to Jesus, the leader and completer of faith. Neither sentiment nor superstition can do anything here but hinder our running the race well; and this can only be with endurance rather than energy.

BY J. N. DARBY COLLECTED WRITINGS, 6/each VOL SYNOPSIS, 5/do.

THE CHURCH'S PRESENT HOPE, 1/paper, 1/6 cloth.

SANCTIFICATION, OR SETTING APART TO GOD, 3d.

OBEDIENCE, ld. PAUL'S WISH IN CHAINS, id.

WHAT DO I LEARN FROM SCRIPTURE?

GRACE, 4 a penny; 1/9 per 100.

BY W. KELLY
The Preaching to the Spirits in Prison, cloth, 1/6.
THE BOOK OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.
AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.
THE OFFERINGS OF LEVITICUS, 12mo. cloth, 1j6.
THE MYSTERY AND THE COVENANTS, 3d. each.
PROVIDENCE AND FAITH, 5d. a dozen.
BRIEF HINTS ON THE PSALMS, lid. each.
HINTS ON ISAIAH, 5d. a dozen. DANIEL THE PROPHET, 2d.
STRANGE DOCTRINE, 6d. per dozen.
GOSPEL WORDS, nine series, each No. 1/per 100.

HYMNS revised in 1894, cloth, 9d.; Paste Grain, 1/6; Mor.,
from 2/to 4/-.

Large Type, cloth, 1/6; Paste Grain, 2/6; Mor. 4/to 6/-.
GOOD TIDINGS' HYMN BOOK, cloth, limp, 3d.
The above two Hymn Books bound together, cloth, 1/-.
HYMNS (29) for Christian Meetings, 2/for 100.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Isaac: 20. The Generations of Isaac

Gen. 25:19-26

As we have had occasion to remark in scripture, the Spirit briefly notices the fleshly claim before giving us what is of grace: not first the spiritual but the natural; afterward the spiritual. We have had Ishmael's generations of much and speedy show; now we hear of Isaac's.

“And these [are] the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son. Abraham begot Isaac. And Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebecca as wife, daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padan-Aram, sister of Laban the Syrian. And Isaac entreated Jehovah for his wife, because she [was] barren; and Jehovah was entreated of him, and Rebecca his wife conceived. And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If so, why [am] I thus (or, do I live?)? And she went to inquire of Jehovah. And Jehovah said to her, Two nations [are] in thy womb, and two peoples shall be separated from thy bowels; and [one] people shall be stronger than [the other] people; and the elder shall serve the younger. And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, twins [were] in her womb. And the first came out red all over like a hairy garment; and they called his name Esau. And after that came his brother out; and his hand took hold of Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob; and Isaac [was] sixty years old when she bore them” (vers. 19-26).

It is of God that faith should be tried. The promise is sure; but the believer has to wait for it. Ishmael can boast of his twelve sons, with names soon notable by their villages, if not “towns,” and by their encampments, if not castles. Isaac mourned for a mother beloved, and had not a wife provided for him, till he was forty years old. Even then he abides childless some twenty years. “And Isaac entreated Jehovah for his wife, because she was barren; and Jehovah was entreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.” As Abraham knew that “in Isaac should his seed be called,” yet staggered not at God's call to offer him up for a Burnt-offering, assured that this very Isaac would be given back to him and continue the line of blessing, so Isaac had His word securing the call inalienably in himself, the type of the promised Seed on Whom all hangs. It was grace; but grace revealed the channel through which the blessing was to flow, and this drew out his prayers, while patience had its perfect work. Isaac therefore entreated Jehovah, and Jehovah was entreated of Isaac. The trial of his faith was far from being so searching as Abraham's. It was suited to each in divine wisdom. Strong faith shone in the father, gracious dependence in the son, to the praise of God in the blessing of both.

We may notice too that Isaac and Rebekah were kept from the snare that involved Abraham and especially Sarah in the grief which impatience brought into their home. In Rebekah's case there was no thought of building up the desired heir to Isaac by a concubine; nor did he on his part look to so fleshly a device. Conjugal faithfulness and purity in the main characterized the pair. They hoped for the promised boon which for so long they saw not; but with patience they waited for it, and not in vain. Isaac did not faint, but besought Jehovah according to His promise, and he was heard in due time.

There were to be twins. And the children gave anticipative token to their mother, as we are told, for her trial, so that she too went to inquire of Jehovah. Who can overlook the propriety with which the name of covenant relationship is here employed? All intrinsic value is lost by the supposition that it is due to an accidental occurrence of that designation; it is really divine purpose clothing the account with the title of moral government. Nor is there any ground to fancy that she consulted Melchizedek or journeyed to Moriah. Without either she knew where to find Jehovah and how to inquire of Him. Her faith might be weak, but it was real, and without superstitious dependence on any man or place.

Here was Jehovah's answer (ver. 23): “Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples shall be separated from thy bowels; and people shall be stronger than people; and the elder shall serve the younger.” Predestination as to their history on earth is manifest here. It is made all the more striking, because the babes yet unborn were of the same mother as well as father, nay twins. So it is that the apostle in Rom. 9:10-12 deduces the truth intended. “But Rebekah also having conceived by one, Isaac our father, (for [the children] being not yet born, nor having done anything good or worthless, that the purpose of God according to election might abide, not of works, but of him that calleth) it was said to her, The elder shall serve the younger.” Divine sovereignty was thus shown to be as free as it is certain to faith. Fleshly descent on which the Jews founded their exclusive title is disproved; expressly and assuredly of Esau. For here flesh is excluded most distinctly, and the title is drawn from Jehovah's sovereign pleasure. His word made it all the more pointed by declaring that “the elder should serve the younger,” and this in view of their future nations respectively.

The details of fact follow. Esau appeared first, full of evident vigor; Jacob afterward, with his hand holding Esau's heel, which gave his name of supplanter before he had power with God. But it is meet, whatever appearances say, that God should have His way, not man; and if man resists, it is to his own sorrow, shame, and ruin. We perhaps may say of Jacob, that God placed more abundant honor on that which lacked. Is our eye evil because His is good?

Priesthood: 13. Not Eating the Sin Offering

Not Eating the Sin-Offering. Lev. 10:16-20

In the opening of the chapter we have seen God's great dishonor and man's great transgression, in presence of signal grace and not merely of creature responsibility. To this the priests were exposed, and therein the elder sons of Aaron fell. It was despising the Burnt-offering, and God's fire in its acceptance. Then came instruction to guard them against the expression of grief or the allowance of excitement. In these others might indulge, but not those who had the privilege of drawing near to His sanctuary. Their communion too with the holy oblation to Jehovah, and with the more freely enjoyed sacrifices of Peace offerings was duly explained. There remained the solemn injunction that the priests should eat the Sin-offering. Their failure in this respect closes the chapter, deeply appealing to us who, though of a heavenly calling, are no less apt to forget what it speaks to our souls and means before God.

“And Moses diligently sought the goat of the sin-offering, and, behold, it was burnt up; then he was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron's sons [that were] left, saying, Why have ye not eaten the sin-offering in the place of the sanctuary? For it [is] most holy; and he hath given it to you, that ye might bear the iniquity of the assembly, to make atonement for them before Jehovah. Behold, its blood was not brought in within the sanctuary: ye should certainly have eaten it in the sanctuary, as I commanded. And Aaron said to Moses, Behold, to-day have they presented their sin-offering and their burnt-offering before Jehovah; and such things as these have befallen me! And had I to-day eaten the sin-offering, would it have been good in the sight of Jehovah? And Moses heard, and it was good in his sight” (vers. 16-20).

Thus the rest of the priestly house, though not guilty of the error fatal to Nadab and Abihu, broke down in a weighty part of their obligations; and all this was, sad to say, at the very start. So humiliating is God's history of man everywhere and at all times, as we may trace from the first Adam to the Second man Who never failed. How blessed for God is His coming and work, and for us who so deeply need it!

Perhaps it would not be possible to find a more wholesome warning for our souls in relation to our brethren, alike set free by the work of Christ to draw near to God, and exhorted as having boldness to enter into the holies by virtue of His blood through the rent veil. It is no presumption, but the “boast of hope” which we are called to hold firm unto the end, that we are in very deed His house, as truly as, and far more blessedly than, the priests were Aaron's. It is a real and rich part of the harvest of blessing we enjoy through redemption; and the Aaronic was comparatively imperfect.

But if we are entitled even now to far greater boldness and access in confidence through the faith of Him, we are bound to identify ourselves in grace with the failures of our brethren, as they with ours. None but the Savior could atone for us. His sufferings on the cross could alone avail to bring us to God. Whatever we had been, He now did reconcile us in the body of His flesh through death; and in Christ Jesus those who were far off are become nigh by His blood, Who is our peace and made the most opposed one, having broken down the middle wall of partition and annulled the enmity in His flesh, that He might form the two in Himself into one new man. Thus it is through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Yet as a fact we all and often offend; and we are exhorted to confess our sins or offenses to one another. Is this all? Far from it, we have to fulfill the type before us, to eat the Sin-offering in the sanctuary, to make the offense of a saint our own seriously in grace before God.

This goes far beyond the kindest feeling. It is so both in the deep sense of what is due to God, and as if we ourselves had offended. This is to bear the iniquity of the assembly, savoring the things that are Christ's, not those of men who would palliate and excuse. Hence it was to be eaten, not in a clean place only like the Peace-offering, but in the holy place. Propitiation had its unique moment; but priestly grace has also its due place and season in nearness to God.

So the Lord, when indicating by His symbolical action in John 13 the gracious but indispensable work He was about to carry on for us on departing to the Father, lets them know that they too were to wash one another's feet. In this it is communion practically with Himself. But here we are as apt to fail through ignorance or carelessness, as Peter did doubly on that occasion.

The apostle Paul too at a later day, who could not but censure the insensibility of the Corinthian saints in 1 Cor. 5, had the joy of learning that they were made sorry according to God, as he expresses it in 2 Cor. 7:9. “What earnest care it wrought in you, yea what clearing of yourselves, yea what indignation, yea what fear, yea what longing, yea what zeal, yea what avenging! In everything ye approved yourselves to be pure in the matter.” Again, to the Galatian saints he writes, “Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ,” instead of meddling with the law of Moses to the hurt of themselves and of each other. Individual responsibility remains true: each shall bear his own burden; but grace would bear one another's burdens.

Intercession with our God and Father is a precious privilege which it is our shame to neglect. It keeps God's rights undiminished, and exercises the heart in saintly love. Let us never forget that grace condemns evil far more profoundly than law did or could; but it holds fast Christ in life and death and thereby the erring believer's title, as it is in unison here below with what He is doing on high as Advocate with the Father.

Proverbs 10:1-10

This chapter begins the less consecutive communications of the book, after the rich presentation of sententious wisdom of more general character seen in the previous nine. We are now introduced to those detached and pithy moral axioms, given to instruct the mind and fasten on the memory for profit day by day.

“The proverbs of Solomon. A wise son maketh a glad father; but a foolish son [is] the grief of his mother.

Treasures of wickedness profit nothing; but righteousness delivereth from death.

Jehovah suffereth not the soul of the righteous to famish; but he repelleth the craving of the wicked.

He cometh to want that dealeth [with] a slack hand; but the hand of the diligent maketh rich.

He that gathereth in summer [is] a wise son; he that sleepeth in harvest [is] a son that causeth shame.

Blessings [are] on the head of the righteous; but violence covereth the mouth of the wicked. The memory of the righteous [is] blessed; but the name of the wicked shall rot.

The wise in heart receiveth commandments; but the foolish of lips shall fall.

He that walketh in integrity walketh securely; but he that perverteth his ways shall be known.

He that winketh with the eye causeth grief; but the foolish of lips shall fall” (vers. 1-10).

In the first verse is stated the importance of cultivating wisdom in a son, not the acquisition of such knowledge as distinguishes among men or promotes the interests of the family or of himself. Vanity and pride, selfishness and greed, are thus guarded against. That is commended which cannot be without the fear of Jehovah. How sad if God's people were as indifferent as the Gentiles that know Him not? Is Christendom really better now? Is wisdom the aim of the School Board or the Education Council? It makes “a glad father “; as its absence cannot but fall as grief to the “mother” especially. How many sons bright, applauded, and successful end in shame and ruin!

The second carries out the warning of the first verse. “Treasures of wickedness profit nothing.” They may dazzle, and furnish the amplest means of self-gratification. But the end of these things is death; and God is not mocked Who will judge by Him in Whom was no sin, but only obedience in love. Righteousness is consistency with our relationships, the first of which is with Him Who is out of sight and forgotten. Now, as Solomon owned publicly when at the height of his earthly blessing, “there is no man that sinneth not,” righteousness cannot be for any man without looking out of himself to Him Whom God ever meant to send, as all that feared Him knew. The prophets here but emphasized what the faithful acted on from the beginning. To be self-satisfied, or indifferent, is to be unrighteous radically. To believe God and look for the Savior is alone right. He gives one to be righteous as well as justified: “he shall live by his faith;” and there is no other way. Righteousness therefore it is that “delivereth from death.”

Ver. 3 appropriately adds the comforting assurance that Jehovah, Who tries the righteous for their good in an evil age, “will not suffer the righteous to famish; but he repelleth the craving (or, the desire) of the wicked.” There is a righteous government in the midst of all sorts of difficulties, snares, and moral contradictions; the most Willful finds himself checked, as the most tried is sustained and cared for.

In verses 4 and 5 heedlessness is shown to work ruin, no less than more pronounced evil. It was not for such indifference that God made man in His image after His likeness; and when he fell, he got a conscience to know good and evil, as was not nor could be in a state of innocence. So we have, “He cometh to want that dealeth with a slack hand; but the hand of the diligent maketh rich.” As man, it is good for him to eat bread in the sweat of his face. An idler is open to evil as well as poverty; the diligent works not in vain. Again, when all is bright and abundant, folly takes its ease and enjoyment; but he is a wise son that gathereth in summer. Thus he that sleeps when he ought to reap diligently must inevitably cause shame, whatever the love of those who are nearest.

Then verses 6 and 7 contrast the portion and the memory of the righteous with the wicked. While blessings are upon the head of a righteous man, to adorn and protect him, the mouth of the wicked is covered by violence, or violence covers it. They proceed farther in ungodliness, and their folly at length becomes evident. Whereas the memory of the righteous man lives as blessed, and the very name of the wicked shall rot.

Wisdom is manifested in lowly obedience (vers. 8, 9). “The wise in heart receiveth commandments; but the foolish of lips (the marked contrast) shall fall.” Man's true elevation is in looking up to Him Who deigns to guide the needy by His counsel. The foolish of lips proves that he neither knows whence wisdom comes, nor distrusts his own emptiness, and therefore shall he fall. But wisdom of heart does not stop at hearing but receives to obey, and is blessed in his doing; and so we are told here, “he that walketh in integrity walketh securely; but he that perverteth his ways shall be known.” He may be sly, and hope to lie concealed; but He Who sees all discloses the evildoer even in the dark day or night.

Very pregnant is ver. 10. “He that winketh with the eye causeth grief.” He may be ever so on his guard, he may not go beyond a sign of his evil eye; but he “causeth grief,” and without defining it farther. It may be grief to himself as well as to others. As before, here it is added that the foolish of lips shall fall. He is not a crafty dissembler, but falls through his outspoken folly.

Gospel Words: the Blind Man of Bethsaida

Mark 8:22-26

This is the later of the two miracles peculiar to the Gospel of Mark. As in the former the Lord led away the deaf man, who could not speak aright, from the crowd apart, so here He took hold of the blind man's hand and conducted him out of the village. The mass of the Jews had already had ample signs in testimony of Who and what He was. It was but for greater hardening of their hearts to see more. They might get their sick healed, they might eat of the loaves He made and be filled; but even the most orthodox sought from Him a sign from heaven, tempting Him; so that He could only groan in His spirit and say, Why doth this generation seek a sign? Had He not given them countless signs? In the sense of their unbelief, which a Syro-Phoenician woman's faith rebuked, the Lord leads aside from the multitude, though He still acts in compassionate grace. This could not fail where they bring distressful need before Him, the Servant not more righteous than gracious.

“And they bring him a blind man, and beseech him that he might touch him. And taking hold of the blind man's hand, he led him forth out of the village, and having spit on his eyes, he laid his hands on him, and asked him if he beheld anything. And having looked up he said, I behold men, for I see [them] as trees, walking. Then he laid his hands again on his eyes, and he saw distinctly, and was restored, and saw all things clearly. And he sent him to his house, saying, Neither enter into the village, nor tell [it] to any one in the village” (vers. 22-26).

It is the gospel of His service; and here, as throughout, we are made to behold the perfect manner in which His mighty works were done. It is not only the power of God ever ready to heal the sick and those oppressed by the devil. The way in which He answered every such appeal was worthy of the Son of God become servant to glorify God and win man. He put His fingers to the deaf man's ears, He touched the ill-speaking tongue. He laid His hands upon the blind man outside Bethsaida. There was no necessity for any such actions. He had but to speak, and it was done. But love is far beyond power; and when man has power to wield it in ever so limited a range, how little he thinks of love! Least of all does he, conscious however scantily of his sinfulness, look for love from the God he slights and dreads. The Lord in the way He wields divine power manifests divine love, and as Man in the midst of men. Nor is there the smallest ostentation but its marked absence: all is done in genuine simplicity as well as tenderness.

We may notice too that in the two miracles the Lord uses His own spittle, as He did also in the cure of the man born blind (told us in John 9). Whatever the reality and lowliness of the humanity He had taken up in His grace, there was divine efficacy in His person; and the sign of this He applies in all three cases, each having its own distinction. When He touched the tongue, He looked up to heaven with a groan, and says to the man, Be opened; and immediately the happy result follows. When He mixed clay with what came of Himself and anointed the born-blind man's eyes, He told him to go to Siloam and wash; and only then did he come seeing. Here the very intent was to mark by the twofold act of laying His hands on his eyes that the Lord would not have the cure partial. It was much to behold men, like trees, but walking. Yet the Lord would not let him go thus; He would give him to see distinctly. He therefore laid His hands upon his eyes, so that he was restored and saw all things distinctly. It was simply the way of love that the blind man might know the deep interest of His heart Who might have dispensed with any or all of these circumstances, and have effected the perfect cure with a word. But what a blank for the man and for our hearts, if it had been only so!

Indeed the instruction was great for the disciples who were then in a measure learning of His ways with Whom they were, and learned far more when He was gone and the Holy Spirit come. The former was no unmeet emblem of Israel's state, and had a sample of the powers of the world to come when the weak remnant shall become a strong nation, with ears opened and tongue loosed to speak Jehovah's praise. The latter in the partial cure might well remind the disciples that they during His earthly ministry did not see more clearly than the man when His hands were laid on him. once. How different when God raised Him up from the dead whereof they were witnesses! Then, He being exalted by the right hand of God, and having received the promise of the Holy Spirit, how great the blessing! Faith needs to have its perfect work, as well as patience. How often men stop short!

How is it with you who read these words? How are you treating Him, His words, and His works? You have to do with Him, whether you will or not. For the hour now is, when the dead have the voice of the Son of God sounding in their ears, and they that hear live. For this He when here prepared men. If He be the rejected Messiah, He is the Son of man and thus the destined Judge of mankind. How would it be with you if the hour of His judgment were come? Could you stand unabashed and unscathed before Him Whose eyes will be then as a flame of fire? Who searches the reins and hearts? Who will reward each according to his works?

What thanks shall one render, when one believes that the same Jesus is the Son of God, not only the true God but eternal life, ready and willing to give life eternal to you who can find it no where else? This is the way, the best way for a saint, the only way for a sinner, to honor the Son. It is to believe on Him; for indeed He is the way, the truth, and the life. Thus believing you do not come into condemnation, but even now have passed from death unto life. So He declares; so may you believe, and never be confounded.

1 Peter 1:10

The concluding verses of the introduction refer to salvation as far as it was originally disclosed to prophets, and now fully presented as glad tidings by the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven, consequent on the sufferings which were to befall Christ and the glories that should follow, while we await that power which will even externally deliver from evil at His appearing. The brief unfolding here given was of extreme moment for the believing remnant whom the Apostle then addressed and all such as might follow. They had little difficulty in apprehending that the Lord in that day will not only accomplish the blessed and joyous prospect for the earth, but for the heavens also. Salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time, comprehends, though it be not limited to, their entering on an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfailing, reserved for them on high, whilst they need to be guarded in God's power through faith meanwhile. It is but soul-salvation now, the pledge of what is final, complete, and glorious in that day. The rejection of Christ and His absence on high brought in meanwhile a necessary modification which tests every soul of man, and not least those who had the early and partial revelations of God.

The unbelieving Jews sought to solve the difficulty by the fiction of two Messiahs: one the son of Joseph, of the tribe of Ephraim; the other the son of David, of the tribe of Judah; the first, to contend and suffer death; the second, to conquer and reign gloriously and forever. The Talmud taught it; the later Targum applied it to Song of Sol. 4:5, 7:3; and the Rabbis Solomon Jarchi, Aben Ezra, and D. Kimchi popularized it. Now we know that the Old Testament leaves no conceivable opening for two such personages, but lays the utmost stress on their being different states of the same Anointed of Jehovah. He was indeed the Son of David, not through Mary only as in Luke 3, but legally too through Joseph who was of Solomon's royal stem as in Matt. 1 And, what was of immeasurably deeper importance, He and He only of David's sons was David's Lord, as in Psa. 110:1 cited by Himself to confound the haughty adversaries who doubted and despised Him. The crowd then, and probably their leader, had not yet invented the delusion of a double Messiah; but they left no room for His sufferings, and cared only for His earthly glory as their vested right. Hence when He said (John 12:32), “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all to me” (this He said signifying by what death He was about to die), they answered, “We have heard out of the law that the Christ abideth forever: and how sayest thou, The Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?”

As we shall have more to say, when we look closely into ver. 11, we turn here to examine the details of what precedes in its due order.

“Of which salvation prophets that prophesied of the grace that [was] toward you sought out and searched out” (1 Pet. 1:10).

So we learn from Gen. 49:18. “Salvation” was identified with the coming and work of the Messiah. The believers little if at all understood how it was to be; but they had no doubt of the saving grace which would then be manifested. They recognized signal acts of deliverance meanwhile, as in the days of Moses the miraculous passage of the Red Sea; as in the work which Jehovah wrought by Jonathan; and as later still in Jehoshaphat's day, when the sons of Ammon and Moab and those of mount Seir destroyed each other to the relief of Judah whom they had menaced with ruin. But they looked on to the latter day as the goal of their hopes, when Messiah should establish the salvation fully and forever. How clearly it is “grace,” not of works whereof flesh might glory.

Hence in the Psalms we hear as in Psalm 14:7, “Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! When Jehovah bringeth back the captivity of His people, then shall Jacob rejoice, Israel shall be glad.” In the second book Psa. 53 similarly concludes, “Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! When God bringeth back the captivity of His people, then shall Jacob rejoice, Israel shall be glad.” The times were dark, and growingly darker; but if the godly remnant fall back on what God, Elohim, is when covenant privileges were no longer enjoyed, they anticipate in faith God's scattering the ruined foe, and long for final salvation to come out of Zion as His center, when His people as a whole should return with everlasting joy. It is certain too from Psa. 67 that the Spirit of prophecy, if the written word had been but heeded, regards God's mercy to Israel as His way to extend His “saving health among all nations.” Sovereign grace is not more sure and definite than rich and free. “Let the peoples praise Thee, O God, let all the peoples praise Thee. Oh let the nations be glad and sing for joy! for Thou shalt judge the peoples with equity and govern the nations upon earth.” Nothing can be in more marked contrast with Jewish narrowness. Salvation is neither of prescriptive right, nor of personal merit, but of “grace.” And so will sing in a day yet to come, both the nations, and all Israel that shall be saved.

It is of deep interest to observe that the next Psa. 68, has for its central truth the Lord ascended on high, the mighty conqueror, Who, as He “received gifts in man” (i.e. as such), gave gifts to men. So the Apostle could add, without citing the words which await divine grace in its future activity, “yea, the rebellious also, for the dwelling of Jah Elohim [there].” Alas! the Jews are still rebellious; but the day hastens, when they shall look up and say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of Jehovah; and He will assuredly come with a blessing never to pass away. Their God is the God of salvation; and so they are to prove, when in answer to their cry He rends the heavens and comes down, and all their righteousnesses are as a polluted garment in their eyes, as indeed they are, and He clothes them with the raiment of salvation and praise. But we must refrain from citing more from the book of praises.

None need wonder that the prince of prophets is pre-eminently rich in speaking of salvation so divine. In Isa. 7 which closes the first section of his prophecies, Isaiah predicts that Israel shall say, “Behold, God is my salvation: I will trust and not be afraid; for Jah, Jehovah, is my strength and song, and He is become my salvation. And with joy ye shall draw water out of the wells of salvation.” This follows beyond doubt the introduction of Messiah and His future reign in Isa. 11. In Isa. 25:9 he says when drawing to the end of the next section with various and prolonged thanksgiving, “Behold, this is our God: we have waited for Him, and He will save us. This is Jehovah, we have waited for Him; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.” So in Isa. 26:1, “We have a strong city: salvation doth He appoint for walls and bulwarks.” In his third section, where the final troubler of Israel is revealed with a “woe” to him, Isa. 33, we have in Isa. 33:2, “Jehovah be gracious to us; we have waited for Thee. Be their arm every morning, yea, our salvation in the time of trouble;” then in Isa. 33:22, “Jehovah is our judge, Jehovah our lawgiver, Jehovah our king; He will save us.” Again in Isa. 35:4, “Be strong, fear not; behold, your God: vengeance cometh, the recompence of God! He will come Himself, and save you.” In the middle or fourth section of history we could not look for more than such a typical reference as Isa. 38:20. But in the fifth where “My servant” appears, we have ample testimony and in forms of great variety beyond the words “save” or “salvation.” He restores, redeems, forms for Himself, pours water and His Spirit upon them, as His witnesses and His servants as He is the God of Israel, the Saviour, “a just God and a Savior; there is none besides me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth” (Isa. 45:21-22; see also Isa. 45:8,17; Isa. 46:13). In the sixth division, where Messiah comes out fully and His rejection, salvation is still more conspicuous, as in Isa. 49:6,8,25; 51:5,6,8; 52:7. Who can be surprised that discerns the Saviour suffering, and exalted, in Isa. 53 where we have the fullest and clearest witness to Him and His work, though the expression of “save” or salvation there occurs not. But many other words point to that truth and the meritorious and efficacious cause, as in Isa. 53:5,6,8,10-11,12. In the seventh or last part we have its express and abundant mention, as in Isa. 59:1,11,16-17; 60:18; 61:10; 62:1; 64:5.

In Jeremiah it is enough to refer to Jer. 25:20; 33:10-11; 46:27; in Ezek. 34:22; 36:29; 37:23; Hos. 1:7; Zeph. 3:17, 19; Zech. 8:7, 13; 9:16; 10:6; 12:7. Only it would be a mistake to imagine that other prophets did not predict the same thing in other words. See for example Daniel (9:24) who confesses the sins of Israel and pleads the Lord's righteousness and name. Then comes the answer of a definite time, when the transgression should be closed, and an end made of sins, and expiation for iniquity, and everlasting righteousness brought in, and the vision and prophet sealed, and the holy of holies anointed. So it is with others, each in differing forms.

Nothing then can be plainer in result than that prophets predicted concerning the coming salvation, which did not fail for such as believed the gospel, like those to whom the Apostle addressed this Epistle. For what if the mass of the Jews were without faith? Their unbelief did not make of none effect the faith of God. Those who submit to His righteousness in Christ reap the blessing.

Prophets before them, we are told, diligently sought and searched diligently concerning that salvation. Their prophesying did not supersede the need or the profit of sedulous research, but rather stimulated it. No honor in prophesying saved its instruments from seeking and searching earnestly to understand what was given them to predict out of the fullness which is in God. Dependence is and has ever been called for, with confidence in His goodness and His tender consideration of our own ignorance and weakness. But the gift of His word encourages us to wait on Him for understanding it as far as pleases Him. So did inspired men, as we see notably in Daniel, for a case at hand, as well as for what would only be in the time of the end. Nor can any incidental fact more distinctly prove how truly prophecy was not of man's will nor shrewd guess of wit, but of God, Who spoke or wrote by His servant in the Spirit. For he had still to sift it with all diligence to understand what he had thus divinely uttered. Salvation was a rich blessing from God, transcending all that they possessed in gracious privilege and bound up with Messiah's day, which God alone gave prophets to anticipate. But what they prophesied, they needed to weigh and examine deeply to make truly their own, in whatever measure of intelligence that might be.

Christ as High Priest Entering Heaven and as King of Kings Coming Out: Part 1

It is the believer's privilege to see and judge everything in view of Christ; for He has not only revealed what God is in His nature and character, but fully brought out what man is. He has moreover made good at the cross, in and by His death, both the claim and the glory of God as to sin, having vindicated His majesty infinitely beyond the power of evil. If the cross encountered man's darkness in the deep and varied and complete guilt of a Christ-hating world, it was blessedly and forever answered by the light of God's glory on the throne above. Yea, it may be said most truly that man in the person of Adam was turned out of the earthly paradise because of his sin; but Christ the Second Man has entered heaven in virtue of redemption accomplished. It is God's righteousness.

The fact of Christ entering heaven testifies to the Jew and the Greek, that He was rejected, being refused His every right and title. For those who should have hailed Him as their true King said, Away with him, we have no king but Caesar; and in place of His temple and throne, they nailed Him to the cross, thereby sealing judgment on Israel, man generally, and the world.

But what says heaven of Christ now hidden there? What says the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven? Let us learn God's testimony to the wondrous sacrifice Christ has offered up, and the present blessed privileges to be known and enjoyed by believers in Him. They are immensely beyond what ancient shadows and types pledged; as the Epistle to the Hebrews plainly teaches. There Christ is presented as the antitype to Aaron the high priest who, on the Day of Atonement, entered the “holy of holies” with the blood of the slain bullock and the goat, sprinkling it before and on the Mercy seat. This secured redemption to Israel, priests and people, though only of value for twelve months; hence its repetition year by year. Even so Aaron must retire, from the presence of Jehovah, without the veil and never enter at other times under the penalty of death. Such was Israel's representative, entering the earthly tabernacle by blood, for the yearly redemption, as the divinely appointed means of maintaining an earthly nation. Who on earth could boast its like? But how vast the difference for the believer to-day, founded on the infinite sacrifice of Christ the Son of God. He came at the consummation of the ages, at the close of man's trial, to settle the question of sin by becoming the sacrifice for it. On God's part this He did, as Heb. 9 & 10 solemnly declare, when “through the eternal Spirit He offered Himself without spot to God.” By His shed blood atonement was made. By the same death of Him the veil of the temple was rent from the top to the bottom; though the declaration of the truth (as in the varied aspects and application of His atoning death) was reserved for the timely moment to unfold, that Christ by His own blood entered in “once for all” into the holy of holies, having obtained eternal redemption.

It may truly be said, all other wonders sink into insignificance in the light of Christ's death; yet its results, in the antitypical Aaron entering heaven, associated with His precious blood, by which eternal redemption was secured, may truly fill us with praise. No more offering for sin; no more blood of atonement to be shed. The One Who became the only sacrifice for sins on the cross is declared to have forever (in perpetuity) sat down on God's right hand. Thus the counsel of peace is between them both. God the Judge of sin, and Jesus the sacrifice for it, Who met for judgment at Calvary, are now together in heaven for indissoluble peace, and this to all the redeemed, God's new creation. Already not alone the conscience, but the heart and ways of every believer are called in matchless grace to be in unison with it. By one offering He has perfected forever those sanctified or set apart to God in the value of His blood, which meets the majesty and the glory of God's throne. Not only has Christ by His blood provided eternal redemption for faith in present unbroken blessedness to know and enjoy, together with a conscience purged from sin; but heaven itself is open for the believer to follow his precious Savior into the true sanctuary. There assuredly, as a purged worshipper, he in spirit finds his liberty and home, before that same holy and blessed God he once dreaded.

Strange indeed, that consecrated places of worship should be set up on earth to imitate the Jewish worship in the temple. Has not Christ entered heaven? and while He is hidden there, has not the Holy Spirit come to witness to His finished work and present exaltation? Thereby is given corresponding effect to believers, so as to draw near to God in the holies through the rent veil, as worshippers in full liberty and known blessedness. Do we not possess Christ on high as the Great Priest over God's house, which house we, believers, are (Heb. 3:6; 10:21)?

What now is the material temple? How contemptible its imitation, with its flowers, music, pictures and all other human aids to worship! How sad to accommodate or reduce the work and person of Christ to buildings, with a ritual earthly and sensational! Are we not now called to spiritual worship, in blessed association (for all true believers) with Himself on high? “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the [holy of] holies by a new and living way,” we are exhorted to draw near with a true heart.

The privilege was unknown and impossible in the typical days of Israel. Even Aaron himself had it not. Yet an assumed earthly ritual after his pattern (which ignores all believers as the only priests on earth, having free access to God in the heavenly sanctuary) is adopted growingly in Christendom, and sanctioned, alas! by those responsible to know better who act otherwise. Did they heed Christ, as having come, been nailed to the cross and gone into heaven, with the heavenly privileges ensuing to His own, true Christian worship in the Holy Spirit's power, they might learn; and they would refuse all which denies it, whilst awaiting the promised return of our hidden Lord and Savior.

If the truth of Christ the High Priest entering the holies is thus significant, and exceedingly precious in opening up the heavenly privileges for the believer of to-day; Christ coming out of heaven as King of kings is most solemn for the world, and has its voice for all pursuing its course. Since the departure of Christ to heaven, men have largely been dragged into the profession of His name, but with the heart and mind quite unchanged toward God. This really adds to the condemnation of Christendom. For there remains the standing fact, that God is at issue with the world about His beloved Son. The cross is its abiding witness; not this only, but the personal presence of God the Holy Ghost Who, as stated in John 16, gives demonstration in a threefold form of coming judgment. “Now is the judgment of this world” said He; and in view of His leaving the world, “The world seeth me no more” is solemn. The gospel moreover coming from heaven did not alter this. On the contrary the gospel supposes that man is lost and the world become a ruin. It does not propose to improve either, nor yet to rule the earth in power and righteousness, as the kingdom will ere long. The gospel saves men by faith, and calls them to heavenly glory with Christ.

(To be concluded, D.V.)

The Principles Displayed in the Ways of God Compared With His Ultimate Dealings: Part 2

The testimony of the Holy Ghost, in patience, called them who had put Him to death to repentance, but the call was unheeded and the guilt remained upon them. And thus closed all God's dealings with the earth, as presenting means of blessing to their acceptance, and Christ the Lord, the Son of man, must return, sent by the Ancient of days, before the principles of blessing held out, and the revealed means of relationship with God, could be made good in power and available in blessing.

In all this it will be evident that the church of God does not at all enter. The scene had for the time closed, in which these various principles were developed on earth, to be resumed in power when Christ returns there, to whom all the title and blessing belongs. Meanwhile He is hid in heaven, and unites to Himself a heavenly people outside all these ministrations, to be associated with Himself, as a better Eve, when He shall take the inheritance and accomplish all that God has held out to man.

Yet in one point evidently there is connection, that is, in Abraham. Although there be higher principles of blessing which have formed the subject of promise, such as being united to the Christ, members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones, yet Christians do come in under Abraham as heirs of promise, as strangers and pilgrims on the earth, walking by faith, called out of the world. Thus they fill up the gap during the power of the Gentiles, guilty of rejecting the Lord, and the setting aside of the Jews for their despisal of Messiah, until called to take their place in the heavens with the Lord. In Christ we are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to promise, though God has reserved some better thing for us. But as the church, she is entirely outside all this, unknown and a mystery, till the time Israel was set aside, and there was nothing but what unknown and sovereign counsels might introduce, under God to keep Israel again for repentance and blessing.

This very plainly shows the distinction of the church from all earthly position and promise though manifested there until God shall again begin to act from the throne on the nations, and take up again His questions with the earth then in judgment, as heretofore in grace. But to His judgment men will be as callous as they have been to grace, till it assumes a character which there is no escaping, and when despair will be as complete as revolt and self-will were before. It does not enter into the subject of this paper to treat of the details of that day. The judgments on the Gentiles are the subject of the Apocalypse; the state of the Jews, of the Old Testament prophecies chiefly. After a moral preparation in the hearts of the Jews, the presence of the Lord Jesus will at once bring in the accomplishment, not only of promises made to them, but the concentration in His person and kingdom in the power conferred on Him, of all the scattered elements of the Divine ways previously revealed.

It may be remarked, that I have left prophecy out of the list I have given of manifestations of Divine intervention. The omission was not forgetfulness. A prophet was one by whom God sovereignly maintained His relationship and connection with Israel, and even in a measure with the world, when there was entire failure. It took place in every dispensation, and was not properly one, but ran through all, though God acted by it in emergencies. It revealed God and foretold Christ, but evidently was to cease when the things it spoke of were accomplished, for then it had no place. Its character was the sovereign intervention of God, not the development of His ways. Therefore as we see, it was in exercise at all times, when, as regards those ways, man had failed. It showed and reproved the failure, and encouraged the faith of the Jew, faithful among the faithless, in the enduring fidelity of the Lord, pointing out with an increasing fullness the intervention of God in power, when the faith that made its way through the power of evil would be no longer needed, because that evil would be set aside by power. Hence we find it in Enoch before the flood, in Noah, in the patriarchs, and, in a particular manner, in Samuel, when Israel had failed under the theocracy, and in Israel departed from God, and in Judah become unfaithful in her kings.

I do not touch here on the character of prophecy in the church, as spoken of in the Epistles. The church was based, as we have seen, on the failure of everything; and to it, and in it, the mind of God was specially communicated. To that which takes a definitely prophetic form the above remarks, however, fully apply in principle. Only the church counted faithful is made the depositary. We have prophecies in Thessalonians, Timothy, Jude, and Revelation. In the latter case, the part fully and properly prophetic treats of the world and the apostasy, or of the Jews; so that it takes a distinctly prophetic character, and returns to the principles stated above. The prophetic character was accomplished in the Lord at His first coming, as far as regards His person.

The priesthood does not enter either in its Aaronic character into the ways of God with man. It was the means of approach of man to God, and subsisted in connection with the existence of His people without a king and under the kings. It supposed an accepted earthly people, so far as it was in daily exercise, though there might be particular failure. So far as the acceptance of the people was in question, it was hidden within the veil. In this character it is Christ's present position as regards Israel, for we know the acceptance (the veil being rent). It existed under different dealings of God to maintain individuals in their position, and was not positively itself one.

J. N. D.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Mark

Chap. 5 Divine Design.-29. Mark

The second Gospel has for its design the setting forth of the service “of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” He who at first failed but at length was pronounced “profitable for ministry” was just as suitable in the power of the Holy Spirit for that task, as Matthew called from the receipt of customs to be an apostle was for the first Gospel. Christ Himself serves in the gospel, and does mighty works accompanying it, as Mark describes. Before proceeding farther, the precision which Mark furnishes, partly by his characteristic “straightway” that so often occurs, partly by a perhaps still more definite specifying of time e.g. in chap. 4:35, enables us to clear up some difficulties in the different order of the events related in the three Synoptic Gospels. From a careful comparison it results, that of the four inspired writers, two were led to abstain save in the rarest degree from chronological order, two from their respective designs subordinate that order where requisite to a grouping of events or discourses independently; and of the two in each case one was an apostle, the other not. Matthew and Luke were from time to time not bound to simple historic sequence; whereas Mark and John as the rule adhere to it. None can be justly called “fragmentary “; for each has a specific design impressed on the work, and all that is inserted or omitted may be accounted for on this principle. Where an incident illustrates that which belongs to the scope of all four, they all introduce it, as for instance the miracle of the five loaves and the two little fishes. Where it falls in with the province of one only, there it is given and nowhere else; as the temple tax in Matt. 17, the deaf stammerer in Mark 7, the penitent woman in Luke 7, and the Samaritan woman in John 4, to mention but one of the many facts, signs, and discourses peculiar to each, and to John abundantly. In some cases three give the same subject matter, in others but two. But this is not all; whilst there are notable phrases and words common to all, there are quite as notable differences in the mode of communication. Hence speculative minds are tempted to irreverent cutting of the knot they cannot untie; whilst unexercised souls fail to gather the profit intended of the Spirit through every shade of difference. For it is a perversion of the truth, that the writers were inspired, but not the writings. If 2 Peter 1:21 warrants the former, still more explicit and distinctly applicable is the claim for the latter in 2 Tim. 3:16. In the verse preceding we have the “sacred” title of the O. T.; but in verse 16 the Spirit of God pronounces for “every” thing that falls under the designation of “scripture.” It is not a question of human infirmity but of God's power. Every scripture is inspired by God (θεόπνευστος). Not only were the men inspired, but so according to the apostle Paul is the result. Ordinarily their writing, like their words, would have been liable to the imperfections of human speech and the limitations of human thought; but every scripture, every writing that comes under this category, is God-breathed, and in no way “left” to the mere accidents of human faculties. To mix up with inspiration the manifold errors of copyists in the lapse of ages is illicit and illogical, not to say dishonest; for this is quite another question. All we contend for is the divine character of indisputable scripture.

Differences then there are; but instead of being the discrepancies which unbelief hastily and improperly calls them because of ignorance, they are the beautiful and instructive effect and evidence of God's varied design. Take Matt. 8 as an instance: “a solemn assembly of witnesses,” as one justly calls it. The leper came in fact long before what is called the sermon on the mount. “And, behold,” in verse 2 ties us down to no date. But as the Holy Spirit had already given a summary of the Lord's deeds of gracious preaching and power in Matt. 4:23, 24, so He presents details of His teaching in chaps. 5, 6, & 7, and of His miracles in chap. 8, and again in another way in chap. 9 where the date yields to deeper considerations, and selected proofs are grouped together designedly. In Mark 1:40-45, where no such purpose operates, we see its place historically. Luke confirms the fact that it was on “one of those days” when Christ was in Capernaum, and before the healing of the paralytic, which in Matthew is reserved for the first case in chap. 9

But, to look into details, the leper's cure fitly attested the present power of Jehovah-Messiah which opens Matt. 8 And as this proved His grace toward the Jew that came in his uncleanness and faith (however faltering), the Gentile centurion's great faith next follows, and here only is connected thus. In the Gospel of Luke it has a different place; in Mark it has none. The third fact in chap. 8, the healing of Peter's mother-in-law, so interesting to a Jew and assuring that grace to the Gentile did not turn Messiah's heart from Israel, seems here inserted with that design; whereas historically it preceded both the previous miracles in date, as shown in Mark 1 and Luke 4. So of course did the healing of many demoniacs and sick on that evening after the sabbath, in fulfillment of Isa. 4. It is not in the least difficult to believe that the Holy Spirit led Matthew to introduce at this point what Luke presents in quite a different connection (chap. 9:57), and with an addition too. The harmonists who imagine duplicates are no more faithful than the commentators who tax the inspired with discrepancies. The conversation whenever it occurred seems given in the first Gospel to show the great vessel of divine power and grace i.e. the Messiah consciously rejected, the Son of man having nowhere to lay His head, yet claiming from a disciple to he followed, even if a father lay dead. We know too for certain that the storm which He rebuked, and the deliverance of the demoniacs took place after the parables of chap. 8 were heard and explained.

The septenary of chap. 9 is a similar collection of witnesses, following that of chap. 8 which indicates not only His divine power displayed in Israel, but the growing hatred and jealousy which it excited in the Scribes, till it culminated in the Pharisees who sought to poison the multitude with their blasphemy, “By the prince of the demons he casteth out demons.” But no more evidence is needed, that Matthew was led, where it was required, to state facts and words so as best to give dispensational order; as Luke was led in no less a degree to present moral order. Take the Lord's genealogy as a clear proof, not in chap. 1 but in chap. 3 after the statement of John put in prison, and of the wondrous scene of his baptism following, though of course it long preceded what is here recounted. Take again the temptation where Luke puts the third act in the second place, as the moral order; whereas the actual fact as represented by Matthew coincided with the dispensational which it was his function to make known. This necessitated the remarkable omission which the true and ancient text testifies, as distinguished from the common error introduced by copyists, harmonists, and the like, whose false assimilations provoke the rather more evil doubts of their opponents.

How full of interest, as bearing on divine purpose, to observe that in the Gospel of Mark there is no account of the Lord's reading of Isa. 61 and preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth, any more than Matthew or John gives it. For Luke 4 it was reserved, as Christ's grandly suited introduction to public service, as we shall see more fully in its place. The introduction for Matthew's Gospel was the striking but wholly different application of Isa. 9 where the light shining in despised Galilee was promised. Nor was Mark given to state this, but only Matthew, whose also it was above all to point out the fulfillment of prophecy in the still more despised Messiah; as he only had mentioned the visit of the Magi, and the flight into Egypt, and the slaughter of the babes, all bearing in the same direction.

Again, Mark was not led to present the remarkable healing of the centurion's servant, which has so prominent a position in the First Gospel, and a still greater length in the Third. The leper's cleansing Mark does give, followed by the healing of the paralytic, and very graphically in both cases; but there was no design by him to bring in the witness that Jehovah's power would call in Gentiles when Israel should be cast out, as in Matt. 8, any more than to show, as in Luke 7, the faith of the Gentile, not so seen in Israel, which recognized the power of God in Jesus to command sovereignly and in love; and this in a soul so humbled by grace as to discern His people in the degenerate Jews, loved and honored for His name' sake.

So further in the First Gospel and the Second we have no account whatever of the widow's son raised from the dead outside Nain. It had no connection with their scope in particular, and we may presume that it was therefore here omitted. But it had the utmost importance for illustrating divine power in the highest form united in our Lord Jesus with the fullest human sympathy; and so it is exactly in accord with the special aim of Luke's Gospel where alone it is found.

On the same principle we may account for a vast deal of intermediate matter given in the central parts of the First and Third Gospels, which does not appear in the Gospel of Mark. We are thus delivered from the theories which have occupied many learned men to the hurt of themselves and of those who trust them. For they have sought on human grounds to explain the different phenomena of the Synoptic Gospels, some advocating a common document, others only a general apostolic tradition. Again, a supplemental intention has been attributed to those that followed successively the first, for his own contribution to the sum as it gradually appeared and grew. Had they believed in the special design imprinted by the Holy Spirit on each and every one of them, erroneous speculation had been spared to the honor of God's word, and to the spiritual profit of His children. The differences which undoubtedly occur would then have been known to be in no case discrepancy, but springing from God's wisdom, not man's weakness, and adding incalculably to the witness of Christ, and consequently to the spiritual intelligence of him that accepts all from God in faith of His love and truth.

Mark 1 presents neither genealogy nor early history, as we have in the accounts of Matthew and Luke. Yet this is not due to his abridging previously well-known facts, but to the divine design which made a genealogy here out of place: the service even of such a Servant did not call for it, Here as every where none so much abounds in striking details. The forerunner is briefly introduced preaching and baptizing. Jesus too is baptized, and then tempted of Satan; here without the details given by Matthew and Luke, yet only Mark speaks of His being with the wild beasts. When John is imprisoned, Christ begins His public service, saying, “The time is fulfilled.” Calling certain disciples to follow Him, He promises to make them fishers of men. His words and works attest the truth. The unclean spirit is cast out publicly. Simon's mother-in-law is healed of fever, and forthwith ministers to them. Sick and demoniacs are alike set free in numbers. He goes to preach; for this He is come forth. He prays without seeking fame; and a leper is cleansed with His touch as benignant as His word in divine power, love, and compassion.

In chapter 2 are given minute details of the paralytic, not healed only but forgiven (for sin is the root of evil), and made to walk, that they might know the Son of Man's title on earth to remit sins: a title which causes the Scribes to blaspheme. He goes on in grace to call a despised tax-gatherer to follow Him, eats with those whom the Pharisees branded as sinners beyond others, and vindicates it as His mission: “I came not to call righteous but sinners.” What a Savior for guilty man! Any truly righteous were already called: He came to call sinners. Those who believed were to rejoice in His presence there: let John's disciples and those of the Pharisees fast in unbelief of Him; full soon should His own have reason to fast. Besides, the new truth and power of the kingdom cannot without loss mix with old things. The sabbath itself was made for man, and the Son of Man is its Lord, not its slave as Pharisees wished.

Hence in chapter 3 He on the sabbath heals a man with a withered hand. He was here, sabbath day or not, to do good and save; but the orthodox counseled with their time-serving adversaries how to destroy Him. If He withdraws, it is to heal and deliver more abundantly; and after being alone on the mountain, He calls and appoints twelve, whom He would, to carry on the work of grace in power like His own. For He did all in the Spirit; but such was His unflagging zeal that His relations called Him deranged; and such His power, that the scribes from Jerusalem imputed it in their malice to Satan. Thereon He pronounces sentence, and announces His relationship, not after the flesh, but with him, whoever he be, that does the will of God.

Accordingly in chapter 4, seated on board ship, He teaches the new departure, contingent upon the people's apostasy, and takes the place of the Sower in the world, such that three parts of the seed come to nothing, and only a fourth by grace takes effect in varying measure where conscience works before God. Light is to shine in service; the veil no longer hides; and he that has gets more, as he that has not loses all. A parable follows peculiar to Mark, and emblematic of the Lord's ways in service, Who works throughout and produces all, yet hiddenly now till the harvest is come when He reaps. The parable of mustard seed illustrates the outward rise from little to a great show on the earth. Such would be the abnormal result of service in man's hand. The evening closes with the storm on the lake, Jesus asleep in the boat now filling, and the alarmed disciples awaking Him Who in two words made a great calm.

In chapter 5 we see Him met by the fiercest of demoniacs, Legion; for many spirits were there. Jesus, expelling them from the possessed, let them enter a great herd of swine which bore witness to their evil power in rushing at once to destruction; while the man sat clothed and in his right mind, beseeching to be with Jesus. The time however is come, not yet for this, but to testify to his friends what great things the Lord, even Jesus, had done for him; while those who heard alas! besought, not Legion, but the Lord to depart from their borders. And Jesus departs. On the other side Jairus beseeches Him to come and lay His hands on his dying daughter. As He went, a woman touches Him secretly and is healed of her issue of blood; the Lord will have her too in the light and without fear. The damsel now dead is restored to life, as the Lord will do for Israel by-and-by. This closes the first part.

Then chapter 6 lays bare the unbelief that could not deny His word or work, yet stumbled at His humiliation in the grace which escaped them. So the Lord before His departure began to send forth the twelve with power over unclean spirits, but without resources of their own; He could control men's hearts as He pleased. Meanwhile Herod is shown as troubled in conscience because of John as well as Herodias, dreading the report of Jesus as a resurrection of John. And the Lord gives the disciples, full of their great work, their needed quiet with Himself, while He waits on man's wants and satisfies the poor with bread.

Then sending away the multitude and the disciples by ship to Bethsaida, while He went on high to pray, He appears to them toiling in vain against contrary wind, and walked the water as if He would pass them, but immediately rejoins them on their crying out in fear; and the wind ceased. When they reached land, those who once wished Him to depart bring their sick, earnestly seeking that they may be healed.

Chapter 7 manifests the superficial worthlessness of the religious chiefs and their tradition.

Man's heart was a spring of evil; but grace reveals God's heart, even to the Syro-Phoenician, and His power to deliver her demoniac daughter; whilst the deaf stammering one, like the Jewish remnant, is led apart and healed, that he may hear and speak to the praise of God.

In chapter 8 a fresh pledge, in the seven loaves multiplied, is given of divine compassion to the poor of His people, as also of His power to make the blind, again led outside, see clearly. The leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod was evil; yet the disciples, though ill-affected by it, had no uncertainty as to the Messiah, but like Peter confessed. Him. This however must yield to the deeper glory of the Son of Man in His rejection and death; but it was too much for Peter, who deprecates it and is rebuked of the Lord, even insisting on a path like His own for His followers and at all cost.

In chapter 9 His glory as Son of Man and Son of God is presented to witnesses on the hill, while below even His own failed in faith to use His name against Satan. How painful to the Lord! How humbling to the disciples! “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you, how long shall I suffer you?” Only His presence in a coming day will deliver the people from Satan's power. Meanwhile it is a question of faith for individual deliverance. Power depends on faith; the ability is in the believing. Jesus acts by His word in power. But He goes on to be slain and rise the third day, whilst they understanding nothing dispute who should be greatest, and have a little child set before them as their right example. Even John is jealous for “us” rather than for Christ; but the Lord in grace owns all He can. Woe to the despiser of the little ones that believe! Woe too, when hand, foot, or eye causes to stumble! It is not earthly judgments, but unquenchable fire that awaits the unbelieving; as believers are to have salt (the preservative power of the truth) in themselves, and peace with one another.

Chapter l0 shows our Lord vindicating the relationships as God ordained from the beginning; He insists on the purity of marriage, and blesses babes. Yet while appreciating the blameless young man, who sought everlasting life (not to be saved), He denies goodness in man, and lays bare love of means and position, which is ruin, as he left Jesus to go away in sorrow. The Savior thereon dwells on the danger, not blessing, of wealth, to the astonishment of His own; and when Peter boasts their self-denial, the Lord declares the sure remembrance of every loss for His sake (and the gospel's, peculiar to Mark), not only spiritual gain now but life everlasting beyond, with the caution that many first shall be last, and the last first. Then His death and delivery to the Gentiles are announced, and the ambition of Zebedee's sons corrected, as well as the displeasure of the ten, by the cross as God's pattern in a lost world.

The last presentation from ver. 46 begins with blind Bartimaeus appealing to David's Son and receiving his sight, as Israel will in due time. In chapter 11 He is presented as the anointed King, and owned with hosannas; He pronounces on the barren fig-tree which is seen withered next morning, cleanses the sanctuary, and exposes the incompetence as well as insincerity of the officials who demand His authority.

Chapter 7 sets forth in a parable Israel's rebellion and Messiah's rejection but exaltation, and in few words the hypocrisy of the question as to Caesar, to whom they were no more subject than to God. Then the Sadducees (who talked of resurrection to undermine it and Him) hear the truth which refutes their error; and the intelligent scribe has the moral sum of the law laid down for his encouragement. Jesus puts the question how David's Son is David's Lord; which is life to him that answers it according to God. But alas! religious show and pretensions with selfishness end in more severe judgment; while the widow and her mite have everlasting record.

In the brief form of the prophecy in chapter 8 the special aim of the Spirit is evident from the fullness given to service past or future; so it is, not only in the center, but near the end. Hence in that character “the Son” does not know; yet He gave to His bondmen their authority, and to each his work. Nowhere else is service so distinctly noticed.

The end approaches in chap. 14, His final rejection, death, resurrection, and ascension, yet “working with them” still as the Lord. The chief priests plot, but God's will is done. Love anoints the Lord's body for His burial; the traitor makes his sad bargain with the rejoicing chief priests; the last passover is eaten, and the Lord's supper instituted. Peter is warned, and all three sleep while the Lord goes through the agony in Gethsemane. Judas then leads the band that takes Jesus, and the high priest condemns Him, not for the false witness of others but for His own confession of the truth, while Peter denies Him thrice and with oaths.

Chapter 15 shows us Jesus delivered to Pilate, the Gentile judge, who owns Him guiltless and knows the chief priests' envy, but gives Him up to be crucified. Thereon ensues the scene beyond all before or to come. The Messiah, the righteous Servant, forsaken by all, even by God (for so it must be for our sins), expires on the cross; the centurion in charge confesses Him Son of God; and Joseph, an honorable councilor, lays His body in his own rock-hewn sepulcher.

In chapter 16 we have His resurrection briefly told by an angel to the women that saw the sepulcher open and empty. They were too fearful and amazed to say anything. In the second part of the chapter, of which some unreasonably and unbelievingly doubt, we have the Lord appearing to Mary of Magdala who is disbelieved; then manifested to the two going to Emmaus, as afterward to the eleven at table, with reproof of their unbelief. Yet did He give their great commission of the gospel to all the creation, with signs following those that believed. And if He risen and ascended is styled “Lord,” none the less true to the design is He said to be “working with them” and confirming their words, as His servants went forth and preached everywhere. Here only in the N.T. have we the fact historically stated, however briefly. Can specific purpose be clearer first and last?

Advertisement by W. Kelly

The Preaching to the Spirits in Prison, cloth, 1/6.
THE BOOK OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.
LECTURES ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, cr. 8vo. cloth, 3/6.
AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.
THE OFFERINGS OF LEVITICUS, 12LOO. cloth, 1/6.
BRIEF HINTS ON THE PSALMS, lid.
HINTS ON ISAIAH, 5d. a dozen. DANIEL THE PROPHET, 2d.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Isaac: 21. The Sons, Esau and Jacob

Gen. 25:27-34

Now the difference in life and manners in the two sons was an issue of deep moment for each, and a warning for every reader who needs God's grace.

“And the boys grew; and Esau became a man skillful in hunting, a man of the field, and Jacob an upright man dwelling in tents. And Isaac loved Esau because venison was to his taste (or, in his mouth), and Rebekah loved Jacob. And Jacob boiled a dish (or, boiling), and Esau came in from the field, and he [was] faint. And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, pray, with the red—the red thing there, for I [am] faint. Therefore they called his name Edom. And Jacob said, Sell to-day thy birthright to me? And Esau said, Behold, I am going to die, and what [is] this birthright to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me to-day, and he swore to him; and sold his birthright to Jacob. And Jacob gave to Esau bread and the dish of lentiles; and he ate and drank and rose up and went away: thus Esau despised the birthright” (vers. 27-34).

As the boys grew, it became plain that Esau had no faith, and that Jacob had. The life, far more truly than the lips, indicated where the heart turned and where the treasure lay. Of those from whom they sprang, it is written that “all of these died in faith,” or according to faith. They had not received the things prescribed; from afar they saw and saluted them, confessing thereby that they were strangers and sojourners on the earth (or, land), of which dwelling in tents was an express token (Heb. 11:9, 13). It was not so with Esau. He had no relish for the believing and expectant posture of the patriarchs. He threw off all the lessons inculcated by the life and confession of his father and his grandfather. Nimrod was his prototype, not Abraham; still less was He the Object, Who shone before the eyes of all the elders that obtained testimony in the power of faith. He chose and gave himself up to the exciting pursuits of the chase; he became a man skilled in hunting, a man of the field. He was bent on visible and present gratification, finding his pleasure in its vicissitudes, in its demand on craft and resources of every kind, and even in its occasional dangers as well as its successes. As with that rebel whom he thus far emulated, God was not in any of his thoughts. What cared he for that bright expectation of victory over the power of evil, through One more than man Who should nevertheless come of woman and taste of the sharpest suffering though triumphant? The unseen was nothing to Esau, whose heart was filled with his own things of every day, catching and killing the animals without reason.

Jacob, on the other hand, could be described as an upright man dwelling in tents. He was an heir, with Isaac and with Abraham, of the same promise. The like faith produced like fruit. He waited for the city that has the foundations, beyond all that earth can furnish, of which God is artificer and master-maker, or demiurge. He had not a little to watch and contend against in his natural ways; but he looked beyond present scenes and so was kept from living according to motives of self-will with no object above the earth. His walk was feeble compared with Abraham, and checkered compared with Isaac. Still he could say ere he departed that God tended him all his life long, and that His Angel redeemed him from all evil. Esau could not and did not speak of any such shepherd care, of which he never felt the need and would have been ashamed. The earth as it is was his one field of enjoyment, and its wild creatures the object of his skilled toils. The future of divine glory was no more to his heart than a dream that is told. But Jacob, faulty as he was, did prove the watchful and gracious care of God now, and wait for “that day.” It is this only which gives integrity before God, without which “dwelling in tents” had been no more than to the Bedouin; but with him it was the mark of his pilgrim character and hopes.

Alas! the faults of children often betray the carelessness or worse of their parents. Partialities, as in ver. 29, may be natural; but they bring inevitable chastening. A parent on the one hand may like a character the most distant from his own, as we see here Isaac did; or there may be preference given to one that resembles, as appears in Rebecca. They had been more blessed and more a blessing, if they had commanded their children with vigilant love in faith, as Jehovah said of Abraham in Gen. 18:19. Here the inspiring Spirit had a humbling tale to tell, as we learn the retribution in God's moral government.

Passing hunger led to the gravest results. Jacob sod a pottage of lentiles the day when Esau returned faint and famished (ver. 29). This gave the occasion. Jacob earnestly sought that title which to his forefathers and his descendants was bound up with blessing; and he knew that his brother had no such value for it. He therefore availed himself of Esau's need to strike the bargain. “Feed me, pray, with the red, that there,” said the spent hunter. “Sell me to-day thy birthright,” eagerly replied the unbelieving believer.

Thus Esau, ever open to the present, agreed and swore to it (30-33).

“And Jacob gave Esau bread and the pottage (or, dish) of lentiles; and he ate and drank and rose up and went his way,” with the simple and solemn comment, “thus Esau despised his birthright.”

No doubt, the edge of his appetite was keen, and the dish before his eyes was tempting to the hungry hunter. But had he no father that loved him, no mother to pity and provide? Blame Jacob as you will for seizing the opportunity for what he valued if Esau did not. And this was now evident: no hunger and thirst for him an hour longer. “That red there” he must have at once, cost what it might. Let others be for Christ's sake “in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings, in cold and nakedness.” What was that to one who lived only to please himself? He could not fast another hour. “Behold, I am going to die, and what is this birthright to me?”

Ishmael, the bond-servant's son, was evil enough. Born of the flesh only, he persecuted him that was born after the Spirit; he mocked the son and heir of Abraham born under circumstances which pointed to God's intervention for all who believe. But Esau was all the more guilty because according to prayer and prophecy he was born of the heir of promise, with whatever of advantage over Jacob that an earlier birth could give. Was not he equally with Jacob brought up in the familiar sound of God's word and ways as far as this is known? But tried in a way which to a hunter should have been comparatively light, and with resources at hand which never had failed, and which it would be monstrous to conceive could fail his urgent need, he deliberately sold his own birthright “for one meal” (Heb. 12:16), and thus incurred from the Holy Spirit the awful stigma of a “profane person.”

Priesthood: 14. Law of Land Beasts

The Law of Land Beasts, Clean and Unclean. Lev. 11:1-8

The preceding chapter announced that the priests were to differentiate between the holy and the unholy, and between unclean and clean. Here we have details pointed out among the living creatures of every sort, and first among the beasts on the earth. Those who drew near to God as their standing privilege were to decide according to the divine word.

“And Jehovah spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying to them, Speak to the children of Israel, saying, These [are] the animals which ye shall eat among all the beasts that [are] on the earth. Whatsoever hath cloven hoofs, and feet split open, bringing up the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat. Only these shall ye not eat of those that bring up the cud, or of those with cloven hoofs; the camel, for it bringeth up the cud but hath not cloven hoofs, it [is] unclean to you; and the rock-badger, for it bringeth up the cud but hath not cloven hoofs, it [is] unclean to you: and the hare, for it bringeth up the cud but hath not cloven hoofs, it [is] unclean to you; and the swine, for it hath cloven hoofs and feet split open, but it bringeth not up the cud, it [is] unclean to you. Of their flesh ye shall not eat, and their carcasses ye shall not touch, they [are] unclean to you” (vers. 1-8).

Eating here as elsewhere is emblematic of communion. One appropriates what is thus taken in. But, sin having entered with all the disorders which ensue, it is given to God's people to have His gracious and wise direction, instead of being left to themselves and the varying caprices of independent judgment. As a general principle the difference of clean and unclean was known in early days. So we find Jehovah directing Noah to take to him of all clean animals by sevens, but of those not clean two, a male and its female, to enter the ark. And on this Noah acted when he built an altar after the deluge as his first recorded act, and offered up holocausts of every clean beast and of all clean birds. For the tenure of the post-diluvian earth hung on sacrifice.

But now that the priests were consecrated, particulars follow. Israel must have no fellowship where the outward walk was not firm, and this, associated with the inward work of full digestion. The two requisites among the land animals are here marked respectively, by the cloven hoofs, not in part, but feet quite split open, and by chewing or bringing up the cud. One only is insufficient. Both must co-exist to meet His mind for His people. Hence the cases are explained of animals familiarly known to them.

On the one hand, the camel must be unclean to them, because it had not cloven hoofs, though a ruminating animal. The rock-badger, in the Authorized Version called the coney, was in the same predicament; and similarly, as a fact, the hare. On the other hand stood the swine, which did not chew the cud but swallowed its food voraciously, though it had cloven hoofs and feet quite split open; it should be unclean to them. They must neither eat their flesh nor touch their carcass.

Scripture is explicit on these qualities. A walk not according to flesh but according to Spirit, is indispensable in those whom the law of the Spirit of life in Christ emancipates from the law of sin and death (Rom. 8). That the Spirit of God dwells in the Christian is a great and sure truth; but it is the very ground on which he is to glorify God in his body. We are exhorted to cleanse ourselves from every pollution of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in God's fear; and this as having the promise of His dwelling in us, and of receiving us as a Father, on our coming out from those not of Him, separate to Him, and touching nothing unclean (2 Cor. 6). Thus the inward reception and effect of the truth must go along with outward activity in order to form and manifest what God sanctions.

They then that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts. But is this all that is requisite? Surely not. “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” “Be not deceived: God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man shall sow, this also shall he reap. For he that soweth unto his own flesh from the flesh shall reap corruption; but he that soweth unto the Spirit from the Spirit shall reap life eternal. And let us not lose heart in doing well, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.” Here again we see the absolute necessity of combining a clean walk with the inward principle of a life nourished by the word of truth, by which we were begotten by God's will unto Himself. New creation alone has value in His eyes; for the old is fallen through sin, out of which is no way save that cross of Christ which proclaims the love and light of God in Him Whom the world hung there, as loudly as it does to the end its own fatal evil and ruin in so treating Him.

Hence it is as vain to rest on inward meditation only as on outward mortification alone. For either thus is but self, a vain boast in the flesh, in total ignorance of both God and man. But His grace meets man unclean, willful and proud, in and by His Own Son, yet man without sin, to die for him and suffer for his sins, in resurrection entering a new condition, wherein He gives those who believe to live of His life and receive the Spirit of God, that we may walk accordingly, as we await His coming to take us to His own abode, the Father's house.

Such love in God is the source, not only of faith, but of life in those that believe. So the apostle prayed that love might abound more and more in full knowledge and all intelligence (or, discernment), and approve the things that are excellent, in order that we might be pure and without a stumble unto Christ's day, being filled with the fruit of righteousness that is through Jesus Christ unto God's glory and praise. Nothing less than this could satisfy the heart's desire that knows Christ. It is therefore clean opposed to nature's walk in those whose God is the belly, and glory in their shame, who mind earthly things. It is to win Christ in heaven—this one thing, forgetting all behind, and pressing on goal ward toward the prize, to apprehend that for which also one was apprehended by Christ (Phil. 3).

So the apostle did not cease to pray for the Colossians, though they had not seen his face in flesh, that they might be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. But was it to end in that inward enjoyment? Not so. It was “to walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing in every good work, bearing fruit and growing by the full knowledge of God.” Thus is the believer to unite making the truth his own by inward digestion, and walking with firm and vigilant steps the path of Christ in a world of slippery places and defilements manifold.

Proverbs 10:11-21

In the verses that immediately follow, “the mouth” has a predominant place for good will, though labor or its fruit is noticed by the way, no less than heed to instruction, as in vers. 15-17.

“The mouth of a righteous one [is] a fountain of life; but the mouth of the wicked covereth violence.

Hatred stirreth up strifes; but love covereth all transgressions.

In the lips of one intelligent wisdom is found; but a rod [is] for the back of him that is void of understanding (or, heart).

The wise lay up knowledge; but the mouth of the fool [is] near destruction.

The rich one's wealth [is] his strong city; the poor's destruction [is] their poverty.

The labor of righteousness [tendeth] to life, the revenue of wickedness to sin.

Keeping instruction [is] life's path; but he that forsaketh reproof erreth. He that covereth hatred hath lying lips; and he that uttereth slander [is] a fool (or, vile).

In the multitude of words there wanteth not transgression; but he that restraineth his lips doeth wisely.

The tongue of the righteous [is as] choice silver; the heart of a wicked one [is] little worth.

The lips of the righteous feed many; but fools die for want of understanding” (vers. 11-21).

The mouth has a widely different intent and character in man from the beast, where it expresses animal need, innocuous or baneful to others. Man's mouth has a nobler purpose and unique, as the means of expressing his inner nature in relationship, not with the realm of nature which he is set to rule, but, in subjection, with God Whom he represents, or alas! misrepresents. Here it is the mouth of a righteous man, and is said to be a fountain of life; for this is the divine mind as to such a one in the desert world. He is not merely seen of God providentially as Hagar by a fountain of water in the wilderness, which was called accordingly. He endures as Seeing Him Who is invisible. He becomes thereby an active source of blessing to others, and of blessing toward that nature which has in it now the taint of death through the sin of man, its first typical head, before the Second Man (the unfailing and true Head) restore all things as He surely will in due time. Meantime the righteous man's mouth by grace is a fountain of life. He is a witness of God in Christ; and as he believes, therefore so he speaks. With the wicked it is wholly otherwise. His mouth not only utters the violence of self-will and ungodliness, but does yet worse in covering the violence he feels, which if disclosed might lead to wholesome caution or restraint and solemn warning.

“Hatred” is next brought before us, the precise reverse of God in His love, the transcript of Satan in his malice. So evident is its association that it is needless to state its parentage; it is “as Cain,” who was of the evil one, and slew his brother. But, even if in its lightest form, it “stirreth up strifes,” resenting all interference with man's will, as God is nowhere in its thoughts. “But love covereth all transgressions.” Such is the deep feeling of the divine nature in a man of God. Personal resentment is far from the heart. He is pleased to forgive and forget. So the apostle repeats (1 Peter 4:8) that love covers a multitude of sins, as James similarly concludes his Epistle. Yet even Israel, not Christians only, were to be holy; and if a false witness rose up and was convicted, when both stood before Jehovah, then, instead of covering, they were bound to do to him as he meant against his brother, and so put the evil away from among them. Any other course is Satan's work by setting one scripture to annul another, instead of obeying all. To bring human feeling into such a case is as contrary to the gospel as it was to the law. “Do ye not judge them that are within?” “Holiness becometh thy house, O Jehovah, forever.” This is as inalienable as love's privilege to cover all transgressions personally. When our Lord on the mount taught His disciples not to resist evil (Matt. 5:38-42) according to the law of retaliation, it was for Christian life in its individual walk. The same Lord insisted on unsparing judgment of evil in the church. So we all know how wrong it is to efface 1 Cor. 5 in practice by forbidding the uprooting of the tares in Matt. 13:29. How unintelligent and blind!

Again, we are told that “in the lips of one intelligent, wisdom is found; but a rod is for the back of him that is void of heart” (or, understanding. How true is this and evident experimentally! It is not only that every intelligent man has wisdom, but in his lips it is found. How self is betrayed in seeking it otherwise! Who would look for wisdom elsewhere unless he (perhaps unconsciously) wanted his own way? On the other hand, he that lacks heart in the moral sense deserves the rod for his own chastening. If his eye were single, he could not want light.

Another blessing comes to wisdom. It does not lose what it has, but grows by grace. “The wise lay up wisdom.” Acuteness or originality may not and often does not turn to profit the most brilliant and even useful ideas; but wisdom keeps and uses what is given from above. Just as the fool's mouth, however voluble, utters nothing of real value, but has ever at hand ample elements for mischief and “near destruction.”

The next couplet seems to state this simple fact, and not without irony. “The rich man's wealth is his strong city; the destruction of the poor is their poverty.” So they think, and others say; yet riches have wings and may fly away; as the poor, if godly and content with the will of God, have great gain.

Compared with the rich, we have now “a righteous man's labor,” which has the stamp on it of tending “to life.” On the other hand, “the revenue” (it is not said, the labor) of a wicked man tendeth “to sin.” How cheering for him who accepts the portion, though it be in a ruined world, of eating bread in the sweat of his face! and how sorrowful is the course of a revenue, were it ever so abundant, flowing into sin!

Then follows the practical test: “Keeping instruction is the path of life,” as surely as “he that forsaketh reproof erreth.” For not to hear only, but to keep instruction, is of great price; whereas to dislike, and so forsake, the “reproof” of our manifold faults, is the way to go astray, one knows not how far.

Next, we hear the yet more solemn warning against hypocritical its character and natural issue, and God's judgment of it, whatever men say. “He that covereth hatred hath lying lips; and he that uttereth slander is a fool.” So He says Who searcheth reins and hearts, which we cannot do and so need to profit by His word. Malevolent lies, when laid bare, thus prove hatred that was covered up, and the sending forth of slander evinces the fool. The divine oracle does not stoop to the deceiving politeness of society, but speaks out that all saints may hear whether for comfort or for admonition.

Further, we are cautioned against overmuch speaking, as our Lord denounced vain repetitions in prayer like the Gentiles, and long prayers in public like the Jews. It is well at all times to watch and refrain, save in peremptory duty. “In the multitude of words there wanteth not transgression; but he that restraineth his lips doeth wisely.” Let us not fail then to ask the Lord to set a watch before our mouth, and keep the door of our lips, as in Psa. 141:3. Our evil nature is too ready to watch our neighbor's mouth to the shame of faith and love.

The tongue of the righteous, as we are told in ver. 20, is as choice silver. This is apposite and suggestive. We might have thought other metals might have suited not less well. Many a tongue that is not righteous cuts like the brightest and sharpest steel. But as silver in sanctuary associations pointed to grave, and gold to righteousness divine, so in usage among men silver is specially adapted for probing wounds without corrosion or festering. So is the tongue of the just, always with grace, seasoned with salt. Hence the apostolic call on “the spiritual” to restore one overtaken in any trespass: the unspiritual is apt to be severe, the carnal would be careless and resent true judgment.

The following verse (21) pursues and defines the positive blessing. “The lips of a righteous man feed many.” On another side we hear, “but fools die for want of understanding.” The bread which Jesus made and gave through His disciples fed the multitude, with more at the end than at the beginning; and this is what the righteous soul finds in Him for many in their many wants and in a thousand ways. Him they are called to testify, and their “lips” will as certainly “feed many.” Just as certainly do fools who believe not in Him though they may hear with their ears, “die for want of understanding.” His flesh, which the Son of man gave us to eat, and His blood to drink, is the most precious grace on His part, and the most needed truth on ours; but upon this many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him. How true and sad to say, that “fools die for want of understanding!” It is the perverse heart, insensible alike to its own sinfulness, and to the goodness of God, Who in Christ went down to all depths to save the lost at all cost.

Gospel Words: the Widow's Son Raised

Luke 7:11-17

As this is a miracle peculiar to the Gospel of Luke, it strikingly illustrates God's design therein. Luke alone tells us of the penitent woman sent away in peace, of the good Samaritan, of the tax-gatherer in the parable self-judging and contrasted with the self-righteous Pharisee, of the prodigal son, of Zacchaeus, of the converted robber: all of them cases of overflowing grace. So it is here where the gracious power of God manifested itself, and this in the man Christ Jesus, and with marked commiseration of human grief. All this and more was in the Savior, as God would have all men know.

“And it came to pass the day after that he went to a city called Nain, and there went with him his disciples, and a great crowd. Now, as he drew near to the gate of the city, behold, there was carried out dead, an only son of his mother, and she a widow, and a considerable crowd of the city was with her, And the Lord seeing her had compassion' on her, and said to her, Weep not. And coming up he touched the bier (or, open coffin), and the bearers stopped. And he said, Youth, I say to thee, Awake. And the dead sat up and began to speak; and he gave him to his mother. And fear visited all; and they were glorifying God, saying, A great prophet is arisen among us, and God visited his people. And this report about him went out in the whole of Judea and in all the surrounding country” (vers. 11-17).

The power in which the grace of Christ acted was not limited to sickness, even so extreme as leprosy or paralysis. It was not confined to Israel: faith drew it out mightily in answer to Gentile appeal. Here without an appeal we see it supreme over the ravages of death, and with exquisite tenderness toward sorrow otherwise hopeless. Outside the gate of Nain, still called Nein, and mounting the steep declivity of Jebel Duhy, or Little Hermon, with its many sepulchral caves, the Lord and His disciples, with a great crowd following, met another great crowd drawn together by the funeral of a young man, a widow's only son. With a heart full of pity He said to the mother, “Weep not.” They were words in vain from other lips. To men it is appointed once to die; and the young man was really dead, as the inspired physician attests. Man born of woman is of few days, and full of trouble. There is hope of a tree, even if it wax old and the stock die in the ground; through the scent of water it will bud and put forth boughs. But man dies and is prostrate; yea, man expires, and where is he? The waters retire from the lake, and the river water dries up; so man lies down and rises not: till the heavens be no more, they awake not, nor are raised out of their sleep.

But now the Second Man was here, the last Adam. The Kinsman-Redeemer was hard by, and uttered words of hope to the widowed mother, stricken afresh and without hope. The strong one fully armed, who had the might of death, thought to keep his own credit and his goods in peace; but a stronger than he had come upon him and overcome him, and would take from him his whole armor wherein he trusted and divide his spoils. As a sample of this the Lord touched the bier, and the bearers stood still; and His voice was again heard. This time He spoke to the corpse, Youth, I say to thee, Awake.

Never was such a call uttered or heard before. The great prophet Elijah prayed and stretched himself over and over again on another widow's child; and Jehovah hearkened to Elijah's importunate supplication (1 Kings 17). He too that asked and received a double portion of Elijah's spirit with no less prayer and urgent effort labored for another dead child, and was heard for his faith. So in later N. T. days Peter ventured not to say to the body of the deceased disciple, Tabitha, Arise, till he had knelt down and prayed, any more than Paul when he fell on the dead Eutychus and enfolded him in his arms.

How different His bearing Who alone is the Resurrection and the Life! “Youth, I say to thee, Awake.” Yet He Who by the act thus done was marked out Son of God in power by resurrection of a dead man, habitually called Himself the Son of man, as it is carefully shown in chap. 3 of this Gospel. And He Who subsisting in the form of God counted it not rapine (or, prize to be clutched) to be on equality with God, in the perfection of human affection gave the youth (no longer dead but sitting up and speaking) to his mother. How able, how willing, is He to help the tried! How suited and ready to sympathize with our infirmities!

Do you, my reader, answer that this was a miracle, and therefore exceptional? Learn then that, though true miracles, His miracles, like His words were written, that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life in His name. Be assured then of a love in a human heart infinitely beyond man's, even the love of God shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us. His voice now appeals to you in the gospel. For the hour now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. O you that read, hear Him and live. Why should you die? Why despise grace and truth in not hearing them? Listen to Him again: “Verily, verily, I say to you, He that heareth My word, and believeth Him that sent Me, hath life eternal, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life” (John 5:24).

1 Peter 1:11

Let us now consider what is revealed as the object of this research. “Searching what or what sort of time the Spirit of Christ that [was] in them did indicate when testifying beforehand the sufferings that [were] for Christ, and the glories after them” (1 Pet. 1:11).

A mind was at work far beyond that of prophets, yet at work intimately in them; “the Spirit of Christ,” a phrase the more striking because not till long after did the Son become the Christ. But what He was disclosing looked on to that wondrous fact and testified of Him beforehand in that character. It is somewhat as in Heb. 2:17 the Apostle speaks of Him as High Priest, whereas He only became a priest properly when He rose from the dead and went to heaven. This some not perceiving have been led on by the enemy to cast the precious truth of propitiation into the chaos of their own error, which denies to His cross its moral glory, and gives it to a fable.

Be it observed that the language employed is unusually precise. The sufferings are said to be not merely “of” Christ, but “for” Him. They befell Him not simply as a fact, but were appointed unto Him; just as the grace was “to you-ward,” so were the sufferings to “Christ-ward.” Christ is never by Peter used mystically as in 1 Cor. 12:12, but exclusively and strictly in person. Compare especially 1 Pet. 4:1,13.

Nor are we left in doubt what the Spirit of Christ that was in prophets of old did signify, seeing that He testified beforehand, not only the glories of the anointed One Whom all saints awaited, but What at first sight seems beyond measure strong, the sufferings destined for Him which precede. This it was that the astonished disciples were taught by the Lord Himself, both before His death and after His resurrection, and nowhere more clearly than in the Gospel of Luke. “So shall the Son of Man be in His day (i.e. His appearing in glory). But first must He suffer many things and be rejected of this generation” (Luke 17:24-25). Again, when risen He said (Luke 24:26), “Behooved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter His glory? And, beginning from Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself.” Who could wonder that they should afterward say one to another, Was not our heart burning within as He spoke to us on the way and as He opened to us the scriptures? Now that He is gone, His Spirit, the Spirit of truth, is come to guide us into all the truth.

The saints addressed, like all other Christians, come between the sufferings that came unto Christ, and, if not the glory, certainly the greater part of the revealed “glories” that should follow. For it is plain and sure that the magnificent scenes of the last days, times of restitution of all things whereof God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets since time began, await His coming from the heavens to take the earth and all the universe under His direct and manifested sway.

Messiah, ascending as a conqueror on high, was clearly made known in Psa. 67:28, and His receiving gifts as Man, that Jah Elohim might dwell in Israel, still regarded as the rebellious till He make Zion His abode forever. Then, on the one hand, God will smite the head of His enemies; and, on the other, princes shall come out of Egypt: Ethiopia shall haste to stretch out her hands unto God, and the kingdoms of the earth shall sing praises to the Lord. The same great truth is reiterated in Psa. 110—the scripture Christ Himself recited to confound those who denied His divine dignity as David's Lord. Both psalms strikingly pass from His exaltation in heaven to the day of His wrath. Then Jehovah shall send forth the rod of Messiah's strength out of Zion, and He shall rule in the midst of His enemies.

What is being done for His friends meanwhile is developed only in the New Testament generally, as here in particular. Room is left for it in the O. T. It is the grace come to the believing remnant, as to us who believe from among the Gentiles, before the generation to come is born again for the days of the displayed kingdom. Undoubtedly He is received up in glory (1 Tim. 3:16); but this is part of the mystery of piety, there made known by the Apostle of the uncircumcision, and found so largely explained and applied by him in his epistles, as it is used briefly and powerfully in what lies before us (1 Pet. 1:21; 3:22).

But there are “glories” to come, which give object and exercise for that hope which is a bright and large part of the truth, so characteristic of Christianity, and so difficult for a Jew as such to apprehend. Hence one perceives how unpalatable to a rabbi it is to read in Dan. 9:26 that after a definite interval Messiah the Prince was not to come merely, but “should be cut off and have nothing” i.e. of His Messianic rights, which is the true force. It was ruin to the benighted and faithless people; it brought destruction, as the context shows, on the city and the sanctuary. The facts and the prophecy which revealed this and more, they themselves cannot deny. Yet are they still impenitent, unbelieving, unblessed, and disposed to deny a great prophet, who shed light on what and what sort of time the Spirit of Christ was signifying, as was done in various ways.

But those who believe the gospel, Jews or Gentiles, come in according to the new principle of sovereign and indiscriminate grace to save souls. The Saviour, rejected by the Jews as a whole, is gone up on high, not at once to introduce the Kingdom in power and glory as even the apostles at first expected, but to inaugurate the mysteries of the Kingdom, itself a mystery, while He sits at the right hand of glory above. This it was which perplexed prophets of old, and not only the sufferings destined for Him Who might well have seemed the last One to suffer. Yet so said the prophetic word, so testified beforehand the Spirit of Christ that was in prophets: the Servant Righteous beyond all comparison was to be equally the sufferer beyond comparison. Suffering is an enigma to all who believe not what sin is before God; but even to those who did believe of yore, which of them so read the riddle that the Christ was to fathom its depths? For He was to suffer, not only from man because He was faithful to God, but, yet more overwhelmingly as it must beyond controversy be, from God because He was faithful for man, for sinful man! Yet Daniel is equally clear that the people are to be delivered after a time, the last time of distress without parallel, when blessed is he that comes to those days, and the prophet like all the righteous dead shall then stand in his lot, as part of Christ's glories to follow, when He shall reign, not as Son of David only, but with the wide and everlasting dominion of Son of Man.

Long before the prophet of the captivity, the lowly seer of Moresheth-gath, testified (5:1-3) of the Judge of Israel smitten with a rod upon the cheek. Even a Rabbi cannot mistake that He was to be born in Bethlehem, though overlooking on the one side His rejection, and on the other His going forth from of old from everlasting days. Knowing Him not, they in judging Him fulfilled also the voices of the prophets which were read every sabbath. “Therefore will he give them up until the time when she that travaileth hath brought forth.” The birth of the new-born Israel is thus postponed; while Christ sits, rejected by them but exalted by the right hand of God to the blessing of such as Peter was writing to. When that day comes (the prophetic terminus of glory for Israel and the earth), “the residue of His brethren,” instead of being added together now to form the church as on and after Pentecost, “shall return unto the children of Israel.” Then shall He stand and feed them in the strength of Jehovah, in the majesty of the name of Jehovah his God. And, instead of being scattered as now, outside their land, they shall abide: for then shall He be great even to the ends of the earth. And this [Man] shall be Peace. When the last head of a great country, the leader of the outside nations, shall come into the land, it will only be to find power there, not the previous weakness. Then the enemy's land shall be wasted retributively; and the remnant of Jacob be not only as a dew of blessing in the midst of the peoples, but also as a lion among the beasts of the forest.

Here again was no obscure intimation of the sufferings to come for Christ and of the glories that are to follow them. But seek diligently and search out as they did, no small difficulty remained, even for those who pondered the wonderful words of Isa. 49:1,4-9, 52:13-15, and 53, the most detailed and luminous of all: the sufferings which awaited Messiah, and the glory of His people Israel. But there was also a covert allusion in Isa. 65:1-2, of a time, and a singular sort of time, when God would be found by the heedless Gentiles, and find in Israel a people disobeying and opposing; just as Moses of old predicted (Deut. 32) that God would provoke them to jealousy through a no-nation, and anger them through a nation void of understanding.

But we know that even those who were blessed in seeing and hearing what many prophets and kings desired to see and hear, so little realized our Lord's clear and repeated explanation of His coming death of rejection and ignominy, that they were utterly staggered when it came to pass. “We were hoping,” said two of them no more downcast than others on the resurrection day, “that He it is that was about to redeem Israel.” His sufferings in redeeming by His blood, so far from entering their hearts, were the stumbling-block; whereas, as the Lord assured their troubled souls, this was both the only way consistent with God's character and their moral necessities, and the very truth set out in the scriptures. He must be a suffering and an ascended Christ: as emphatically for the Christian now going to heaven, so for Israel and the nations to be blessed on the earth by-and-by under His reign of glory.

In fact, however, the first prediction in the first book of scripture made known to the instructed ear what prophets searched into, and what the apostle explicitly states here with all clearness of light from Christ dead, risen, exalted, and about to appear in glory. The figurative terms are intelligible and expressive. The woman's Seed (in itself a phrase as gracious as startling and unique) should have His heel bruised, but bruise the serpent's head: a victory over the power of evil complete and final, but not without keen suffering. Again, blessing even for all families of the earth, when idolatry had overspread them, was promised in Abram's seed in Gen. 12; but fuller light came in chap. 22 when the father's only son is seen risen from the dead in the same parable which presented him previously as the lamb God would provide for a burnt offering. Thereon Jehovah's oath which distinguishes, in a way which the apostle Paul gives us to understand, the numerous seed which shall possess the gate of the enemies (as in O. T. prophecy), and the Seed, without any such number attached but “one” only, in Whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed; which Gal. 3 applies to the grace come now to Gentiles no less at the least than to Jews who believed. What a testimony is this to “the sufferings Christ-ward, and the glories after these things"!

The same principle might readily be shown in the history of Joseph, suffering in the pit at the hand of his brethren, and then both sold to Gentiles and consigned, if not to death, to the Gentile prison, but exalted to rule the world, administering its power with the same wisdom that had been manifested in previous humiliation, to the glory of him who sat on the throne. We at least are inexcusable if we cannot clearly discern what prophets may have duly searched. Add to this, that so it was before he made himself known to his guilty brethren whose sins he forgave and life he preserved, no less than for the Egypt-world that he governed. Can one fail to read here another application of our text? Nor would it be difficult to trace a fresh testimony beforehand in the blessing Jacob a-dying pronounced on his sons, yet to be fulfilled, for the good portion at the end of days, if we may not now speak of it all more particularly.

Genesis is not singular in this respect. So it might be shown in the types of Ex. 12 and Ex. 14-15. So too throughout the earlier and the later prophets. The Book of Psalms is quite as rich in the same witness borne beforehand unto Christ. What can be deeper, what more undeniable, than the testimony to His sufferings and His consequent glories in Psa. 22 and 102? These may be the fullest; yet are they but a part of what presents both, in that rich collection which the Lord loved and used so perfectly, and prophets searched not in vain, though at a great interval, in their day.

Christ as High Priest Entering Heaven and as King of Kings Coming Out: Part 2

Alas! Satan was made known as the god of this age, blinding the mind of the unbeliever. Christ's resurrection too, which justifies all who believe in Him, becomes the distinct evidence of coming judgment. So the apostle presses at Athens in the heart-searching language: God “now commandeth all men everywhere to repent,” because “he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness, by the man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead” (Acts 17:30, 31). Thus scripture is emphatic, proving how God holds the world guilty respecting His Son, in its hatred of Him come in love and grace and in the glory of His own Person. What availed His presentation according to promise and prophecy? What, that He was the rightful God-appointed King? The Divine Son and the King were the final truths raised, and rejected by the world's representatives, religious and civil. They chose Barabbas and killed the Christ, God's Son, thereby closing the responsibility both of the nations (Nebuchadnezzar's image) and of boastful religious Israel with its divinely given temple, earthly priesthood, and typical ritual.

It is blessed to know that all the sin of the world can never alter the purpose of God respecting His Son, as His appointed heir, to rule and reign for Him, when He comes in universal dominion as Son of Man and as King in Zion over all the earth. The Old Testament scriptures abound with the glorious prospect. The very Epistle to the Hebrews (which declares His present heavenly priesthood, and our worship in holy liberty before God without a veil or the smallest distance) speaks most clearly of the coming age of glory, and blessing under the headship and rule of Jesus the Son of man. Chapter 2 speaks not of angels, but of Jesus as the Lord's appointed One to have all in subjection to Him.

But we are called to faith and patience in this gospel day, when so many are deceived as to its nature and purpose; which is, to take out of the world a people as God's sons for heavenly glory. If the believer knows what is to be for Christ, and sees things around exactly the opposite, faith, resting on God's intention as to the nearing future for Him, looks meanwhile up into heaven, beholding Him crowned with glory and honor there. But in these delusive times of outward greatness, of human boasting and pride, it may solemnly be asked, When, how, and by whom are the rights, honor, and glory of God's King to be established? Surely God Himself will not fail to bring back His Son by ways and means and at a time least expected by the world, putting forth an irresistible power to subdue all enemies. The voice of scripture speaks plainly of righteous judgment preceding and accompanying the appearing of the King of kings from heaven, to establish His kingdom in power and glory.

In particular, “the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to Him,” most emphatically makes known the coming glories of the once-suffering and now exalted Lamb. His worthiness, and redemption rights are in heaven declared, in view of being established, displayed, and universally owned. Yet, be it observed, seals are broken, trumpets blown, and vials poured out in their varied degrees of wrath, all before the shining forth of the hidden King of kings. Amid the closing sorrows that usher in His return, voices in heaven in Rev. 11 state that the hour is come for the world-kingdom of our Lord and His Christ; and He shall reign forever and ever. The redeemed elders celebrate it by falling on their faces and worshipping God for having taken to Himself His great power and reigning. But earth is at issue as to this; for the nations are angry that God's wrath is come. This discloses the guilt veiled though it be under religious profession. The nations of the earth wilt then prove to have nothing but hatred and opposition to God and His Anointed.

Ponder it, reader, in this year 1900, when so much comes out eventful in Christendom with nations boastful of progress but jealous-eyed. All testifies to mutual fear but also to impending judgment; all leads on to the unwelcome introduction of God's Anointed; Who, according to Psa. 2, will have the nations for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. Then no longer hidden in heaven, like Joash the type in the temple of old, He comes forth from above; as we see in the emblem of glorious conquest seated on a white horse, “the Faithful and True,” Who will judge and make war. Such is the description of Rev. 19:11-16, when the Lord Jesus will appear to this guiltily deceived world. Oh! the woe for those who now refuse Him as the Word of God in patient, matchless grace, only to be exposed to Him under the same title in unsparing judgment Then shall fall the little stone smiting the image of Dan. 2 in its last stage. For Christ is to smite the nations, and rule them with the rod of iron. The fierceness and wrath of Almighty God is His unmistakable testimony to Christ coming out of heaven to reign as King of kings and Lord of lords.

Thank God, the believer's hope is heavenly, in character with his heavenly life and position, not of the world as Christ is not, but awaiting the fulfillment of His parting promise, “I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.” Oh to view things in accordance with God's thoughts and purpose for Christ the only Savior, no less than Ruler of the kings of the earth; Who will, after cleansing by judgment, fill the whole scene with glory and blessing, with peace and righteousness. G. G.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Luke

Chap. 5 Divine Design.—30. Luke

The third Gospel is distinguished by its display of God's grace in man, which could be only and perfectly in the “Holy Thing” to be born and called the Son of God. Here therefore, as the moral ways of God shine, so is manifested man's heart in saint and sinner. Hence the preface and dedication to Theophilus, and the evangelist's motives for writing; hence also the beautiful picture of Jewish piety in presence of divine intervention for both forerunner and Son of the Highest to accomplish promise and prophecy, as announced by angels (chap. 1). The last of the Gentile empires was in power when the Savior was born in David's city, and Jehovah's glory shone around shepherds at their lowly watch that night when His angel proclaimed the joyful event and its significant token, with the heavenly host praising as they said, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, in men complacency (or, good pleasure). God's Son, born of woman, was also born under law, the seal of which He duly received; and the godly remnant seen in Simeon and Anna, that looked for Jerusalem's redemption, testified to Him in the spirit of prophecy; while He walked in the holy subjection of grace, with wisdom beyond all teachers, yet bearing witness to His consciousness of divine Sonship even from His youth (chap. 2).

In due time, marked still more explicitly by the dates of Gentile dominion and of Jewish disorder, both civil and religious, John comes preaching, not here the kingdom of the heavens, nor yet the kingdom of God, but a baptism of repentance for remission of sins. Here alone and most appropriately is quoted from Isaiah's oracle, “All flesh shall see the salvation of God “; here only have we John's answers to the inquiring people, tax-gatherers and soldiers; and here too is stated anticipatively his imprisonment, but also the baptism of our Lord; and here only is given His praying, when the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on Him, and the Father's voice, “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee am I well pleased.” And the genealogy is through Mary (as she throughout is prominent, not Joseph as in Matthew) up to Adam, as becomes the Second Man and Last Adam (chap. 3). It may help if it be seen, that “being, as was supposed, son of Joseph” is parenthetical, and that “of Heli, of Matthat,” &c., is the genealogical line from Mary's father upward.

Then follows His temptation viewed morally, not dispensationally as in the first Gospel; the natural, the worldly, and the spiritual. This order necessarily involved the omission in chap. 4:8, which ignorant copyists assimilated to the text of Matthew. The critics have rightly followed the best witnesses, though none of them appears to notice the evidence it renders to plenary inspiration. Divine purpose is clearly in it. Thereon He returns to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and at Nazareth in the synagogue He reads Isa. 61:1, 2 (omitting the last clause strikingly), and declares this scripture fulfilled to-day in their ears. In that interval, or within the acceptable year, Israel as it were goes out, and the church comes in where is neither Jew nor Gentile, but Christ is all and they one new man in Him. Then when His gracious words were met by unbelieving words on their part, He points out the grace of old that passed by Israel and blessed Gentiles. This kindled His hearers to murderous wrath even then, whilst He, passing through the midst of them, went His way. At Capernaum He astonished them publicly with His teaching and cast out an unclean spirit in the synagogue, as He brought Peter's mother-in-law immediately to strength from “a great fever,” and subsequently healed the varied sick and demoniacs that were brought, while He refused their testimony to Him. And when men would detain Him, He said, “I must announce the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for therefore was I sent” (chap. 4). It is a question of the soul yet more than of the body.

In connection accordingly with preaching the word of God, we have (chap. 5) the Lord, by a miracle that revealed Him, calling Simon Peter (who judged himself as never before) with his partners, to forsake all and follow Him: an incident of earlier date, but reserved for this point in Luke. The cleansing of a man full of leprosy follows, and after the healing of multitudes He retires and prays; but as He afterward was teaching in presence of Pharisees and law-doctors, He declares to a paralytic the forgiveness of his sins, and, to prove it, bids him arise, take up his couch, and go to his house, as the man did forthwith. Then we have the call of Levi, the tax-gatherer, and a great feast with many such in his house; but Jesus answers all murmurs with the open assertion of His coming to call sinners to repentance, as He defends the actual eating and drinking of His disciples by their joy in His presence with them: when taken away, they should fast. In parable He intimates that the old was doomed, and that the new character and power demand a new way; though naturally no one relishes the new, but likes the old.

Chap. 6 shows first, the Son of Man Lord also of the sabbath, and secondly the title to do good on that day, which filled them with madness against Him. Next, going to the mountain to pray all night to God, He chose twelve and named them apostles, with whom He came down to a plateau, healing all that came under diseases and demons. Then He addresses them in that form of His discourse which falls in perfectly with our Gospel. The great moral principles are there, not contrast with law as in Matthew, but the personal blessedness of His own, and the woes of such as were not His but enjoy the world. Another peculiarity is that Luke was led to give our Lord's teaching in detached parts connected with facts of kindred character; whereas Matthew was no less divinely given to present it as a whole, omitting the facts or questions which drew out those particulars.

Then in chap. 7 He entered Capernaum, and the healing of the centurion's slave follows. Luke distinguishes the embassy of Jewish elders, then of friends when He was near the house; but the dispensational issue was left to Matthew. The raising of the widow's only son at Nain yet more deeply proves the divine power He wields with a perfect human heart. It was high time for John's disciples to find all doubts solved by Jesus, Who testifies to the Baptist's place instead of being witnessed to by him. Yet was wisdom justified of all her children, as the penitent woman finds from the Lord's lips in the Pharisee's house. Every-where it was divine grace in man; and she tasted it in the faith that saved, and in the grace that bade her go in peace.

In chap. 8 we see Him on His errand of mercy, followed not by the twelve only but by certain women healed of wicked spirits and infirmities, who ministered to Him of their substance. And the Lord addresses the crowd in parables, but not of the Kingdom, as in Matthew; after that He designates His true relations to be those that hear and do the word of God. The storm on the lake follows, and the healing of Legion in the details of grace, as well as of the woman who had a flux of blood, while He was on the way to raise the daughter of Jairus.

Chap. 9 gives the mission of the twelve empowered by and like Himself, and sent to proclaim the Kingdom of God, with its effect on Herod's bad conscience. The apostles on their return He leads apart, but, being followed by a hungry crowd, He feeds about 5,000 men with five loaves and two fishes multiplied under His hand, while the fragments left filled twelve hand-baskets. After praying alone, He elicits from His disciples men's varying thoughts of Him, and Peter's confession of His Messiah-ship (Matthew recording much more). For this He substitutes His suffering and His glory as Son of Man: they were no more to speak of Him as Messiah. Deeper need had to be met in the face of Jewish unbelief. The transfiguration follows with moral traits usual in Luke, and the center of that glory is owned Son of God. When the Lord and His chosen witnesses come down, the power of Satan that baffled the disciples yields to the majesty of God's power in Jesus, Who thereon announces to them His delivery into men's hands, and lays bare to the end of the chapter the various forms that self may assume in His people or in pretenders to that place.

Then we have in chap. 10 the seventy sent out two and two before His face, a larger and more urgent mission peculiar to Luke. On their return, exultant that even the demons were subject to them in His name, the Lord looks on to Satan's overthrow, but calls them to rejoice that their names were written in the heavens. To this our Gospel leads more and more henceforth. His own joy follows, not as in Matthew dispensationally connected, but bound up with the blessedness of the disciples. Then the tempting lawyer is taught that, while those who trust themselves are as blind as they are powerless, grace sees one's neighbor in every one that needs love. The parable of the Samaritan is in Luke only. The close of the chapter teaches that the one thing needful, the good part, is to hear the word of Jesus. It is not only by the word that we are begotten; by it we are refreshed, nourished, and kept.

But prayer hereon follows (as He was praying), (chap. 11), not only because of our need, but to enjoy the God of grace Whose children we become through faith; and in His illustration He urges importunity. Here again we have an instructive example of the divine design by Luke as compared with that in chap. 6 of Matthew. His casting out a dumb demon to some gave occasion to blaspheme, whereon He declares that he that is not with Him is against Him, and he that gathers not with Him scatters: a solemn word for every soul. Nature has nothing to do with it, but the grace that hears and keeps the word of God. So did the Ninevites repent, and the Queen of Sheba come to hear; and more than Solomon and Jonah was there. But if light is not seen, it is the fault of the eye; if it is wicked, the body also is dark. Then to the end the dead externalism of man's religion is exposed, and the woe of such as have taken away the key of knowledge, and their malice when exposed.

Chap. 7 warns the disciples against hypocrisy, and urges the sure revelation of all things in the light, with the call to fear God and to confess the Son of Man, trusting not in themselves but in the Holy Spirit. It is no question now of Jewish blessing; and He would be no judge of earthly inheritances. They should beware of being like the rich fool whose soul is required when busy with gain. The ravens and the lilies teach a better lesson. The little flock need not fear, but rid themselves rather of what men covet, and seek a treasure unfailing: if it is in the heavens, there will the heart be. And thence is the Lord coming Whom they were habitually and diligently to wait for. Blessed they whom the Lord finds watching! Blessed he whom the Lord finds working! To put off His coming in heart is evil, and will be so judged. But the judgment will be righteous, and worst of all that of corrupt and faithless and apostate Christendom. Whatever His love, the opposition of man brings hate, and fire, and division, not peace meanwhile. His grace aroused enmity. Judgment came and will; as on the other hand He was baptized in death that the pent up floods of grace might flow as they do in the gospel.

With the Jews on the way to the judge, and about to suffer from God's just government (at the end of the chap. before), the Holy Spirit connects in chap. 8 the question of what had befallen the Galileans. Here the Lord pronounces the exposure of all to perdition, except they repented. The parable of the fig tree tells the same tale; respite hung on Himself. In vain was the ruler of the synagogue indignant for the Sabbath against Jehovah present to heal; it was but hypocrisy and preference of Satan. The kingdom about to follow His rejection was not to come in by manifested power and glory, but, as under man's responsibility, from a little seed to wax a great tree, and to leaven the assigned measure, wholly in contrast with Dan. 2-7. Instead of gratifying curiosity as to “those to be saved” (the remnant), the Lord urges the necessity of entering by the strait gate (conversion to God); seeking their own way they would utterly fail. So He would tell them He knew them not whence they were, in the day when they should see the Jews even thrust out, and Gentiles sitting with the fathers, last first, and first last, in the Kingdom of God. Crafty as Herod was, it was Jerusalem He lamented, the guiltiest rejecter alike of God's government and of His grace, yet not beyond His grace at the end.

Hence chap. 14 points out unanswerably the title of grace in the face of form, and its way of self-renunciation, which will be owned in the resurrection of the just, not by the religious world which is deaf to God's call to the great supper. But if the bidden remain without, grace fills it not only with the poor of the city, but with the despised Gentiles. Only those that believe God's grace are called to break with the world. Coming to Christ costs all else: if one lose the salt of truth, none more useless and offensive.

In chap. 15 the Lord asserts the sovereign power of grace in His own seeking of the lost one, in the painstaking of the Spirit by the word, and in the Father's reception and joy when he is found; as self-righteousness betrays its alienation from the Father and contempt for the reconciled soul.

Then chap. 16 describes parabolically the Jew losing his place; so that the only wisdom was, not in hoarding for self but in giving up his master's goods, to make friends with an everlasting and heavenly habitation. Practical Christianity is the sacrifice of the present (which is God's) to secure the future (which will be our own, the true riches). Pharisees, being covetous, derided this; but death lifts the veil that then hid the true issue in the selfish rich tormented, and the once suffering beggar in Abraham's bosom. If God's word fail, not even resurrection would assure. Unbelief is invincible, save by His grace.

As grace thus delivers from the world, so it is to govern the believer's walk, who must take heed to himself, rebuke a sinning brother, and if he repent, forgive him even seven times in the day (chap. 17). Faith is followed by answering power. But the yoke of Judaism, though still existing, is gone for faith, as the Lord shows in the Samaritan leper, who broke through letter of the law, rightly confessed the power of God in Christ, and went his way in liberty. The kingdom in His person was in the midst of men for faith. By-and-by it will be displayed visibly and judicially; for such will be the Son of Man (now about to suffer and be rejected) in His day, as in those of Noah and Lot, far different from the indiscriminate sack of Jerusalem by Titus.

Chapter 18 shows prayer to be the great resource, as always, so especially when oppression prevails in the latter day, and God is about to avenge His elect, and the question is raised if the coming Son of Man shall find faith on the earth. After this the Lord lets us see the spirit and ways suited to the kingdom in the penitent tax-gatherer contrasted with the Pharisee, and in the babes He received, not in the ruler who, not following Jesus, because he slave to his riches, lost treasure in heaven. Yet he that leaves all for His sake receives manifold more now and in the coming age life everlasting. Lastly the Lord again announces His ignominious death but His resurrection.

Then (ver. 35) begins His last progress to Jerusalem and presentation as David's Son; and the blind beggar, invoking Him so, receives his sight, and follows Him, glorifying God.

Zacchaeus in chap. 19, chief tax-gatherer and rich, is the witness of yet more—the saving grace of God. But the Lord is not going to restore the Kingdom immediately, as they thought, He is going to a far country to receive it and to return; and when He does, He will examine the ways of His servants meanwhile entrusted with His goods and He will execute judgment on His guilty citizens who would not that He should reign over them. And next He rides to the city from the Mount of Olivet on a colt, given up at once by the owners; and the whole multitude of the disciples praise God aloud for all the powers they had seen, saying, Blessed the coming King in Jehovah's name: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest. It is a striking difference from the angels' praise at His birth; but both in season. Pharisees in vain object, and hear that the stones would cry out if the disciples did not. Yet did He weep over the city that knew not even then the things for its peace, doomed to destruction because it knew not the time of its visitation. The purging of the temple follows, and there He was teaching daily; yet could not the chief priests and the chiefs of the people destroy Him, though seeking it earnestly.

Then in chap. 20 come the various parties to judge Him, really to be judged themselves. The chief priests and the scribes with the elders demand His authority; which He meets with the question, Was John's baptism of. heaven or of men? Their dishonest plea of ignorance drew out His refusal to tell such people the source of His authority. But He utters the parable of the vineyard let to husbandmen, who not only grew worse and worse to their lord's servants but killed at last his son and heir, to their own ruin according to Psa. 118:22, 23, adding His own solemn and twofold sentence. Next, we have His reply to the spies who would have entangled Him with the civil power; but as He asks for a denarius, and they own Caesar's image on it, He bids them render to Caesar Caesar's things, and to God the things that are God's; and they were put to silence. The heterodox Sadducees followed with their difficulty as to the resurrection; whereon He shows that there was nothing in it but their ignorance of its glorious nature, of which present experience gives no hint. Resurrection belongs to the new age, to which marriage does not apply. Even now all live to God, if men cannot see. The Lord closes with His question on Psa. 110, how He Whom David calls his Lord is also his Son. It is just Israel's stumblingstone, ere long to be Israel's sure foundation. Then the chapter concludes with His warning to beware of those that affect worldly show in religion, and prey on the weak and bereaved, about to receive, spite of long prayers, judgment all the more severe.

Chap. 21 begins with the poor widow and her two mites of more account than the richest in the offertory. Then, in correction of those who thought much of the temple adorned with goodly stones and offerings, the Lord predicts its approaching demolition, though the end was not to be immediately. But He cheers and counsels His own meanwhile. From ver. 20 to 24 is the siege under Titus, and its consequences to this day. Ver. 25 and the following look on to the future. The Gentiles are prominent; whence we have, “Behold the fig tree and all the trees” in ver. 29. Observe also “this generation,” &c. in 32, is in the future part, not in what is fulfilled. Lastly, vers. 34-36 give moral appeal. Here again we find Him teaching in the temple by day, and every night lodging at Olivet.

The last Passover approaches (chap. 22) and found the chief priests and the scribes plotting, when Judas Iscariot gave them the desired means. On the day of sacrifice He sent Peter and John to prepare, and the Lord instructs them divinely when and how: for as He said, “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer,” and its cup He bade them take and divide it among themselves. Then He institutes His supper. As yet He had given no sign to mark the traitor, though He had long alluded to the person. Alas! they were even then contending which of them would be accounted greatest; whilst He explains that such is the way of the Gentiles and their kings, but they were to follow His example— “I am in the midst of you as he that serveth.” Yet He owns their continuance with Him in His temptations, and appoints to them a kingdom. He tells Simon of Satan's sifting, but of His supplication that his faith should not fail, and bids him, when turned again, or restored, to establish his brethren. After further warning Peter, He clears up the change from a Messianic mission to the ordinary ways of providence in vers. 35-38, and then goes out to the mount and passes through His agony with His Father (39-46) while the disciples slept. Then a crowd comes, and Judas drew near to kiss, and the Lord laid all open. He heals the high priest's bondman, whose right ear was cut off; but remonstrates, yet allows Himself to be taken Who could have overwhelmed them with a word. Peter denies Him thrice. The men revile the Lord with mockery and blows; and as soon as it was day, He is led to the Sanhedrin, and when asked if He were the Christ, He tells them of the place the Son of Man will take, and owns Himself Son of God.

Before Pilate in chap. 23 the effort was to prove Him a rival of Caesar; but though confessing Himself the King of the Jews, Pilate found no fault in Him. The connection with Galilee gave the opportunity for a compliment to Herod, who got not a word from the Lord; but, after with his soldiers insulting Him, he sent Him back, when Pilate again sought to release Him, as neither he nor yet Herod found evidence against Him. But the Jews only the more fiercely demanded a seditious murderer to be released, and Jesus to be crucified. Still Pilate made a last effort. But their voices prevailed. And Pilate gave sentence that what they asked for should be done. Such is man; and such is religious man, even more wicked: “Jesus he delivered up to their will.” Simon of Cyrene had to prove the violence of that hour; and Jerusalem's daughters lamented with wailing. But the Lord bade them weep for themselves and for their children, and proceeds to Calvary where He was crucified, and the two robbers on either side. There He prayed His Father to forgive them as rulers scoffed and soldiers mocked. Even one of those crucified kept railing on Him; but the other became a monument of grace, confessing the Savior and King, when others forsook and fled. The centurion too bore testimony to Him; and if they made His grave with the wicked, the rich was there in His death, and with Pilate's leave laid His body in a tomb hewn in stone where never man had yet lain. It was Friday, growing dark, and sabbath twilight was coming on. And the Galilean women who saw Him laid there returned and prepared spices and unguents. Little did they know what God was about to do; yet they loved Him in Whom they believed.

On the first day of the week at early dawn the women came (chap. 24) but found the stone rolled away from the tomb and the body gone; and two in dazzling raiment stood by them to their alarm, who asked, “Why seek ye the Living One among the dead? He is not here, but is risen;” and they recalled to their minds His words in Galilee now fulfilled in His death and resurrection. Even the apostles disbelieved. And Peter went, and saw evidences and wondered. Then we have the walk to Emmaus with all its grace and deep instruction from the scriptures, not for those disheartened men only, but for all time and all believers. Next the Lord makes Himself known in the breaking of bread (the sign of death), and at once vanishes. For we walk by faith, not by sight. On returning to Jerusalem they hear how He had appeared to Simon; and as they spoke, the Lord stood in their midst, bids them handle Him and see (for they were troubled), and even eats to reassure them of His resurrection. He speaks further and opens their minds to understand the scriptures; a distinct thing from the power of the Spirit they were to receive in due time. No going to Galilee is introduced here; it was exactly suited to Matthew's design. Here Jerusalem is prominent, which was avowedly most guilty. So repentance and remission of sins “were to be preached in his name, unto all the nations, beginning with Jerusalem.” There too they were to tarry till clothed with power from on high. And thence, when the day arrived, He led them out over against Bethany, and blessed them with uplifted hands; and, while blessing them, He parted from them and was borne up into heaven.

Advertisement by W. Kelly
The Preaching to the Spirits in Prison, cloth, 1/6.
THE BOOK OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.
LECTURES ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, CT. 8vo. cloth, 3/6.
AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.
THE OFFERINGS OF LEVITICUS, 12mo. cloth, 116.
BRIEF HINTS ON THE PSALMS, lid.
HINTS ON ISAIAH, 5d. a dozen. DANIEL THE PROPHET, 2d.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Isaac: 22. Jehovah Appears to Isaac

Gen. 26:1-5

The chapter opens with the account of Isaac tried by “famine in the land,” as Abraham had been a hundred years before. It was meant to put faith to the proof passingly, as the Canaanite then in the land tried it permanently. But well did father and son know that the time had not arrived for possession. For this the object of their hope must come in power; and the prospect of Christ's day, we may be assured, filled the heart of Isaac with joy, as we are expressly told of Abraham (John 8:56). Meanwhile they were content to dwell in the land of promise, as not their own, looking for the coming glory, not on earth only but in heaven too. Here therefore they bowed to whatever tribulation God might send. We shall see, however, distinctions as interesting as they are instructive.

“And there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine which was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines to Gerar. And Jehovah appeared to him and said, Go not down to Egypt: dwell in the land that I shall tell thee of. Sojourn in this land; and I will be with thee and bless thee; for to thee and to thy seed I will give all these lands; and I will establish the oath which I swore to Abraham thy father. And I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and to thy seed I will give all these lands; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws” (vers. 1-5).

Here we have Isaac's distinctive trial of faith. Abraham was called to get out of his land and from his kindred and from his father's house to the land that Jehovah would show him, as He did. But Isaac was charged not to leave, but to sojourn in that land. This had its own difficulties, which grace does not spare. Blessed is the man that endures temptation or trial; for having been proved, he shall receive the crown of life which He promised to those that love Him, and meanwhile the proving of our faith works patience. Isaac accordingly, expressly forbidden by Jehovah, did not go down into Egypt even under the pressure of famine in the land. Abraham, as we know, did go; but there he dishonored Jehovah, his wife, and himself, however rich he became in consequence.

Personally Abraham was a man of faith far more thoroughly than his son. And the son was forbidden where no interdict was laid on the father. Isaac was called, whatever it might cost, to abide in the land, and not go down to Egypt. The land, as all know, typifies heavenly places, as he does Christ, dead, risen, and in heaven, though the Philistines were there as yet uncleared.

This is the trial now. If we have been given to know that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ, our responsibility is to walk worthily of the call wherewith we were called with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love. It is in this very association that we are prepared to face the sharpest trial. We must expect to be visited by every wind of that teaching which is in the trickery of men, in craft for the systematizing of error; but we are exhorted to be truthful in love and grow up unto Him in all things, Who is the Head, Christ. Our conflict is not against blood and flesh, like Israel in their day, but against principalities, against authorities, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies. For this reason we need to take to us the panoply of God; and withal we need to pray at all seasons with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance. Our exposure is all the more because our blessing is of the highest: just as Isaac was the object of incomparable favor then, and called to abide where he was.

So are the saints now. What can match their revealed and blessed relationship? Is it possible to conceive greater privileges? Nothing is easier than to despise the pleasant land, and to cast longing eyes on Egypt. There flourish the resources of the world, the incentives to flesh, the pleasures of sin for a season. In the land such attractions are not; there was a famine as to all that feeds nature. But the word to those whose blessing lay in Canaan is, Go not down to Egypt: dwell in the land that I will tell thee of. Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee and bless thee.

We are diligently to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, even as also we were called in one hope of our calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, Who is over all and through all and in us all. Far beyond the oath to Abraham is our security, far beyond the lands of Israel or earth is our inheritance, though we rest on the same One Who is the Seed of blessing for them and all the nations; and we boast a Father infinitely above their father Abraham.

Priesthood: 15. Law of Creatures in the Waters

The Law of Creatures in the Waters

Lev. 11:9-12

The second class of liberty or of prohibition relates to the creatures which people the waters, salt or fresh, in seas and in rivers.

“These shall ye eat of all that [are] in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas and in the rivers, these shall ye eat. But all that have not fins and scales in seas and in rivers, of all that swarm in the waters, and of every living creature (or, soul) that [is] in the waters, they [are] an abomination to you. They shall be even an abomination to you: of their flesh ye shall not eat, and their carcass ye shall have in abomination. Whatever in the waters hath no fins and scales, that [shall be] an abomination to you” (vers. 9-12).

Here the principle is plain. The Israelite was free to eat of the abundance of the sea whatever had fins and scales. In fact such fish were wholesome; and the marks were easy to discern, like the rules as to land animals. But what believer doubts that a deeper bearing lay under that which is written? As the apostle asked in 1 Cor. 9, Is it for the oxen that God careth, or doth he say it altogether for our sakes? Surely for our sakes was it written. And so we may be assured is the direction here. The moral truth figured by these regulations was what He had chiefly at heart, the spirit, not the letter (save in executing the law on the lawless).

The line had to be drawn here too where the Jew might and where he might not freely partake. A fresh lesson is taken from the denizens of the waters. As Israel was not to eat of every sea or river fish, the believer is again instructed what he ought to avoid. Two marks are specified without which he was forbidden to eat. If they had not fins and scales, he must not make them his own. Both divine direction and divine protection are required in all things and at every step.

As the fins were the organs which directed and balanced the movements of the fish, we can readily discern, what the possession or the lack corresponding to these means spiritually. The word applied to the way in the prayer of faith seems to answer to the provision for the fish in both the prescribed respects. For it is not enough to be born of God, nor yet more to be justified by faith. Beyond controversy to have a new nature from God and to be rescued from the burden of a sin-oppressed conscience are indispensable. We also need a living and constant power of direction that we may know and do His will, to move where He desires or refrain according to His bidding. Who or what is sufficient for these things? Only in subjection to His word can we find ourselves obedient, as the Lord Jesus was; and to this obedience we are sanctified by the Holy Spirit. “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his path? By taking heed according to thy word.”

Hence the all-importance of prayerfully using scripture, as we may read in Luke 10:39-11:4, and Acts 6:4. “Let my cry come near before thee, O Jehovah; give me understanding according to thy word.” This is as necessary to glorify Him in our souls as in our service of His name. “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” Zeal and energy otherwise expose to habitual danger. As men of God, we ought to trust neither our own hearts nor the direction of others. We ought to obey God rather than man. It is due to Him that we thus honor Him; and, looking to the Lord, we are entitled to count on the Holy Spirit to join His help to our weakness. Is He not a spirit of power, of love, and of sobriety? He will not fail to guide sons of God who distrust themselves and cry to our God and Father in the Lord's name. But it is through His word, and not our feeling and ideas. “I have refrained my feet from every evil path, that I might keep thy word.”

And what is there to compare with God's word against the enemy? “By the word of Thy lips I have kept from the paths of the violent.” It only is the sword of the Spirit; but here too we need all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance, in order to wield it with effect. “Through faith” are we guarded by the power of God unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. But faith ever supposes and relies on His word. Otherwise one is prone to self-deception. Satan is as strong as we are weak; yet the word is, “Whom resist, steadfast in faith.” For the word assures us, that, so believing, we have the Lord to stand with us, to deliver from every evil work, and preserve for His heavenly kingdom. “Princes also did sit and talk together against me: thy servant doth meditate in thy precepts. Thy testimonies also are my delight and my counselors.”

To feed on anything which leaves Christ out, to do without His direction and preserving care, is and ought to be an abomination to our souls. So the finless and scaleless creatures that moved and were in the waters the Israelite was to shun; alive or dead, they must be had in abomination by him. If they were destitute of the normal guidance and protection, which that twofold provision represents, he was not only not to eat but to hold them as a horror. But all that had divine direction and protection, he could freely use and appropriate fearlessly. “I am thine, save me; for I have sought thy precepts. The wicked have awaited to destroy me: I attend unto thy testimonies. I have seen an end of all perfection: thy commandment is exceeding broad.” Many are my persecutors and mine oppressors: I have not declined from thy testimonies.”

Proverbs 10:22-32

To the end of the chapter we have the blessing of Jehovah, in contrast with the fool, the wicked, and the sluggard, in their respective paths; the fear of Jehovah, and again the way of Jehovah, and the effects compared with the opposed evil.

“The blessing of Jehovah, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow to it.

[It is] as sport to a fool to do wickedness; but a man of understanding hath wisdom.

The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him; but the desire of the righteous shall be granted.

As a whirlwind passeth, so [is] the wicked no [more]; but the righteous [is] an everlasting foundation.

As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, so [is] the sluggard to those that send him.

The fear of Jehovah prolongeth days; but the years of the wicked shall be shortened.

The hope of the righteous [is] joy; but the expectation of the wicked shall perish.

The way of Jehovah [is] strength to the upright one; but destruction to the workers of iniquity.

The righteous one shall never be removed; but the wicked shall not dwell in the earth (or, land).

The mouth of the righteous one putteth forth wisdom; but the froward tongue shall be cut off.

The lips of a righteous one know what is acceptable; but the mouth of the wicked [is] frowardness” (vers. 22-32).

The Israelite was here called to remember that their God, Jehovah, the only unerring moral governor, is the blesser; and that His blessing makes rich. The day comes when Messiah shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall reign in judgment. In that day, as the rule, false appearances shall not flourish. The vile person or fool shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful. The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and confidence forever. The very wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad; and no wonder, when He reigns Who made all very good, before the sin of man brought in confusion and every evil work. But then shall the wolf dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp (or adder), and the weaned child shall put his hand on the viper's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain. In that day will it be seen by every eye that the blessing of Jehovah makes rich, and He adds no sorrow to it. But even in this day of man when sin still reigns in death, godliness with contentment is great gain, whatever be the outward circumstances.

On the other hand the lively pleasure of moral folly is to do wickedness for a little while. What is the end of such sport, but death as part wages, and judgment as full? A man of understanding has wisdom, and the fear of Jehovah is his constant part as well as beginning. Moreover, the fear of the wicked is far from groundless, and if it heed not the goodness of God that leads to repentance, the suspended blow falls, “it shall come upon him.” Just so, even while it is still the evil day, the desire of the righteous shall be granted; for he asks of God what is according to His will, judging himself where, seeking more or otherwise, he yielded to vain thoughts. Why should he doubt care and mercy in any trial from Him whose grace justified the ungodly? No doubt, even now there are hours of exceeding pressure, here compared to a whirlwind. When it passes, where is the wicked? “No more.” The very distress which overwhelms him discloses that “the righteous is an everlasting foundation.” “Sluggishness” may not have the dark character of “wickedness” or of “folly” in the moral sense; but it is a two-fold wrong of no small dimensions. It is unworthy in itself, and dishonors the failing man by its purposeless ease; it is as vexatious to others “that send him” “as vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes.” How sad when lack of heed and diligence in a Christian exposes His Master's name to be ill-spoken of!

The apostle Peter cites a word kindred in substance to ver. 27 from Psa. 34 though the form differs. The fear of Jehovah is the source of strength and security for the weak in a world of evil and anxiety and danger. It “prolongeth days” for him who trembles at His word, not at the enemy; as “the years of the wicked” who has no such fear “shall be shortened.” For the same reason “the hope of the righteous is joy” now as well as at the end; whereas “the expectation of the wicked shall perish.” Not only is there the wearing chagrin and worry of disappointment to shorten his days, but he cannot shut out his dread of inevitable judgment and his mockery of perdition ends in the blackest despair.

In bright light shines out ver. 29 “The way of Jehovah is strength to the upright, but destruction to the workers of iniquity.” It is not here His “end” as in James 5:11, but His “way;” though they are alike worthy of Him, and also the reliance and comfort of faith, as His word reveals both. Oh what patience and long-suffering in His way, however dark and afflicting it seemed to Job and his friends! but what was the end? Could Satan deny its compassion and mercy? But His way corrected error for the upright, while its forbearance gives occasion to the destruction of such as work iniquity. They shall no more inhabit the earth, than the righteous be removed, in the judgment. They may foam out their own shames now; but “the froward tongue shall be cut out,” as surely as “the mouth of the righteous putteth forth wisdom.” It is the single eye to the Lord that gives the lips to know what is acceptable to God as well as man. The mouth of the wicked speaks frowardness according to the abundance of his heart; the good man speaks out of his good treasure, and this is Christ Himself.

Gospel Words: the Unclean Demon Cast Out

Mark 1:23-28; Luke 4:33-36

This miracle which Mark records as well as Luke may be noticed as the first wrought publicly on one a demoniac. Indeed it has a striking place in the opening of our Lord's service in the second Gospel, which is devoted to that display of its exercise. What truths are more needful for man to hear than that he is in one way or another under the thralldom of Satan? and that the name of Jesus alone avails to deliver him? Only it is as beautiful as it is blessed to see that the third Gospel depicts from the vision of Isaiah the grace and power in which He came, before manifesting man's wretched subjection to the enemy. It was given to Luke only to tell us of that matchless scene in the synagogue at Nazareth, before the solemn lesson that soon followed at Capernaum. How quickly men turn from wonder at grace in God and His Son to the wrath and hatred of their own offended pride I How slow to allow that their own will opens the door for their slavery to Satan!

“And there was in the synagogue a man having a spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried with a loud voice, Eh! what have we to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Didst thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out from him. And the demon, having thrown him down in the midst, came out from him, without injuring him. And amazement came upon all, and they spoke together one with another, saying, What [is] this word? because with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out” (vers. 33-36).

No doubt this case like others in the Gospels exhibits the aggravated fact of possession. It was not derangement here, but Satan's command of mind and body. Yet it is also observable that what is ordinary and presents none of the humiliating horrors of possession may be really more ruinous eternally. So we may infer from the Gadarenes, who were not drawn to Jesus by the deliverance of him that had the legion, but on the contrary besought Him to depart from their borders. In any way, how awful is the subjection! How gladly should men hail the true tidings God sends of a Deliverer in Jesus! Only believe on Him; believe God about His Son. Do you not need Him desperately? None less, none other, than Jesus can defeat Satan or save your soul.

Think of the fearful identification of the unclean spirit with the man, which his language reveals. “Eh! what have we to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Didst Thou come to destroy us?” There is no creature in the universe which affords a lair so congenial for a demon as a sinful human heart. As long as you are far from the Lord, you are near and open to the power or wiles of the spirit of evil. He is your great enemy; the Lord Jesus is your greater friend. Reject not the Savior to your ruin. Be assured that He will receive you; if you cast your soul on Him, He will in no wise reject you. He came to seek and save the lost. If you own yourself lost, as indeed you are, He is just the Savior for you.

There is another notable word. “I know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God.” Yes, He was and is “holy,” even as God is, the Holy One of Israel. And this most appalls these unclean spirits, a Man, yet the Holy One of God No wonder that they believe and shudder. How portentous that sinful man when he hears neither believes nor shudders! yea, yet worse, that he believes after a sort without a shudder even at his own state and sure doom, if he abides as he is in his sins, neglecting so great salvation.

But “Jesus rebuked him,” refusing a demon's testimony; as the apostle did at a later day. God testifies by His word, as He was then testifying in Jesus, His Son and Servant; and the Holy Spirit is now sent forth to bear witness of Jesus, that you may believe on Him and be saved.

Not content with rebuking the demon, He commanded him to hold his peace and come out from the man he had made his prey. And the demon was compelled to obey. If he threw the man in the midst, as evidence of the powerful spirit, he came out from the man without doing him hurt, to the praise of the Lord Jesus. It was not “word” only, to which they were used; but this word was with authority and power in Jehovah's servant, His chosen. Amazement came on all then; but for a sinner to believe is far better still.

Oh! is not this the Savior that you want? He that died to annul him that had the power of death, He died for you, that your sins might be blotted out and yourself justified by faith in His name. “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” Such was the due time with God: why is it not your due time? What could God do more to meet your danger and your need? How could He better assure you of His deep compassion? No other sign could match what He has already given in the Crucified? Why should you ask or look for any other? Be sure God gave the very best.

1 Peter 1:12

We have next an interesting intimation made as to inquiring prophets, full of importance to us no less than to those the apostle was addressing—

“To whom it was revealed that not to themselves but to you they were ministering the very things which have now been announced to you through those that brought you glad tidings by [the] Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven; which things angels desire to look into” (1 Pet. 1:12).

There is no distinction more characteristic than the one just brought out. The Holy Spirit wrought in those of old as “the Spirit of prophecy"; and so He will work in days to come, as we learn from Rev. 19:10. Our brethren that have the witness of Jesus at the end of the age, when the final conflicts arise, will know the Spirit's action in a prophetic way, not as the one Spirit who baptized us into one body, the church, and who dwells with and in us individually (John 14:17).

Here we have the contrast drawn. It was revealed to the O. T. prophets that not to themselves but to us they ministered the things announced now to the faithful through the gospel. They prophesied of the privileges now enjoyed. The Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven at Pentecost is not giving a prophetic testimony to Jesus as then. He is as given to the Christian a Spirit of present communion in a way which was not and could not be, till Christ had come and accomplished redemption.

Fully is it admitted that all saints of old were born of God. If not born of water and Spirit, they could not see or enter the kingdom of God, as the Lord told Nicodemus. This was no privilege special to Christianity, as some shortsighted men conceive. It is indispensable for that kingdom of God in which shall come many from east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, as well as with the elders before them, and prophets and saints after them. Flesh and blood cannot inherit God's kingdom, nor does corruption inherit incorruption. But all the children of God without exception will have their part in it, as they that are Christ's are raised at His coming.

The saints of old, before He came in flesh and suffered as He did once for sins, could not have more than the Spirit of prophecy. And it appears from the Revelation, that so it will be again during the Apocalyptic crisis, when the heavenly saints are seen on high, and Jewish and Gentile saints will be separately called to bear witness on earth in the tribulation to come. All that is revealed of them in those trying scenes points to a distinct testimony and experience, resembling substantially that of the elders who had witness borne to their faith and through it, but with the faith and witness of Jesus too, as far as it is given them. They will look for His coming in His kingdom. But nothing indicates the possession of those privileges, individual and corporate, which we now enjoy through the Holy Spirit given to us.

They will not know that their bodies are Christ's members (1 Cor. 6), and that they are a living God's temple (2 Cor. 6); nor will it be theirs to say that they have put on Christ, in whom they are all one, and there can be neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, nor male and female, but who as being sons have the Spirit of God's Son sent into their hearts crying, Abba, Father (Gal. 3:4). It would be language beyond their intelligence to hear of the glory of His grace which God freely bestowed on them, in the Beloved, still more to be the fullness of Him that fills all in all (Eph. 1:23). Nor could they, as Paul exhorted the Colossian saints, give thanks to the Father who qualified them for their share in the inheritance of the saints in light, who rescued them from the power of darkness and translated them into the kingdom of the Son of His love. They in faith long for the glorious future He will establish, but they fast and groan in the present. The two witnesses prophesy (not, preach grace) in sackcloth, but with power to devour their enemies with fire, killing those who would hurt them, power to shut heaven, and over the waters, and to smite the earth, till their hour is come ere finishing their testimony. Symbolic and figurative no doubt, but symbols and figures of a state wholly foreign to that of the Christian and the church.

Far different is your position, says the Apostle, who have not only the prophetic testimony of old, but had glad tidings brought to you by the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven. Even the babes of the family have an unction from the Holy One and know all things (1 John 2:20); they know the Father, as well as their sins forgiven for the name's sake of Christ. The Christian dwells in God and God in him: what greater blessedness can there now be? He is sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, Who is the earnest of our inheritance. We are children of God, kings and priests. We are Christ's body, and bride. We are heavenly in title and about to bear the image of the Heavenly at His coming. What precious, holy, or glorious privilege is withheld from us? In short, as another apostle says, “all things are yours;” not that ye in yourselves are anything, but that Christ is the whole sum and substance of blessedness. “All things are yours. Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present or things to come, all are yours; and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's.” What a circle, and what a center!

How wondrous it is that the rejection of Christ which would prove the Jews returned from Babylon worse than their fathers banished there and elsewhere for their idolatry, as Isaiah and others foretold, is made by God's grace in the cross the turning-point of all blessing! It is the righteousness of God. Receiving it by faith now (while the people generally are as unbelieving as the nations generally) the remnant according to the election of grace enters into better blessings than if He had been received in the display of His Kingdom. For thus only in divine wisdom could these exceeding privileges be the portion of believers on earth with the further privilege of suffering, not only for righteousness but for His name. Truly, as the Epistle to the Hebrews says (Heb. 11:40), God provided, or foresaw, “some better thing” concerning us.

It is the interval after propitiation was made, Christ meanwhile exalted at God's right hand, and the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven, which gives occasion and ground for the special privileges of the Christian, and of the church as well as of the gospel. The Messiah had been cut off and had nothing (i.e. of His Messianic glory on Zion and over all the earth); but He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father for another and higher glory; and by-and-by He will appear for the promised glory. Christianity comes in between.

Thus the joys of communion as well as peace in Christ are tested fully. Also love has the freest scope, in the endurance of suffering for good rather than evil, and in earnest service both in the church and in the gospel. And hope again acquires its highest character, no less than spiritual understanding in our waiting for Christ's coming and the glory to be revealed in the last time. The new blessedness is so rich and peculiar, that the Holy Spirit, besides illuminating the ancient oracles of God, was about to indite another divine volume, and expressly in the leading tongue of the Gentiles of which this Epistle forms a part. It is written in Greek, not in Hebrew, even when addressed to believing Jews or to the twelve tribes of Israel. Nothing short of this would set forth the new things adequately, beginning with Christ's advent and atoning death, and closing with that great prophecy, which, while it crowns all the predictions, fitly concludes the entire revelation of God.

Who can wonder that the verse ends with “which things angels desire to look into.” Angels were upheld by the Son. They were enabled to keep their first estate. They did not need redemption like guilty man. But they were permitted, not only to shout for joy when the corner stone was laid in founding the earth, but in the multitude of the heavenly host to praise God at the birth of the Saviour, and say, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men. It was not that they doubted; but what wonder and awe, yet eagerness withal, must have filled them as they bent down to apprehend what His sufferings meant, and indeed His humiliation at large, and the glories after these! Oh, what lessons to learn of God in men, and above all in that one Man Who best proved the divine complacency in mankind!

False Prophets

1 John 4:1

This word is addressed to those who know Jesus as not only Savior but their Lord, to whom their allegiance and obedience is due. Happy those who look wholly to His good pleasure for their guidance. They ought also to know that this is a time when allegiance to Him is put to the test. It will be quite a different proof than heretofore, because Satan will deceive ever with more deceivableness of unrighteousness. The deception begins with unbelief in the Lordship of Jesus and by in subjection to it, and in speaking therefore as of the world, and not as of God for heaven, but often commending what is earthily religious and thus enhancing the deceit.

We are desired to “prove the spirits,” to bring them to the proof by the work of the prophets who speak by these spirits. First, they must be proved by their work, which is not confessing Jesus come in flesh, and therefore Lord of all men. Secondly they speak as of (ἐκ) the world. These are two very plain things, so that there is no need that simple men should be deceived. Yet the want of holding fast Jesus as Lord may lead even the elect into danger. Obeying Jesus as Lord will disown what He disowns, will make a good confession of the hope He has left, and will worship in the power of the Spirit that is of Him and the Father.

We must not suppose that having “that of the antichrist” makes those, who by this spirit speak as of the world and its hopes, like men possessed so as to act violently and madly; they would in this case be quickly suspected or disregarded. They require to be tested in the knowledge of God and of Christ, because they soberly lead from God and His obedience. Persons would gain no credit, and this their master knows, if they were to proclaim principles that would shock mankind. In order to persuade men they must propose some advantage, something that does honor to mankind and not dishonor; and no one is taught in the honor and reward of obedience to Christ. A condition that would need forgiveness of God they repudiate. They say that man in his own honor and dignity, and educated therein, has a true nobility; that death is no judgment of God; and if they acknowledge a continued existence after death (not a restoration of the dead to life by the power of God), it is to their own honor, and the extension of the self-importance with which they have dignified themselves. With a future life, however, they trouble themselves but little.

The mark given, in addition to the denial of Christ come in flesh, is that they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. What is now more common than these two marks? God warns us now against them. Against the world He has already warned us (1 John 2). The world perishes, and its works. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, are of the world and not of the Father. The world will be judged, and the works thereof; but of this scoffers are willingly ignorant. They have known, or at least know, the testimony, and reject it. No one can get rid of the judgments God has appointed in His word. Disbelief alters the truth of not one thing. What is, is; and what shall be, shall be. Man does not make anything untrue by his disbelief. So nothing false can be made true, because I am deceived by it, even if it were to my ruin; nor do my convictions make any true, nor bind God in His judgments, or else my judgment would bind God. Men deceived by themselves are easily deceived by others who prophesy according to the blindness of the people. Who is so foolish as to infer that a man thinking he sees, or has a true mental apprehension of a thing, will make it certain?

God is never moved from His throne, and He will be justified in the day when all things will be judged; and if my affections are with God, I say, “Let God be true, but every man a liar.” Now God has revealed the resurrection of all men; and they will stand just as they now are to be tried, in their present capacity of conscience, by His presence, and not by their own thoughts; and their judgment will be final, and righteously so, for God has not failed to make known His goodness and His word. A true prophet believes that Jesus appeared in flesh, and will come again to blessing or to judgment. Such a one therefore speaks of things to come; he speaks of the peace made by blood, and that God in love receives men for the sake of His Son Whom He has given.

Now false prophets are in this scripture portrayed. They prophesy false things; they reverse God's judgment of the world. They speak of its capacities and its greatness; of man's perfectibility, and of the world's institutions becoming his noble condition; and the world hears them. How quickly are men's ears caught by the false evangelist, by the pretenders to inspiration! How Christ's coming to judgment, how His Lordship over the world, is scorned, though the price was paid for man's deliverance from Satan, in spirit, soul and body!

It is quite true that at present some men have not gone as far as others in the denial of the Lordship of Jesus; but their words and position are in a strange contradiction one to the other. Religion is not always rejected by those who listen to the false prophets; but few would listen if any more than accidentally speak of it. Man is so formed of God, that some acknowledgment of Him is natural and necessary as a right condition of his existence: wholly to reject is to denaturalize himself. But they do not acknowledge Lordship in Jesus; and the world hears them. Politics, as we know them, are an unbelief of Him as Lord. Man is sufficient to himself, the ground of measure for his own country and with others; as the Egyptian said of the Nile, “The river is mine own, and I have made it for myself.” It is a simple character to try them by, and it seems a sweeping judgment. But God judges all things in truth, and gives a simple rule to judge by; and all not in Christ will be found not of Him. A false prophet is one not confessing Jesus, and their word is as of the world, independently of God; and the world heeds them. These are they that speak by what is of antichrist. The apostle says “many false prophets are gone out into the world.” If any one knows the true extent of the call God has thus made and by those that hear, he listens to none of that class.

For the spirits and the prophets speaking by them are portrayed; and because they do the reverse of what true prophets do, they are false. And they are spoken of as to appear in this “last time,” when all things hasten to the day of God's interference in the world by His judgments against the rebellion; and the spirit is called “that of antichrist,” because it is set against the Lordship of Jesus over the world (to which must be added denying the Father and the Son), and will fully exist in the antichrist when he is manifested. Those who are of God overcome the seduction and turn away, because they have the Spirit in them that is greater than the spirit in the false prophets.

But let us not conceal from ourselves how plain the distinction is made by the word of God between one spirit and the other. Nor let us think less of the grace of God in Christ to man, or to ourselves who believe; for “of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” We are possessors of Christ, and own the Lord of Whose glory we are partakers, but separate by a clear undeniable separateness from all that the false prophets speak of. “Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be to you a Father, and ye shall be to me sons and daughters, saith the Lord God Almighty.” Doing good to all men, and loving one another for God and our hope's sake, our works shall be owned of Him when He shall come; and they shall be judged for “all the hard speeches they have spoken against Him.”

It is unbelief in us to have anything to say to any of these matters. We return as the dog to his vomit when we do so. We must not be deceived by words of honor and of noble sentiments. When men do well to themselves, men will speak well of them, as is said in Psa. 49. Our rule is, “Whom the Lord commendeth.” But for us they are condemned, though we confess ourselves always sinners saved by grace.

But if the spirit of antichrist is at work, the same will produce a false prophet far above the rest. How wise is the arch-enemy! Will he let the world see this all at once? None was ever wicked at once. No man ever gained his fellowmen by proposing a thing as evil but as good. But you have here, in the description of the false prophets and their works, the sure marks of the beginning; and they lead surely to the end. Those spoken of speak as of the world, and the world hears them. Men again now perhaps dispute about religion, and about this or that being the right one. God says, “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” His commandments are to believe on the Son of God, and to love one another in this faith.

Everything is now slipping from its place. Everything not founded on Christ and His word, and to the exclusion of everything else, will soon be in the enemy's camp. Take with you a single eye, and your whole body shall be full of light: otherwise you will slip away into the dominion of evil, and at last of Satan. Do not be deceived by the name of religion. The crucified One is God's power unto salvation. It is a matter of faith and of holding fast. Disbelieve the false prophets. Believe God, and the devil will flee, and yourself be left to rejoicing of hope, and rest (with those that from the first declared God's salvation) when the Lord shall be revealed from heaven with His Mighty angels, and those who troubled you righteously receive tribulation, being punished with everlasting destruction from His presence, which will then have become yours in joy evermore. Let us now be fain to pluck out of destruction those in whom we discover that God keeps a conscience to the Lord alive in their breasts.

This then is the present state and one we shall see more and more accomplished. But there will be a great false prophet (Dan. 11:36, &c., 2 Thess. 2, Rev. 13:11, &c., 19). The power he will receive of Satan will be very great. His business will be to commend the Beast to whom Satan gives his power and throne and great authority; him the false prophet, or Beast from the earth, will commend to mankind by signs, wonders, and miracles, even fire from heaven in men's sight, to cause them to obey the Beast from the sea whom Satan has set up imperially as man's glory and boast.

It is one fashion of present unbelief to deny the existence of Satan, the adversary. There can be no greater cause of any falling into his toils; because when miracles and wonders are done, they will be ascribed to God, and thus men will give credit to Satan and be deceived. But scripture (and a sad and woeful sign of Satan's power is it when scripture is kept from people's hands) is express on the subject, that as miracles were wrought at the beginning of Christianity, so miracles at the close of the age will be from the evil one, not from God. Men then will have no eyes to discover the deceit, but will wonder and worship. The false prophet will without doubt find his representatives, who by the same deceit will commend the same lie to those subject to them, not to God; indeed of all whose names are not written in the slain Lamb's book of life. It is a sure word that Christianity falls not into forgetfulness or ignorance like heathenism, but into apostasy, and in the fullness of human intelligence and hatred of Christ.

The false prophet will receive his doom with the head of the Roman Empire, which is yet to rise from the abyss, as we learn from Rev. 17 and other places of scripture in the N. & O. T. Testaments. Comparing this with chap. 8:11, we have his miracles to deceive. But he has also the character of a worldly power, as in Dan. 11:36, &c.

It is not said that the prophets mentioned in 1 John 4 do any miracles. Their task is more ordinary; their primary character is, that they do not confess Christ come in flesh. They say as it were “Who is Lord over us?” They speak as of the world, and of its religion. But the time comes when the world, through hearing of them, is ripe in the deceivableness of unrighteousness to fall into the last snare of the enemy. At length the great false prophet, and those connected with him, will bring men into the last measure of deception and rebellion against the Lord. The time is not far off. It is written that in the last time false prophets shall come on the earth and speak by the power of antichrist. And this is written to warn and quicken those who confess the Lord, that they also be not deceived. P. T.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: John

Chap. 5 Divine Design.—31. John

Can it be doubted by any serious reader that the fourth Gospel presents the Lord pre-eminently in His divine aspect? He is the Word Who in the beginning was with God and was God. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. He was made (or became) flesh; but none the less the Only-begotten is Son in the bosom of the Father, as we hear in the wonderful opening (chap. 1:1-18) of the three introductory chapters. Indeed most of chap. 4 is before His public ministry commences in Galilee after John was put in prison. Chap. 1 is striking in its enumeration of His various titles, and in setting forth the work which on earth (ver. 29) or from heaven (ver. 33) none but a Divine Person could do. Chap. 2 prefigures the bridal joy He will usher in at His coming, and the judgment which is to cleanse the temple in Jerusalem; but it is as risen from the dead, as He announces. Man, however, was quite unmeet. Hence chap 3 insists on his being born anew as indispensable even for the earthly things of the kingdom. But the Son of Man lifted up on the cross opens the way for heavenly things and life eternal, being in truth also the Son of God given in love to the world that the believer might be fully blessed. And the chapter closes with John's witness to His glory as above all, Whom the Father loves and has given all things to be in His hand.

To the woman of Samaria (chap. 4) the Lord opens the free giving of God in the Son stooping to the uttermost, yet giving not life only but living water, the Spirit, as a fountain within; as He goes on to the hour when the true worshippers worship the Father in spirit and truth. Not only does she own Him as the Christ, but many of the Samaritans believed because of her word, and many more because of His, confessing Him the Savior of the world. When at Cana, the dying son of the courtier is healed by His word, though the father's faith at first was short and corrected by the Lord.

In Jerusalem (for this Gospel tells of His often working there), at the pool of Bethesda, He brings out His quickening and raising power, with a resurrection of judgment for unbelievers, in a discourse which grew out of a man long infirm being immediately made well. The latter part of chap. 5 points out man's responsibility because of the ample testimonies afforded.

Chap. 6 opens with the five loaves in His hand feeding five thousand men, and the Lord owned as the Prophet, refusing at present to be King, goes as Priest on high but will return to His own, tempest-tossed as they were, so that the ship at once reaches the land. The discourse follows, or rather discourses (see ver. 59), in which He speaks of Himself coming down from heaven as the bread of God; next, giving His flesh to be eaten and His blood drunk; lastly, the Son of Man ascending where He was before: the Incarnation, the Redemption, and the Ascension, the “common faith.”

Chap. 7 completes this portion by the disclosure that, though the time was not yet come to show Himself to the world as He surely will when He comes in His kingdom, He would give the Spirit when glorified, like rivers flowing out. It is the Spirit for bearing witness, as in chap. 4 for worship. Judaism is in all these chapters set aside for Christ, Who is really and in power what it was in figure, not to say much more.

In chap. 8 we have Christ, the Son, yea God, manifested by His word, but rejected; in chap. 9 manifested by His work, and equally rejected by those unbelievers who pretended to see, while the once blind from birth believed, saw and worshipped Him. Chap. 10 closes this section by the Good Shepherd service of the Son, one with the Father, Whose word and work are the resting-place of His sheep, not Jews only but Gentiles, and even now one flock, one Shepherd.

The next portion gives the testimonies borne to the Lord Jesus; and first in chap. 11 as Son of God in power of resurrection shown on Lazarus, already not dead only but buried, “for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.” The Jews, dead to all but self and present interests, are only afraid of the Romans; and Caiaphas, more wicked than Balaam, prophesies the expediency of one man (albeit Son of God!) dying for the people. Yes, grace in God sent Him, grace in Himself came, to die; but what blind and blasphemous iniquity in that expediency, whereby the whole nation morally speaking did perish, and their priesthood notably! In chap. 7 Mary's anointing Jesus' feet with the costly unguent is told, censured by the heartless covetousness of Judas about to betray Him. But the testimony is next given to Him as King of Israel, Son of David, when entering Jerusalem. Here the Greeks desire to see Jesus, Who answers, “The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified,” and announces in His solemn formula the necessity of His death to bear much fruit. Thus could Gentiles be fellow-heirs as well as Jews in God's rich grace. But if man was insensible, the Lord realized the sacrifice; and the Father answered the trouble of His soul with the assurance of glorifying His name again, as He had already, to wit in resurrection. The Lord, no longer in figure but in open speech, explains the judgment of the world and of its prince, because of His rejection on the cross; whereby He becomes the center for all, whether Jew or Gentile, the One by Whom alone the believer comes to God. From ver. 37 the evangelist ponders on the situation of Jewish unbelief, as owned in Isa. 6 and 53, putting God's seal on the prophet. It is the more awful because many even of the rulers did believe, but feared to confess through loving the glory of men rather than of God. From ver. 44 it is Jesus in His last charge publicly laying bare the root of things. It was not Himself only come as light and to save: the word He had spoken should judge in the last day. The Father Who had sent Him, and Whose commandment is life eternal, was behind and above all.

Then in chaps. 8-17. we have the communications that open out the coming association with Christ in heaven, which was a wholly new thing after the breach with the Jew, chap. 17 completing it by giving us to hear His communion with His Father thereon. The first of these presents Christ in the significant act of washing the disciples' feet, with (not blood but) water. It is His advocacy for us now in heaven with the Father, interceding for us, as we on earth are called to do for one another (14). Advocacy is not to form relations, but to restore communion when interrupted by sins: as generally misunderstood now as by Peter then, to the shame of those who have the Holy Spirit given them. Judas is excepted, whose betraying Him He most touchingly discloses after supper; “and he went out immediately; and it was night!” Thereon, in terms of infinite depth, the Lord says, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God also shall glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him.” There is the ground and the display of the righteousness of God in its highest character. The blessing proclaimed in the Gospel is its result to us in His grace. Here we have all fully in Christ, where none as yet could follow. Yet all are exhorted to love one another as His disciples. If Peter trusted himself, he should learn what he himself was by denying Him thrice.

Chap. 14 follows, comforting the disciples on His departure by the blessed hope of His coming to receive them for the Father's house, whither He was going to prepare a place for them: a wonderful statement indeed of that wonderful hope. Next, He points out what the Father is Whom He had been showing while here, words and works alike the Father's; as they should do even greater works because of His going to the Father. Obedience was to be the witness of their loving Him; on His part, the Father at the Son's instance would give them another Advocate, the Spirit of truth, to dwell with them forever, yea to be in them. Hence in that day they should know that Christ is in the Father, and they in Him, and He in them. But obedience should only be deepened, not of His commandments only, but of His word. Here comes in the Christian's responsibility, and in the Father's government of our souls more enjoyment follows fidelity. Indifference to the Savior's words proves that one loves Him not. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father would send in His name, should teach them all things, as well as recall all that Christ had said. He leaves them peace, and gives them His peace. Why then be troubled or fear? Love to Him would rejoice that He was going to the Father. Now that He is rejected, the enemy acquires the title of Prince or Ruler of this world: but his coming finds nothing in Christ, Who loves the Father and obeys, as Adam disobeyed, unto death.

Chap. 15 treats of Christ as superseding Israel (fully proved an empty vine, and worse), and the disciples as branches, responsible to bear fruit, but only doing so by abiding in Him. Not life, still less unity of the members with the Head, is in question, but practical cleaving to Him in order to fruit. Those who do not are cut off, as hollow professors. Keeping His commandments is to abide in His love; for here it is ours to Him in daily practice, not His to us as in the gospel. Even here His love to us is the spring and pattern of ours one to another; but it is as friends, who once were enemies; and He chose us to bear fruit abidingly, telling us all He heard from His Father, and assuring us that what we ask of the Father in His name, He will give us. He urges mutual love in the face of the world's hatred, as of Him, so of those who must expect persecution for His sake, and are avowedly not of the world. Christ's words and works had only brought out hatred of Him and His Father—a sin outdoing all other sins. But the Advocate when come would testify of Him, as those also did who were with Him from the beginning.

In chap. 16 we have distinctly the presence of the Holy Spirit Whom Jesus sends; and He, when come, demonstrates to the world sin, righteousness, and judgment; as He guides the disciples into all the truth, and announces the things to come, thus glorifying Christ. It was but a “little while” in contrast with Jewish expectation. Meanwhile how wondrous to have the Father plainly revealed, and to be loved of Him ourselves, and to have peace in Christ with tribulation in the world!

Chap. 17 crowns all with the Son's spreading before the Father His person and His work, as His double plea for glorification, but in order to glorify the Father, in the objects of their common love beyond all thought of man. He requests that they should be associated with Him before the Father as well as before the world; and at length be with Him and behold His glory, and, meanwhile, yet more know the Father's name with its blessed consequences.

Chap. 18 commences the final scenes: the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter, the blasphemous unbelief of Annas and Caiaphas, the guilty yielding of Pilate against his conscience, and the guiltier clamor of the Jews who prefer Barabbas. In chap. 19 Pilate scourges Jesus, but vainly strives against spite till the chief priests disavow the Christ of God in the apostate answer, We have no king but Caesar. The only One that shines with divine dignity and grace is Jesus, as this is the design of the Gospel: not His agony in the garden, but the prostration of the band at His name; not the forsaking on the cross, but, “It is finished,” and the dismissal of His spirit; for He, and He only, had authority to lay down His life (soul) and to take it again. Here too is noticed the piercing of His side after death, and the blood and water that came out, as John testifies in the Gospel and applies in his First Epistle. Also Nicodemus reappears, and Joseph (whatever man designed) “with the rich in his death.” In chap. 20, early as Mary of Magdala came on the first day of the week, she found the stone taken away from the tomb. Peter and John run at her call, and see the evidence of His resurrection. They had not as yet known the scripture that He must rise. Such faith is powerless. Mary knew no more, but remained weeping; when first angels, then the Lord, ask her why she wept. All was known when He said, “Mary.” He forbids her touching Him (not so was the Christian to know Him, but as glorified), and sends His message of full grace to His brethren, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God. At evening within the shut doors they were assembled, when Jesus stood in the midst, announces peace to them, and gives them their mission of peace, with administrative remission and retention of sins. Thomas was both absent and unbelieving; but eight days after he was with them, and Jesus comes, though the doors were shut, and again salutes them, with full acceptance of Thomas' challenge to shame him into faith, so that he cries, My Lord and my God. The words that follow confirm the conviction that he typifies the Jew brought to see and believe, after the Christian is called to the better part—believing without seeing.

Chap. 21 appends typically the millennial haul of many great fishes from the sea of the nations, in contrast with the catch now (as in Luke) where the nets break and the boats are sinking. Peter is then probed, but reinstated before his brethren and entrusted with Christ's lambs and sheep. Besides, he is assured of that portion by grace which could not be in his self-confidence. Next John has his place defined enigmatically; not as the earliest tradition said, that he should not die, “but if I will that he abide until I come, what [is it] to thee?” All is left in suspense. John remained, when all the rest were gone, to point out the passing away of the churches, “the things that are,” and to predict the judgments on the world which precede the Lord's return in visible glory, when He will take His great power and reign.

The Spirit's Work

We see the Spirit's work in creation, in the Sam-sons, Jephthahs, Sauls, and even in Balaam. We see it in the prophets calling back to the law, and foretelling Messiah's sufferings and the glories to follow. But here though called the Spirit of Christ, yet it was a divine Person working in a divine way to manifest divine power, or deal with God's people from without. This went on till John, who was Messiah's forerunner. It was a transition time.

Then on Christ as Man the Holy Spirit came down as a dove. He was anointed and sealed, but He only—on this to be declared Son of God by John. And then the heavens opened, and the Father owning Him as His Son, the Man that was there anointed, the Second man and Last Adam, personally though yet alone. For except the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it must abide alone. Even then Christ was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to overcome for us, fully tested here below. Through the eternal Spirit too He offered Himself without spot to God. But He was alone.

But then (what no heart can tell or fathom) the blessed Son of God, the lowly One and the Just, was made sin for us; and we can say, He bore our sins in His own body on the tree. Now He is risen. All that is passed. That wonderful atonement has been made, in the very place of our sins, in absolute and perfect obedience and in love to the Father—God perfectly glorified. Sin, death, Satan's power, God's forsaking in judgment against all sin; all are passed. And man, owned of God, and having glorified God as made sin, is passed into the divine glory to begin all afresh in a place the consequence of redemption. Thence too, having in that place received the Holy Ghost, Christ sent Him down to believers (not to man in the flesh or the world, though the gospel goes out thereby), to associate them with and unite them to Him Who, glorified, begins all afresh. J. N. D.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Who Shall Declare. . .; Grave with the Wicked; Tares; Their Angels; Little or Believing One;

Q.-(1). Isa. 53:8. What is meant by “Who shall declare his generation?” H. D.

(2). Isa. 53:9. How are we to understand “His grave with the wicked and with the rich in His death?” R. M.

A.-(1). It appears to be as contrary to general usage as to the particular context, that we should here conceive “posterity” (even though of course in a spiritual sense). The meaning is rather His contemporaries. How blind they were, not only to His glory, but to the wondrous work His humiliation was about to achieve by His atoning death on the cross! They in their murderous hatred were but hurrying on that which would give effect, in the grace of God, to taking away the transgression of His people.

(2). The next verse refers, not only to the grave which was appointed to one reckoned with lawless men, but to that honor which God took care should notwithstanding be paid in His burial. As is well known, “the wicked” is plural, whereas “rich” is singular. The simple facts are thus the best comment on the prediction. Man proposed, but God disposed, Who alone could and did set it out long before. Men assigned Him in his thought a grave with the wicked, but He was in fact according to His purpose with a rich man in His death.

Q.-What is the real bearing of Jer. 31:22? Bp. Pearson treats it as the prophet's prediction of the Incarnation, as you will know, declaring this interpretation “ancient, literal, and clear.” “Ancient” it may be, both for Rabbis and Fathers; but is it either literal or clear? Is it the truth intended? E.

A.-The context clearly looks on to the gathering of all the families of Israel, not to a mere remnant of Jews provisionally (in a day when Jehovah will be their God) and they His people. He that scattered Israel will gather him and keep him as a flock; when priests and people shall be satisfied with His goodness (vers. 1-14). Rachel's tears are to be no more; her children instead of perishing shall come to their own border. Ephraim turns and repents; and Jehovah says He will surely have mercy on him (15-20). Then, as filling up the beautiful picture of Israel's return, we hear the call to set up way marks and signposts, yea to set their heart toward the highway, once of sorrow, now of joy; for Jehovah bids the virgin of Israel, forgiving all past delinquency, to “turn again to these thy cities.” “How long wilt thou wander about, thou backsliding daughter?” What has one word of all this to do with the miraculous conception, all-important as it is in Isa. 7:14? “For Jehovah hath created a new thing in the earth; a woman shall encompass a man” (22). No matter what their weakness, they need not fear the strong, but should go round about him. The word here used is never employed to express any such idea as is assumed, but is suitable for a phrase that imports one out of weakness made strong. And this is confirmed by all that follows to the end of the chapter. Even Calvin, unintelligent as he was in prophetic truth, understood the verse correctly. The Incarnation rests on grounds so plain and solid as to need no forced construction. For a female compassing a mighty one has nothing in common with giving birth, but rather to freedom and exemption from his power, however weak in herself. Usage quite agrees with the force of the words. Where is the phrase applied to gestation? Scripture speaks similarly where any strikingly divine intervention wholly distinct appears; as, for instance, of the earth opening its mouth to swallow the apostate rebels, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram (Num. 16:30). The phrase employed therefore embraces a far wider range than the Incarnation, to which the terms of a woman compassing a man are in themselves wholly alien.

Q.-Matt. 13:5, 6. Can a believer lose life eternal? R. C.

A.-It would not be life eternal if it could be lost. Animal life can perish; but even the soul is immortal for man, being inbreathed by Jehovah-God (Gen. 2). How much less can that life perish, which the believer hath (not merely shall have) in Christ, the Son of God! What then means the withering away of what sprang up on the stony places? Our Lord explains in vers. 20, 21. There is more than one way of ruin for mere professors of His name: 1st. Satan hindering the entrance of the word, as in ver. 19; 2nd. as in vers. 20, 21 the flesh receiving the word hastily without conscience before God, and therefore quickly giving up under pressure; and 3rd. as in ver. 22, the anxiety of this age and the deceitfulness of wealth choking all fruit, the necessary issue of life. It is the world. He who hears in faith is no longer Satan's prey and does bear fruit, though even so the flesh and the world may hinder the hundredfold which ought to be.

Q.-Matt. 13:25. What is the true force of the word (ζιζάνια) translated “tares” in the A. & R. Versions? Is there any ground for the strange notion, among many of old to our day, that the noxious weed intended is degenerate wheat? QUERIST.

A.-The word beyond doubt means “darnel,” which is in Latin “lolium,” or “l. temulentum” because of its deleterious properties. The “tare” or vetch is in Latin “vicia,” and, far from being a noxious weed, a leguminous grain wholesome in itself and useful to the agriculturist in spring and winter for feeding his cattle. There is no more ground in natural science to confound tares with darnel than there is in philology. The things are as distinct as the terms. Nor is there the smallest evidence, since man began to observe, that wheat ever degenerated into either. It is a mere and baseless fancy. Yet so farmers talked and fathers wrote, to say nothing of natural philosophers like Pliny of old, and grave divines, as Dr. J. Lightfoot down to Abp. Trench, who goes so far as to treat as a Manichean error that wheat and tares (or rather darnel) are different in kind, and their spiritual counterparts incapable of passing from the one into the other I As his assumption is not the fact in natural history, so it is a mistake doctrinally to deduce from our Lord's words that the sons of the kingdom and those of the evil one are interchangeable. They are viewed as the results of the respective sowings. It is still more palpably the error of ancients and moderns to overlook our Lord's interpretation of “the field” as “the world.” To regard it as “the church” opens the door to confusion and evil without end, as every Christian ought to see.

Q.-Matt. 17:10. What mean “their angels?” R. M.

A.-Not the spirits, but the angelic representatives, of the little ones. Compare what is said of Peter in Acts 12:15. It is well however to abide within the limits of what is revealed without prying beyond. See Col. 2.

Q.-Matt. 18:5; 19:13-15. Is it a little one only, or a believing one, or both? R. M.

A.-The Lord at the beginning of the chapter corrects the ambition of the disciples by the figure of a little child as far as possible from any such thought. But it is certain from ver. 6 that He goes forward to the “little ones that believe on Me.” But it seems worthy of Him before closing the subject to give us comfort in a more distinct way than elsewhere respecting “little ones” like the one that He called and set in the midst of them. How many die at an early age? Do they perish? We are not left to spiritual instinct, or to reasoning from general principles. Nor is it the unbelieving and unspiritual plea that they are “innocent.” They do belong to the fallen race, for whose sake the good Shepherd came and died: “even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” Are we not entitled to look beyond those that believe to “these little ones” for assurance that, if called before believing could be, they are not to perish? Compare also chap. 19:13-15.

Q.-(1). Mark 1:23, Luke 4:33-36. The late Dr. Trench, Abp. of Dublin, in his well-known Notes on the Miracles of our Lord (p. 233, seventh ed. 1862), speaks of the healing of this demoniac as “the second miracle” of the kind which the evangelists record at any length. Is this correct?

(2). He connects in p. 234 “the Holy One of God” in the accounts of this miracle with Psa. 16:10, as “the first appearance of this phrase.” Is it really so?

(3).Dean Alford in the fifth edition of his Greek Testament, 1 313, says that this demoniac's healing in the synagogue at Capernaum was “not immediately after the preceding. The calling of the apostles, the Sermon on the Mount, the healing of the leper, and of the centurion's servant, precede the following miracle.” Is this the fact? or ignorance of the chronology? QUERIST.

A.-(1). The Abp. cannot have carefully examined the relative order of the events in the Gospels; else he must have known that the cure of the demoniac at Capernaum was the first case of detailed account, and long before that related in Matt. 8:28-36. Mark and Luke are explicit that the cure in the synagogue at Capernaum was on the same sabbath when he healed Simon's mother-in-law, soon after the four apostles were called as Mark proves, whereas only Luke reserves that call for fuller development in the miraculous draft which so powerfully acted on Peter's soul (Luke 5:1-11). But both conclusively show that the cure of legion (Matthew telling us of two demoniacs) was after the day when the parables of the kingdom were delivered (Matt. 13), and the storm on the lake when the Lord rebuked the winds and the raging water.

(2). Dr. Trench is not less mistaken as to the phrase, “Holy One of God.” “Holy” here answers to ἅγιος, whereas the corresponding Greek in the Sept. rendering of the Psalm (and quite accurately) is ὅσιος. The former means strictly holy, as separate from evil; and this the angel announced even of the Lord's humanity, in a way never said of any other born of woman, nor yet of Adam unfallen. Compare also 1 John 2:20. The latter is often in the Sept. said of Christ as the “pious” or “gracious” One, which comes practically to the sense of “holy” as said of man, and “merciful” of God. This is the word that occurs in Psa. 16 as quoted in Acts 13:35, as also in Heb. 7:26. Psa. 89 is very instructive, in that we have the former said of the Holy One of Israel, our King, in ver. 18; whereas He is said to speak in vision of His Holy or gracious One in ver. 19, the One in Whom His loving-kindnesses or mercies centered.

(3). From what has been already remarked on Dr. T., it will be plain how far from all intelligence of the structure of the Gospels, and of Matthew's in particular, was Dean Alford. For there is no ground to doubt that the healing of the demoniac at Capernaum is the first recorded miracle of our Lord after calling the four apostles, that the leper was healed not long after, and considerably before what is called the Sermon on the Mount, and that the centurion's servant was not healed till after it, as is shown in Luke 6, 7 beyond cavil. Matthew was led to displace the events in order to group together a divine dispensational picture; Luke brings together events for the moral purpose which reigns in his account. Mark had no such reason to depart from the sequence of fact. Failure in apprehending the truth of things has wrought serious mischief in immature harmonies of the Gospels, and still worse in those whose lack of insight emboldened them to tax inspired men with discrepancies and errors.

Isaac: 23. Isaac in Gerar

What candor is in scripture! How truly divine Isaac was saved from going down into Egypt, whither famine had driven his father. He was guided so as to be a suited type of Him Who is now for us only in heaven. But he sinned in Gerar, as Abraham sinned before him. This ought to have been to him a solemn admonition, if he had remembered it as he ought in God's presence. Out of it the failure of one we love becomes a snare to repeat it, and it may be an excuse as not pretending to be better.

“And Isaac dwelt in Gerar. And the men of the place asked him about his wife. And he said, She [is] my sister; for he feared to say, My wife, lest the men of the place slay me on account of Rebecca; because she was fair in countenance. And it came to pass when he had been there some time, that Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked out of the window and saw, and, behold, Isaac [was] sporting with Rebecca his wife. And Abimelech called Isaac and said, Behold, she [is] certainly thy wife; and how saidst thou, She [is] my sister? And Isaac said to him, Because I said, Lest I die for her. And Abimelech said, What [is] this thou hast done to us? Lightly might one of the people have lain with thy wife, and thou shouldest have brought on us a trespass. And Abimelech charged all the people, saying, He that toucheth this man or his wife shall surely (dying) be put to death” (vers. 6-11).

For the Christian it is the sure proof of a low and earthly state of soul to palliate a lie by toning it down to “incorrect speech.” One thus panders to the world's code of honor, where the truth is unknown, and an impeachment of veracity, however certain, demands wiping out with blood. Still more deplorable is the delusion which plays into the enemy's hand, as if no saint can be guilty of lying. Even the N. T. warns of the danger in Epistles such as those to the saints in Ephesus and Colosse, which treat of the highest privileges of the church. “Wherefore putting away falsehood, speak ye truth each with his neighbor; for we are members one of another.” “Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds.” The repeated warning proves how readily it might be even among the best taught. Only ignorance or worldliness could think otherwise. In fact it is recorded for our admonition that such was the first sin after the great Pentecost.

But it is intolerable to compare or class with lying any mistakes of inadvertency or hearsay, particularly when there is care to correct them after the facts are better known. The essence of lying is the wish to deceive, whatever the motive; which may be to exalt self or to injure another, to evade through fear or to gain a desired end. There is no difficulty in discerning where the eye is single. Even the least esteemed or those of no account in the church are quite capable of judging matters of wrong or falsehood, though it would be absurd to expect from such a sound judgment on deeper questions. But as the O. T. does not hide or extenuate the fathers, so the N. T. lets us know how far in this very way might fall an honored apostle, who trusted himself and let drop the warning words of the Lord.

Is it not a most humbling element presented in Isaac's case as in Abraham's, that a saint may sink below the world's standard of morality? The king of the Philistines reproved Isaac for untruthfulness, and this in exposing that wife to dishonor and his own people to guiltiness; as either he or probably his predecessor had similarly denounced the same case of deceit in Abraham, made yet worse by his previous failure in a like way with Pharaoh in Egypt. Had Isaac borne all holily in mind, it must have proved a safeguard by grace, instead of a cloak for the flesh yielding through unbelieving terror. Let ourselves now see to it that we profit by the written word all the more, because He Who is the truth, now fully revealed, makes all such failure appear in its full heinousness.

There is an added element in the untruth of Abraham and of Isaac: the betrayal of the relationship of their wives Sarah and Rebecca by their own shortsighted selfishness. How blessed is the contrast of Christ, as the Husband of Israel, and the Bridegroom of the church! Compare Num. 30.

Priesthood: 16. Birds Unclean

Birds Unclean

Lev. 11:13-19

The next division handled is of the birds proscribed, which left other kinds free to the use of Israel.

“And these ye shall have in abomination among the birds; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the osprey, and the sea eagle; and the falcon, and the kite after its kind; every raven after its kind; and the ostrich, and the night hawk, and the seagull, and the hawk after its kind; and the owl, and the gannet, and the ibis, and the swan, and the pelican, and the vulture, and the stork; the heron after its kind, and the hoopoe, and the bat “ (vers. 13-19). Of course the rendering in any case is but approximate, some of the names occurring nowhere else. Nor is there any aim at scientific terminology, but a practical direction for Jehovah's people, with a moral application now for faith.

Many birds of the heaven are characterized by qualities hateful to God for those He takes into relationship with Himself; others are unsuited to be the food of mankind. What can be more opposed to His character than fierce rapacity toward the living, and insatiable greed toward the dead?

The utility of these last as scavengers, in the actual condition of a fallen world, may be of no small value for men who settle down in the earth as it is, denying a primeval paradise for our first parents, or striving to blot out the proofs of their exile through rebellion against God. If the Israelite was forbidden to make such birds his food, the Christian is to have no fellowship with ways morally analogous; but to avoid and reprove them. If some of these birds boldly seek their prey by day, others find their congenial pursuits in the darkness of the night. There are birds as remarkable for lack of family affection as others for loving care. But in man what is even this without the fear of God? Some are of towering pride, others of loathsome lust after the unclean; some are known as of plain exterior, others of attractive beauty; some have quiet habits and natural kindness; others are boisterous, tricky, or otherwise offensive. But all symbolize traits with which we should eschew all communion. Christ is to be our food.

“Have the same mind one for another, not minding high things but going along with the lowly. Be not wise in your own eyes, rendering to no one evil for evil, providing things honest before all men. If possible, as much as in you lieth, be at peace with all men, avenging not yourselves, beloved, but give place to wrath” (Rom. 12:16-19).

“And such were some of you; but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11).

“Let the stealer steal no more, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have to distribute to him that hath need. Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but whatever is good for needful edification, that it may give grace to those that hear. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby ye were sealed unto redemption's day. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and railing, be put away from you, with all malice; and be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you. Be ye therefore imitators of God as beloved children; and walk in love, even as Christ also loved us, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor. But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not be even named among you, as it becometh saints; and filthiness and foolish talking or buffoonery which are not befitting, but rather thanksgiving.... Be not ye therefore fellow-partakers with them; for ye were once darkness, but are now light in the Lord: walk as children of light... and have no fellowship with the fruitless works of darkness, but rather also reprove them” (Eph. 4:5).

But why cite more, when scripture so largely speaks similar language? Having Christ as our life, we are taught to feed on that heavenly bread, yea, to eat His flesh and drink His blood; for His flesh is true food, and His blood is true drink. He that eateth His flesh, and drinketh His blood, abideth in Christ and Christ in him. As the living Father sent Christ, and He lived on account of (not merely “by”) His Father, so, said He, he that eateth Me shall live on account of Me. Such is the communion that sustains the Christian. What is of the first man is mere offal, wholly unsuited and injurious to the new man.

Proverbs 11:1-9

THE saving grace of God instructs us to live righteously in the present age. It is far from all that He looks for in a saint. Sobriety He claims, and godliness also. But honesty in our dealings with men is indispensable, the lack of which wholly discredits any profession of piety. It betrays a covetous man, whom the Holy Spirit brands as an idolater (Eph. 5:5), and without inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. How hateful it was to Him of old, we see in the opening of our chapter.

“A false balance [is] abomination to Jehovah, but a just weight his delight.

Pride cometh, then cometh shame; but with the lowly [is] wisdom.

The integrity of the upright guideth them; but the crookedness of the treacherous destroyeth them.

Wealth profiteth not in the day of wrath; but righteousness delivereth from death.

The righteousness of the perfect maketh plain his way; but the wicked falleth by his own wickedness.

The righteousness of the upright delivereth them; but the treacherous are taken in their own craving.

When a wicked man dieth, expectation shall perish; and the hope of evil ones perisheth.

The righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked cometh in his stead.

With the mouth a hypocrite destroyeth his neighbor; but through knowledge are the righteous delivered” (vers. 1-9).

“A false balance” is much more than an act of dishonesty; it implies the pretension to integrity, and withal deliberate purpose to cheat. It is therefore an abomination to Him Whose eyes behold, Whose eyelids try the children of men; as a just weight is His delight. Trickery in trade is a corroding evil, most of all fatal to such as gain a sullied or a seared conscience.

Pride readily comes in this poor world, where man poses as something when he is nothing and worse. But its shadow is close at hand: “shame cometh"; and this even here, before the judgment. For God resists the proud, and proclaims their abasement. But with the lowly is wisdom. He is not ever on the tenter-hooks of self. He looks above the petty ways of men, and refuses to be irritated even if wronged. The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, without hypocrisy.

It is not only unworthy devices in trade, or a self-exalting spirit, that we need to watch against, but perverseness in our heart and ways. Christ could designate Himself as “the truth.” He was absolutely what He also spoke. His ways and His words perfectly agreed. Are we begotten by the word of truth, and sanctified by the Spirit? Let us follow Him, finding it is our sin and shame if we turn aside in aught. How blessed to be truthful in love “The integrity of the upright shall guide them; but the crookedness of the treacherous destroyeth them.” A tortuous path ends in ruin.

Nor can “riches” avail to avert or stay God's displeasure, however they may shield and deliver in man's day. “Riches profit not in the day of wrath; but righteousness delivereth from death.” The just have a special resurrection (Luke 14:13). “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: over these the second death hath no power.” Death is now our servant (Rom. 8:38, 1 Cor. 3:22).

Nor is it only that righteousness delivers from death; “the righteousness of the perfect shall direct his way; but the wicked shall fall by his own wickedness.” The man to whom grace has given a single eye sees the way straight before him; while the wicked needs no executioner, as he shall die by his own evil.

Death ruins the flattering expectation of a wicked person. In hades he lifts up his eyes, being in torments: they had been closed before, save to the lie of the enemy. “When a wicked man dieth, expectation shall perish; and the hope of evil ones perisheth.” “Thou fool” is then heard and felt in his despair.

How different is the lot of the just! “The righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked cometh in his stead.” Even here the believer proves that God is his great Deliverer: how much more when the morning dawns without clouds! The wicked even here are not without evidence that God's eye is on them, to let them taste the fruit of their own way. “In the net which they hid is their own foot taken.”

“With the mouth a hypocrite (or, impious one) destroyeth his neighbor; but through knowledge are the righteous delivered.” Violence is not so dangerous as deceit, and no deceit is so evil as that which clothes itself with the name of the Lord and His word. But God causes all things to work together for those that love Him, and this “through knowledge,” through that which faith is now to learn, because God gives it in His grace. Thus is the righteous kept, yea garrisoned by God's power, whatever ill-will may plot to destroy.

Gospel Words: the Woman With a Spirit of Infirmity

Luke 13:10-17

This is a miracle which fell to Luke alone to record; and it sets before us the Man Who was Jehovah's fellow accomplishing His mission of grace in the midst of a race not only indifferent or hostile to God but hypocritical. Their perverse iniquity leads on those who ought to be intercessors to become adversaries.

“And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And, behold, a woman having a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and she was bowed together and wholly unable to hold her head up. And Jesus, seeing her, addressed and said to her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. And he laid his hands upon her; and immediately she was made straight, and was glorifying God. But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus healed on the sabbath, said in answer to the crowd, There are six days in which one ought to work; in these therefore come and be healed, and not on the day of the sabbath. The Lord therefore answered him and said, Hypocrites! doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall and leading it away water [it]? And this [woman], Abraham's daughter as she is, whom Satan bound, behold, eighteen years, ought she not to be loosed from this bond on the day of the sabbath? And as he said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed; and all the crowd rejoiced at all the glorious things that were being done by him” (vers 10-17).

The sabbath had often furnished occasion to prove the evil state of the people, especially of those in repute among men, as in Luke 6:2, 7, and 11. Here the Holy Spirit introduces the grace of our Lord, where the context tells of God's moral judgment of Israel, tested and aggravated by His presence, Who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil. But what was God and His grace to such as sought no glory but their own? They were only provoked by a love which condemned their ungodly self-seeking. Their heart was far from Him, and its deceits were veiled from themselves by religious forms. It is not the righteous, still less the self-righteous, but sinners whom our Savior calls.

While teaching in a synagogue one sabbath, the Lord beheld a woman, so long bowed down that she could not look up, and yet coming to hear God's word. Without an appeal from her or any other, He addressed her with words of wonder-working compassion. “Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.” Not content with what had fully sufficed, “He laid his hands upon her; and immediately she was made straight, and was glorifying God.” He had vanquished the strong one, and would take from him all his panoply wherein he trusted, and would divide his spoils. The Lord was entitled to proclaim release to the captives, and to set at liberty those who were bound.

The ruler of the synagogue, instead of owning and blessing God for His manifested goodness and power, was “indignant,” hating the grace which he could not deny, and thus proving himself to be under a deeper slavery to Satan than the delivered woman. His wickedness was all the worse for the zeal, in his answer to the crowd, he affected for the sabbath. “There are six days in which one ought to work; in these therefore come and be healed, and not on the day of the sabbath.” It was God Who had wrought in and by His Son; and would he shut one out from His mercy on that day? to say nothing of her lying in the bitter bondage of the enemy so many years.

“The Lord therefore answered him and said, Ye hypocrites! [for he had not a few who shared his half-hearted unbelief] doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead it off to watering? and this [woman], Abraham's daughter as she is, whom Satan bound, behold, eighteen years, ought she not to be loosed from this bond on the day of the sabbath?” It was irresistible for the conscience; and hearts were gladdened by grace as evident as the truth. “All his adversaries were ashamed; and all the crowd rejoiced at all the glorious things that were being done by him.”

He, the Lord, has done a far greater and more enduring work. He has given His life a ransom for many. He has suffered once for sins, Just for unjust, to bring you to God, Who points you to Him for a greater deliverance, even redemption for the body with glory on high. Acknowledge then your desperate need; for you too are so bowed down by Satan through your iniquities, that you cannot truly look up. To your guilt and misery add not the hypocrisy of pleading religious obligations, when God proclaims in your ears the glad tidings of His Son, the Rescuer from the wrath to come. Neither working on the six days, nor rest on the seventh, can efface your sins; nor can the synagogue avail, nor saints or Virgin more than yourself, but “Jesus only.” He is the “one Mediator between God and men” (1 Tim. 2:5). “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house” (Acts 16:31). “In none other is there salvation; for neither is there any other name under heaven that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.” So said Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit to the rulers of the people and 'elders (Acts 4:12). So say not those who falsely claim to be his successors or their abettors.

1 Peter 1:13

Exhortation here begins, founded on the preceding verses. Now that Christ is come, and gone to heaven, having borne our sins, the believing Jews were objects of rich and sure blessing, far beyond what their fathers enjoyed before the law or since.

The glory is not manifested on earth as the prophets predicted, but this will have actual accomplishment in a new age. There is now an intermediate state for saints on earth before that new age: faith, love, and hope have their fullest exercise, after the sufferings destined for Christ were closed, while He is received up in glory. It is therefore before the revelation of His other glories to all the earth and indeed the universe. Our life is hid in God; but when He is manifested, so shall we be with Him in glory. The glories after His sufferings are not therefore complete, but in a large measure await His appearing at the end of the age.

Yet the glory in which He sits already at God's right hand has a momentous bearing on the soul individually and on the church as a body. Hence even now we exult with joy unspeakable and full of glory; for Christ, its spring, is glorified and we expect to be, now receiving the end of faith, salvation of souls, but not yet that of our bodies. Meanwhile we have for our profit, not only what prophets of old testified beforehand, but the still fuller light of truth announced since Christ by apostles and others, who evangelized in the power of the Spirit sent forth from heaven, as Father and Son alike promised. This is Christianity, not promise but accomplishment of redemption by Christ's work, and, as shown elsewhere, for Gentile believers as much as Jewish, though these only are addressed here by the Apostle appropriately to this message.

“Wherefore, having girded up the loins of your mind, being sober, hope perfectly for the grace that is to be brought to you at Jesus Christ's revelation (1 Pet. 1:13).

The allusion in the opening clause is evidently to their forefathers at the first passover: a memorial to them, a feast to Jehovah to be kept by an ordinance forever. “Thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand.” Could words or acts more graphically give us the living picture of a people screened from divine judgment, and leaving in haste the house of bondage for a land flowing with milk and honey? The Lord in Luke 12:35 employed the same figure, with others, to impress on His disciples their pilgrim character in waiting for His coming: in no taking their ease, but constant readiness to do His will earnestly, as was meant by their loins girt about. On occasions of active exertion the garments, instead of being allowed to flow loosely, were tucked up, that the work might be done without impediment. So would He now have our hearts engaged without wandering affections or distraction of mind. The blessing is assured to our faith; we love Him Who first loved us, and He with a love above all measure; whilst the prospect before us is glorious beyond all comparison.

The Apostle's phrase “the loins of your mind” renders inexcusable the notion of such fathers as interpreted it of chastity; for this would require another expression of quite distinct form. It seems strange that Calvin should characterize a turn so unintelligent in itself, and unsuitable to the context, as philosophizing refinedly about the loins. It is a wholly baseless importation of prurient ideas, natural perhaps to those who piqued themselves on a fair show in the flesh, which soon betrays its hollowness by falling into all manner of uncleanness. He himself however had no doubt of its quite different meaning, in the disentanglement of the Christian from all hindrance to devotedness.

There is another term which immediately follows, of great practical moment, “being sober.” It is expressly from its form a continuous habit; which is the more emphatic, because the form of the phrase before, with which we have been occupied, implies no less precisely the act done and settled; and such is the force of the hope which immediately follows. They had once for all girt up the loins of their mind; their hope was set with equal decision upon the grace to be brought to them at Christ's appearing. The nature of the case called for and explained these being accomplished facts in their souls. But the sobriety in question calls for unceasing diligence.

For there is much in the gospel and in the truth now fully revealed, which might naturally lead to the utmost enthusiasm. We see how it affected outside observers on the day of the church's birth. All were amazed and in perplexity when they heard Galileans speaking in the various tongues of the Gentiles the great things of God. Some mocking said, They are full of new wine. Apart from the striking phenomenon of grace which was thus ungraciously maligned, how much there is in Christianity if realized to fill the heart and lips to overflowing. Even the eminently wise Paul could say, “whether we are beside ourselves, it is to God; or we are sober, it is for you” (2 Cor. 5:13). Here no doubt it is the kindred thought of discretion that is expressed; but it is at bottom the same truth. Before God and to Him, the heart may rightly go forth in ecstasy; but when we think of men and even the saints, a more guarded feeling is well on our part.

Hence the same apostle exhorts the saints that were in Ephesus to guard against exciting causes. “Be not drunk with wine whereby is dissoluteness, but be filled with the Spirit.” Where He becomes the source and power of all within us, acts outward should be according to God's mind. Our singing even is meant to be so characterized that it may please Him Whom we praise, in no way carried away by sweet sound, but with the spirit and with the understanding also.

Hence then “being sober” is laid on us as a continuous duty. It is a figure naturally drawn, as all admit, from keeping clear of all intoxication, which for the Christian means the avoidance of everything apt to excite the flesh or spirit. Young Thessalonian believers are thus exhorted, “So then let us not sleep as do the rest, but let us watch, and be sober [the same word as here]. For they that sleep, sleep by night, and they that drink, drink by night; but let us, being of the day, be sober, having put on a breastplate of faith and love, and hope of salvation as helmet.” In 1 Peter 4:7 the word, in view of the end of all things having drawn nigh, is “Be of sound mind therefore, and be sober unto prayers.” (So also in 1 Pet. 5:8). Here it is not constant habit that is involved in the form of the phrase, but the soul's attitude due to so solemn a fact. Both appeals have their importance. The call in our 1 Pet. 1:13 is grounded on known redemption as our portion, whilst we journey through a wilderness world, with an expectation worthy of what God has already given us in Christ.

Of this he proceeds to speak in the next words, “hope perfectly for the grace that is to be brought to you at Jesus Christ's revelation.” One cannot doubt that it is the glory about to be revealed unto us, as it is put in the Epistle to the Romans (Rom. 8:18-19), the revelation of the sons of God. Nor does our Apostle treat of anything beyond that supreme bliss, which he describes as “the grace that is to be brought” in that day. For he does not open out, as Paul did in 1 Thess. 4, the preliminary stage and the special action of the Lord, in Himself descending from heaven with that shout which shall assemble His own whether dead or alive to meet Him in the air. Our Epistle dwells on the manifestation of the saints with Christ in glory without telling us how the wondrous issue effected.

It is so intrinsically blessed, and so efficacious even now for the well-being of the soul, that he bids the saints “hope perfectly” for the grace to be brought then and thus. “To the end,” as in the A. V. and so understood by many, seems short of what is intended by the adverb; nor does any sufficient reason appear to make us swerve from the simple meaning. It is likely that translators shrank from connecting perfection with a hope which too often fluctuates, if it be not also rather indefinite and feeble. They took it as “to the end.”

But it is the aim of the Spirit apparently to reveal it in its power, grandeur, and blessedness, so that the coming glory should be regarded as part of that grace which we have known in Christ's death and resurrection for our souls, and the rest we are awaiting for our bodies. Then indeed we shall be conformed to the image of God's Son, the Firstborn among many brethren. The grace that is to be brought in that day is a meet object for our hope to have once for all and perfectly; just as in Heb. 10 we are now called to approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, sprinkled as to our hearts from a wicked conscience, and washed as to our body with pure water. For the veil is rent; and we who believe have boldness to enter into the holies by the blood of Jesus. It may be that none of those addressed by Peter did “perfectly” hope for that grace to come, as sure as the grace which had already appeared; but the aim of this scripture was to invite, yea, to urge it. Why should the saints not cherish the hope fully and without a waver? He Who has promised will assuredly perform. Let us treat all shortcoming in hope as a wrong done to His grace and truth.

It may seem strange that our Apostle writes here of the grace to be brought at Christ's revelation only to those who now believe. Prophets do speak of this, as may be seen with especial plainness in Isa. 8:13-18. To this throughout is the Epistle directed, rather than to the far more common witness which prophecy bears to the manifest and wide-spread blessing when Christ comes in His kingdom with power and glory. Then all Israel shall be saved; and their receiving and fullness shall be “life from the dead” to the world at large. But this would not have been meat in due season to the believing remnant whom Peter here addresses. Hence he stops short of any development on that head which fills the prophets, and he dwells simply on their own Christian portion at the revelation of Christ. This is what they needed, and what the Holy Spirit gave him to minister. Compare the preceding ver. 4. What will be by-and-by for Israel and the nations on earth the prophets fully declare from Isaiah (we might add from Moses) to Malachi.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Acts: Part 1

Chap. 5 Divine Design 32a. The Acts of the Apostles.

WHAT then is the aim of this book, the sequel of the third Gospel? As the title is human, one may draw from its own contents that we have in it the working of the Holy Spirit, rather than of the Twelve of whom we hear little, save of Peter and of Paul called extraordinarily, but of others too who were not apostles.

In the first chapter the risen Christ is seen ascending to heaven after forty days since His resurrection, and injunctions given to the apostles through the Holy Spirit Who was soon to baptize them. But instead of His restoring at this time the kingdom to Israel as they expected, they were to be His witnesses everywhere when they received power, whilst waiting for His return from heaven. Meanwhile they gave themselves to persevering prayer; and Peter takes the lead in filling up the vacant place of Judas Iscariot among the witnesses of His resurrection, according to Psa. 109.

On the day of Pentecost, as they were all together, the Father's promise was fulfilled with twofold outward signs a blowing sound out of heaven that filled all the house; and parted tongues as of fire that sat on each, so that all were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as He gave them utterance—the answer of grace to the judgment of Babel. While all were amazed and some mocked, Peter vindicated the wonderful work of God by citing the close of Joel 2, though he does not say it was its fulfillment yet till the great and gloriously appearing day of Jehovah. He then lays on the men of Israel the awful sin of crucifying, through lawless men's hand, Jesus, Whom God raised up (Psa. 16), the Christ yet to sit on David's throne (Psa. 132), meanwhile ascended to sit at Jehovah's right hand (Psa. 110). Pricked in their heart when they heard this, they were called to repent and be baptized in His name; when they too should receive the Holy Spirit. For to them and theirs was the promise. In that day about 3,000 souls were added, and such fellowship in joyous unselfish love and truth and in holy worship as earth had never seen; and the Lord kept adding day by day together those to be saved. It was the church's birthday (chap. 2), though there remained then, and for long, attachment to the institutions of the law.

Accordingly, while going up to the temple, Peter and John were asked alms by a notorious cripple. This was met by Peter's bidding him, in the name of Jesus, arise and walk; as he did immediately before all. And Peter proclaimed that it was the God of their fathers glorifying His Servant Jesus, Whom they delivered up and denied when even Pilate had decided to release Him. They denied the Holy and Just One, preferring a murderer to Him Whom God raised up as the apostles testified. It was the virtue of His name which in faith wrought that deed. He called them then (for grace would treat His rejection as ignorance) to repent and be converted for the blotting out of their sins, so that seasons of refreshing might come from the Lord's presence, and He would send Jesus, Whom heaven must receive till times of restoring all things according to the prophets. This will be the kingdom in power, as the church the kingdom in patience till then. But Jesus was the Prophet of Whom Moses spoke in Deut. 18, as all others foretold of these days, for He was also the true Seed of promise for blessing (chap. 3).

But Sadducean unbelief here opposed the risen Christ (chap. 4), as Pharisaic self-righteousness hated Him when here below. And the two apostles were put in ward unto the morrow, when the high priest and his party inquired and learned distinctly from Peter that it was in the name of Him Whom they crucified, Whom God raised from the dead, that the infirm man stood before them whole. Psa. 118:22 was cited as the most irrefragable evidence and for declaring Jesus the only Savior. Unable to reply they, after consultation, charged them not to utter a word nor teach in the name of Jesus, but received the bold reply whether they should be hearkened to rather than God, for themselves could not but speak what they saw and heard. These, let go, came unto “their own” (for so the Christians are now distinctly called), and reported all; when arose with one accord their cry to God, applying Psa. 2:1, 2, but with no thought at all that the following verses could be accomplished till Christ comes again. The Holy Spirit wrought in answer, and gave great power to their testimony of His resurrection and in all ways of grace, Barnabas then first shining conspicuously.

Chap. 5 opens with the sin and judgment of Ananias and Sapphira, deliberately guilty against the gracious working that characterized all at that time; but God turned it to great fear within and without, yet adding more than ever to the Lord, and working in mighty power on men's bodies. Hence the high priest was incensed beyond measure and put in prison all the twelve, who were brought out by an angel and sent to speak in the temple all the words of this life. Led thence by the captain of the temple with the officers, they openly answered that God must be obeyed rather than men, and asserted that the Holy Spirit was witness, as well as they, of what they set forth. This cut to the heart. Counsel was taken to slay them; but Gamaliel gave such sound advice, with a certain fear of God, that they satisfied themselves with beating them and reiterated injunction not to speak in the Name. They however retired with joy that they were counted worthy of dishonor for the Name, which every day in the temple and at home they ceased not to teach and preach.

Another cloud gathered; again failure against the very grace that was so marked. Jealousy and mistrust came in, the Hellenists against the Hebrews, as if their widows were not duly cared for (chap. 6). The twelve cope with the danger in wisdom and grace, calling on the mass of the believers to choose seven men of good report, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, to relieve the apostles of this outward task and be set by them over the business. For what the church gave, the church was entitled to choose. It is the Lord only who gave spiritual gifts, which are therefore above man's choice. So when the seven were chosen (apparently all Hellenists), the apostles prayed and laid their hands on them. And great blessing followed, even a crowd of the priests obeying the faith. But as Stephen surpassed all in grace and power, so he became soon an object for deadly persecution, and false witnesses were set up, when he was brought before the council.

In chap. 7 he gave the striking testimony, which convicted them, like their fathers, of always resisting the Holy Spirit. Beginning with the call of Abraham (tardy in obeying wholly), he shows him to have been but a pilgrim in the land of promise, as his descendants were bondmen in Egypt, the sons of Jacob selling their brother Joseph to the Gentiles before that. But God, with wonders and signs, delivered them by Moses, whom they had rejected. Even so they went after idols, as the prophets long after testified, and were carried for it beyond Babylon. Law and prophets, Christ and the Spirit, made no difference: they opposed and forsook all. So now, exasperated by the truth, they stoned God's witness invoking the Lord to receive his spirit, and to lay not this sin to his murderers' charge.

A great persecution followed, the greatest persecutor of the saints a young man named Saul (chap. 8). But grace used those scattered by it, not the twelve, to preach the gospel far and wide. Philip, clothed with power, proclaimed the Christ to the Samaritans to their great joy; so that even Simon the sorcerer, believing the miracles, professed faith and was baptized. The apostles sent Peter and John, who crowned the work with the gift of the Spirit in answer to their prayers and by imposition of hands. But Peter detected Simon's unreality; and while he and John returned, Philip is used to the salvation of the Ethiopian noble traveling home from Jerusalem, but was caught away by divine power for other work so as to confirm the convert only the more, who went on his way rejoicing.

The ninth chapter shows us the new step of sovereign grace in the conversion of Saul to be the witness of an ascended Christ, Who owns the saints as part of Himself, and calls the persecutor to be His chosen vessel to bear His name before Gentiles, kings, and children of Israel, the deepest in truth, the largest in heart, the most abundant in labor of all the apostles. No wonder the gospel of Christ's glory marked him, who first saw and heard the Lord thus; yet a simple disciple baptized him who forthwith, in the synagogues, preached Jesus as the Son of God. Even the disciples in Jerusalem were afraid; but Barnabas, having a deeper sense of grace, banished their fears by showing what the Lord had wrought. When here too menaced with Jewish violence, such is sent to Tarsus. The rest of the chapter recounts Peter's activity and power in the Spirit; the paralytic AEneas healed, the dead Tabitha raised, and all around in the Sharon converted, with many in Joppa.

Chap. 10 presents Peter used to open the kingdom to the Gentile Cornelius and his friends, in spite of his own Jewish prejudice. Already converted and devout, Cornelius was yet without; and the law kept such there. The gospel brings them within, as well as converts those who were enemies, telling words whereby believers “shall be saved.” For “salvation” means more than to be born again. In a vision seen by Peter, as well as by an angel sent to Cornelius, we see the way God took to call and gather the uncircumcision. Peter preached the gospel, and while he was yet speaking, the Holy Spirit fell on all those hearing the word, who were accordingly baptized at Peter's direction by the brethren that accompanied him from Joppa.

As this unexpected act of accrediting Gentile confessors, no less than Jewish, roused strong objection in Jerusalem (chap. 11), Peter set out the matter as originating in God's word and culminating in the fullest token of God's favor—the equal gift of the Spirit to those Gentiles as to themselves. They could only be still, and even glorify God for His grace. Concurrently with this we hear how God blessed the free action of the Spirit in the scattered preachers to many, not Hellenists but Greeks, as the right reading tells us. And Barnabas is sent to Antioch where the work had been; as Peter and John went before to Samaria. He seeks Saul; and there both taught for a whole year, where the disciples were first called Christians. As a prophet predicted universal famine, love wrought actively and maintained sense of unity by sending relief to the brethren in Judea through Barnabas and Saul.

In Jerusalem the Spirit testifies (chap. 7) to the murderous hatred that animated the people and their king, who killed James the brother of John, and apprehended Peter with a like intent. But God answered the prayers of the saints, even to their own surprise, in delivering him the very night before the purposed execution. And ere long Jehovah's angel that brought the apostle out of prison smote the self-exalting king. The word of God grew. Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem, as Peter left on his deliverance; but we hear no more of his active work, though he spoke to good purpose in Jerusalem (chap. 15) at the council.

Commissions in Gospels and Acts

Matthew links on, it is evident, to the Lord's power and service shown in Galilee. Specially compare Isa. 9:1, where clearly in the desolation and judgment of Israel, and the separation of the disciples, and the law and the testimony being sealed among them, the light (in the utter desolation as distinguishing it from other desolations) is shown to spring up, to have a remnant just because it was utter desolation. This is applied, Matt. 4:15, to the Lord's sojourn in Galilee. The kingdom of heaven is declared at hand, and repentance called for then according to the prophecy.

On the smiting of the Shepherd and the scattering of the sheep as so held together by Him, He tells them that when risen He will go before them into Galilee. Jerusalem having rejected Him, He returns into His own prophetic title in which blessing is to flow from Him. He is to be the center and source, whatever blessing may hereafter be conferred on Jerusalem. Hence according to Isaiah and His service [shown] in Matthew, Galilee was the place for this: so chap. 28:10. But when there, it was no longer a Messiah in the flesh Himself presenting the gospel of the kingdom, according to the prophets, to the nation, and to Jerusalem. All power was now given Him in heaven and on earth; and they were to disciple to Him all the Gentiles. It was the extension of what was His Messianic power, connected with the title of power over heaven and earth He held as risen, to the whole world. It was not establishing His reign over Israel; He had been rejected there.

The remnant had the testimony sealed to them; Jehovah hid His face from the house of Israel (though to be waited for); and the testimony of Galilee, so rejected, was now identified with all power in heaven and earth, and sent to bring all nations into discipleship. It was power and authority, yet of this character, but with the further revelation of what now, Jesus being risen, was necessarily brought out—the common name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (common yet distinct), and Christ's injunctions were to be the rule of the Gentiles so discipled. With this is connected the promise to be with them “to the end of the age “; so that this connects itself with the age and the service rendered, till it closes. And we get the important principle that the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost is continued “to the end of the age,” or at any rate the service which declares it is supposed in duty to continue.

Next in Mark we have the gospel carried on. Christ had served in the gospel. Mark's account is the beginning of the gospel of the Son of God. Here (chap. 16) this gospel of the risen Son of God is carried on; and he who believes and confesses it, in being received by baptism, will be saved, and he that believes not will be lost. The fate of every creature on hearing it is attached to the preached gospel. It is a general principle and commission as a matter of life—eternal life and salvation, attached to the gospel of the Son of God, thus sent out by His messengers, and to which the Lord gave testimony by signs.

In John it is another thing, as in all the latter part of that Gospel, the Lord puts the disciples in His own place, deriving it from Him only, as He from the Father. “As my Father hath sent me, so send I you.” It is intrinsically connected with their position, and this as united to Him. It is derivative identification with Him, not authoritative mission merely here, which constituted the commission. Thus He first pronounces peace, then sends them from Himself, as the Father had sent Him (also He is in the midst of the gathered saints). Hence He breathes on them, and communicates to them the Holy Ghost; not now merely natural life breathed of God into their nostrils, but the Holy Ghost in living power from Him, giving them spiritual competency to take and as taking His place, and thus to effectuate in His name that remission of sins which the Holy Ghost can administer down here in the name of Jesus, as He did as Son of man in His place. There was real administrative forgiveness, as Paul and the church in Corinth with the incestuous man (2 Cor. 2). It is a living spiritual commission, putting them (by receiving one Spirit with and from Him) in the place of service according to what He had accomplished, in His place, only with what He had done and was as risen its source; but to do it for Him in His place and name, looked at as in the church, and the spring and source of union and the giver of spiritual power; not as sending down in power, externally declaring what He was—Son of man, but spiritual competency from and by Himself who breathed the Spirit, His breath upon them, that they might act by it.

In Luke it is different. There is not properly a commission. The Lord first presents to them His real resurrection in flesh and bones, eating before them; then shows how, according to His words, all things which Moses, &c., had written concerning Him were to be fulfilled. Next, He opens their understanding to understand the scriptures, and how, according to the mind of God there revealed, these things should have been, and the gospel preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. Here then we get thus far the counsels of God as to this matter revealed, and their minds brought to rest on, and draw from, these counsels as so revealed, which they now understand: so Paul uses Isa. 49. It was then intelligence of the mind of God in the scriptures opened to them by Christ, and His words confirmed, and they acting on this intelligence, and this being their intelligent service. The source from which they acted, “It behooved” (compare chap. 24:25, &c. where the Lord expounds; here He opens their understanding). There was a further thing before they acted publicly by this knowledge, namely, power. They were to tarry in Jerusalem (they could not go out of this circle, as it were), till they were endued with power from on high. It is not then properly a commission, but the opening the understanding to understand the scriptures, and connecting them by Christ's teaching with “the Christ “; and then power enabling them to act upon it—this by the Holy Ghost coming down as the promise of the Father.

The same general truth, specially as to power and further the return of Jesus, is found in Acts 1. This power we need. The commission in ver. 8 or rather what the Lord says would happen in them, so endued with power, has the same character as to order. It recognizes the administration first—Jerusalem, Judaea, Samaria, the ends of the earth. This is what we find in the blessed Paul's ministry: to the Jews first, and also to the Gentiles; and the knowledge of God's mind. From this he both speaks and acts. “We have the mind of Christ.” He speaks from Christ's glory; and this is what we are led to as the terminus in Luke 24 (knowledge and power); and the power of the Spirit is Paul's whole spring and power (and so for others): only [remembering] this that, while it substantially remains the same in these two points, the beginning at Jerusalem has no place—this had been done. He receives his commission from Christ on high and nowhere short of it; nor does he return to Jerusalem nor go up there; but he goes on from the point of starting, Christ's heavenly glory. It is the Just One that is the link with the Jews. The righteous Jew is maintained; but Paul is a witness of what he has seen directly from the Lord. It has no other root or connection as such for him. Only he receives the Holy Ghost in the church, because he was there now, and thus the link with the previously existing church, and its recognition. Hence we have two points in Paul's ministry, the glory of Christ (and so universality), and then the one that is in Christ (see Col. 1).

The glory, or glorification, ended Peter's witness; it begins Paul's; and the unity of the church is a fresh revelation. J. N. D.

Endowment

There is a danger, growing out of the tendency to imitate what is without or the same unbelief which originated that departure, against which we need to watch. Were we realizing that we are not of the world as Christ is not, and looking day by day for His coming, the evil would be seen and judged. But herein we are so apt to fail that the exhortation to watch is ever wholesome.

The danger we now refer to is to settle down on earth, and to escape from dependence on God corporately as well as individually. This sometimes takes the shape of acquiring a freehold meeting-room, or at least some arrangement practically equivalent. It saves the trouble of a constant rent to pay, perhaps the need of self-denial and of drawing on the liberality of others to lighten our own burden. Where is there such a scheme in scripture? Where a hint leading to it?

There is nothing to hinder individual grace either in providing a building, or in diminishing rent where poverty is great. But it is a false principle and a dangerous practice for the assembly to possess itself of the room wherein they meet. It cannot in law belong to the Christians assembling there. They must, in order to legal security, become a recognized body with the dogmas and the polity wherein they differ from all others; in other words, they must be a distinct sect, like the rest of Christendom. They must forfeit the position of fidelity to the one body and one Spirit. They must abandon the confession that they are but a feeble remnant cleaving to the immutable truth of the church's unity in the midst of ruin. For such a plea could command no tenure before this world's judicature, and would expose those who affirmed it to nothing but derision. If dissension sprang up among those assembling, and scattering ensued, to which would it belong? Those who are under grace could not fight for such a thing; the unruly would be sure to claim it with violence; and those who had too easily desired or consented to the first wrong must find out their error too late.

In our pilgrimage let us be content to hire a needed room or building. To pay the rent is the witness that we are content with a tent and an altar in spirit. Let those who do not wait for Christ possess and build forever. What if there be difficulty here or there? Have we not God to lean on and expect from? Is there not brotherly kindness on the part of those who have to help those who have not? Besides, those who walk in a spirit separate from the world have far fewer claims than those who love the world and its things. Rare will it be that they cannot pay the rent of a suitable room. In the case of a very few, has no one the grace to offer the use of a private room? How much true worship has often gone up thence? How many souls have therein heard and received the word of life, to say nothing of the open air and its almost unlimited opportunities?

To frame a title-deed which gives legal safety (the one aim of every title-deed) to the assembly, I do not say to one or more individuals, there must be, especially in the present condition of Christendom, the definite position of a. sect. But to assume such a position is to surrender what we have learned of God about His church. And to assume to be His church in due and full standing, instead of being the witnesses of His grace and faithfulness as a few of its members meeting on His ground of faith, and no other, would be the abandonment of our intelligent actual duty. Individual property is the escape from the dilemma, where we pay our dues according to the righteous or gracious arrangement with him to whom it belongs. But to seek corporate possession as brethren is a slip from what scripture tells us, an inconsistency with our hope, a worldly or selfish desire, and a temptation to the violent or lawless when dispute arises, as experience shows not without sad example.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Inspired or Not; Why the Cross is Not Included;

Q.-Matt. 28:1, Mark 16:2, Luke 24:1, John 20:1: please explain. M.

A.-The first text speaks, not of the resurrection day, but of the sabbath which preceded, though late on that day, the dusk of evening when the next day was to begin according to Jewish reckoning. With ver. 2 commences a distinct paragraph referring to that first day. When the sabbath was past, as we hear in the second (ver. 1), the women named bought the spices to embalm; but on coming to the sepulcher very early next morning, they learned that the Lord was risen; and so speaks the third text. The fourth tells us of the two separate visits of Mary of Magdala, when she saw the stone taken away, and subsequently when He first appeared to her, as also Mark 16:9 declares.

Q.-Luke 1:1-4. Are those verses equally inspired as the rest of the Gospel? or only a preface of the writer's? M.

A.-They are a striking evidence and instance of what characterizes Luke, in the combination of man's motives and affections and aims with the inspiring Spirit's power and design. It is only unbelief which tries to sunder what God has united. No doubt then a preface is peculiar to the third Gospel; but so it ought to be, if this Gospel have for its specialty, as it clearly has, to present the Lord Jesus, while truly God, in all the reality of that holy human nature, of which He deigned in grace to us and for God's glory to partake. The converse we see in the prediction of Caiaphas (John 11:49-53). There in divine sovereignty the Holy Spirit gave him to prophesy the death of the Savior in terms which none the less betrayed the selfish and unprincipled wickedness of the high priest. Here we see the piety, faith, love, and conscientious care of the writer, who was none the less empowered by the Spirit to give us the truth of Christ without error according to the divine purpose in view.

Q.-1 Tim. 3:16. May I ask why the cross is not included in this summary view of Christ? and why His being received up in glory is put last? A DISCIPLE.

A.-The reason, as I believe, why the cross does not appear is because Christ's death of rejection and in atonement was fully revealed in the O.T., as Psa. 22, Isa. 53 and Zech. 13 serve to prove. Sacrifice in general pointed to His death for our sins. Here it is “the mystery” or secret of piety which is presented, (i.e. not so revealed in the O.T.). Next, it would seem that the last clause is taken out of its historical place, in order that the blessed object of Christian dependence in faith should there stand in the more marked contrast with the falling away of some in later times, giving heed as they did to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons by the hypocrisy of legend-mongers branded in their own conscience, forbidding to marry and bidding to abstain from God-given meats. Such a system was a mere fleshly religion in open contempt, of the ascended Christ. These were the victims that fell away, through seducing spirits &c. behind the hypocritical legend-mongers, who were their instruments. Christ in glory was nothing to them. Their confidence was in self-devised ordinances instigated by demons. Christ's being “received up in glory” is an essential and characteristic truth of Christianity.

Q. Heb. 2:17; 8:4. As a matter of interest, not of authority, can you cite the judgment of the late J.N.D. on these scriptures so strangely misused of late? O. D.

A.-His uniform doctrine, as far as I know, was that the work of propitiation was on the cross when lifted up, before He entered on His proper priestly office in heaven, an exceptional work in being representative for atonement as the foundation of all. Take, out of many proofs, the following from Notes and Comments, 2 17, “But then the High Priest represented the people as such, and in this character, when He has personally, not as priest, offered Himself to God. He acknowledges the people's sins—He becomes that Khat'tath, but in conscious confession first, not in judicial suffering that follows. But the sins are laid on Him—the Lord has laid them on Him; and He, willingly bearing them, confesses them in perfectness before God for reconciliation being made. This the High Priest does as representing the people, but it is not high-priestly in the proper sense, though the High Priest's service—the priest's was with the blood; but then the sacrifice was finished. Had the High Priest not done this, there could have been no priestly service at all; even this was not done on earth, but as lifted up from it. Earth was connected with flesh (there was no reconciliation for it), and as long as Christ was alive upon it, He presented Himself to men in the flesh. When that is done with, He begins His lonely work where none could enter while it was going on—and as representing the people, He makes reconciliation. Hence no priesthood in any sense was exercised on earth; for the reconciliation work, in which the High Priest was engaged, was as lifted up from it, and, though not in heaven, no longer on earth.”

Q.-What is the precise difference between κρίνειν, ἀνακρίειν, διακρίνειν, ἐγκρίνειν, κατακρίνειν,and συγκρίνειν in N. T. usage? R.

A.-The meaning of the first or simple form is “to judge,” ἀνακρίσις being the technical word for the previous inquiry or preliminary investigation. Compare 1 Cor. 2:15; 4:3-5; 9:3; 10:25, 27, in the Greek, as well as Acts 25:26 (noun). But διακρίνειν is “to discern,” right in 1 Cor. 11:29 but wrong in 31; as the simple form means not “damnation” but “judgment” and even as contrasted with that. Again συγκρίνειν is in plain contradistinction to ἀνακρίνειν in 1 Cor. 2, and means the communicating or authoritative explaining of spiritual things in spiritual words, not sifting or examining them. In John 5:22-29 the confusion of the A.V. is extreme and seriously misleading. The right word is “judge” or “judgment” throughout, not “condemnation” as in 24, nor “damnation” as in 29; for our Lord is contrasting “life” with “judgment,” though the issue in this case be the same. In 1 Cor. 11 the “judging” is present, in the sense of temporal only, in contrast with final and everlasting condemnation (κατακρ.). Compounded with ἀπὸ the verb means “to answer,” as it should be in 2 Cor. 1:9, not “sentence,” as we may add.

Isaac: 24. Isaac Blessed of Jehovah

Gen. 26:12-16

It is well to note the manner of scripture. God does not need to vindicate His holy character, and still less does He attenuate or excuse the faults of His people. He demands and deserves our trust. He tells the unvarnished truth now of Isaac's prevarication, as before of Abraham's. He makes known the successive and humiliating reproofs of Philistine kings. On His part is no hiding of what man would have gladly ignored. The sin was too sadly true; and inspiration preserved the record for warning and profit at all times to His servants' shame but to His own glory. There He stops, leaving us to infer the inner exercises of Isaac. Yet striking is that which follows in the way of external blessing.

“And Isaac sowed in that land and found in the same year a hundredfold; and Jehovah blessed him. And the man became great, and went forward and grew great; until he became very great. And he had possession of flocks and possession of herds, and a great store of servants; and the Philistines envied him. And all the wells that his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped them, and filled them with earth. And Abimelech said to Isaac, Go from us; for thou art become much mightier than we” (vers. 12-16).

Here it is the silence of scripture which we do well to heed. For nothing is told us of what must have passed in such a man's soul. Did he not review the unworthy cheat by which he sought to screen himself from danger at the cost of his wife? Was he not humbled by its just exposure by Abimelech? Isaac was a gracious and prayerful person, who knew what it is to meditate in the fields at eventide. Is it conceivable that one of such habits would fail to sit in judgment on his own deliberate untruth, stumbling to the world, dishonoring to his Almighty Protector, to his beloved wife, and to himself as a saint? His father's sin in the same way, ought it not to have admonished him all the more, instead of ensnaring him to follow so bad an example? Can, one doubt then, that the fear of Isaac (Gen. 31:42) wrought in his conscience to humble and to clear his spirit from guile.

God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap. For he that sows unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that sows unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life eternal. Did not Isaac judge himself? How else can we understand the blessing vouchsafed in so marked a way and degree to the patriarch at this juncture? It was no doubt of an external sort; but so it is that Jehovah wrought of old, and thus did He act then. There was no longer a moral obstacle in the way. The defilement, even when publicly known, grace had removed. “And Isaac sowed in that land and found in the same year a hundredfold; and Jehovah blessed him. And the man became great and went forward, and grew until he became very great,” &c.

Isaac's increase, especially in the great year of famine, drew out the envy of his neighbors. Nor did stay there. The Philistines stopped with earth the wells dug before by Abraham's servants. But Isaac was a man of meek spirit. It was a felt loss to one whose household and herds were dependent on such supplies; it was no less insulting than injurious; but Isaac bowed before the wrong. “If when ye do good and suffer, ye shall endure it, this is acceptable [grace] with God.” None of the fathers manifested the passive virtues equally with Isaac. Even Abimelech failed to rebuke the unkindness and enmity. “Go from us,” said he, “for thou art become much mightier than we.” Even so, He Who is higher than the highest walked in His grace. Indeed it was His portion from a babe and onward, for Satan is “the prince of the world,” —the personal enemy of the Lord of glory. There was no room for the Son of God in the inn: was not the manger good enough for Him? But is the slight nothing in God's eyes? The reproach of Christ ought to be dear to the hearts of His own. Yet is it excellent discipline for the godly, if indeed they walk by faith, not by sight. They declare thereby that they belong to the One crucified on earth but glorified in heaven.

So the Lord in Matt. 5 opens the principles of the kingdom of heaven, that those who follow Him now may clearly know His mind till the Father's Kingdom come, and His will too is done on earth as it is in heaven. Then must evil vanish divinely and judicially, for unrighteousness shall disappear from the earth when the Lord reigns in power; it is His patience as yet. Hence for the present the enemy rules. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens; blessed they that mourn, for they shall be comforted; blessed the meek, for they shall inherit the earth; blessed they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. In the day that hastens, as Jehovah will govern manifestly, His people shall dwell at ease, and the oppressor be broken in pieces; the righteous, instead of suffering, shall flourish, with abundance of peace till the moon be no more. For the Great King shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. Yea, all kings shall fall down before Him; all nations shall serve Him. Can contrast be more complete with what the Lord taught us to expect till that day? We shall know His sufferings, with the assured prospect of reigning with Him then, as the Epistles no less than the Gospels and the Revelation so amply and plainly attest to him that has ears to hear. For the world it will be Jehovah reigning as could not be now.

Priesthood: 17. Winged Reptiles

Winged Reptiles. Lev. 11:20-25

Here we have a brief prohibition of winged creatures that crawl. It is so comprehensive that the only need is to specify the few exceptions of which the Israelite might eat: all the rest were regarded as abominable for them.

“Every winged insect (or, crawling thing) that goeth on [all] four [shall be] an abomination unto you. Yet these shall ye eat of every winged insect that goeth on [all] four: those that have legs above their feet with which to leap upon the earth. These shall ye eat of them: the arbeh (or, locust) after its kind, and the salam after its kind, and the chargol after its kind, and the chagab after its kind. But every winged insect that hath four feet [shall be] an abomination unto you. And by these ye shall make yourselves unclean: whoever toucheth their carcass shall be unclean until the even. And whoever carrieth of their carcass shall wash his garments, and be unclean until the even” (vers. 20-25).

We may assuredly dismiss from ver. 22 “the beetle” of the A.V. and “the cricket” of the R.V. The coleoptera are not to be mixed up with the orthoptera saltatoria. Nor is “locust” and “bald locust” a satisfactory specification, if there be good ground to believe that all the four here named are varieties of locust, which we do not know enough to distinguish with confidence. Hence, as in not a few cases through the O. T., it seems safer to retain the Hebrew terms. The first “arbeh” is the more ordinary appellative derived from its great numbers (compare Jer. 46:23); the second, from its voracity, for it means “devourer “; the third, from its leaping, for it is equivalent to “hopper “; as the last seems called from its veiling the sun's light. All this is all we have for defining the species. It would seem that Joel 1:4 does not refer to the palmer-worm (gnawer), the canker-worm (licker), and the caterpillar (consumer), but rather to the locust generally, and probably in the different stages of its growth, all of which were most destructive to vegetable life as a scourge from God.

But there is no doubt whatever that the locust is edible, whatever the Palestinians dreamed in their effort to substitute the fruit of the carob-tree. They have been and are esteemed a delicacy in the East. Drs. Kitto and Tristram pronounce them good when simply cooked, and not unlike our shrimps. So that the plain meaning of the text is vindicated beyond legitimate doubt. The believer needs no confirmative proof beyond Matt. 3:4, Mark 1:6. Rapacious as they were, their food was vegetable. They were not unclean; whereas the other members of the insect realm that flew and crawled on their feet were unfit for food, and an abomination for Israel.

The spiritual lesson touched under the permission to eat at any rate some species of the locust here specified is not so easy to say. It would not become the present writer to give his thought with any pretension where other servants of God preserve silence. But as communion is certainly taught by the figure of eating, here too it can mean nothing else. God then employed these creatures as a scourge, not only for His enemies as we see in Egypt but for the chastening of His people, ungrateful and rebellious as they too often were. May we not view the eating of these locusts as meaning that, while called to patient grace in our own walk across a world wholly and incurably opposed to God as it is, we may have fellowship with His inflictions from time to time, in reproof of audacious self-will and its hostility to the name of the Lord, to His word, and to His followers?

Never have Christians meddled with governing the world, save to His dishonor and their own shame. They are now called to suffer with Christ; by-and-by they shall reign with Him. Even He has not yet taken His great power for reigning. He sits upon His Father's throne, as the earth-rejected Christ, waiting the word from His Father to execute judgment and sit on His own throne (Rev. 3:21). Hence we learn that, whatever God's providential dealings (and they are admirable), it is an error to talk of “the Lord reigning” as yet. He awaits the time, which, when it comes, will leave not a soul in doubt of its actuality and power. When He reigns in the Psalmist's sense, all creation will rejoice, instead of groaning as now. But He does chastise from time to time even now, and will still more manifestly when the Apocalyptic judgments follow the translation of the heavenly saints, as in Rev. 6-18. And assuredly the saints, cognizant of His scourges, join their Amen, and worship, though they take no direct part in inflicting any. But it is, or will be, a permitted and appropriate fellowship. Let every believer judge before Him, what the intended instruction is.

There is no obscurity however in what defiles (vers. 24, 25). To touch the carcass renders unclean till even; to bear aught of the carcass entailed the necessity of washing the clothes and of uncleanness till even. Death came through sin, and Jehovah would have it felt by His people. Heathen feeling sought to hide it under flowers; but Israel were taught its defiling effect. So are we exhorted to touch no unclean thing, as well as to come out and be separate to the Lord according to our new and near relation to Him. Christ gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify to Himself a people for His own possession, zealous of good works, not benevolent only but honorable in His eyes. Therefore, having promises of His love and blessing, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in His fear.

Day of Atonement: 1. The Principle Part 1

“And Jehovah spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they came near before Jehovah and died; and Jehovah said to Moses, Speak to Aaron thy brother, that he come not at all times into the sanctuary within the veil before the mercy-seat which [is] upon the ark, that he die not: for I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy-seat. Thus shall Aaron come into the sanctuary, with a young bullock for a sin-offering, and a ram for a burnt-offering. A holy linen coat he shall put on, and linen breeches shall be upon his flesh; and he shall be girded with a linen girdle, and with the linen miter shall he be attired: these [are] holy garments; and he shall bathe his flesh in water, and put them on” (Lev. 16:1-4).

The preliminary verses of Lev. 16 introduce the day of atonement. It is indeed a chapter demonstrably instructive in all its provisions. It shows, in the light of the New Testament (that is, of Christ Himself and the mighty work He has accomplished), what the import of “atonement” truly is. But the distance of the O.T. was kept up.

In due course proofs will appear that in this type God not only had all before His mind (as every one that knows Him must feel), but that He has been pleased to unroll it before us. In a marvelous manner He has contrived, with a wisdom that bespeaks itself as divine, to furnish an earthly people with provisional sacrifices and outward cleansings (or what is called “the purifying of the flesh”); but in these self-same rites grace and truth lay hidden till the light of Christ should shine on them. Then could be perceived, if not the very image, a shadow of the good things to come; some already fulfilled, some not even yet, but no less assuredly so to be according to the word and purpose of God.

Inasmuch then as God has yet plans which have not been carried out to the full, as even this chapter does testify, we may see (what is true of scripture generally) that it is prophetic. Can anything witness to God more than that His word is thus pregnant? Is not prophecy a more enduring and deeper witness than miracle? While the world goes on as usual, a miraculous sign displays God's power and goodness; but prophecy gives living proof of His truth. None but a low-minded or thoughtless man could suppose that power is equal to mind. Yet there is more than this in it. Moral light and love are made known, the maintenance of God's character, will, and grace; which are evidently far beyond not matter only but mind. As a great Frenchman said, the least mind is above all matter, and all mind is below charity or divine love.

Here we find the true source of atonement. The love of God provided it in a way that should conciliate grace and righteousness, guilty man and a holy God, Who thus, and thus only, causes mercy to glory against judgment. Nowhere is God so highly exalted, nowhere man so truly humbled. What speaks so simply and withal so profoundly of sin as the blood of Christ? But this is applied to our utter unworthiness, meeting man as he is, to bring him out of all his iniquities to God as God is. For such, and nothing less, is the design of atonement. Divine righteousness, based on Christ's work, is its character, when man was proved unrighteous; and as it was according to God's grace, so is it of faith, and thus open to every believer, Jew or Greek.

But the day of atonement necessarily had, first of all, a temporal and imperfect character: “the law made nothing perfect.” It was, beyond question, the most solemn rite in the whole Jewish year; but its renewal every year is conclusive evidence, as the Epistle to the Hebrews declares, of its inefficacy for man's conscience as well as for God's judgment in view of eternity. It was therefore provisional, as all the institutions of the law were. Is this any impeachment of the law of God? His own word pronounces it. If such be His word, dispute not that God is a better judge than you or I or all men. If God declares that the law made nothing perfect—and such is His expressed and irrevocable sentence (Heb. 7:19)—who that has the least reverence ought to question it for a moment? The atonement being year by year for Israel disclosed therefore on its face, that it did not rise up to the perfection of God's nature and mind. At best it could be but a type of the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ. One can understand readily that, only when a perfect being comes, can the result be perfection.

Adam was an admirable creature, if we believe the scriptures, as an innocent man on an unfallen earth. Nevertheless, on the plain surface of fact, the first thing recorded of his doing when tried is that he sinned. There may be perpetual and violent effort to escape the moral inference; honest denial of man's sin there cannot be. The overwhelming fact is out from the beginning. Is sin to be tolerated or ignored because it is universal?

At once God's grace pledges a bruised Vanquisher of the Serpent in the woman's Seed. This ere long decided the difference between the two sons of Adam. Jehovah had respect to Abel and to his offering: why to Abel rather than to Cain? Because “by faith” Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice. Faith submits to, receives, and rests on, the word of God. It was not the mere matter of fact or human feeling; it did not turn on which of the two brought the more valuable offering. By faith Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. What made it so? In Cain there was no more than natural religion: he took no account of sin; as duty to Jehovah he offered of the fruit of the ground—the ground under the curse. It was the expression of unbelieving homage, with total insensibility to sin on one side and to grace on the other. Faith always takes account of sin in man, as it more or less rises up to grace in God. Whatever be the sin of man, the grace of God is beyond it. One of the workings of unbelief is despair, another may be the bolder form of rebellion against God in the open rejection of His word. But the soul may not be so impious and yet be guilty by doubting grace in God to forgive its sin, however heinous. Faith owns the sin truly, but reckons on the mercy God reveals.

Man's device ever fails to cover his evil. God clothed fallen Adam and Eve with coats of skins. It was a provision which, as there was sin, spoke of death, yet of mercy to man through it. This would never have entered the human mind. Naturally Cain's was a more reasonable offering in appearance. What man in unbelief would ever have thought of a sacrifice as acceptable to God? Abel brought of the firstlings of the flock, and of the fat thereof. If slain beasts furnished the clothing which God gave his parents, Abel slays a lamb in sacrifice to God. It was an offering in faith; access to God for a sinner can only be through death. That there was more behind it all, deeper than Abel or any saint of old knew, is true. One does not say that Abel contemplated the sacrifice of the woman's Seed; but it was in God's mind, and faith reaped the blessing. Thereby witness was borne to Abel as righteous, “God bearing witness to his gifts; and by it, having died, he yet speaketh.” Abel looked for the One who should crush the power of evil here below; and against and above nature he, by faith, offered sacrifice to God with the expression of its excellency in “the fat.” God blesses according to what He sees in the sacrifice; a principle which comes out plainly in the blood of the paschal lamb (Ex. 12:13).

No doubt all the believers throughout the Old Testament looked for the Kinsman-Redeemer (as we may see in the assurance of Job 19:25-29), the destroyer of death and of him that has the power of death. They did not question that in due time the Messiah would meet both God and man perfectly; but to suppose that they understood how it was to be done is going beyond scripture. Not even the disciples in the days of our Lord could put the two things intelligently together. Did not Christ's personal envoys who accompanied the Master from John's baptism till the ascension—did not the apostles know as much as their predecessors? To doubt this would be doing anything but honor to the teaching of Jehovah's righteous Servant (Isa. 53:11). His enemies being judges, “never man spake like this man;” and never did men on earth receive such a course of holy and perfect instruction as did the twelve from the Son of God.

The grand question then is, not what the saints under the Old Testament understood, but what God set up in word or deed, and what its bearing is on the atonement, now that Christ has come and finished the work given Him to do. The true meaning of the atonement is in question; and here the New Testament comes most powerfully to our aid. What can be conceived clearer than the divine comment given in the Epistle to the Hebrews (or Christian Jews) who needed it, as they ought to have appreciated it best? We sometimes hear of commentaries and commentators; wherein the best men show their prepossessions and prejudices. It is a pity that they do not use the Epistle to the Hebrews a little more and to better purpose. There is the greatest of all commentaries, and the one most immediately bearing on this very truth with which we are now occupied. Not only does the inspired text lie in the chapter before us, but we have also the inspired exegesis in that Epistle. No believer can doubt this who reads Heb. 9. And what does it let us know? That Aaron, the high priest, represents Christ, and that the work He wrought was for no transient purpose but “eternal (or, everlasting) redemption.”

Of old they were but carnal ordinances imposed till a time of setting things right; but Christ being come, High Priest of the good things to come, by the better and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands (that is, not of this creation), nor by blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood entered in once for all into the holies, having found (or, obtained) an eternal redemption. His sacrifice is in the strictest sense of everlasting efficacy. The word “eternal” occurs frequently with peculiar stress in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Why eternal? In contrast with the temporal character of what was akin among the sons of Israel. Thus we find not only eternal redemption, but eternal salvation, eternal inheritance, everlasting or eternal covenant: all of which words have a pointed reference, to lift the believing Hebrews out of familiarity with what was but temporal. Christ dead, risen, and in heaven, puts the believer face to face with the unseen and eternal. Just because as Jews they were accustomed to what was displayed on earth, their eyes needed to be raised above and to see within the veil what can never pass away. If the believing ones slipped into their old thoughts, they would lower the gospel, and perhaps fatally as they are warned in chapter 6 and elsewhere.

Nor did the Hebrews only need this, but we do also. The inspired word has the supreme authority of God, and the deepest value for us all who believe. To faith it is no question of reading the law and of simply concluding that we have only there what is temporal, while of the New Testament we say this is eternal. Such is not the way to read the Bible, nor to profit the soul. What God intends by His precious word is that you should be raised above the clouds of tumult, doubt, and difficulty, especially during these changeful periods through which we are passing; and that you should be established even now in the certainty of a new, everlasting, and heavenly relationship to God through the atonement of our Lord Jesus.

The day of atonement avowedly was to provide for all the sins, transgressions, and iniquities of the children of Israel. What had the work of Christ in view? Not only the entire, present, and everlasting removal before God of all our iniquities, but the glorifying Himself even about sin by virtue of Christ's atoning death. Not only such is the need, but nothing less can avail. God assuredly will never slight the value of the sufferings of His Son, nor forget that He is indebted to His cross for perfectly glorifying Himself. Even if we take a lower but true ground, what is the value of an atonement which could fall short of a single sin? Supposing such a scheme possible as a man forgiven 999 sins, but not the 1000th, he is as ill off as if he had none; for by that one unforgiven sin he is absolutely unfit for the presence of God. No sin can enter there; and if we have not our portion above, where must we be consigned?

Nor did atonement contemplate a ground to meet the need which will arise only when we die or appear before the judgment-seat of Christ. It will be admitted by the reader of Lev. 16, that a Jew rightly looked for the effectual application of that day's sacrifice to his then wants, to his urgent need, to the iniquities that burdened his spirit and filled him with apprehension of judgment. But the effect was only for the time.

What then has the coming of our Lord done? Has it not brought life, love, and light into the world? It has revealed God in the actual presence of His own Son yet a man, Who suffered for sins once for all, Just for unjust, to bring us to God. To the believer this is Soul-salvation, as the body's salvation awaits Christ's coming again. Certain imperfections were allowed of old, as no saint can deny. Our Lord has ruled it so, “because (or, in view of) the hardness of their hearts.” We find David, Solomon, &c. doing things that no Christian would think of. How comes it then that licenses, which notoriously existed under the law, are now intolerable? Because Christ is come, “the true light now shineth.” No doubt man put it out, as far as he could; but he has not got rid of it. The rejected Christ is in heaven; but the light, far from being withdrawn, shines more brightly than ever. The First Epistle of John is most careful to affirm that the darkness is passing away, and that the true light already shineth (2:8). When He was on earth, the darkness comprehended it not, though shining in the darkness (John 1:5). Now that He is risen and in heaven, the darkness passeth away. It is not exactly true that it “is past “; for plainly the A.V. is therein too strong. But if it be not absolutely gone, it is quite passing away as each believer receives the light. Now that redemption is effected, he who receives the light is made light in the Lord; and every one, to whom Christ is not only the light but the life, is cleansed by His blood, freed from sin to live to God.

What is the effect of redemption even outwardly? That men are ashamed now of what, before Christ came, was thought nothing but natural and to be borne. Few know on the one hand, how much is due to the light of Christ in the gospel exposing all, and so deterring men from their audacious and inexpressible iniquities. For that very reason on the other hand, the sins of every one whose conscience is awakened by the word before God become most hateful and even appalling. The first effect of the light of God in Christ is to make the evil appear worse than ever.

Hence it is that wherever the word of God deals vitally with the soul, repentance toward God ensues, even though there must be faith that the repentance should have any divine character. The soul has no abiding comfort as yet, no settled peace, nor real relief. One may say, the burden becomes through the Holy Spirit's action more felt and more oppressive; and thank God for it! There is nothing more dangerous than to slur over our sins because Christ is preached. How enfeebling to the soul afterward if we bound, so to say, over the grave of our sins, instead of looking down steadily there to judge ourselves for what they are! A man otherwise is startled to find another day the evil which he at first passed over too lightly; and he is in danger of beginning to question whether he can really have, as he calls it, an interest in Christ and His grace. Had he at the start faced his own evil, he had known better, not only what he himself is, but how the Savior took all up and cleansed him from every sin with His precious blood when he believed.

According to the plain testimony of the New Testament, Christ's coming has laid sin bare in its full opposition to God, in its evil against man, in all its secret depths as never known before. No doubt the law acted in an admirable manner; for the commandment is holy, just, and good. But after all the law is not Christ, and Christ revealed God in His grace, instead of merely continuing rites that appealed suitably to fallen man. Yet in the law God had before Himself the evil state of man. At Sinai He commanded “Thou shalt not do this evil; thou shalt not do that.” It was of no use to claim from the sons of Israel, what could only be found in Christ. What the law did was just what man then needed; it forbade doing the evil that was there, it condemned what the evil heart desired. Man was already a sinner before the law was given. No doubt Adam had a law; but this is a very different thing from the law. For the law supposes that man is fallen, and that he is constantly inclined to do the wicked things prohibited and denounced by it. Along with the ten words, the most solemn institution annexed was the day of atonement, among other gracious provisions subsequently added.

But now that Christ is come, He has brought in an incomparably deeper and larger standard of sin. The evil and wretched condition of man is shown beyond comparison more complete and profound, and by nothing so much as by the worth of Christ's redemption. No wonder that the Holy Spirit uses grand words, for none less could set forth truly the character of what is revealed to us in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The law claimed man's works. Christ did in the highest sense the will of God. “Lo, I am come to do thy will, O God.” Atonement is God Himself, by and in Christ, taking up and settling the question of sin in His own grace for His own glory, that believers might now be fully and forever blessed. Present association with heaven is in open view, because the immediate object was to wean the Hebrews from yearning after earthly hopes. Yet the future is not forgotten; for the Christian it is unmistakably “everlasting,” whatever may be the accomplishment of earthly promises by-and-by. But there is more to heed than this. The Spirit's power gives present enjoyment of that eternal character. Its object is to put the believer now, with purged conscience, into God's presence, or, as Peter puts it, “to bring us to God,” as He is and will be known in the light forever.

What a blessed reality this is! Have you or have you not made it yours? The Lord intimates it even in the Gospel of Luke. The prodigal son comes not merely “to himself” but to the father; and the father meets him with not affection only but a vast deal more. He has the best robe put upon him, not when he deserved it (if this ever could be), but before there was the smallest question of aught save his repentant sense of sin. It is his father's love. God acted from and for what He is Himself, and for what He can righteously afford to do for the worst of sinners through the redemption that is in Christ. Such and so efficacious is His love displayed in the atoning work of the Lord Jesus. Luke as usual was led thus to present the grace of God in Christ and by His death, as applied to the most worthless who repent. Matthew (xxii. 2-14) presents grace dispensationally in the well-known parable of the kingdom of heaven; and the professor that despised grace is seen individually judged.

Proverbs 11:10-15

The use and abuse of the mouth has a large place in the verses which come into review. Yet how small is the circle pursued compared with the vast range which scripture touches elsewhere! There is much in the O. T. which sets forth its evil; but in the N. T. it is exposed more deeply still, and in no part so much as the Epistle of James.

“When it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth; and when the wicked perish, [there is] shouting.

By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted; but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.

He that despiseth his neighbor is void of heart; but a man of understanding holdeth his peace.

He that goeth about tale-bearing revealeth secrets; but he that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter.

Where no advice [is] the people fall; but in the multitude of counselors [there is] safety.

It goeth ill with him that is surety for a stranger; but he that hateth suretyship is secure” (vers. 10-15).

The impious person of ver. 9 described as ruining his neighbor with his mouth must have been as deceitful as mischievous. We can understand therefore why it should be narrowed to “a hypocrite." Certainly he covers his neighbor with his defiling imputation so as to injure and destroy, as far as his intention could. But God takes care of the righteous in their unsuspecting simplicity, and gives knowledge, so that they are delivered.

Again, whatever may be the of men provoked by a course of life which silently condemns them, conscience is forced to justify the true-hearted. Hence, when it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices. Compare Esther 8:15-17. Just so, when downfall comes to the notoriously wicked, men cannot disguise their loud satisfaction.

Further, good fruit is expected to others from the upright. “By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted, but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.” Here the public ruin is attributed to the same source as that which destroys private reputation. A veil of piety but adds to the iniquity and to the mischief.

Next, we are told where silence is golden, both by contrast and directly: “He that despiseth his neighbor is void of heart.” Where is his sense, where is propriety, to say nothing of the love and fear of God? It is certain that the Highest despises not any. What can a creature's state be who forgets either the body made of dust, or the soul from the inbreathing of Jehovah Elohim? Least of all does it suit Him Who died to save the lost. “A man of understanding holdeth his peace” in such a case, unless there be a divine obligation to speak out. “He that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter; whereas he that goeth about as a slanderer revealeth secrets.” To receive nothing so said, and to reprove the tale-bearer, will soon check and put such to shame; to repeat slanderous tales is to share the guilt and the mischief.

On the other hand there are those whom God sets as watchmen, and who are therefore bound to warn; as again the humble rejoice to be helped in their difficulties, instead of decrying those who have more discernment than themselves. “Where no advice is, the people fall; but in the multitude of counselors there is safety.” Whatever the haughty spirit of independence may aspire to, there are chief men, or guides, among God's people; and none can ignore or slight them but to their own loss. The Holy Spirit does not lead to self-conceit but to unfeigned humility and to cordial value for fellowship.

But to be surety for another is quite another thing from either giving or taking counsel. “It goeth ill with him that is surety for a stranger; but he that hateth suretyship is secure.” Yet He Who was best and wisest deigned to be surety for us where suffering followed to the uttermost; but as He knew beforehand, so He endured it all for us to God's glory. In our way and measure we too may incur the risk; but we should do it only where we are prepared to stand the forfeit, and we can do it considerately and honorably. Otherwise it is right as well as safe to refuse. But speculation without or beyond means is wholly unjustifiable; it is not kindness but rather dishonesty.

Gospel Words: the Dropsical Man Cured

Luke 14:1-6

It is plain that the Spirit is in this context setting out the moral ruin of men who flattered themselves, as far as possible from believing that the kingdom of God was to be taken from them, and given to such as should bring forth the fruits thereof. The various incidents of the chapter bring to light man in his evil confronted by the grace of God in Christ. So it is in the opening scene.

“And it came to pass, when he went into the house of a certain one of the rulers of the Pharisees to eat bread on a sabbath, that they were watching him. And, behold, there was a certain dropsical man before him. And Jesus answering spoke unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath, or not? But they were quiet. And he took, healed, and let him go. And [answering] he said unto them, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fall into a well, and will not straightway draw him up on the sabbath day? And they were unable to answer again unto these things” (Luke 14:1-6).

Neither love nor truth animated these religious chiefs. Under the cover of hospitality, they were hostile. They sought evil, but only proved it in their own ill-will. The dropsical man there present gave the Lord occasion to assert God's title to do good.

Had not Jehovah said before the law, “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of Jehovah thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his eyes, wilt give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put upon the Egyptians; for I am Jehovah that healeth thee” (Ex. 15:26). Yet what was the witness of the dropsical man before the Lord and before them? And what meant all manner of disease and of sickness in the land of Israel, as it were crowding round Him to be healed? And why from all Syria brought they all that were sick, suffering under various distempers and torments, and those possessed by demons, with lunatics and paralytics? It was not Jehovah-Rophi who had failed, but man generally and Israel in particular. If the sabbath was a sign between Him and them, how came it, in shining, to disclose such misery and suffering? Why with an object before all eyes to draw out pity and humiliation, were these chiefs, Pharisees, doctors of the law, blind to His glory Who was the Son of God, blind to His grace Who went about doing good and healing all that were overpowered by the devil, for God was with Him? Yea, God was in Him, reconciling the world to Himself, not reckoning to them their offenses; and they were watching Him with eyes fuller of hatred to Him than to the Gentiles they most despised! Was this then their sabbath honor?

The sabbath was a precious sign from the beginning, and, filling the very center of the law, the sure pledge of what God would accomplish in due time. But what of man's ways before the law, and under the law? What had he been to God during all the six days? What were his works before Him, and what his life? Did he love Jehovah with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might? Did not the presence of His Son, a man among men, prove the very reverse? Alas! man, sinful man, cannot enter God's rest. His works are evil. There is judgment, not rest, for him; death, and judgment.

The Lord therefore made a special point of healing on a sabbath. All the Gospels attest it, and repeatedly (Matt. 12:9; Mark 1:21; 3:1; Luke 13:10; John 5:9; 9:14). Here, as in chap. 8 cases are special to Luke as displaying divine grace, hateful to the self-righteous. The incurably sick man was the true testimony to man's state. Christ answers the selfish and unbelieving rancor of their hearts by His question. They were abashed and afraid to speak; but their will remained unbroken. And He laid hold of the man, who had not even appealed to Him (that the grace of God might all the more appear), healed him, and let him go. But He added a withering word to those hard and self-complacent sinners, “Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fall into a well, and will not straightway draw him up on the sabbath day”? This was notorious. And had God no interest in healing a sufferer or in saving a sinner? This they virtually denied, and hated Him Who came to give it effect.

And you, dear reader, if you believe not on Him, are in worse case than the dropsical man. Are you not a lost soul? Face your actual state before God; do not palliate; do not forget. In vain the medicine-man; in vain yourself or others; in vain, the saints, the angels, or the virgin. But “the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost.” So He said Who is the truth. It is God's word; believe Him, and receive the blessing, even peace and joy in believing. Own the truth of your sins: this is repentance. Own the truth of His grace; this is faith. It is the way of Christ to the Father; and there is no other way from God and to God for a sinner.

1 Peter 1:14-16

“So great salvation” calls for earnest decision and sobriety, brightened as it is by a perfect hope which puts not to shame. But next the apostle insists on a quality of the new life we have in Christ which is as indispensable for the saint, as it is due to God.

“As children of obedience, not conformed to the former lusts in your ignorance, but according to the Holy One that called you, be ye also holy in every [part of] conduct, because it is written, Holy ye shall be, because I [am] holy” (1 Pet. 1:14-16).

The Christian is characterized as a child of obedience. This is far more energetic than the “obedient children” of the A.V. which rightly speaks of men in their unrenewed state as the children (or rather sons) of disobedience (Eph. 2:2, Col. 3:6). It is the habitual bent of fallen nature to disobey God. Now on the contrary, when sanctified by the Spirit, we are for obedience, childlike obedience, as we see its perfection in our Lord Jesus. As He is our pattern as well as life, it is to His obedience we are livingly set apart, no less than to the sprinkling of His blood. Quickened by the faith of Christ, we are neither left to ourselves like the Gentiles, nor set under the law as the Jews; but are subject to Christ and His word as the perfect law of liberty; even as it was His meat to do the will of Him that sent Him.

Here it was of the more consequence to express this, as the apostle was addressing such of the circumcision who believed. Re-action is a danger. They might have slipped into the delusion that all direction was gone because the law was; a mere negation for those delivered from the bondage of the law. But Christ freed from law only to lead into a constant obedience far deeper and more comprehensive. So in Romans 8 the apostle taught the saints in Rome, Jewish or Gentile, that if the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (which is our law) set free from the law of sin and death (against which Israel and man vainly strove), it is through redemption that the law's righteous requirement (τὸ δικαίωμα) might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to flesh but according to Spirit. And this walk is solely one of obedience. We are not our own but bought with a price, and what a price! Glorify God then in your body. We are the Lord's freedmen, had we been slaves; we are Christ's bondmen, had we been freest of the free. The Christian denies his Master and his standing, if he claim independence of His authority and His word. The more he knows his privileges, the greater is his obligation to obey. He was once, Jew or Gentile, a son of disobedience; he is now a child of obedience; let him be consistent as such. “If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” The Apostle John only confirms and completes Paul and Peter.

Such then is the great governing principle; and so it must be, unless God's children are to have an unnatural independence, yea mastery, of God Himself, and thus subvert the highest of all rights. But it is of moment also to beware of old habits, which may not be weighed sufficiently when the Christian relationship is new, and which are apt to re-assert their evil influence when the truth has no longer the fresh power over the soul which the ungrieved Spirit maintains. Hence it is here added, “not conformed to the former lusts in your ignorance.” When the True Light was unseen, the heart's ignorance of God was extreme. Here it is no comparison of Jews with heathen, but their real state pointed out as before Him, when divine love was as unknown as light. How rank was the growth of lusts in that ignorance! They were now the more to beware of being conformed to what dishonored Christ, being themselves begotten of His God and Father unto a living hope. If God's power alone keeps, it is through faith, which implies the heart simple and subject to His word. Those who are still passing through the wilderness need to be on their guard, vigilant, and self-judging.

Another consideration follows and lifts the eyes yet higher. “But according to the Holy One that called you, be ye too holy in every [part of] conduct.” Holy is He that called them out of darkness unto His marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9). Holy is He that called them by His grace unto His eternal glory in Christ Jesus (1 Pet. 5:10). He is just the same every step of the dangerous journey they were meanwhile treading. They were even now in the nearest relation to Him as objects of His love, and after a sort which was only shadowed by His people of old. Then it was national and after a fleshly and temporal sort, though individual faith pierced through to the Coming One and to things better and enduring. Now it was distinctly personal in character and everlasting. For the people and the land and the world Jesus was the rejected Christ; higher and larger glories came into view, grace fuller and more intimate. “He calleth His own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. When He hath put forth His own, He goeth before them, and the sheep follow Him; for they know His voice.” The highest in earthly position might claim or call away; but such are strangers to those that have heard the voice of the rejected Christ. “And a stranger will they not follow; for they know not the voice of strangers.” Can one wonder? He is the door that opens into every blessing. By Me (said He) if any one enter, he shall be saved, and shall go in and shall go out, and shall find pasture. Who but He can truly say, I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly? It is now in the power of His resurrection (1 Peter 1:3). If He that called them is holy, how essential it is that they should cherish the same character of separateness from evil to Himself, and this without stint or limit? “Be ye too holy in every part of conduct."

Was this an unheard of requirement on God's part? Far from it. When as Jehovah He governed a people after the flesh, even so it could not be otherwise: “Because it is written, Holy ye shall be, because I am holy.” The Apostle cites Lev. 11:44: see also Lev. 19:2; 20:7,26. Without doubt, as we read in Heb. 9:10, the Levitical system consisted only of meats and drinks and divers washings, ordinances of flesh imposed until a time of rectification. Christ brought in His person grace and truth, and redemption enables us to walk accordingly in the Spirit. It is now the children, not of the fathers, but of God the Father, whose standing is not in flesh, but in Christ. The holiness rises according to the place and relationship.

If the principle in itself is invariable, the character of the holiness is akin and proportionate to the blessing conferred. As there is no bound to the grace and truth received in receiving Christ, so is the holiness suited to the Holy One revealed in the Son of God. God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. And Christ is the light, not of Jews only but of the world. Hence he that followeth Him shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. The natural man, no matter how intelligent, never rises to this; if he profess Christianity, as he may and often does, it is unreal. “If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth.” The believer alone has reality in Christ, whence is the contrast: “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light [and there every true Christian does walk], we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from every sin.”

We all know how often it is argued that this is a condition. Who doubts this of “If we walk,” &c.? But what most who so talk overlook is that it is the condition of being a Christian, not in name only but in deed and truth. The Apostle John in no way means of some real saints compared with others. It is the condition of such as are born of God. It is the unquestionable privilege of all the faithful who follow Christ, unless it be pretended that any faithful souls do not follow Him. It is not a question of walking according to the light which admits of different degrees, but of walking in it, which belongs alike to all who were once darkness but are now light in the Lord. They are therefore exhorted to walk as children of light. But John expresses the necessary condition assumed: if we walk in the light as God is in the light (true of every real follower of the Lord Jesus), then have we these other privileges. For all now go together, as the gift of divine grace: we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus cleanseth us from every sin. They are the constant enjoyment of all that walk in the light, as necessarily do all that are Christ's.

So too in this Epistle of Peter the exhortation to be holy is addressed to all. If all were alike sanctified of the Spirit in principle, as we have seen in 1 Pet. 1:2, all are in 1 Pet. 1:15 enjoined to be holy, because the God that called them is holy. Here it is holiness in practice, without which (as Heb. 12:14 solemnly assures) no one shall see the Lord. If ye live after the flesh, ye are about to die (Rom. 8:13). Know ye not that unrighteous men shall not inherit God's kingdom (1 Cor. 6:9)? He that soweth to his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption (Gal. 6:8). We need not surely quote more of these grave warnings.

It is well to guard against the misuse of this text and others, as if God's word gave apparent support to the heterodoxy of perfection in the flesh, otherwise styled sinless sanctification, whether taught by A'Kempis and other Romanists, by Jer. Taylor and W. Law, by J. Wesley and his followers, or by the American school of so-called higher holiness, with its modifications in Great Britain since it got discredited. Nothing can be plainer than that scripture urges God's people, or as we now say His children, to be holy, because He is. It is a call addressed to all. The false deduction is of a state attained by special faith in some. And this has led J. W., if my memory serves aright, to misquote, “holy as God is holy.” What is written is the reason God lays down: He requires practical consistency with Himself in those that are His. Nothing can be more certain, becoming, and necessary. But to be holy as He is holy is in any case mistaken, and liable to most presumptuous thoughts if not blasphemous error.

Possibly what was running in the good man's head was our Lord's injunction in Matt. 5:48: “Be ye therefore perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” But this text has no real connection with the aim for which it is produced. For our Lord simply insists on the grace toward evil men which His disciples are to cultivate, after the pattern. of their heavenly Father, Whose sun is made to rise on evil and good, and Who sends rain on just and unjust. What has this to do with the question of the old man in believers? There is power in the Spirit given to us against every ill; but this assertion is very distinct from the assumption that sin is extinct and gone from any saint on earth. It ought never to be allowed to act.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Acts: Part 2

Chap. 5 Divine Design. 32B. the Acts of the Apostles

The solemn and momentous mission of Barnabas and Saul for work among the Gentiles is recorded in chap. 8. It was from the Syrian Antioch (Antakieh), and by the Spirit through a prophet, their fellow-laborers fasting and laying hands on them as thus commended to God's grace. Going to Seleucia they sail to Cyprus and preached in the synagogues in Salamis. But at Paphos Jewish hatred to the gospel's reaching the Gentiles is judged by the infliction of blindness for a season, whilst the pro-consul believed. But from Perga in Pamphylia, John Mark (not then profitable for service) returned to Jerusalem; and the apostles come to Antioch (Yalobatch) in Pisidia, where Paul, as he was now called, preached Jesus and the resurrection in the synagogue, dwelling on Psa. 2:16, and Isa. 4, with the warning of Hab. 1:5. On the next sabbath almost all the city flocked to hear; which filled the Jews with a jealousy, that drew out the striking use of Isa. 49 to the joy of the Gentiles, though the apostles were expelled.

At Iconium (Koniyeh), the capital of Lycaonia, the apostles had like experience (chap. 14) in the face of signs and wonders; and when worse was purposed, they fled to Lystra and Derbe and the surrounding regions, and preached. At Lystra a miracle of healing would have led to offering them sacrifice, had they not utterly refused it, exhorting them to turn to the one living and gracious God. Yet at the instigation of Jews that came and opposed, they stoned Paul, who revived and departed next day to Derbe, where they preached and taught, but revisited the scenes of their labors on their return through Attalia (Adalia) in Parcphylia, from whence they sailed to their point of departure. On this journey they chose elders for the disciples in every church. At Antioch they related to the assembly what God had wrought.

Chap. 15 records how the Judaizing snare which would have put Gentiles under law was put down authoritatively in Jerusalem itself by the apostles and elders, with the whole assembly concurring. Peter testifies, as well as Barnabas and Paul; James sums up in the establishment of liberty for the Gentiles, but of course recognizing those principles which prevailed from Noah's time before the law. Thence Paul and Barnabas return (Judas Barsabas and Silas being chosen to go with them), and read the letter at Antioch whence Judas returns, Silas remaining. But after a while the question of taking John Mark on their next missionary journey led Paul to sever himself from Barnabas and take Silas with him, recommended afresh to the Lord's grace (which is not said of Barnabas): ordination it clearly was not.

From chap. 16 to 20 we see the free power of the Spirit in the apostle's ministry, its character, and its effects. Compare his circumcising Timothy, and his refusal of it in the case of Titus; his use of the apostolic decrees in the cities passed through, and his solving the question independently of that letter in writing to the Corinthians. The Holy Spirit (for the book treats of His action rather than of the apostles') specifically calls him to fresh scenes. After visiting Phrygia, and working in Galatia and in Philippi of Macedonia, it is still “To the Jew first and to the Greek.” Satan wrought by applauding the servants through a Pythoness; but Paul exorcised the spirit. A tumult ensued set on by those whose gain was stopped, and the colonial Duumvirs (for it was a Roman province) yielded for peace' sake and committed them to prison; where. God (not the prisoners only) heard their praises and answered by such an earthquake as never was before or since: doors opened, bonds loosed, yet none escaped. The alarmed jailor received the gospel on the spot, and was baptized, he and all his, immediately. But the magistrates, wishing to hush up things, are compelled by Paul to own their wrong: and Paul and Silas depart at their request.

In chap. 17, at Thessalonica, we see the more usual religious opposition to the gospel; and some converts are brought before the Politarchs, who take security and no more. The brethren send away Paul and Silas to Beraea, where the Jews prove more noble than those in Thessalonica, being such as received the word of God readily, and searched the scriptures too. But when Jewish enmity pressed here also, Paul went off, Silas and Timothy abiding. At Athens the apostle reasoned in the synagogue and in the market place; and, when attacked by Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, made a speech at the Areopagus, which refuted alike Chance and Fate by a Creator Who is misrepresented by idols, the work of men's hands, and Who will judge the habitable earth, having given proof to all in raising from the dead Jesus Christ the righteous.

From that inquisitive seat of art and letters, where the fruit was small, the apostle goes to dissolute Corinth (chap. 18). There after Jewish opposition the Lord assured him of His protection, as He had much people in it: and there he stayed a year and a half teaching the word of God. Even the proconsul Gallio's indifference to Jewish plots and to contemptuous Gentile violence shielded him. After a visit to Ephesus where the Jews were willing to hear, he goes to Jerusalem to pay a vow as well as salute the assembly, and revisits Galatia and Phrygia. From verse 24 we have the interesting account of the Spirit's way with Apollo's at Ephesus.

After that while he was at Corinth (chap. 19), Paul comes to Ephesus; and finding a dozen disciples, who, like Apollos at first, only knew the word of the beginning of Christ, he sets the truth of the gospel before them; and they are baptized unto the name of the Lord Jesus. We may profitably compare Eph. 1:13, 14. He preached for three months in the synagogue; when conflict came, he separated the disciples, discoursing daily in the school of Tyrannus; and this for two years, so that all in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord. There the wiles of the enemy in profane Jews bowed before the power of the Lord Jesus, even when great gain through sorcery was in question. Here again Satan raised an uproar against His servants, by which the Jews sought to profit. Yet in fact it was the mingled pride of local idolatry and their interests which agitated men; and some of the Asiarchs who were friendly dissuaded the apostle from taking part in the scene. But after much outcry the town-clerk pointed out the futility and disorder of the proceedings, and dismissed the meeting.

The next chapter (20) opens with Paul's departure for Macedonia, where he exhorted much, and then came to Greece for three months; but when Jewish plots threatened, he resolved to make his way to Jerusalem through Macedonia. At Troas we have the instructive account of a Lord's-day; and Eutychus suffers for his drowsiness, but is restored through the apostle to the comfort of all. From Miletus the apostle sent to Ephesus for the elders of the church, and gave them that really edifying charge which fills the latter part of the chapter. He feels as if his work was closed, dwelling on its character for their profit. He does not doubt that bonds and afflictions await him; and as he was clean from the blood of al], he calls on them to take heed to themselves and to all the flock wherein the Holy Spirit set them overseers, to feed God's assembly. He knows of a sad change after his departure, not only grievous wolves coming in, but from among themselves men rising up, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples. Not a hint of succession as a safeguard, but a sure declension. Yet he commits them to God and to the word of His grace. This is the resource in perilous times. And in the spirit of His grace had Paul labored, as they ought, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, the reflex of Himself. No wonder that they wept, especially at the word that they were to see his face no more.

Acts 19:15

Q.-Acts 19:15. Dr. J. B. Lightfoot in his Fresh Revision of the N.T. 4 §3 (p. 60) speaks of “the distinction which is effected by the insertion of the article before the one name and the omission before the other,” &c. But this is not the fact, though he cites the Greek expressly, and wrongly, just before. He was eminently learned, and usually most accurate. How can we account for the statement? R.

A.-It is a striking proof that good Homer sometimes nods. Not only no known MS. bears him out, but the supposed omission would be in this case impossible Greek. The repeated article is even more requisite than the separate verbs, γ. I know or acknowledge, έπ. I am acquainted with. It is to be presumed that in a later edition so glaring and of course unwitting a mistake must have been corrected; I have only the first before me.

BY W. KELLY THE BOOK OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH, Bvo. cloth, 7/6.
LECTURES ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, Cr. 8vo. cloth, 3/6.
AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, 8170. Cloth, 716.

BRIEF HINTS ON THE PSALMS, price HINTS ON ISAIAH, price 5d. per dozen.

DANIEL THE PROPHET, price 2d.

BRIEF HINTS ON THE MINOR PROPHETS, price 2d.
THE Flom OF CHRIST COMPATIBLE WITH PROPHECY, price 6d.
JEWISH. AND CHRISTIAN EXPECTATION OF CHRIST CONTRASTED,

price 1id.
UNITY OF THE CHURCH, IN THE INSPIRED HISTORY, &c. price 2d.
THE PROMISE OF THE FATHER; AND THE BODY, THE CHURCH,
price 3d.
THE MYSTERY AND THE COVENANTS, price 3d.

Shortly.

ON THE LORD'S PRAYER, a New Edition.
THE FEASTS OF JEHOVAH, a New Edition.

Later.

THE DAY OF ATONEMENT, a New Edition.
LONDON: T. WESTON, 53, PATERNOSTER Row, E.G.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Isaac: 25. Isaac up to Rehoboth

Gen. 26:17-22

Gebab was a district as well as a town. When the patriarch removed from the king's neighborhood, it was still the same country, the valley or “torrent” of Gerar, a wady in our more modern term. At times of much rain a stream ran for a while through the valley.

“And Isaac departed, and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. And Isaac again (returned and) dug the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, and the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham; and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them. And the servants of Isaac dug in the valley and found there a well of living water. And the herdmen of Gerar strove with Isaac's herdmen, saying, Ours [is] the water. And he called the name of the well Esek (Strife), because they quarreled with him. And they dug another well; and they contended for that also; and he called the name of it Sitnah (Hatred). And he removed thence, and dug another well, and they strove not for that; and he called the name of it Rehoboth (Broadways); and said, For now hath Jehovah made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land” (vers. 17-22).

Neither sense of his own failure in the past depressed Isaac now, nor did the unmerited goodness of Jehovah puff him up. It was a pain, though it ought not to be a surprise, that the Philistines envied his prosperity; nor was it wonderful that Abimelech should gratify the popular feeling, and prompt his departure. But if he departed from their vicinity, he kept the word of the Lord and did not deny His name. Egypt was forever barred to him. He encamped in the valley of Gerar and dwelt there.

With none of the wandering fathers do we find wells of water so largely and conspicuously connected as with Isaac. This is manifestly characteristic. In that quarter of the earth they were of the greatest value. They were a needed and welcome part of his blessing here below, not so much for one that sowed and reaped abundantly, but in the possession of flocks and herds with a great retinue of servants, who suffered from the spite which sought to render useless what men did not need for themselves.

But the typical interest is no less instructive. Where but with Isaac should the pledge of spiritual use and refreshment be appropriately sought? The washing of water by the word, and yet more the fountain of water springing up unto life eternal, and the rivers of living water flowing out richly, have we not this and more in the N.T. as the figure of the Holy Spirit's operations, now that the Son of God is come, redemption accomplished, and the Man (who is no less God) glorified consequently in heaven? What can be plainer than the fact here attested? What less worthy than for believers to allow that inspiration had no divine motive or end in recording such facts as these and very few others in the lowly and peaceful path of Isaac? He dug again the wells of water, dug in the days of his father: even this is reserved for the account of Isaac, and his perseverance in the face of that enmity which has its pleasure in opposing and destroying the unused good.

Another feature in the case it is well to notice, because the blatant skepticism of the hour, more audacious and malicious than Philistinian hatred, perverts it to dishonor God's word as well as to injure needy man. “He called their names after the names by which his father had called them:” a very natural and proper thing for any upright soul to do, and peculiarly suitable to such a son as Isaac showed himself uniformly to be.

But here in vers. 19-22 we hear also of wells unheard of before. “And Isaac's servants dug in the valley, and found there a well of living water. And the herdmen of Gerar strove with Isaac's herdmen, saying, The water is ours; and he called the name of the well Esek, because they quarreled with him.” Change of place does not see change in man. “And they dug another well, and they contended for that also; and he called the name of it Sitnah.” But Isaac did not change from that meekness which becomes the man of God, gentle to all, and forbearing to such as opposed themselves. Nor was his dependence on God without a speedy answer. For removing thence he dug another well, and they strove not for that; and he called the name of it Rehoboth, and said, as accounting for the name, “For now hath Jehovah made room for us; and we shall be fruitful in the land.” Contention was as far from his spirit, as ingratitude to the Almighty protector of him who must not strive. How is it with us? Do we indeed know that all things work together for good to them that love God? Do we give thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to Him that is God the Father?

Defilements of Touch and the Creeping Things

Lev. 11:26-31

Here the beginning of the prohibition is not a reflex of what we have already in vers. 3, 4, but regards their own cases according to ver. 24; see also vers. 27, 28.

“Every beast that hath cloven hoofs, but is not quite split open, nor cheweth the cud, shall be unclean to you; everyone that toucheth them shall be unclean. And whatever goeth on its paws, among all beasts that go on all four, those are unclean to you: whoever toucheth their carcass shall be unclean until the even. And he that beareth the carcass of them shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even: they are unclean to you” (vers. 26-28).

Death was the great defiler, death as the wages of sin, the greatest defiler of all. Yet it was not left to a general principle; in these verses the Israelite was expressly told that a touch of those carcasses unfitted him for his usual communion of privilege under the law. No one that did but touch was exempt from the consequence; no contact could be passed over with impunity. “Bearing a carcass” might be to remove it out of the way, without any wish to use it for purpose of gain or any other selfish end. Even so the bearer must take the place of defilement, wash his clothes, and be himself unclean till even. The requirement was inflexible.

It is not for the Christian a matter of eating or drinking. “Handle not, nor taste, nor touch” are legal ordinances cited in Col. 2:21 in order to the apostle's peremptory denial that we are subject to such injunctions. The Christian does not belong to a Jewish Messiah alive according to flesh; but the Jews were a people living in the world. We died with Christ from the elements of the world. They had their fitting place when Jehovah governed His earthly people tried under law. The result of the trial was their guilt and ruin, even so far as crucifying their own—Jehovah's—Messiah by the hands of lawless men. Carnal ordinances are thus shown to be no honor to God any more than real good to man. The people so distinguished were those most distinguished for their hatred of the Holy and the Righteous Servant, the Anointed of Jehovah. Yet His death of the cross is not only the extreme of man's wicked rejection, but the atoning basis, as His resurrection was the starting-point, of Christianity. And the initiatory institute, the baptism of water, is the symbol, not only of His death, but that we Gentile or Jew who confess Him also died with Christ. Hence restrictions of touch, taste, and the like are for us passed away. We by faith stand on the resurrection side of Christ's grave; yet none the less but the more are we exhorted to cleanse ourselves, as God's children here below, from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God (2 Cor. 7:1).

“29 And these shall be unclean to you among the creeping [or, swarming] things that creep on the earth: the mole, and the mouse, and the tortoise after its kind; 30 and the gecko, and the land-crocodile, and the lizard, and the sand-lizard, and the chameleon. 31 These shall be unclean to you among all that creep: whoever toucheth them when they are dead, shall be unclean until the even” (vers. 29-31).

In this regulation creeping things without wings are forbidden. The creatures that burrow were unclean for the people of old separated to God, as were those that devoured and destroyed in the field. So were such as flitted in the sun, silent or crying, that hid in the sand, or that dived into congenial rubbish. Some too might enjoy the grass or the shrub or the tree, and not without lively activity after its insect prey, and with beauty of color too. They might not all grovel on the earth. But they were to be alike unclean. Whoever touched them when dead should be unclean till even.

Thus had Israel to learn how universally the creature was defiled through man's sin; for this he was taught of God as no other nation knew, nor even the most thoughtful of philosophers ever guessed. Yet till it be known, all is darkness before us, and man walks in a living lie amidst the defilements of death. Israel alone were made to feel it in an external way by ordinances which made the burden press, save on such hardened men as turned the legal yoke into a claim of self-righteousness and glorying over others.

The Day of Atonement: 2. The Principle Part 2

Alas! even those who love His name put off the feast which the Father would have us enjoy here till we get to heaven. They think that such joy and gladness cannot be known in the midst of earthly sorrow, and that the gathering together for rejoicing must await the heavenly scene at the close, “forever with the Lord.” Unwittingly they do God's grace great injustice, and defraud themselves now of exceeding joy in the Spirit.

They practically lose the sweetness and the power of His joy which is their strength even here. It is not only that the once guilty son meets his father, and that the father meets the son in nothing but love, without a reproach so much the more to produce self-reproach (oh, the immense loss for the soul that slightly judges self before God!); but along with this there is the conscious fitting him for the presence of his father in enjoyed communion. The best robe is put upon him. Never had he worn such a robe before levity and self-will induced him to abandon his father's house. Grace goes far beyond restoration.

Adam had not the beauteous robe of Christ when he walked upright in the garden of Eden. Redemption is no mere re-instating of fallen man, as it is sometimes perversely called. The believer puts Christ on and is made whiter than snow by His blood. Nothing less does the Savior undertake than to fit for the Father's presence. It is no question at all of bringing back to the condition of innocence. The Last Adam decides everything; Jesus provides and gives the tone to all. God the Father is the source; Jesus the means and channel of love; and the Holy Spirit takes His blessed part in making the written word living and effectual in the soul. The robe therefore must be the best robe; the calf must be the fatted calf; the shoes, the ring, the feast, each and all are in accordance with Christ's person and with His work. Lastly, and above all, there is the communion of joy; for God Himself must have His own deep enjoyment of the feast, as indeed nothing could be good without Him.

Do Christians in general know what all this means? It is exactly what God intends to be made good now in Christianity. Let us hope that you have now at least a little of that divine spring of communion in joy and liberty. No one doubts the fullness of joy by-and-by; then and on high it will be forever in all perfection. But it is a flagrant mistake that the scene the Lord describes should be put off to heaven. Is it needed to demonstrate why not? In heaven there will be no elder son, nor will the Father go out then to entreat. Ungracious murmurers in heaven! nay; there are many now on earth. It is therefore to be realized now and here, though all the springs of the joy are heavenly and divine.

The reason why people relegate it to the heavens may be because they are not in the secret of its joy themselves. There is a feeling in the nature even of righteous men that they do not relish others having what they have not themselves. Ah! let the lack rather awaken an earnest searching of heart to inquire, “How is it that my soul is not in the love, joy, and liberty here described? How is it that I have not yet realized the best robe? or the fatted calf? How is it that one has overlooked the communion of God's own joy in love with His own?” “The Son of man is come to save that which was lost;” but by that work God was glorified in Him, as God at once glorified Him in Himself, and would have us now to taste its fruit.

Forgiving is not all the gospel told out, nor should it be all for us to know or make known sins' remission. Salvation is immensely misunderstood when it is only held to mean that we are forgiven. God's object is not, nor could be, less than to bring us to the knowledge of the Father and the Son, into the joy and liberty of grace now, while we wait for the glory of God in the hope of which we exult. In this knowledge of our God and Father lies the most effectual power against the worldly snares that encumber us on every side. It is never the gospel order to make us holy in order to be happy before God; an effort that is often made, but always made in vain. In order to be holy in practice, grace makes you happy first. He who alone was the Holy One died for you in your unholiness and evil, in order to give you peace and joy in believing. By His death Christ deserved it for you, and the grace of God righteously blesses you in the faith of Him. This is exactly in unison with God's heart, mind, and word; for His word was written for us that we, believing, might share His joy in love.

Have we wandered from the text and the commentary? From neither. Lev. 16 held up the picture of atonement. Heb. 9 declares that, as Christ is come and His blood shed atoningly, blessing is now for faith, and everlasting. What was forbidden to Aaron, save a little on one day in the year, is now vouchsafed always to every Christian. “The way into the holies has been and is made manifest (71-60.).” Hence in Heb. 10:19 it is written, “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holies by the blood of Jesus, the new and living way which He dedicated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith,” &c. We are ever welcome there and thus.

But there is another fruit of Christ's work. His blood is equally efficacious in purging our conscience from dead works to serve religiously (or, worship) the living God (Heb. 9:14). The two privileges go together; if the way is made manifest into the sanctuary, where Christ is, His own are welcomed to draw near now, but only as purged in conscience, not merely from bad but from dead works, to worship the living God. How great the superiority of our privilege over Israel, and Aaron's sons, yea even Aaron himself! It is not only that the way is open, and the sins are borne; but the conscience is purified by the same blood of Christ which did all else. Thus the light of God makes only the clearer what that blood has effected.

Nothing there disturbs the conscience of the believer, who is set in love and liberty to serve the living God. Christ's work, which displaces the dead works of man, ever abides in unchanging value as our ground before God. The same efficacious sacrifice of Christ has achieved these inestimable blessings as a whole. As long as the Jewish tabernacle had its standing, there was not the remission of sins forever but their remembrance, the conscience unpurged before God, and the barrier maintained between God and man. The blood of Christ has changed all for us who believe. And no wonder. The law had for its aim to shut up those under it till faith came; but the accomplishment of God's will by Christ set aside all the lifeless substitutes and vain endeavors of man. Then the believer, purified from sins and in his conscience, comes freely to God in His sanctuary.

This nearness to God appeared distinctly at Christ's death, as the death of the sons of Aaron was the time to restrict even Aaron from God's presence. Why so? Because his sons had been guilty of presumptuous sin. God had caused His fire from heaven to consume the burnt sacrifice, and they had despised it and Him. They thought that any fire would do just as well: common fire could burn incense no less than His fire. Oh, what readiness in man to set at naught the favor of God, however rich! God had affixed that seal of divine approbation; but it only gave Nadab and Abihu the opportunity of proving their hearts to be wholly careless of His glory as well as of His grace. Jehovah had deigned in grace to send the fire from before Him to consume the burnt offering and the fat. Therefore it was for them to keep up the holy fire. But these two sons of Aaron profanely took common fire; and if God had passed this over, He would have been signing and sealing His own dishonor. Could God do so? Impossible. God judged them. They sinned unto death. It is not every sinner that thus sins unto death. There was then, there is now, sin unto death. This supposes sin in special circumstances to His dishonor. God had just brought in a peculiar work of grace, and in it was distinguishing Israel as His people; and immediately the two sons of Aaron put shame on His favor, and died for it at once, solemnly, and before all.

How plain it was to Israel even on the day of atonement, that God's chosen people could not draw near to God in the sanctuary! Even the priest could not go within the veil. Nay, the very high priest Aaron could enter the most holy place on this day alone in the year for brief moments, but only with incense and with blood! What did it all indicate? That the way into the holies had not yet been made manifest. Now it is. Such is the striking contrast since the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. The way into the holies has been made manifest. So, when Christ died, the veil of the temple was rent from the top to the bottom. Could one conceive a mark more significant? It was plain for those that had eyes to see that the Levitical institution was gone, and that a new thing was come on God's part through Christ's death. This enters into the very core of Christianity. The way into the holiest has been and is made manifest.

Now are you, my brother, in its peaceful enjoyment? Are you in the present conscious possession of this nearness to God? What is the good of knowing that the way into the holies is manifested, if it is not for you to enter in by faith day by day, thereby appropriating the exceeding riches of God's grace toward you? It is for every partaker of the heavenly calling. The veil that God rent was the death-warrant of Judaism. Of course man might repair; but it was only man without God. The veil was by no word from God erected again. For the Christian it is gone forever, as are earthly sacrifice, altar, and priest. This therefore serves to show, in the most open manner, the essential difference between Jewish atonement and that which the Christian has in Christ's death.

In the Jewish institution who can deny that the barrier abode impassable with the slightest exception even for Aaron? It did not matter whether it were a Samuel or a David, an Isaiah or a Daniel, there was no free entrance into the holies. The faith, or holy character, of the high priest made no difference as to this. Jehovah appeared in the cloud upon the mercy-seat, and even Aaron must not come at all times within the veil, that he die not. On that one day there was a special Sin-offering to atone; then only with the most jealous observance of God's injunctions could he come to atone for himself and his house, as well as for the people. The way thither was otherwise and always closed.

What do we find in the birth and life of our blessed Lord Jesus? God came to man in the person of Christ. And what appeared in the Lord's death? That man, believing man, can now come boldly to God. The unbeliever is blind to both these matchless blessings. God in Christ came to man, believing or not; but unbelieving man rose up against Him, cast Him out, and crucified Him. But in the very cross of our Lord Jesus was a new and living way dedicated by God. He who now believes in His name is free to draw near to God with a true heart in full assurance of faith through the rent veil, and has Christ as the great priest over the house of God. In fulfillment of the Levitical types our hearts are sprinkled from a wicked conscience, the body washed with pure water. The Christian has as an abiding settled reality—what the Jew had only in form. The word of God has purified his heart by faith. There is but One Whose death has laid the basis for this title of access to God; and there it remains uncanceled and living, till the last believer in our Lord goes up to be with Him forever. We shall all in person meet Him there where our faith penetrates now. This is Christianity, and our sure hope.

Are you, Christian, resting intelligently on Christ's work of atonement? It is admitted that more is in Him than what we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Thus one cannot believe in Christ without receiving life in His name. The believer requires divine life, in order to have affections according to God—affections to hate evil, and to love what is good. Christ is life eternal to every one who believes in Him. He is their life, just as Adam was the head of natural life to mankind at large; and it is well to remark that Adam only became that head and source of life practically when he was a sinner. So Christ becomes the giver of life everlasting after His unbroken work of obedience unto death was complete. Righteousness was an accomplished fact God being glorified in Him to the uttermost.

Christ therefore stands in blessed contrast with Adam. When He rose from the dead, the Lord breathed on His disciples the breath of new life in resurrection power, the distinctive life of the Christian. But this is no more the topic of the Epistle to the Hebrews, than the baptism of the Spirit which forms Christ's body; yet, any one can see the two things were necessary, not His death only but the life which He is, and gives to us. What congruity would there be, if we could conceive the blessed life of Christ given to a man left struggling against his unremoved sins? How suitable that the risen life should be, where the sins were blotted out by His blood! These two privileges of grace are absolutely necessary, and both are given, if one is, to the Christian. Therefore it is that Christ received by faith secures the believer in them both. What a mercy that the gifts of grace should be thus united! For they are given to the simplest through faith in Christ; even to one that could not read and write, to a poor old man or woman, to a little child, if there be the Spirit of God producing subjection of heart to Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Do you ask, Will it last? the answer is, To all eternity; for “Jesus Christ yesterday and to day is the same, and forever.”

For a Jew there was a round of daily, monthly, yearly, and occasional sacrifices. But one of the characteristic features of Christianity is that there is one offering and one only, the antitype that answers to all but infinitely more than all.

Creature sacrifices could be nothing but shadows; Christ's work is the divine reality. In the sacrifice of Christ God introduced what He could rest on, a perfection wholly impossible in the probationary plan of Old Testament times. Christ not only made the need of this perfection felt, but alone supplied it to God's glory and man's blessedness; and the Holy Ghost is sent personally from heaven to bring in the power and joy of it all into the Christian's heart, ways, worship, and service.

He that receives the gospel is entitled to receive the blessing at once. At least, whatever hindrance may be, it is from human activity of mind, and often from morbid feeling; it is not God who delays the soul. As to these difficulties the Lord is patient and tender; but no difficulty is on His part; it is purely and solely on his side that ill hears the word. Old habits or thoughts, or it may be will, working one way and another—these things may cause an obstacle; but He is faithful and unfailing.

See the beautiful instance of the Syro-Phoenician woman. The Lord was ready for her call as soon as she came, but was she yet ready for the Lord? She had not considered how far off she was; but the Lord brought her down to this point. He was not sent but for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. When her cry became simpler as one deeply needing His help, He threw out the hint that it was not meet to cast the children's bread to the dogs. The light shone into her soul now brought truly low; she sees the need of grace in a moment. Correcting her mistake through His word, she no longer takes the position of being one of the sheep, but virtually calls herself only a little dog. She had no claim, falls back on sovereign grace, and finds far more than she had sought. If not indeed a lost sheep of the house of Israel, she becomes a saved sheep of the Lord Jesus forever. Here was a case, not for a miracle like her daughter's, but for the coming work of sovereign grace. God would justify all the forbearance He had shown in the past; but He was now bringing to view deeper counsels and ways than man had learned or could learn before.

Hence it is that the gospel does not merely set forth God vindicated in the cross of Christ, or, according to the language of the theologians, His “satisfaction.” Surely that God is glorified says a great deal more. “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him.” Is not this far beyond the satisfaction aforesaid? Even a man is satisfied when he gets what he wants; but God was glorified in Christ's death; and why? Because God took in all the reality, depth, height, and compass of Christ's work in redemption. All that is in God and man thereby was met and displayed perfectly: majesty and humiliation, grace and righteousness, holiness and suffering for sins, obedience and moral glory. “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him.” God as such was glorified in the rejected Christ, the humbled crucified Son of man. Every attribute of the divine nature, every declaration of His word, shines in the cross to God's glory; and therefore did God at once set the risen Son of man on God's throne, not David's, but at His right hand on His own throne.

Throughout Christ's life and service previously the Father had been glorified by the unswerving obedience of the Son at all cost and in all circumstances. Why is it that we now hear of “God” being glorified, rather than “the Father?” Because sin brings forward “God” as the judge of sin; just as sin affects man's conscience and compels him to think of God. For, spite of man's bad habits and hardness, God makes Himself felt in the conscience of a sinner who ordinarily quails at the thought of death or judgment. But if conscience will be heard about sin, what did God feel about the self-sacrificing work of the Lord Jesus under His own judgment of sin, and on behalf of sinners? God is glorified even about sin, by the perfection of Christ's enduring all its consequences at God's hand; and what is the effect of it all? If God was thus, and only thus, glorified as He' could have been by none other person and in no other way, how does He testify His sense of the worth of His Son's atoning death?

It would have been wholly beneath that worth to have accomplished the Old Testament prophecies for the earth and the earthly people, even if willing. The cross proclaimed mankind evil and lost, most of all Israel; and God takes the Son of man “straightway” into His own glory on high as the only adequate answer to the cross (Psa. 8, 110.). The holy hill of Zion is not holy or high enough for the Son of man. The “decree” (Psa. 2) which was declared for it will be assuredly fulfilled another day. But what has God done now? He has set the risen Lord at His own right hand. Man in His person is exalted, and shares the throne of God; the Old and New Testaments declare it.

There had been many kings sitting on David's throne, and God will yet bestow more abundant dignity and honor on that throne when Christ deigns to sit on it, asking for and receiving the heathen for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. But this will be the future Kingdom, and not Christianity. Christianity is founded on Christ dead, risen, and glorified by God's will, as it sheds on the believer the light of heavenly grace and glory in Christ, and puts the soul into living relationship with God the Father on the ground of redemption, according to the efficacy of Christ's blood which shall abide forever. Oh! beloved brethren, that you would only learn your own Christianity. How much more would you then know of Christ, and better estimate His work!

The death of Aaron's profane sons was the occasion of declaring man's unfitness to draw near before Jehovah; even Aaron must not approach at all times within the veil on pain of death (vers. 1, 2). Aaron must come with a young bullock or calf for a sin offering. He had to bring a ram also for a burnt offering (ver. 3). Aaron had to put on the holy linen coat, to have the linen breeches upon his flesh, to be girded with the linen girdle, and to be attired with the linen miter or turban; and he must bathe his flesh in water before putting them on (ver. 4). All this spoke of intrinsic imperfection and uncleanness. He was as he stood in no degree meet for access to God; and when he did get there, it was through incense and blood. (continued).

Proverbs 11:16-23

These verses open with a contrast, a gracious rather than graceful woman, and violent men; but in ver. 22 it is the very different image of a fair woman without discretion with its painful incongruity.

“A gracious woman retaineth honor, and the violent retain riches.

The merciful man doeth good to his own soul, but the cruel troubleth his own flesh.

The wicked earneth deceitful wages, but he that soweth righteousness a sure reward.

As righteousness [tendeth] to life, so to death he that pursueth evil.

The perverse in heart [are] abomination to Jehovah, but the upright in way [are] his delight.

Hand in (or, for) hand, evil man shall not be unpunished; but the seed of the righteous shall be delivered.

As a gold ring in a swine's snout [is] a woman fair and indiscreet.

The desire of the righteous [is] only good; the wicked's expectation [is] wrath (or, arrogance)” (vers. 16-23).

The spirit that is “virtuous” is quite distinct from “gracious “; but the picture given in the latter part of chap. 31 is of a woman of whom the latter might be predicated as the former is. They are but different aspects of the same person. How can there be found a more vivid answer to one who seeks the meaning of her retaining honor? In fact it is well illustrated in the history of Abigail the Carmelite; as her husband Nabal shows how the violent retain riches. For the one a meek and quiet spirit is not only of great price in God's sight, but a blessing that endures; whereas what are the stoutest in holding their wealth before death? There is no discharge in that war.

It is obvious to every one how blessed mercy is to the needy and wretched. Here is shown the good it does to the man's own soul. Who that reflects can dispute this, or its moral importance? On the other hand equally certain it is that the cruel person does trouble not only his victims but his own flesh. Far from meaning it, he becomes in divine retribution a self-tormentor even now.

The force of ver. 18 seems to be, not only the deceitful work that the wicked man does, but the kindred and disappointing wages he earns. It deceives himself as much or more than those he injures. But he that walks consistently with his relationship to God and man sows and reaps accordingly. He has a sure reward. How fully the N.T. bears both out is evident from Rom. 8 and Gal. 6.

This is carried farther in terms still more general but no less sure and weighty in the verse that follows. Righteousness certainly tends to life, as he that pursues evil to his own death. The devil is not only a liar but a murderer from the beginning till his end come; and those who are swayed by him must share his doom, as they reject the Righteous One Who alone gives life to those that believe.

Then we hear of a class whose aggravated evil makes them offensive to God. For the froward or perverse in heart are declared to be “an abomination to Jehovah.” But it is a comfort to know from Himself that such as are perfect (or, upright) in way are His delight. It was man, independent and rebellious, that departed from Jehovah Elohim, before He drove him from the earthly paradise. Yet does His goodness lead the guilty to repentance and by revealed grace render him upright and guileless, but this only through His Son becoming not only the pattern man, but the sacrifice for our sins. What a joy to the believer that His complacency in man is beyond doubt, and according to His word! Yes, He delights in those whose way is marked by integrity.

“Hand to hand,” here and in chap. 16, is a phrase open to a variety of explanations. Even, to all generations, and certainly, have been suggested by some, while another refers it to terms in making a bargain. Whichever it be, an evil person shall not be scatheless in one version; in the other not only the righteous but their seed shall be delivered. Israel, as they have been, attest the one; Israel, as they shall be, will he the plain proof of the other. Jehovah can by redemption forget iniquities, but will remember and bless for the fathers' sake: in Christ He can afford to do so.

But bow unseemly a sight is a fair woman without that discretion which the weaker vessel needs in the world and the race as they are! Truly a jewel of gold in a swine's snout: a phrase purposely framed to convey incongruity and disgust.

Again, the desire of the righteous is only good. Begotten as they are of incorruptible seed through God's word, their affections flow from that new life. They have another nature prone to evil; but this they judge before God Who watches over His husbandry for good and the repression of evil. The expectation of the wicked is according to their unremoved evil and their deadly opposition to God, which only vexes them to wrath, and must end in outer darkness with its weeping and gnashing of teeth. Who can wonder that in chap. 11 we read, “the hope of the righteous shall be granted,” and that the fear of the wicked shall come upon him no less than his expectation?

Gospel Words: the Ten Lepers

Luke 17:11-19

The Lord in this miracle sets forth the grace, which was soon to supersede the law publicly, as even faith might in a measure enjoy personally. So this Gospel shows the Lord preparing the way in word and deed for the Christianity that was at hand, when Judaism died in His death.

The miracle was striking in its breadth and in its originality, if one may so say. It was not now a single leper prostrate at His feet, and His hand touching him in gracious power as Jehovah-Messiah. Ten leprous men together appealed as they stood afar off, calling aloud for His compassion, and not in vain before Him who came to save that which was lost. But let us hear the instructive account of divine pity and much more here only recorded.

“And it came to pass as He was on the way into Jerusalem, that He was passing between Samaria and Galilee. And as He entered into a certain village, there met Him ten leprous men who stood afar off; and they lifted up their voices, saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And on seeing He said to them, Go your way, show yourselves to the priests. And it came to pass, as they departed they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back with a loud voice glorifying God; and he fell on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks; and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus in answer, said, Were not the ten cleansed? but where [are] the nine? Were none found to return and give glory to God save this stranger? And He said to him, Arise, go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole” (vers. 11-19).

Faith was put to the test. While still uncleansed, they were told to go and show themselves to the priests. The solitary leper in earlier days was first cleansed, and then sent; but the ten were to go as they were. Assured of His power and unfailing compassion Who never wrecked the hope of the wretched, they acted on His word; and as they withdrew they were cleansed. What could the priests do but pronounce on the cure by the Master, and perform their prescribed ritual? One infinitely greater and better than they had wrought on ruined men to God's glory.

And this truth had spoken in growing faith to one heart among them where it might least have been expected; for be was a Samaritan. How apt even believers are to settle down contented with the needed blessing, and stop short of the Blesser! But one rose above letter and self; but one of them recognized the new responsibility created by grace; but one of the ten felt the immediate and paramount duty of returning to give glory to God, and of honoring the Man, His image and Son, even as the Father is honored.

Yes, the despised Samaritan alone turned back when he saw that he was healed. The nine might argue and blame the faith that outgrew theirs. “What! you going back to Jesus! Did He not tell us all to go and show ourselves to the priests?” It was plausible to reason, which cleaves to letter; but above letter is spirit, which cannot be satisfied with aught but God's mind; and He is not truly honored apart from Jesus. The nine remained Jews as they were, relieved bodily by divine power, but the heart in the old precincts of law, neither purified by faith nor enlarged by grace. Not so the Samaritan who turned to the Source and honored with the deepest homage Him Who is the Channel too of divine goodness.

It was indeed a living sample of Judaism, the refuge now of mere lettered ritual, soon to give place to grace and truth in and by Jesus, the Christianity of the gospel, and the church, believing man being brought to God reconciled and rejoicing. The first becomes last, and the last first. How the Lord fathomed and felt it all! “Were not the ten cleansed? but where the nine? Were none found to return and give glory to God save this stranger?” Truly their loss is the riches of the Gentiles; their casting away is the world's reconciling, as the apostle announced in Rom. 11.

Nor is this all. The Lord instantly proclaims to the grateful Samaritan that liberty which is so essential to the Christian and is now preached to all that believe the gospel. “Arise, go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole (or, saved thee).” The cleansing, marvelous as it was, was but a figure of a deeper cure, even of soul-salvation. God in Christ came out to man in his sins, and man justified can now go in to God, even in the holiest. Earthly priests and temple, sacrifices and rites of law, are all gone in presence of Jesus dead, risen, and ascended.

But how is it with you, my reader? Many Jewish and more Gentile eyes that scan these pages know how true is the gospel to their present and everlasting deliverance. Are you one of those who say that to believe on Christ is one thing, but to realize and appropriate to yourself is another? God says not so; only your human dogma, or your unjudged unbelief, cherishes these churlish thoughts of God. He is better than the strongest faith apprehends; He has declared himself to you in Jesus, full of grace and truth. Believe Him about His Son given for you and testified to you, that you too by grace may be saved through faith.

A Word on John 14:23

The faith of the believer rests on no hypothesis, but on the sure word of God; moreover he “hath the witness in himself” (1 John 5:10). But it has frequently struck one that any thoughtful mind, starting merely with the statement that Jesus is God manifest in the flesh, must see how fully and minutely all scripture corresponds with it. Nothing, it would seem, could hinder such a conclusion but the sad fact, of which the Bible also assures us, that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. For, assuming the Divine Personality of our Lord, we find every act, every word of His, to be in keeping with His claims. On the one hand there is in Christ a supreme dignity infinitely above man; on the other, a lowliness and accessibility that are the perfection of human nature absolutely free from stain.

Now not the least convincing of these accumulated evidences of our Lord's Divinity are often found in the simplest of His sayings, where the truth as to His Person is not the less palpable because it is implied rather than stated in so many words. Direct statements of His Sonship are numerically overwhelming; but not less weighty are the hidden touches, if we may so call them, as in the verse under consideration. “We will come unto him and make our abode with him.” Here the Lord couples Himself with the Father in the most striking way. He does so of course because He could also say, “I and My Father are one “; but, as remarked above, there is in the text in John 14 the peculiar cogency that attaches to implicit statements. And this is the more noteworthy when we reflect that our Lord Jesus never couples Himself with His disciples when it is a question of approaching God. When He gave Peter instructions for obtaining the stater for the temple service money, He graciously said, “Lest we offend them” (the collectors of the tribute); but after His resurrection, and when the disciples were. at the impending outpouring of the Holy Ghost about to enter a higher sphere of blessing, our Lord says, “My Father and your Father, My God and your God” —never, as has been well remarked, “Our God.” How could He?

The practical truth conveyed in this wonderful verse is well-known to the readers of the Bible Treasury. Undoubtedly the making it good in the soul is another matter. We know the condition, and that in order to it Christ's word must be cherished, not isolated fragments, but His word in all its far-reaching import. But it will be so kept, if and as we love Him. For so the Savior assures us in this very verse. However the immediate thought of the writer is the implicit doctrine of the incarnation in the word “we.” And at which shall we marvel most, the grace that led to such condescension, or the majesty of Him Who uttered these divine words? R. B.

1 Peter 1:17

But other considerations are urged of distinctly Christian character, which add immense weight and power both to the new responsibility and to the comfort and cheer of those who are Christ's.

“And if as Father ye call on Him that impartially judgeth according to the work of each, pass the time of your sojourning in fear” (ver. 17).

As Jehovah was the divine name in relation to Israel, so is Father to the Christian, and this, not in the vulgar sense of the derivation from His birth, as fatherhood of Adam and the race (Luke 3:38, Acts 17:29), but of the special and spiritual nearness into which the risen Christ brought the believer. “Go unto my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.” He had prepared the disciples for this, throughout His ministry. Rejected by the Jew, He turned from fleshly kin and said, “Behold, my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father that is in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother” (Matt. 12:49, 50). But now that redemption was accomplished and accepted as the new standing fact, now that purification of sins is made, and life given abundantly by His resurrection, He could announce precisely that His brethren enter the same relationships that He Himself had as risen from the dead and taking His place on high. So had He anticipated while opening His heart to the Father in their hearing only a few days before: “I made known to them thy name, and will make it known, that the love wherewith thou lovedst me may be in them, and I in them.” This is Christianity, not in atonement (however true and needed through our sins and ruin), but in its positive excellency and in our special and proper place according to God's counsels and love.

To the fathers dwelling in tents with nothing but His promises He revealed Himself as God Almighty, El Shaddai, their sure and sufficient Protector in the midst of the peoples they were in due time to dispossess. When the time came to bring forth Israel out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, He gave the name of Jehovah as their unchanging Governor, He their God and they His people. “And what great nation is there (Moses could ask), that hath God so nigh to them, as Jehovah our God is in everything we call on Him for?” “Hath God essayed to come and take Him a nation out of the midst of a nation by trials, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a powerful hand, and by an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that Jehovah your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? Unto you it was shown that thou mightest know that Jehovah He is God; there is none else besides Him. From the heavens He made thee hear His voice, that He might instruct thee; and on earth He showed thee His great fire; and thou heardest His words out of the midst of the fire. And because He loved thy fathers, therefore He chose their seed after them, and brought thee out with His presence, with His great power, out of Egypt, to drive out nations from before thee greater and mightier than thou, to bring thee in, to give thee their land for an inheritance, as at this day. Know therefore this day, and lay it to thy heart, that Jehovah He is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath—none else” (Deut. 4:7, 34-39).

It was indeed the best portion a nation could have here below till Messiah reigns over them, and the new covenant be made with the houses of Israel and of Judah. But before that day Messiah came for a deeper, holier, and more wondrous purpose—to suffer for sin, and for the sins of all who believe, to the glory of God. The cross of Christ, where He suffered from God as well as from man, presents a work divine beyond all that ever was wrought or can be again. For in this way, so strange to human eyes, not only was the Son of man glorified, but God was glorified in Him Whom man despised and the nation abhorred. Therefore God glorified Him in Himself and glorified Him straightway, instead of in His kingdom of manifested power and might, which He awaits in due time. But in and by His sufferings on the cross atonement was made; and risen from the dead He could and did reveal in all its fullness the name of His Father and our Father, His God and our God; that we might ourselves call upon Him as such, in a blessed nearness never till then appropriated by the faithful, never even possible before save to our Lord Himself.

Yet it is exceedingly important to recognize that divine love never weakens but really and powerfully strengthens our sense of divine light. It is the dread of fallen humanity. Conscious sinfulness, till we know that we have been once for all cleansed sacrificially, makes us shrink from God. How changed all is, when we not only repent and believe but rest on Christ's one offering, whereby He has perfected in perpetuity (εἰς τὸ διηνεκὲς) the sanctified! Then we children of light walk in the light, and prove it as wholesome as it is marvelous. We are thus thankful for the way with us of our God and Father in a world of danger and darkness and deception and self will and rebellion against His will and word. For He “impartially judgeth according to the work of each.”

So had the Lord Himself taught in John 15, speaking of Himself as the True Vine, and of His disciples as the branches. “My Father is the husbandman. Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He taketh away; and every one that beareth fruit He cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit.” Those that remained around Him were already clean because of the word, He had spoken to them; many went back and walked no more with Him, and stumbled at the word being disobedient. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray Him. The Vine represented the external relation, and the branches those who bore His name truly or not. It was no question of life eternal or of union with Him as before. It was a blessed place on earth of cleaving unto Him and bearing fruit, and so every true saint proves; but it might be only mental or external, and so unable to bear the word or overcome the world, and thus in some way come to ruin. The believer welcomes the Father's care and bears more fruit. Even if He chastens, it is a Father's hand, and a proof of His love, the very reverse of alienation from the erring one. “He dealeth with you as with sons, for what son is there whom a father chasteneth not? But if ye are without chastening, of which all have been made partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.” The Father of spirits can make no mistakes, as our honored parents may have done; without fail He chastens for profit in order to the partaking of His holiness (Heb. 12:7-10). Man or woman, young or old, poor or rich, He judges according to the work of each. There is no partiality with Him; there is a Father's love in the light.

But the present participle expresses here, not the abstract principle, but His actual dealing in distinct reference to the time of our sojourning. It is uncommonly bold to say otherwise in presence of John 5:22, and indeed the context; where our Lord teaches that the Son quickens in communion with the Father, but has all judgment committed to Himself, because He is the Son of man. He only, of the Persons in the Godhead, became man, and suffered to the utmost in that humiliation; so He only has authority to execute judgment (in the final and everlasting sense) in that very nature. This is set beyond fair doubt, because the Lord declares that the believer does not come into judgment, by any such solemn act as He speaks of; whereas it is certain that every believer does become subject to the judgment which the Father now carries on while we are here. It is not that future act in God's judgment no doubt through Jesus Christ the Lord (Rom. 2:16; 14:10); it is not the Father's but the Son of man's. But it is the Father who now judges according to the work of each saint in his sojourn here.

That this scripture goes no farther than the Father's present scrutiny is evident from the exhortation which follows: “Pass the time of your sojourning in fear.” At Christ's appearing there is for those addressed or others like them no sojourning more. Any such time is ended. Pilgrimage in the wilderness is exchanged for an abiding city, the coming one. There is no longer grief which we possibly needed, but praise and glory and honor, with an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading. But now it is our responsibility as Christians that our conduct be “in fear” of our Father and God, Whose word is living and operative, sharper than any two-edged sword, and penetrating to division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern both thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature unapparent in His sight; but all things are naked and laid bare to His eyes with Whom we have to do.

It may be well, even if hardly needful, to say that the fear enjoined on the believer, during the time of his earthly course, is not only consistent with enjoying our Father's love but its inseparable accompaniment. “There is forgiveness with Thee that Thou mayest be feared,” says Psa. 130:4. Hence “blessed is the man that feareth Jehovah, that delighteth greatly in His commandments” (Psa. 112:1). Not only is “the fear of Jehovah the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 1:7), but “happy is the man that feareth always” (Prov. 28:14). It is in contrast with him that hardens his heart, who shall fall into mischief.

There is a natural fear of unbelief, which distrusts God and really hates Him. Of this John speaks in his First Epistle (4:18) as incompatible with love as with faith and hope, in short with the knowledge of God and His Son. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love [His, not ours] casteth out fear, because fear hath punishment; and he that feareth hath not been perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us.” A true and filial spirit fears the commandment; as whoso despiseth the word shall be held accountable. In His fear is strong confidence, for He looks to the man who trembles at His word. No privileges of grace are meant to hinder or weaken this pious fear and godly awe. We shall also give account of all done in the body before Christ's tribune, and receive accordingly. But this to us who believe is not the judgment from which grace exempts.

So the apostle Paul speaks of being with those who received the gospel at Corinth “in fear and in much trembling,” though in the full assurance of faith and in labors as abundant as his love; and in the Second Epistle he praises the saints for receiving Titus with fear and trembling (7:15), to his comfort and the joy of his fellow-workman. What a contrast with the wicked and slothful bondman in the parable! Him the Lord describes as being afraid of the gracious Master, counting Him “an austere man,” and therefore hiding His talent in the earth, instead of using it faithfully for the good of others in His service, relying on His love!

Well did one write more than two centuries ago, “This fear is not cowardice; it doth not debase, but elevates the mind; for it drowns all lower fears, and begets true fortitude and courage to encounter all dangers for a good conscience and the obeying of God. The righteous is bold as a lion' (Prov. 28:1); he dares do anything but offend God; and to dare do that is the greatest folly and baseness and weakness in the world. From this fear have sprung all the generous resolutions and patient sufferings of the saints and martyrs of God, because they durst not sin against Him; therefore they durst be imprisoned, and impoverished, and tortured, and die for Him. Thus the prophet [Isa. 8:12, 13] sets carnal and godly fear as opposite, and the one expelling the other. And our Savior [Luke 12:4], ' Fear not them that kill the body; but fear Him who, after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell: yea, I say to you, fear Him! ' Fear not, but fear; and therefore fear that ye may not fear” (R. Leighton in loco, (Jerment's ed. 1:133, 4).

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Acts: Part 3

Chap. 5 Divine Design. 32C. the Acts of the Apostles

As far as the inspired history speaks, the active service of the apostle was closed. His latest Epistles give evidence that he wrought freely between his first and second imprisonments in Rome. But his visit to Jerusalem (chap. 21), against which he was cautioned, issued in his arrest, and the book terminates with Paul a prisoner. It was thus the fellowship of Christ's sufferings, rejected by the Jews whom he loved, and the Gentiles urged by them not only to imprison but to kill him.

On his way he enjoys Christian communion at Tire; then from Caesarea he goes on in the face of warning, and in Jerusalem yields to Jewish feeling, which brought on the opposition it was meant to allay: all Jerusalem in uproar, and the multitude demanding his death.

In chap. 22 he addresses his defense in Hebrew to the excited Jews, who hear the wondrous tale of his conversion, but are convulsed afresh. Mission to the Gentiles they would not endure; as he should have learned from the Lord's words to him in a previous trance. As the Jews raged murderously, so the Roman tribune or chiliarch violated law in his baste; and in Jerusalem the apostle did not display the power which marked him in his own proper field outside.

Nor in chap. 23 do we see the same superiority, as usual, to circumstances before the council, where he set the Pharisees in his favor against the Sadducees. But the grace of the Lord was as perfect as ever to cheer him, when he needed it sorely: he was to bear witness in Rome, as in Jerusalem. Then we find the Jewish plot discovered, and Paul conveyed to Caesarea under a characteristic letter from the tribune to the governor or procurator, Felix.

Five days after, the high priest and the elders, with an orator they had retained, accused the apostle of that which he refuted with simple truth and dignity, pointing out the resurrection as the occasion of offense. Felix, conversant with Jewish prejudice, gives latitude to Paul till Lysias came down and all was known. But after an interval he and his wife Drusilla, a Jewess, sent for Paul, who, instead of discussing the faith, dealt with the conscience, so that Felix trembled and closed the interview. The “convenient season” to hear more never came. Disappointed of a bribe from Paul, and willing to gratify the Jews, Felix left him bound when Porcius Festus succeeded (chap. 24).

The new procurator (chap. 25) was equally unscrupulous. For at Caesarea he proposed to send Paul to Jerusalem, which he had before refused to the Jews, and Paul appealed unto Caesar, which compelled Festus to act on it. But the arrival of king Agrippa with Bernice furnished a new occasion for testimony before the dignities of this age; and Festus was glad, not only to give these members of the Herod family a hearing of interest, but to gather matter for a report to the emperor.

In chap. 26 Paul before all again lays stress on the resurrection as the basis of the promised hope, and tells how he, as determined a foe of Jesus as any, had seen His glory from heaven and heard His voice constituting him a witness, and taking him out of the people and the nations, to which last he was now sent. And this was to turn them from darkness to light and the power of Satan to God, that they might receive remission of sins and inheritance among those that are sanctified by faith in Christ the Lord. Not disobedient to the heavenly vision, he was standing to this day to the call of God everywhere, which drew on him the hatred of the Jews; yet was it in full accord with what Moses and the prophets said should be. Festus broke out as an incredulous Roman; but Paul calmly appealed to the king as one cognizant of the prophets; and his answer proved that he was not unmoved, though seeking to hide it. This drew out from the captive apostle the expression of a heart filled with a happiness he desired for them all, except his bonds. They admitted his innocence: only his appeal sent him to Caesar.

Then in chap. 27 we have his voyage as far as Malta where the shipwreck occurred. We hear not of evangelizing; but the proof is plain that faith saw clearly in circumstances so novel where no other eye did. It was reserved for a naval man, a Christian in our day, to clear up terms and facts misunderstood by all previous translators ignorant of things marine. Yet the great feature was unmistakable: the reality of God's mind and care enjoyed here by the believer.

The last chapter is also full of interest. Paul practically proves the truth of Mark 16:18 (first clause and last); and many honors and kindnesses followed for the Christians from the heathen islanders. In another ship, of Alexandria, the rest of the voyage was completed; and they slowly made their way from Puteoli to Rome, met on the road by the brethren at Appii Forum and Tres Tabernae. This cheered even the apostle. Arrived at the great city Paul was suffered to abide by himself with the soldier that guarded him, and after three days called together the chief of the Jews, and explained the strange fact that for the hope of Israel he was a prisoner through Jewish accusation. On a subsequent day he testifies the kingdom of God, and sets forth Jesus from the law and the prophets, some being persuaded while others disbelieved. So that Paul could but show them now the sentence finally of the Holy Spirit, as of the Son on earth (John 12) and of Jehovah of old (Isa. 6). But if Israel cut themselves off, save a remnant (the pledge of future restoration), the salvation of God is sent to Gentiles who hear.

Such is the bearing of this book first and last. Only it is well to add that the apostle's charge in chapter 20 is no less clear that after his departure evil would prevail in the church, as previously in Israel. And we know from Rom. 11 that the Gentile, if not continuing in God's goodness (as he surely has not), must also be cut off, and thus make way for the recall of Israel to the universal joy and blessing of the world under the Redeemer.

Texts of Scripture Misapprehended

There prevails among Christians a traditional habit of misquoting or misapplying God's word to ill result. For thereby is given divine authority to what He nowhere says or means. Let us examine some that are most common. To rescue scripture from abuse, to expose any misapplication, to recover its just bearing, is a boon for which every believer should be grateful. A few of these errors may be comparatively slight in appearance; but others are of real and manifest importance. Mistranslations are added as a still more insidious source of error.

Gen. 3:15. The woman's “Seed” to have the heel bruised but to bruise the serpent's head, is all but universally called a “promise.” But this is a mistake. It was a revelation of grace, and not even said to Adam, but declared in judging the evil one. If at all a promise, it was to the Second man; for the first was not then an object of promise but of judicial dealing because of his fall into transgression.

Gen. 3:19. “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” It is not merely “thy brow” as generally misquoted. The “face” furnishes a larger and more graphic expression of the fact.

Gen. 32:24. The wrestling is generally treated as simply to Jacob's honor in wrestling with God. But whatever divine mercy may have done in this as elsewhere (we have ground to know it well), it is certain that primarily it was the inverse; God was wrestling with Jacob. And He must wither natural strength and self-confidence as in the patriarch, while strengthening him to prevail under the new name of Israel.

Gen. 36:24. This should be “found the warm (or, hot) springs” (not mules) in the wilderness.

Gen. 49:10. “Unto Him (Shiloh) shall the obedience of the peoples be.” It is neither of Israel (though this be true then), nor of the church now, but of the nations who own the great King in the future of His manifestation.

Exodus. 11:2, 35, 36. The real meaning is not “borrow,” but “ask.” There is no need to explain or apologize. Deceit did not exist. They asked, and the Egyptians gave.

Ex. 12:6. “Between the two evenings,” and not exactly or only “at even” will be found for the most momentous of all passovers, when it was fulfilled in Him Who is the True one. It explains the truth which many commentators on the Gospels have overlooked treating us to unfounded theories, to get rid of the general fact and the special statement in John 18:28.

Ex. 28:9. It is of interest and importance that the truth which underlies priestly “consecrating” is filling their hand. It is not holiness nor yet devotedness, however necessary and prized, but appropriating the precious sacrifice of Christ in its intrinsic excellency before God. It is therefore no spiritual effort of saints, but Christ Godward possessed by faith.

Ex. 29:13. The Hebrew term for “burning” the fat of the inwards, &c., even in the case of a Sin-offering, is the same as for burning incense; so expressive is it of acceptance, whilst the flesh, and skin, and dung were burnt with fire outside the camp. What a witness to Christ, most holy and object of divine complacency, and never so much as when Him Who knew no sin God made sin for us Ex. 34:33. The A. V. is in substance right, the R. V. wrong, like Dean Alford on 2 Cor. 3; for the meaning is that Moses ended speaking with them, and, or when, he had put a veil over his face. During the communication of Jehovah's words to Israel, he kept the veil over his face until he went in to speak with Jehovah. So, when Israel's heart shall be turned to the Lord, the veil is taken away. But we all who now believe, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord (which even Moses could not, only His back parts), are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from (or, by) the Lord the Spirit.

Lev. 1:3. This should be, not “of his own voluntary will,” but “at the door, &c. for his acceptance” before Jehovah.

Lev. 4:3. The right meaning is “if the anointed priest sin to the guilt (or, trespass) of the people,” that is, so as to bring guilt upon them.

Lev. 10:6. This appears to forbid disordering (rather than “uncovering”) their heads, as mourners were apt to do.

Lev. 16:1. It is not when they “offered,” but “came near before,” or approached, Jehovah.

Num. 1:16. Not “renowned,” but summoned of the assembly, charged to take care of its affairs.

Num. 12:2-8. How much deeper is the sense given by the literal force of the prepositions here! In ver. 2 it is “through” Moses, and “through” us, not exactly “to,” though this was also true. But Jehovah (ver. 6), in making Himself known to a prophet, says, I will speak “in” him in a dream. Of Moses with whom He visibly conversed, He says, Mouth to mouth do I speak “in” him. So it is in Heb. 2:1, and in Zech. 1:9. There was an inner dealing of a special nature shared by the prophets, whatever the privilege of Moses.

Num. 21:1, 14. Here we must omit “when.” It is unwarranted and gives a false sense. We should also translate, ver. 14, “Vaheb in Suphah, and the valleys, or brooks, of Arnon.” Num. 23:15. Balaam does not say whom he expected, but simply “I will go to meet ... yonder.” In fact “Jehovah” met him (in ver.: 16), as it is said “God” did (in ver. 4). But he was used to enchantments under Satan's power, whatever the pious pretensions by which he deceived. The false prophet was by a miracle forced to utter true prophecies.

Deut. 2:13. Carefully omit the unauthorized insertion, “said I"; it is really the word of Jehovah, not what Moses said by the way.

Deut. 33:6, 25. This should be in its last clause, “and let his men be few “; as indeed it was. The latter verse should be “Iron and brass shall be thy bolts (or, bars); and thy rest (or, old age) as thy days “: a very different meaning from a resource according to the need of one's days, as it is so often applied.

Scripture Queries and Answers: One Body or Lord's Name; Valleys Identified

Q.-Eph. 4:4; Matt. 18:20. Do we meet as Christians on the ground of the one body, or as gathered to the Lord's name? What about 1 Cor. 12:14? J. C. L.

A.-I see no right reason to regard any one of these and other like scriptures exclusively. None can be forgotten or overlooked without loss. The others treat of the essential and abiding truth of God's assembly; whereas the word in Matt. 18:20 supplies the resource given by the Lord to assure of His presence, if we are gathered to His name as the center, in times however difficult or disastrous. Those so gathered in faith of His presence may not be intelligent as to the church's privileges or the Spirit's action therein; but they could not be thus gathered truly, if they resisted the truth by indifference or by independency. They might need and would welcome instruction in the truth, so clearly revealed and deeply concerning God's honor and their own obedience; but they could not, if dependent on the Lord, oppose God's will, and they would humble themselves and correct their fault, if they mistook through haste, influence, or error of any kind. Departure from the unity of the Spirit is fatal; and refusal of just discipline is rebellion against the Lord.

Q.-Has the valley of Elah, where Goliath fell, been yet identified, or Ephesdammim, or Socho, or Jarmuth? DISC.

A.-It would appear that what is now called the Wady es-Surat answers to the first famous spot; that Damun may be Ephesdammim; that Socho in this neighborhood is now called Shuweikeh, as is also the other Socho in the mountain district of Judah (Josh. 15:48), and that the Yarmuck of our day corresponds with Jarmuth of old.

by W. Kelly
THE BOOK OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.
LECTURES ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, CT. 8vo. cloth, 3/6.
AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, 8vo. cloth, 716.

LONDON: T. WESTON, 53, PATERNOSTER Row, E.C.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Isaac: 26. Isaac at Beersheba

Gen. 26:23-35

We cannot avoid seeing, at least when it is pointed out, how truly Isaac typifies the part of the Christian who is not of the world as Christ is not. He does not resist evil. Smitten on the right cheek, he presents the other also. He does not contend for the goods of which he was deprived, but when his cloak was taken away, he does not fight even for his coat. Neither Abraham nor Jacob was so tried, nor did their patience shine so eminently; the one fought for Lot (Gen. 14), the other for himself (Gen. 48), but never Isaac. The Christian, the church, has this call to suffer still more as a living principle, for which not only the Pagans of old taunted, but no less the skeptics who inherit their enmity. Christ was the perfect exemplar.

“And thence he went up to Beersheba. And Jehovah appeared to him the same night, and said, I [am] the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I [am] with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham's sake. And he built an altar there, and called upon the name of Jehovah, and pitched his tent there; and there Isaac's servants dug a well. And Abimelech, and Ahuzzath his friend, and Phichol the captain of his host, went to him from Gerar. And Isaac said to them, Why are ye come to me, seeing ye hate me and have sent me away from you? And they said, We saw certainly that Jehovah is with thee; and we said, Let there now be an oath between us, between us and thee, and let us make a covenant with thee; that thou wilt do us no wrong, as we have not touched thee, and as we have done to thee nothing but good, and have sent thee away in peace: thou [art] now blessed of Jehovah. And he made them a feast, and they did eat and drink. And they rose early in the morning, and swore one to another; and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace. And it came to pass the same day, that Isaac's servants came and told him concerning the well that they had dug, and said to him, We have found water. And he called it Shebah: therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day.

And Esau was forty years old, when he took as wife Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basmath daughter of Elon the Hittite; and they were bitterness of spirit to Isaac and Rebecca” (vers. 23-35).

Patience had a perfect work with Isaac. If the old wells were stopped up out of spite, if the new that were found excited envy and he contended not. Enmity on his side there was none. He departed when the ruler bade him, till at last a well was found beyond for which the opposing herdmen did not strive. Yet thence, however promising it looked, he went up to Beersheba; and Jehovah again appeared to him “the same night,” and bade him “fear not;” His presence and blessing were assured for Abraham's sake. And there a fresh spring was dug, where he raised an altar and pitched his tent.

Nor was this all. The very king with his friend and chief captain seek Isaac, not he them; and on his remonstrance own that they saw plainly that Jehovah was with Isaac, and seek an oath and covenant that he would do them no hurt, though they explained away their own shabby course. “Thou art now blessed of Jehovah.” Yes, this is emphatically Isaac's position, the Philistines themselves being judges. They came and paid homage at his feet, and acknowledged that Jehovah loved him. And as a prince he treated them with a feast and the pledges they sought; for indeed he desired their blessing, as will one day be fully in the Promised Seed to all the nations of the earth. And “the same day” a new well was found, which he called Shebah, and renewed the name of the old city adjoining.

But vers. 34, 35 reveal a bitter sorrow in sad contrast. Not content with despising his birthright, profane Esau took to him at mature age two daughters of Heth, to the grief of both his parents. Was this a man to receive or value the blessing of Jehovah? It was He Who was dishonored most by such a marriage, to say nothing of the family.

Priesthood: 18. Defilement Through Dead Creatures

Lev. 11:32-40

In the verses that follow the Israelite was instructed as to another class of pollution, through the touch of these creatures when dead. This must have caused the yoke of the law to press heavily on their neck; for they were not moral delinquencies, but ceremonial only, and at the same time of inevitable and most frequent occurrence. It was the law of Jehovah, under which they lived, and which claimed their implicit obedience. Nothing could righteously deliver from it, save His death Who honored it to the uttermost. For He not only died for us when we were mere and lost sinners, but we died with Him, and thereby, had we been Hebrews of Hebrews, we were made dead to the law by the body of the Christ. Henceforward we belong to Him in another condition, even to Him Who was raised up from out of dead persons, in order that we might bear fruit to God.

“And on whatever any of them when they are dead falleth, it shall be unclean; all vessels of wood, or garment, or skin, or sack, every vessel wherewith work is done, it shall be put into water, and be unclean until the even; then shall it be clean. And every earthen vessel, whereunto [any] of them falleth, whatever is in it shall be unclean; and ye shall break it. All food that is eaten on which [such] water hath come shall be unclean, and all drink that is drunk shall be unclean in every [such] vessel. And everything whereon [aught] of their carcass falleth shall be unclean; oven or range shall be broken down: they are unclean and shall be unclean to you. Nevertheless a spring or a well, a collection of water, shall be clean. But he that toucheth their carcass shall be unclean. And if [aught] of their carcass fall on any sowing-seed that is to be sown, it is clean; but if water be put on the seed, and [aught] of their carcass fall thereon, it is unclean to you. And if any beast die that is to you for food, he that toucheth the carcass thereof shall be unclean until the even; and he that eateth of its carcass shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even; he also that carrieth its carcass shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even” (vers. 32-40).

Here we read the application of all three rules, Handle not, nor taste, nor touch. Indeed the first of these prohibitions goes yet farther, for if any of them when dead were to fall on another thing, it became unclean: vessels of wood, raiment, or sack, every vessel for work had to be put into water, and be unclean till evening. Even involuntary contact with these dead things defiled; so that the vessels described in ver. 32 must be put in water for cleansing, and those in ver. 33 must be quite broken. Not Rabbis, but the apostle Peter tells us the truth. It was a yoke which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear. Every form of service, and the means of living, contract pollution in a scene where death reigns.

Two exceptions are specified in vers. 36, 37. First, a fountain or well, a quantity of water resisted pollution from this source; but that which touched the carcass was unclean. Next, seed for sowing was not thereby defiled, if aught dead fell on it. The cleansing by the word, and the life that quickens, were superior to death, the figure of what is special to Christ. But if the seed were for other use, it was rendered unclean.

Further, not merely the forbidden creatures, minute as many are, but even such as might be eaten were defiling if they “died.” This appears, not if killed duly, but dying: he that touched its carcass, he that eat of it, and he that bore it off, were severally unclean till even (vers. 39, 40).

Our purity has its source in Christ, Who is not only life to us by faith, but washes us by the word, and purifies us by the hope of His coming. And the Holy Spirit glorifies Christ by showing us Him and His things to preserve us from evil and promote our growth till we shall be like Him when He is manifested. Only then shall we be conformed to His image, however we abiding in Him ought now to walk as He walked. His commandments are not grievous. We live of His life, and would walk in dependence, obedience, and confidence of His love. Yet how peremptorily the Spirit warns against participation in lawlessness, in fellowship with darkness, in concord with Belial, in sharing with an unbeliever. Babylon is the caricature of the bride, the Lamb's wife, and is the great center and seat of corruption, mingling things holy and profane. The bride is espoused to one man, in faith, love, and heavenly separateness, longing to be presented a chaste virgin to Christ.

The Day of Atonement: 3. The Principle Part 3

The high priest appears not in his official robe, but in the garb that spoke of unsullied righteousness, the special holy garments. These were not his regular or proper apparel. The high priest was distinguished by a rich dress wherein gold and jewels had their place. The holy “linen garments” were required for the atoning work of this day.

We may here observe that this exceptional presentation of the high priest on the Day of Atonement helps to understanding a verse which has been fatal to men otherwise versed in scripture. It is written in Heb. 2:17, “Wherefore in all things it behooved Him to be made like to His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in all things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” To reconcile sinners to God is exactly what the gospel proposes; but to make reconciliation for their sins is an unhappy expression. The A. V. did not mean that God can ever be reconciled to sins, or would have us reconciled to them. It is one of those verbal oversights occurring in an otherwise admirable version. Reconciling is not atoning.

In Rom. 5:11 it is commonly known that it should be “the reconciliation,” not “the atonement"; whereas in Heb. 2:17 “atonement,” expiation, or propitiation would be correct, not “reconciliation” which is another word and truth. Atonement implies expiation as to sins, and propitiation as to God, Who is offended at sin, justly indignant at that which directly violates His will on the part of man who resists His authority and commands. Atonement is God's intervention in His grace by Christ's death to expiate the sins and pardon the guilty who believe; and therefore is it the sole way in which He can righteously bring the sinner into reconciliation with Himself. Therein is God as truly glorified as the repentant soul is brought nigh to Him in peace. By that work the face of God becomes propitious to the sinner, so that his sins being judged on Christ are sent away never to be found again. “To propitiate, or make atonement for the sins of the people” is the right sense.

But here some stumble at the text in Heb. 2:17, because the High Priest is not in His official status on high till after the sacrifice is made. His proper sphere is in heaven. They therefore deny propitiation till after His death He entered the sanctuary above. But this undermines God's general testimony to the death of His Son, for an imaginary work assigned to Him in His disembodied state as if He were the efficacious High Priest in that condition. It effaces the propitiating character of the work finished on the cross for a different work which is not another. It annuls reconciliation by His death, unless it be true that He reconciled us by it before this fancied and strange doctrine of propitiation made in heaven after His going there in the separate state. “You now He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death” says the apostle, not by an after work in heaven. Here He died, lifted up from the earth no doubt, yet not in heaven, though the virtue of His blood was at once infinitely there as here and forever. Can one conceive a more admirable shadow than what God gave to put these two things together? The high priest had to act that day in a manner not more necessary than effectual for making atonement for sins; nevertheless he was not arrayed in his official but exceptional garments.

Does not this instructive type singularly tally with the facts? The Lord entered on the proper functions of His priesthood, after He had been perfected through sufferings and ascended to heaven. But before this the atoning work was effected and accepted. “Having made [by Himself] purification of sins, He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb. 1:3), nay more, “With His own blood He entered into the holies, having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12)—the very text misused to confirm the error that propitiation was only then and there made. He obtained that redemption strictly neither in heaven nor on earth, but “lifted up” on the cross. There did God make sin Him Who knew no sin; but if atonement was thus made, its efficiency penetrated the holiest that very moment. “It is finished” said He Who poured out His soul unto death. The blood was for God in the sanctuary and for man's sins on the earth.

The reality far surpassed every part of the type. To this end was He “lifted up from the earth.” Thus does He draw “all men unto Himself,” not sons of Israel as such exclusively but all; for as the cross closed all hope from a living Messiah, everything for sinful man turned on a crucified Savior. On the cross He bore God's judgment of sin while the virtue of His blood instantly reached the holiest, Only after His ascension and sending down the Spirit was it preached to men on earth. It was in type the high priest alone acting, not in regular intercession, but in the exceptional position of the one great representative in the judgment of sin before God, both for the heavenly family and for the earthly people, not yet saluted of God as entered on His ordinary functions above. Had it been with the garments proper to His heavenly place, one might have thought of a fresh action of Christ in heaven, to make out a succession of stages answering to the various parts of the type.

But even the type, as it stands and we read, is plain enough, that before the high priest assumes his ordinary garments, he executes a work of the deepest moment, clad in the holy linen, and this after He leaves the sanctuary. For only then does He confess sins on the scape-goat which carried them away to be remembered no more. If believers have not to wait for Christ's coming out of the heavens to enjoy this great privilege from His substitution, we must beware of a too technical treatment of the type. Reasons that called for a pledge to Israel at the end of the age rendered this order necessary for the shadow. But the body is of Christ for us already. Aaron had not, Christ had, obtained eternal redemption when He entered the sanctuary. The very image, the truth, has an immediate completeness and unity which the shadow could not possess. For the law made nothing perfect (Heb. 7:19). Aaron was immeasurably below the Savior and His work.

Creature means availed but for the moment, as a mere witness to Christ's everlasting acceptance personally and the efficacy of His blood for us. The offering of our Lord was final and complete. There is no question for us of sacrifice again. There is also in Him life eternal, as well as through Him everlasting redemption. Thereby is the conscience perfectly purged from sin. If He has not purged it by His blood once shed, what can do it? Christ suffers and dies no more.

Do you object that one may go wrong in the course of the day, that one may fall into sin? For this there is divine provision which restores the soul, while humbling it in the dust by the remembrance of what the sin cost Christ. The soul bows to God under the sense of the dishonor done to the grace of such a Savior. The word of God is applied by the Spirit to rebuke and bring the defiled into confession before God. The “washing of water by the word” is the remarkable figure of the apostle answering to the water of separation from defilement in Num. 19. This goes on when needed; but why not the sacrifice? Because it remains absolutely perfect, yea perfecting; which its repetition would deny according to the argument to the Hebrews. Yet something has to be done; and “if any one sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous.”

But the central truth before us now is, that Christ's work of atonement, blotting out the believer's sins and cleansing his conscience, abides forever before God, and renewal is excluded because its efficacy is perfect. Such is the unqualified and unhesitating doctrine laid down by inspiration. From this sentence of the Holy Spirit there is no appeal. Every form or degree of presenting sacrifice for our sins to God now is a shameless and blasphemous rival set up against Christ's one offering of Himself. It is the grossest unbelief of its ever abiding efficacy. Not only is it everlasting in value, but also without a break which is much more. Christ sat down for perpetuity at God's right hand, for by one offering He has perfected for perpetuity the sanctified. Ritualism like Romanism is an apostate subversion of the truth of the gospel, and a vain and evil effort to resuscitate earthly priests and creature sacrifice. (concluded)

Proverbs 11:24-31

A death-blow seems struck at selfishness in the following verses. They open with a maxim expressly framed to startle souls and call for reflection. But the more the words are weighed, their certainty appears all the clearer and the more important.

“There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is right, but only to want.

The blessing soul shall be made fat; and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.

He that withholdeth corn, the people curse him; but blessing [shall be] upon the head of him that selleth [it].

He that is earnest after good seeketh favor; but he that searcheth after mischief, it shall come upon him.

He that trusteth in his riches shall fall; but the righteous shall flourish as a green leaf.

He that troubleth his own house shall inherit wind; and the fool [shall be] servant to the wise of heart.

The fruit of the righteous [is] as a tree of life; and the wise winneth souls.

Behold, the righteous shall be requited on the earth: how much more the wicked and the sinner!” (vers. 24-31).

Even agriculture, trade, and commerce, illustrate faith in the unseen, however severed from that sovereign grace which is the spring of blessing in the spiritual realm. But increase as the result cannot be without judgment along the way. On the other hand niggardliness and fear cannot ward off want, nor do they deserve it. He who is alone worthy of all trust, and even in a scene of confusion holds the reins, is entitled to form and guide the heart, and He loves a cheerful giver.

Hence the blessing or liberal one is richly blessed, and the waterer of others, according to this expressive figure, gets watered himself. Have we not known it here and there, if we have not proved it as we ought? See its perfection in Him Who at the well of Sychar touched the core of the fatal evil, that the Spirit might act as the fountain of His living water springing up to life eternal, Himself finding His food in doing the will of the One Who sent Him.

Next we hear the people, on the other side, cursing the withholder of corn in the time of want and suffering to enrich himself; as surely as blessing does not fail to be on his head that fairly disposes of it. See it in the beautiful tale of Joseph during Egypt's years of famine. Alas! the sad story prevails to-day too often where the glad one should be heard.

Now we are shown a larger and higher application. He that is earnest, or rises early, after good seeks favor, nor does he fail as the rule to procure it. How pleasant it is in His eyes Who alone is absolutely and essentially good! But what can one look for in divine government, but that mischief shall come upon him that is industrious in devising it? What a solemn and sudden witness of it in Haman the Jews' enemy during their servitude to the Gentile; as of no less favor is in Mordecai!

Precarious indeed is confidence in riches, as we are next told; for they certainly make for themselves wings and flee away as an eagle toward heaven. No wonder then that he that trusts in them shall fall. On the other hand righteousness endures, whatever comes from without; so that the wise man can say that the righteous shall flourish as the branch or green leaf. He is, as David sung, like a tree planted by rivers of water, that brings forth fruit in season, and with leaf also that withers not. “Your bones,” said the prophet, “shall flourish like the tender grass.” For the Christian this is through abiding in Christ.

Verse 29 brings before us the man “that troubleth his own house.” This might be by one or other of the aforesaid objectionable ways; undue scattering, or undue withholding. By either course not only is his own house made a scene of vexation, but the end for himself is the wind, a heritage of nothing but disappointment. “The fool” seems to sink still lower, and becomes servant to those who are “wise of heart,” the very reverse of his own heartless inconsiderateness.

How contrasted with persons so failing in righteous wisdom is that which is next set before us. “The fruit of the righteous is as a tree of life; and the wise winneth souls.” A tree is a noble object in the landscape, but the fruit of the righteous is far beyond such a comparison; it is as “a tree of life.” They are blessed and a blessing. But the wise rises yet higher, and wins souls; or he that wins souls is wise: a work impossible without divine love constraining, a divine fear communicated by the word and Spirit of God. How richly the gospel of His grace now produces both! How sad where it does not!

The chapter closes with a vivid call to “behold “; and what then? A cardinal principle for Israel: “the righteous shall be requited on the earth: how much more the wicked and the sinner!” It has been but imperfectly seen, for rulers and subjects have alike fallen short. For a full witness it awaits His kingdom Who will come in power and glory, Whose right it is. He has spoken, and He will do it. And the time is short; the end of all things is at hand.

At the Feet of Jesus

Luke 8:35

There is no other place of repose. It is not necessary to have been the victims of demoniacal possession to realize this; it is sufficient to have known the “plague of our own hearts.” Undoubtedly the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit is necessary to bring any of us to our “right mind,” whether the germs of evil, that are innate in fallen humanity, have borne much or little fruit. But the contrast is all the more striking when the sweet and divine peace found at the feet of the Savior succeeds a state of wildest tumult and unrest, as in the case of the Gadarene demoniac. Singular that those who witnessed this blessed change in his condition should have felt an alarm of which we read nothing in connection with his previous ravings and violence. It is true that a feeble realization of divine power may very probably have mingled with less worthy feelings; still it stands written that not lawlessness but grace alarmed them most.

The two non-apostolic evangelists give a very vivid picture of the incident, Luke being in this case no less graphic than Mark. In Matthew there are two demoniacs mentioned because two was adequate testimony. The story however is more compressed, though each narrator tells of the fear that fell on the people of the place, and how they were so blind as to beseech the divine and beneficent Healer to depart out of their coasts. What a strange thing is the heart of man!

It has been surmised that moral depravity may have left the spiritual being of the unhappy man open to this terrible possession by evil spirits. The weakening of the will, that usually accompanies excess, would make him all the easier prey. There may be analogous cases now, though in a less marked degree. For no doubt when the grace of God was being manifested in an outward sort, such that even the natural mind could appreciate it, the corresponding power of evil would make a more desperate effort. Such Satanic agency was, at least in its more violent exhibitions, of short duration.

The heathen oracles also are understood after the incarnation to have sunk into ignoble silence, as if they were compelled to hide abashed from that great and holy Presence. No doubt there had been a mixture of chicanery and deception in it all, and sometimes the priests took refuge in the ambiguities of syntax in framing their replies in order to cover their ignorance. Still it cannot be doubted that there was more involved than human cunning and craftiness. The true Light came to destroy these and all the works of the devil, and the darkness was already passing, as it is still passing—at least from the eyes of those who believe. Alas! in some it seems increasing. This must be where Christianity is rejected, as it characterizes the abodes of the heathen. Happily it is also true that there never were so many real Christians probably as are now on this earth. If it be sadly true that, where Christ works, Satan works, the converse is also blessedly true. In the story of the Gadarene demoniac we have a most striking exemplification of this. The man was seated, who had been wildly rushing to and fro, clothed after being naked, in his right mind after his wretched body had been the tool of a legion of demons. What a change the blessed Lord had wrought! The devil is always contrasted with the Son, as the world and the flesh with the Father and the Holy Spirit. R. B.

Gospel Words: the Lord at Bethesda

John 5

Throughout this Gospel, and especially these early chapters the Lord is shown eclipsing and superseding all the old objects of honor and trust. The Pool of Bethesda bore witness even then to Jehovah as healing Israel (Ex. 15). Not merely was it occasional only, but incomplete and conditional; like the law, it required strength enough to avail oneself of it. He that was quite powerless lay there in vain. Another stepped in before he could be put into the water when troubled by the angel. To will was present with him, but not to do. “O wretched man that I am!” was all he could feel. He needed the only One Who could speak the effectual word, “Arise, take up thy couch, and walk “; then he did so immediately, sabbath as it was. What was an angel's act in comparison?

Such a sight aroused Jewish enmity; for with seared conscience they exaggerated and idolized every form. They disliked the healing power of the True God on a sabbath. The man did not profit by the warning given him of worse than sickness, but learning who it was that healed him, went and told it to the Jews, who persecuted Jesus. His answer was, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” How overwhelming for their evil and pride! how glorifying to God! how full of blessing to every man who truly owns his sin and misery!

It is the revelation of the Father and the Son, Who works as man in the midst of men. This is the truth, yea grace and truth come through Jesus Christ. Let the Jews vainly boast of the law given by Moses, which they kept not, it could not but be a ministration of death and condemnation. But the veil of unbelief was lying on their heart; and they neither judged themselves nor believed on Him Who did indeed say that God was His own Father, making Himself equal with God. And therefore those blindly religious yet wicked men sought the more to kill Him.

O my reader, flatter not yourself. You were not so tried. You are no less guilty and lost. You may pay homage with the lip; but are you in heart and life slighting Him Who came and died for you? Are you not neglecting so great salvation? Do you not annul the gospel, as if God's proclamation were but a fair and kindly form, and not a message of life and peace to the believer? Does not God pronounce His wrath to abide on him who is not subject to the Son? If you are believing on Him, God's word is that you have life eternal in His Son.

So the Lord then declared that the Son loyally takes as man the place of entire subjection, and does nothing of Himself, save what He saw the Father doing. He emptied Himself of glory, taking the form of a bondman; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even death of a cross. From what a height, and to what a depth, that God might be perfectly and at all cost glorified even about sin and ruin! And so He is. Wherefore also God highly exalted Him.

Here the Lord opens the great truth, starting from the sign on the sick man, and going on to His giving life eternal to those who believe, and His executing judgment on those who, not believing, do evil. Thus it is that all may honor the Son even as they honor the Father. The Son quickens whom He will, in communion with the Father who raises the dead and quickens. But He alone of Godhead became man, and suffered man's contempt and hatred even to the Cross. He therefore has all judgment given to Him, for in that full and final sense He alone judges. Bodily healing was but a sign. The real question is between life eternal and future judgment.

Hence we have the solemnly blessed message: “Verily, verily, I say to you, He that heareth my word and believeth him that sent me hath life eternal and cometh not into judgment, but hath (or, is) passed out of death into life” (ver. 24). All turns on hearing Christ's word and believing Him that sent the Savior Son of God. If one hear and believe, he has life eternal, and does not come into judgment which is no less everlasting, but has passed out of death as it was into life as now given in Him. Life eternal is in contrast with judgment which awaits those who here below only dishonored the Son, but must honor Him to their own perdition in that judgment.

Next is shown on one side man's real state, not infirm only but “dead” before God; and even now the voice of His Son for men that have heard to live. “Verily, verily, I say to you, An hour cometh and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that heard shall live” (ver. 25). For the Son was come, and as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself. Being man, He receives all from the Father, jealous to honor Him alone, as man's only right place. Thus He quickens now, as at the end He will execute judgment, according to the authority given Him, because He is Son of man.

None should wonder at this. An hour cometh which will demonstrate both His giving life as Son of God, and His executing judgment as Son of man. It is an hour, “when all that are in the tombs [distinguishing these from the spiritually dead of ver. 25] shall hear his voice, and shall go forth: they that wrought the good things unto a resurrection of life; and they that committed the worthless unto a resurrection of judgment” (vers. 28, 29). There are thus two resurrections of opposed character (not a general one as the unbelief of Christendom feigns). They answer to life and good fruit now had by faith in God's Son, and to the unbelief with its unremoved death and corrupt ways. The Revelation which the Lord gave John adds the fresh light of the kingdom over the earth and all things, in which the changed saints reign with Him for a thousand years, and a little more, before the judgment of the wicked dead and their consignment to the lake of fire. It is a book of times and seasons, which the Gospel of John is not: but both thoroughly agree as to a resurrection of life, and a resurrection of judgment.

O my reader, can any words of man add to the Lord's solemn call? Hear the voice of God's Son now, that you may have life in Him and may not come into that judgment which is woe forever.

1 Peter 1:18-19

The fear in which the saints were urged to pass the time of their sojourn is the farthest possible from that doubt as to their souls and distrust of God's grace, which go together if they be not the two sides of the same unbelief that leaves Christ out as revealed in the gospel. Such a dread is wholly excluded by the words which follow, as they ground the inculcated fear on the comforting and assured fact of having been redeemed, and redeemed by that which is of all things the most precious to God, and the most efficacious for sinners.

“Knowing that not by corruptibles, silver or gold, ye were redeemed, from your vain course ancestrally handed down, but by precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless” (vers. 18, 19).

Jewish believers ought to have been familiar with redemption. In its earthly and temporal shape it is the central truth of the book of Exodus; wherein their bitter bondage and oppression forms the beginning; and God dwelling in the tabernacle in their midst, founded on that redemption, is the close. But they also came under the law, which Israel then undertook to obey. They thus let slip the promises to the fathers, and slighted the grace just shown to themselves from the Red Sea all the way to Sinai. This was fatal; not because the law was not good, but because they were weak and ungodly, sinners and enemies, as another apostle describes man's natural state (Rom. 5). To such, no matter what long-suffering and goodness may be shown, the law must prove a ministration of death and condemnation, And so it was to the elect nation, which blindly and self-righteously offered to stand on legal conditions.

Now it is by grace that any have been or can be saved, and therefore through faith. This was attested to their fathers, as plainly as any shadows could convey it, in the combined type of Jehovah's Passover and Israel's passage of the Red Sea. The blood of the lamb sprinkled on the door-posts and upper lintel of each house expressed in that figure the sacrifice of Christ (1 Cor. 5). This alone could perfectly meet His moral judgment and not only screen a people justly exposed to it, but give them there and then to feast on the lamb's body. With bitter herbs they were to eat; for repentance toward God must accompany the faith that He would see the blood that night and pass over all within the sprinkled doors; also with loins girded, shoes on feet, and staff in hand, as pilgrims henceforth turning their back on Egypt for Canaan, but meanwhile crossing the desert. But there was a great supplement—the passage of the Red Sea; which in figure joins the resurrection to the death of the Lord Jesus for us. Here it was divine power righteously exercised on behalf of His people, impossible without the Victim's blood, but now annulling the enemy's power, and entitling them to sing as delivered, Jehovah too no longer as a judge shut out, but leading and fighting for them victoriously. Christ was not only a propitiatory through faith in His blood, but given up for our offenses and raised for our justification. It is God for us (Rom. 8) but by Christ, Who gave Himself for our sins to take us out from the present evil age. We are thereby brought to God not yet to heaven though made meet for it, as Col. 1:12 declares.

It is of this redemption Peter speaks when he tells the saints that they “were redeemed,” and that they knew it consciously (εἰδότες). It was no longer a simply objective fact: this they had at first to apprehend by faith; it was now part of their inward realization by the Holy Spirit. And the Epistle to the Hebrews (9:12) characterizes it, in contrast with the foregoing pattern, as “everlasting redemption.” An eternally divine Person was needed, as He deigned to become incarnate, in order by His atoning death to obtain it; and having obtained it, He entered once for all into the heavenly sanctuary where we know Him now on high. Redemption is therefore an accomplished standing of rich and immediate consequence to God Who is glorified by it, and to the believer; and of his acceptance, not Christ's resurrection only is the guarantee but His session at God's right hand above.

There is another and future application of divine power which is called redemption, as in Rom. 8 for “our body” when raised or changed at Christ's coming (1 Cor. 15:23); so too of the acquired possession, “our inheritance” (Eph. 1:14, cf. Rom. 8:19-22). But this power of His glory is also founded on His work as well as His person. The same principle applies to its very frequent use in the Psalms and Prophets to the future deliverance of Israel for His kingdom on earth. See Psa. 103:4; 106:10; 107:2; Isa. 35:9, &c., 41:14, &c., 43:1, 44:22, 23, 48:20, 52:9, 63:9. Another word also conveys it, as in Isa. 1:27; 29:22; 35:10; 51:11., Jer. 15:21; 31:11; Hos. 13:14; Mic. 6:4; Zech. 10:8. All however rests on His blood-shedding. The return from Babylon was an outward sample and pledge.

True redemption was no mere release by creature means, such as the children of Israel knew, when every man in the numbering of them had to give a ransom for himself as a living man to Jehovah, “that there might be no plague among them.” Here it was no question of sins or sacrifice but of a ransom for his life against plague. Accordingly the principle established was a sacred half-shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary. The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than the half shekel when they give the heave-offering of Jehovah to make atonement for your souls” (Ex. 30:15). This was a beautiful token that each of the people, all alike, belonged to Jehovah their Divine Guardian and Governor. But in presence of Christ and His redemption already possessed, even silver that shadowed grace or gold that represented divine righteousness, were but “corruptibles,” fading away before the glory that both surpasses and abides (2 Cor. 3:9-11).

It is worthy of remark, that the saints are here said to be redeemed, among its manifold and wondrous results, from their vain course, or mode of life, handed down from their fathers. Language so precise to describe, not Gentile idolaters, but the Jews since the Maccabees in their tenacity of tradition from father to son, it is hard to conceive. Of old before the Babylonish captivity, kings, priests, people, ran a race after the abominations of the heathen. But this hateful lusting after strange gods they learned to abjure; and even Antiochus IV. (Epiphanes) could only impose his profane Hellenizing of Jerusalem and the Jews for a measured space by treachery and violence, by pillage and massacre. Our Lord Himself formally charged even the more orthodox and learned among them with neutralizing the most solemn duties of the law on its human side, and thus the word of God, because of the tradition of the elders. It made them “hypocrites.” “In vain do they worship me” (citing Isa. 29:13); a prophecy which embraces their final trouble but deliverance when at the lowest, as well as their sinfully blind state, that brought them so low, about to pass away forever at the end of the age.

Can there be a more authoritative comment on the apostle's description of their state before they were redeemed? Their manner of life, even in its religious aspect, had neither purpose nor result. No doubt this might well be said of Paganism, which was wholly a lie with demons behind it; but how emphatic when applied truly to men confident of being a guide of the blind, a light of those in darkness! Only among Jews had the early fathers a claim from God. But this was for His promises, not for any such tradition of theirs, as the sons imagined. For the truth, “one is your Father, who is in heaven” said the Lord to the disciples. Fore-fathers, of whom scripture gave a reliable and sad account, were their trust, not the living God. They were guilty, because only they knew those sure and unambiguous oracles; but the heathen knew them not, and filled the void with the deceptive myths of poets. Gentile religion, like their wisdom, did not come down from above, but was earthly, natural, and demoniacal. What a contrast with ours which has its center in Christ and its basis in His redemption, its glorying in God, its charter in His word, and its power in the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven!

Accordingly the redemption is here said to be “by precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless.” The order of the Greek, which some prefer in English also, is “by precious blood as of a lamb..., Christ,” followed closely by “fore-known” &c. in ver. 22. The truth in substance remains the same. Christ's blood is of all things precious. “Without shedding of blood is no remission “; by His blood our conscience is purged from dead works to serve the living God (Heb. 9:10). Not only are believers redeemed by it, as here; but it is everlasting redemption, as we have seen. In Christ we have redemption through it, not yet of the body, but the remission of offenses (Eph. 1:7). Nor was there forgiveness only but peace through the blood of His cross (Col. 1:20), and justification in virtue of it (Rom. 5:9). For indeed as He loves us, so He washed us from our sins in His blood (Rev. 1:6). As we now drink the cup of the new covenant in His blood, so in heaven the new song is of the Lamb slain Who bought to God by His blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation. Is it not indeed precious blood?

The allusion is plain in “as of a lamb unblemished and spotless.” It may well be to the paschal lamb of which we have spoken. They had too the burnt-offering of the morning, and especially perhaps the evening lamb, offered between the evenings, day by day continually. It was at the door of the tent of meeting before Jehovah, “where I will meet with you, to speak there unto thee [the mediator]. And there I will meet with the children of Israel; and it [the tent] shall be sanctified by my glory.” So it stands in Ex. 29:38-46, the book of redemption. Thus only could Jehovah dwell in their midst. Hence we can measure the daring that takes away from the Prince of the host the “daily” or continual offering (Dan. 8); for it was the exclusion of the visible link of acceptance between God and His people on earth: a more impious affront than any political oppression of His people.

For the Christian the sanctuary is on high. “For Christ is not entered into holies made by hands, figures of the true, but into heaven itself now to appear before the face of God for us” (Heb. 9:24); and there He entered once for all by His own blood (12). “For such a high priest became us, holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and become higher than the heavens” (Heb. 7:26).

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Romans

Chap. 5 Special Design. 34. the Epistle of Paul to the Romans

It is scarce possible to overlook or mistake the divine aim. For herein, on the proved failure of man, God's righteousness is revealed, by or of faith unto faith, with its resulting deliverance (1-8). Yet sovereign grace like this is conciliated with special mercy and unfailing promises to Israel (9-11). The practical consequences of God's mercies are urged in devotedness as a living sacrifice to Him, personally, as well as in subjection to the world's authority, and in grace one toward another (12-16).

In chap. 1 the inspired writer presents himself as bondman of Jesus Christ, a called apostle, separated unto God's gospel, which He promised before through His prophets in holy scriptures. It is now fulfilled; for it is concerning His Son, who came of David's seed according to flesh, and also marked out Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by resurrection of the dead—Jesus Christ our Lord. Thus He is heir of promise, and conqueror of death. It is not yet the day when to Him shall the obedience of the peoples be; but He is sending out witnesses of Himself, as here He was God's faithful Witness. Through Him Paul received grace and apostleship, not for law but for faith-obedience among all the nations, in behalf of His name; among whom were also they, called of Jesus Christ, all that were in Rome, beloved of God: they saints, as he apostle, not by birth or merit but called respectively by divine grace. He wishes them grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, as he did to all saints. It was not only that he thanked his God for them, always at his prayers beseeching that he might be prospered in God's will to come to them, for joint comfort as he graciously said; but he was hindered hitherto. He is not ashamed of the glad tidings, for God's power it is (not promise merely) to every one that believes, both to Jew first and also to Greek; for God's righteousness in it is revealed, and therefore by faith unto faith. Thus the gospel is about God's Son; and therein God's righteousness is revealed, in contrast with His law in vain claiming human righteousness. Hence as faith is the way or principle (so wrote the prophet), it was open to every believer, Jew and Greek (as wrote the apostle). Such is the introduction (vers. 1-7).

Then follows from chap. 1:18 to 3:20 the overwhelming proof of man's dire need of the gospel. For God's wrath is revealed from heaven (in contrast with earthly judgments under law) upon all impiety and unrighteousness of men holding fast the truth in unrighteousness. As this embraces both Gentiles and Jews, he from verse 21 to the end of chap. 1 shows the shameless departure of mankind from God: first, ignoring the testimony of creation (19, 20); secondly, abandoning what they knew, especially by that public demonstration of moral government given in the deluge. Professing to be wise they were befooled, and changed the truth of God into falsehood; and as they gave up God for idolatrous images, God gave them up to vile lusts and a reprobate mind. Such were the heathen for ages before, and when the gospel went forth (21-32).

But had there not been philosophic moralists who judged those unspeakable enormities and religious follies (chap. 2)? Yes; but they did the same things; and their fine words could not screen them from the judgment of God. For they despised His long-suffering goodness, which leads to repentance, and thus treasured up wrath in a day of wrath. Then God will render to each according to his works, Jew and Greek, for with Him is no favoritism, though He considers privilege or the lack of it, in a day when He will judge the secrets of men through Jesus Christ (1-16).

From 2:17-29 the Jew is weighed, and his rest on the law, and boast in God, and superiority in light to others; but how about his own ways? Was not the name of God blasphemed among the nations on their account, as it is written? Unrighteousness made circumcision uncircumcision, as righteous uncircumcision will be reckoned for circumcision. Shadows are gone with God, Who insists on reality; and he only has the praise of God who is a Jew in what is secret, and heart-circumcision is in spirit, not in letter.

Are divine privileges nothing? Much every way, says the apostle in chap. 3 (1-19); and in nothing so much as having the scriptures. Yet the unbelief of some cannot invalidate either the faith of God or His right to judge. Was not the Jew then better than the Greek? In no wise. Jews and Greeks are alike under sin. This is shown in Psa. 53, &c., Isa. 59, &c. “Now we know that whatever things the law saith, it speaketh to those under (or, in the scope of) the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world be under judgment to God.” The Jew, who would readily allow the Gentile hopelessly evil, is expressly condemned by the scriptures. All then were guilty beyond dispute. “Wherefore by deeds of law shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for through law is knowledge of sin” (ver. 20).

From verse 21 God's mouth is open to declare His grace, and how it can be righteously, now that every mouth of man is stopped. It is God's righteousness manifested apart from law, witnessed by the law and the prophets; God's righteousness by faith in (lit. of) Jesus Christ unto all, and upon all that believe: its universal direction, and its actual effect (confounded in the R. V., because of trusting the blunder of some old MSS., but right in the A. V.). For there is this distinction. All in fact sinned, and come short of the glory of God; for this becomes the standard, when Adam's paradise was lost. Hence there is “no way” but being justified freely through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, Whom God set forth a propitiatory through faith in His blood for showing His righteousness in the present time, that He might be just and justify him that is of faith in (lit. of) Jesus. What can be plainer or more precise? Behold boasting excluded. If law can be said, it is faith-law, apart from works of law; and God is of Gentiles as well as of Jews—one God justifying Jews only by faith, and Gentiles through the faith which they have (and hence only in this case the article is used). Thus is law established, not annulled, through the faith of Jesus Who paid the penalty to the utmost.

Did the Jew plead the cause of Abraham for favor to his seed? The apostle answers in chap. 4:1-5 that A. believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness. David's case (6-8) equally and quite as evidently proves that all depends on God's grace through faith. For how else is a transgressor to have blessedness? We see again, how circumcision contributed nothing, for Abraham was reckoned righteous by faith when uncircumcised (9-12). Faith secures the promised heirship of the world in the face of all natural disabilities; not law, which works wrath through man's transgression (13-19). Faith on the contrary gives glory to God, and reaps its fruit (20-22). And the Christian has more even than Abraham, fully persuaded as he was that what God had promised He was able also to do; whereas we believe on Him Who actually raised from among the dead Jesus our Lord Who was given up for our offenses and was raised for our justification (23-25). Thus as the latter part of chap. 3 brought in propitiation through Christ's blood, chap. 4 adds the intervention of God in justifying us by His raising Him from the dead.

Chap. 5:1-11 draws the blessed consequences: peace with God in view of the past, His grace for the present, and His glory in the future. Not only do we boast this, but also in tribulations, as the allotted experience of Christians now, knowing the invaluable result to which God turns them, in breaking the will and severing from the world and lifting above things seen, so that faith, love, and hope are all strengthened by better learning God's love. Not only are we so, but “boasting in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom now we received the reconciliation.” Beyond this “boasting in God,” it is impossible to rise. One may learn the glories of Christ in God's purpose and our own union with Him in them; but to boast in God Himself is of unequaled depth and joy, and we are called to it now.

But a profound discussion forms the needed supplement to that which we have already had, dealing not with our sins, but with sin in the flesh, and deliverance in Christ learned experimentally and enjoyed by the power of the Holy Spirit in the believer. Hence from Rom. 5:11 (closing the former part), the apostle is no longer occupied with the evils we had done, and the grace of God in justifying the guilty by faith. He now lays bare the root of all that we are, and so goes up to Adam, the figure of Him that was to come. For as to man there are two heads, of whom scripture speaks: as of sin and death in him who transgressed where all was good, so of obedience and life eternal in the face of nothing but self-will and ruin here below; the first man, and the Second. For as we know, no Jew doubted that one man's sin brought those dreadful consequences on the human race. If this were just on God's part, as they allowed, was it not worthy of God to bring in the gift by grace through one man, Jesus Christ? Adam was under a law, and the Jews had the law; and transgression followed for both. But the nations who had not law were none the less sinners, and thus obnoxious to death like the Jews; for in fact death reigned universally. But shall not the act of favor be as the offense? And shall not the gift be as through one that sinned? Accordingly, as the bearing through one offense was to condemn all men, so is it through one righteousness toward all men for justification of life. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were constituted sinners, so through the one's obedience the many shall be constituted righteous (vers. 12-19). Thus grace far outstripped sin; and if the Adam family were obnoxious to death through sin, the Christ family in spite of manifold sins shall be justified and reign in life. The law came in by the way, that the offense might abound and so crush Jewish self-righteousness; but where sin (and not transgression only) abounded, grace exceeded far; that as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness unto life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord (vers. 20, 21).

Chap. 6 meets the cavil that grace tends to license sinning. This, the apostle shows, contradicts the truth that we died to sin, and by baptism unto Christ Jesus were baptized unto His death; in order that as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too should walk in newness of life. He that died has been justified from sin; for it is a question not of sins forgiven, but of sin and of continuing it, which death with Christ denies. Hence this also is the meaning of our baptism (vers. 1-14). But there is the further reply that being under grace, not law, is the way of holiness for those set free from sin and become bondmen to God. For the wages of sin is death, but God's act of favor is life eternal in Christ (vers. 15-23).

Then in chap. 7 Christ dead through Whom we were made dead is deliverance from law, as in chap. 6 from sin. Law provoked lust and condemned those under it. The Christian belongs to Christ dead and risen, in order that he might bear fruit to God (vers. 1-4). When we were in the flesh, fruit was borne to death; but now even Jewish believers have been discharged from the law through having died thus, so as to serve in newness of spirit (vers. 5, 6). Thereon follows the detailed case (which the apostle personates, as he often does) of one converted yet still struggling under law with its powerlessness and misery, till experimentally learning that we have flesh unchanged, along with a new nature, one looks to God for deliverance and finding it in Christ (as truly as before for the remission of our sins), he thanks God for it, though the old man is as bad as ever, but with the mind he serves God's law (vers. 7-25).

Lastly, chap. 8 is the blessed conclusion of this appendix on indwelling sin through death with Christ, as chap. 5:1-11 was of pardon of sins through Christ's blood. We are in Christ where all condemnation is gone, as fully treated in vers. 1-4 (the latter half of ver. 1 being spurious, but right in ver. 4). We are not in flesh but in Spirit, if so be that God's Spirit dwells in us—the distinct privilege of the Christian; and therefore we put to death the deeds of the body. For the Spirit we have received is of power, love, and sobriety, as the apostle reminds Timothy. Hence as He is a spirit of adoption, so He groans in us who are delivered, yet with our bodies awaiting redemption which we now have only in our souls. Thus the Spirit, Who gives us joy, helps our weakness, interceding for us according to God. For we are called, as well as predestinated, and being justified, the apostle can say, “glorified “: so sure is God's purpose (vers. 5-30). Then comes the final triumph even now: God for us, who against us? A series of unanswerable challenges of grace and truth in Christ follows, in the face of all opposing circumstances; and as “no condemnation” began the high argument, “no separation” from God's love closes it in vers. 31-39.

We have now to consider the bearing of chapters 9-11. They are the divine solution of the question, how to reconcile the indiscriminate grace of God in the gospel (as already seen in chapters 1-8) with the special promises made to the fathers in favor of the children of Israel. Here all is cleared to the opened eye. The scriptures, which the Jews owned to be of God, are here also decisive.

First, the apostle shows how far he was from lowering his interest in Israel; they on the contrary were shutting out their highest privileges by their unbelief. Moses loved them no more than he; but how blind were they in not recognizing the Christ, not more truly of David according to flesh than One Who is over all, God blessed forever! Psa. 45, 102; Isa. 9:1. (9:1-5). Next (in 6-13), he denies that the word of God had fallen through, for it is certain that not all are Israel that are of Israel. This he proves from the family of Abraham and of Isaac. Fleshly descent, or “seed,” is not all: witness Ishmael and Esau. If the Jews must, as they would, repudiate the title of both lines, they must also admit God's sovereignty: a principle plainly shown in Isaac, still more in Jacob where the mother and father were the same, and the children twins. It was God's purpose according to election as Jehovah indicated before their birth, in the first book of the Pentateuch (Gen. 25:23), and sealed it by the last of the prophets (Mal. 1:2, 3). Is anyone ready to charge God with unrighteousness? The unrighteousness was in Israel beyond doubt, when they made and adored a calf of gold, and must have been justly destroyed but for that sovereignty in God which unbelief criticizes and rejects: “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Ex. 33:19). How would pretension to righteousness have suited Israel then? But God is no less sovereign in judgment, as the apostle cites Pharaoh's case (Ex. 9:16). God is judge, not man, who has no right to reply against Him. For has not the potter power of the same clay to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor? In effect however He endured with much longsuffering vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction, and vessels of mercy which He fore-prepared unto glory. The evil is man's, the good is of God's grace, whether of Jews or also of Gentiles, as Hosea declares (2:23; 1:10). On any other ground all was lost for Israel; but if God fell back on His sovereignty, the prophet shows he would use it for Gentiles who believed; and this at the very time He executes judgment on Israel, guilty not of idolatry alone but of rejecting their own Messiah, His Messiah, as is plain from Isa. 10:22, 23; 1:9; 28:16; 8:14 (vers. 14-33).

In chap. 10 the apostle reiterates his earnest love for their salvation. Zealous for God, they ignored His righteousness in the gospel and sought to establish their own. For Christ is end of law for righteousness to every believer. Deut. 30 furnishes the proof; for there, when Israel lost their land by apostasy, God holds out His testimony for believers to lay hold of, though exiles from the land where alone the law could be carried out. Under the law they were ruined, where the word of faith (pointing to Christ) can alone avail, as Isa. 28:16 confirmed. But being the word of faith, not law, it is for Gentiles as much as Jews, and calls for preachers according to the principle of Isaiah 52:7; 53:1; Psa. 19:4; and, as a fact, Jews needed it no less than Gentiles. Nor could Israel deny that God had made this known. Moses (Deut. 32:21) and Isaiah had warned, not only of God's provoking Israel to jealousy, but of being found by a nation that sought Him not, while Israel was perverse and disobedient.

This raises the inquiry in chap. 11 if God thrust away His people (Israel), as indeed Christendom had long dreamed. Of this three disproofs follow. (1) The apostle cites himself as witness of a remnant, and refers to Elijah who erroneously thought himself alone, whereas God had and has a remnant, the fruit and pledge of grace, the rest blinded and for judgment (1-10). (2) Their fall, far from being definitive, is but to provoke Israel to jealousy, as already stated. Theirs is the olive tree, so that they are the natural branches, and the breach of some was because of their unbelief. The Gentiles, now grafted in, were but wild olive; and if they continued not in God's goodness, they too should be cut off (11-24). (3) The prediction is sure, that after the solemn dealing of God with His guilty people, and when the complement of Gentiles has come in during the partial blindness of the Jews as now, “All Israel shall be saved; as it is written, There shall be come out of Zion the Deliverer, He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” According to the gospel the Jews are enemies for the Gentiles' sake, according to election beloved for the fathers' sake. God does not change His mind as to His gifts and calling. “For as ye once disobeyed God, but now were objects of mercy by their disobedience, so also they disobeyed your mercy that they too should be objects of mercy. For God shut them all together into disobedience that He might show mercy on them all.” No wonder that the apostle breaks forth into a transport of praise. For thus the special promises are fulfilled, while all pride of the law and pretension to righteousness vanish: again, Gentiles who boasted, instead of enjoying all as mercy, with the Jews before them, are cut off; and all Israel returning to His mercy are saved.

After the episode of the three chapters preceding, the direct course of the Epistle proceeds. The apostle beseeches the saints by the compassions of God, so fully shown, to present their bodies (for they are now vessels of the Spirit) a living sacrifice, holy, well-pleasing to God, their intelligent service or one governed by the word. Outwardly they are not to be conformed to this age, yet not by mere externalism, but changed by the renewing of the mind unto their proving the will of God, good, well-pleasing, and perfect. They were to be lowly, and obedient to God in the Spirit, each acting according to the place God chose, many members in one body, but each in his own function. The gifts pass from those in the word to moral and gracious service in the varying circumstances of saints on earth, blessed with all good and its expression to all, in a spirit of gracious and holy sympathy. Such is chap. 7.

In chap. 8 the saints are set in their due relation to higher authorities of the world. Every soul was to be subject. For there is no authority but of God; and the existing authorities have been ordained of God. To resist authority is to oppose God's ordinance; and they that do shall receive judgment (not “damnation,” which is an extravagant mistake here as in 14:23); but a chastening (compare 1 Cor. 11:29-32). Conscience therefore acts, and not merely dread of punishment. The Christian is to pay honor as every other debt, love alone the due that can never he paid off. And love works no ill, and is the law's fulfillment. Besides, it is already time to wake up: salvation, our deliverance for glory, is nearer than when we believed. As in day-light let us walk becomingly, not as the dissolute world, but putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, and making no provision for lusts of the flesh.

From chap. 14 to 15:7 is the great seat of brotherly forbearance as to things above which “the strong” rose in liberty, but which burdened “the weak” with scruple. Many Jewish saints did not realize their deliverance from meats forbidden, or from days enjoined by the law; which Gentile believers knew to be outside Christianity. This led to friction and trial: to judging on the one side; and to despising on the other. The apostle does not hesitate to declare for freedom, but urges receiving the weak, not for discussions of such points. Conscience, though uninstructed, must not be forced: doing, or not doing, “to the Lord” is a great peace-maker. Each shall give account of himself to God. We are therefore now if strong to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves, receiving one another, as Christ received us, to God's glory.

This question, to which the union of Jew and Gentile naturally gave occasion, leads on to the apostle's explaining God's ways from verse 8 and onward. Jesus was minister of circumcision for God's truth to establish the promises of (i.e. made to) the fathers, and that the Gentiles (who had not promises) should glorify God for His mercy. And proofs are produced not only from the Psa. 18:49, 117:1, but from the law (Deut. 32:43) and the prophets (Isa. 11:10). He appeals to the God of hope to fill the saints in Rome with all joy and peace in believing, and give them to abound in hope; and the more so as be had no doubt of their actual blessing and ability to admonish each other. But he does not hide from them the grace given him by God to do Christ's public service toward the Gentiles in the sacred work of the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. What a difference from Israelitish holiness with its fleshly mark of circumcision!

Then He speaks of the extensive work he had already wrought in might of signs and wonders, in power of the Spirit, preaching the gospel of the Christ from Jerusalem to Illyricum round about, and this where He was not named (as in Isa. 52:15). This had been the hindrance; but as he had no more of this work in those parts undone, and had long desired, he would visit them on his way to Spain. He was going now to Jerusalem in remembrance of the poor saints, as those of Macedonia and Achaia wished with their contributions; after which he would set off by them into Spain, assured to come with the fullness of the blessing of Christ (omit “the gospel of”). But he beseeches their earnest prayers for him that he might be delivered from the disobedient in Judea, and that his service in Jerusalem might be acceptable to the saints. The Acts of the Apostles shows how he got to Rome.

Chap. 16 is very full of personal commendations and salutations to individuals, though he was as yet a stranger there. But what associations of love and faith! What comfort to Phoebe going to Rome! What joy to Prizes, and Aquila in such a mention from him! and to the assembly in their house! It is a notice of much interest. Then follows a roll of brothers and sisters with the distinctive marks of honor which a single eye does not forget, closing with a call to them all to salute one another, and to receive the salutation of the churches of Christ. It is the mind of heaven on earth. In verse 17 he is equally earnest in warning against those that make divisions and stumbling-blocks contrary to the doctrine learned. If they formed divisions, they were to be avoided; for such serve their own belly (he says with disgust), whatever their fair speech to deceive the hearts of the harmless. The obedience of the Roman saints was known: but they should be wise unto the good, and simple as to the evil. And a second time he commends them to the God of peace, yet more fully and triumphantly. Then he adds the names of Christians saluting with him, and of the scribe of the epistle, Tertius; and after more salutation prays that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ may be with them all. Lastly he himself ascribes glory to Him that was able to strengthen them according to his gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery as to which silence had been kept in everlasting times, but now manifested, and by prophetic scriptures according to the eternal God's command made known for obedience of faith to all the Gentiles; to an only wise God be the glory for the ages. Amen.

Scripture Query and Answer: Inspiration of Scripture - The Lord's Prayer

Q.-Matt. 6, Luke 11 I believe in the verbal inspiration of Scripture; but how are we to explain the differences, e.g., in the Lord's prayer? Why are there such distinct reports of what the Lord uttered? Or were there two occasions with a form not identical? PERPLEXED.

A.-God's inspiration, so far from binding the Evangelists to an identical re-echo of our Lord's words, shows the power of the Spirit in discourse or fact reported, so as to carry out His special design in each Gospel. A simple reproduction of our Lord's words in all the four might have been done by mechanical skill; but the Holy Spirit inspired each to give us all according to divine design respectively. It was God's editing with specific purpose, which man, however pious, never could have achieved but by His energy, yet in the style of each. There is a new re-issue of a pamphlet on this prayer, which goes fully and minutely into these differences, and can be had of the Publisher.

Fragment: 2 Corinthians 12:12

2 Cor. 7:12. Is it not instructive to read that, though “signs and wonders and mighty deeds” are undoubtedly “signs of an apostle,” yet a very different thing, a most passive virtue, takes precedence of them all? In the apostle “patience” was the supreme or at least first-named sign. The inference is obvious. Patience should, a fortiori, characterize those who are not apostles. R. B.

by W. Kelly
THE BOOK OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.
LECTURES ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, cr. 8vo. cloth, 3/6.
AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.
ON THE LORD'S PRAYER, a New Edition, 3d.

Shortly THE FEASTS OF JEHOVAH, a New Edition.

GOSPEL GLEANINGS, edited by W. J. H. No. 1, ld.
LONDON: T. WESTON, 53, PATERNOSTER Row, E.C.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Isaac: 27. Isaac Old and Seeing Dimly

Gen. 27:1-5

Humbling for Isaac, and for all concerned yet more, is the scene which opens for our admonition. No such failure stained the testimony of his father nor yet his son Jacob's. His life of comparative easy-going blinded him for a while to distressing forgetfulness of Jehovah's mind and declared purpose. Alas I it was not a new thing that Isaac loved Esau, not simply as his son or on account of his natural boldness, but because venison was to his taste. Whereas Rebecca loved Jacob, whose character in its fleshly traits resembled her own in Syrian craft and selfishness; but in neither was there lukewarmness to divine promise.

“And it came to pass when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, that he called Esau his son, the eldest, and said to him, My son; and he said to him, Here [am] I. And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death. Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and hunt me venison, and make me savory meat such as I love, and bring [it] to me that I may eat, in order that my soul may bless thee before I die. And Rebecca heard when Isaac spoke to Esau his son; and Esau went to the field to hunt and bring venison” (vers. 1-5).

No doubt the words of Jehovah, before the sons were born, the more impressed Rebecca because they were said to her, “The elder shall serve the younger.” But Isaac was wholly responsible as one that loved and feared Him. Then again did not Esau, when arrived at years of discretion, sell his birthright for one mess of food? And was not this profane act aggravated by indifference to that separateness which the chosen family were bound to maintain before Jehovah in the midst of the doomed races who possessed the land? His Hittite wives were bitterness of spirit to both parents: how sad that the father should now treat it so lightly The Holy Spirit puts the matter simply and livingly before us for our profit. Nor let us fail to adore our God for His wondrous patience. Let us delight in the wisdom of His ways, overruling carnal partiality which would make His word void, and securing His purpose, however faulty they were who remembered it. And as they resorted to unworthy expedients to correct the wrong and insure His promise, they each fell under His righteous chastening of their crooked policy. God loves dearly, but rebukes and chastises.

What a grief it is to one who feels for God and His saints to look on this household of faith reversing that godly order which long before characterized Abraham's in His estimate! “For I know him that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of Jehovah to do righteousness and judgment, in order that Jehovah may bring upon Abraham what he hath spoken of him” (Gen. 18:19). Yet what He spoke of Abraham was the Seed of promise, and not only a great and mighty nation, but all the nations of the earth blessed in him. Now the type of that very Seed was oblivious save of present gratification of the flesh, and this with the intention of conveying the blessing to the profane line and away from the divinely designated heir! Again she who once turned her back on kin and country to become the bride of the father's only son and heir in distant Canaan, plotting against her husband, and teaching the true inheritor of the promises to cheat against the father's short-sighted folly! O what shame before God, men, and angels, even if we say not a word of him who hoped through his father's weakness to retrieve his hopes, ruined by his own rash and unbelieving self-seeking! But, if we anticipate, Isaac's words certainly filled Rebecca with alarm. Instead of inquiring of Jehovah as in days of more lively faith, she heard them now to devise her own wretched way of deceit, in order to defeat the wrong her husband had in mind to do. Esau meanwhile went, we may be sure with alacrity as unbounded as his surprise, to gratify his father after his own fashion, and regain what had seemed lost irreparably. But be not deceived. God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life eternal. Even if all faithlessly fail and receive rebuke from above in righteous government, God abides faithful; for He cannot deny Himself; and His word is as sure for the future as it has ever proved in the past and the present.

The Creeping Not to Be Eaten

Lev. 11:41-47

Here the things that crept on the earth are forbidden to be eaten. It is a lower grade than in ver. 2, and ver. 9; for these flew or hopped. Those which now come before us crawled and went on their belly. Nor is it touch we read of here, but eating.

“And every creeping thing which creepeth, (or, crawleth) on the earth shall be an abomination; it shall not be eaten. Whatever goeth on the belly, and whatever goeth on all four, and all that have a great many feet, of every manner of creeping thing which creepeth on the earth, these ye shall not eat; for they are an abomination. Ye shall not make yourselves abominable through any creeping thing which creepeth, nor shall ye make yourselves (souls) unclean with them, that ye should be defiled thereby. For I am Jehovah your God; and ye shall sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy, for I am holy; and ye shall not make yourselves unclean through any manner of creeping thing which creepeth on the earth. For I am Jehovah who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God; ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy” (vers. 41-45).

We turn from the touch of death to the eating of crawling things, which is pronounced an abomination and utterly forbidden. Man depraved by sin is easily led to feed on the loathsome. Jehovah takes note of the meanest creatures, such things as crawl on the earth, to prohibit them as food for His people. Creatures that go on the belly, or on all four, or with numerous feet, have their place and function in the realm of nature; but they are denounced for Israel's use: even all crawling things that crawl on the earth, these ye shall not eat, for they are an abomination. “Ye shall not make yourselves abominable with any crawling thing that crawleth, nor shall ye make yourselves unclean with them, that ye should be defiled thereby.” Nature has no power against the fall or its effects; nor has the law power save to prohibit, and if violated to condemn. Such was Jehovah's attitude as thus putting Israel to the proof by the law. “For I am Jehovah your God: sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy, for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of crawling thing that crawleth on the earth. For I am Jehovah that brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.” But law gave power no more than life, which are alone given in Christ received by faith. Therefore all was unavailing for unbelieving Israel, themselves the most unclean of all.

Immense and fundamental is the change brought about by Him Who came in love and went down for the guilty and lost to the dust of death, yea under divine judgment beyond all man can see or realize. And this was significantly brought before the vision of the apostle of the circumcision, and with express bearing on the uncircumcised Gentile. Hence he was given to behold heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending, as a great sheet, by four corners let down on the earth, in which were all the quadrupeds and creeping things of the earth, and birds of heaven. And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter, kill and eat. But Peter said, By no means, Lord; for I never ate anything common or unclean. And there was a voice again the second time to him, What things God cleansed, do not thou call (or, make) common. And this took place thrice, and the vessel was taken up into heaven. The fullest witness was given.

Thus grace accomplished what was impossible for the law; and this, because God condemned sin in the flesh, and sacrificially for sin, in His own Son. There is too sanctification for the foulest in the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus; and He proclaims it to every creature that whosoever believes may be saved. For as law was just an earthly dealing at Sinai, but the Savior was from heaven, so the issue is heavenly. Thus God in Christ has wrought for His own glory, where man proved a total failure, as He knew from the first it must be.

Hence while sanctification is an immutable truth of God since sin entered the world, it has now a divine character by grace, instead of being a moral requirement and ineffective under law. So we see in 1 Peter 1:2 sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus, which is the principle of vital work from the start; and the practical exhortation follows in vers. 15-21 to holiness in all manner of conduct grounded on redemption. For it is no longer external or fleshly but a living reality, which takes account of man as he is, sinful and guilty, and can reach equally to the most distant and dark; for God acts in sovereign grace through our Lord Jesus and by His quickening Spirit.

Day of Atonement: 4. The Two Goats

The Two Goats. Lev. 16:5-10

“And he shall take of the congregation of the children of Israel two kids of the goats for a sin offering, and one ram for a burnt offering. And Aaron shall offer his bullock of the sin offering, which is for himself, and make an atonement for himself, and for his house. And he shall take the two goats, and present them before Jehovah at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for Jehovah, and the other lot for the scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which Jehovah's lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering. But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before Jehovah, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness” (Lev. 16:5-10).

If we leave for the moment the bullock, the distinction between the two goats claims our consideration. Every one can see on the face of scripture that there is a marked difference between them. It is vain to suppose that God did not intend a definite truth to be taught by each. Notice that they were decided by lot—the disposal in the hand of Jehovah exclusively. This was quite exceptional in the sacrifices. In those of sweet savor the choice of the victim, under expressed conditions, was left to the offerer. For sin or trespass there was no latitude whatever; a positive command was laid down that such or such an animal should be offered in given circumstances. In other cases there is a gracious consideration of the poor in the offering. Poverty is taken into account on the one hand, and ample means, with a large heart, had their full opportunity on the other side. But in this case the choice was specially decided by Jehovah.

Two goats, no other animals, were to be brought by the children of Israel. Even the high priest himself was not allowed to choose which of them should be Jehovah's lot, and which the people's. This was left absolutely with Jehovah. The reason may be that in all the ritual of Israel no offering has a character so Godward as those presented on the great Day of Atonement. It was His dealing with sin; and He accordingly moves in the matter—Jehovah alone. The high priest himself is the only man permitted to appear. On other days he had the sons of his house; the subordinate priests take their suited part. On this day he acted, and he only. The bearing of these things on our Lord Jesus is manifest. Accordingly the high priest appears, not clad in his official robes, but in a garb that spoke of unsullied righteousness, the holy garments. This was not the dress even of the ordinary priest: a priest was marked by wearing an ephod; the high priest distinguished by a rich attire, wherein ornaments of gold, silver, and jewels had their place. But only the holy “linen garments” were worn for this peculiar duty, the high priest having an altogether exceptional function.

Aaron was the high priest, but here seen in a quite exceptional position—a high priest not in what was intercessional, but in a representative function for sin bearing. He identified himself thus for Israel, and not for the people only but for his sons as well as himself. it is clear therefore that the place altogether differs from his regular one in the sanctuary of God. Intercession in no way fulfilled the type of this great day, but rather laying a righteous basis for it.

It was not as a martyr, nor identification in sympathy, to which some would lower the atonement; neither was it any question only of moral government, nor a pure display of love or of absolute pardon. All these features, perhaps, may in a just measure and true light be found in the death of our Lord Jesus. He was indeed the holiest of martyrs, and beyond all comparison, in His death. And therein did He make good God's moral government as it never was nor could be save in His own person, and under God's own hand. His obedience in love was absolutely perfect. Yet had He been tempted as none other was. No temptation common to man had He been spared; but it is never said that the Lord was not tempted far beyond all. Suppose you that any man was tempted as the Lord during the forty days?

The last three temptations of our Lord may be known in measure and spirit by not a few of His followers, as they present the only details of it given us. But what do we know of the forty days? Why are there no particulars? Because none will ever be put in such a position again. A man may, on the one hand, imitate it in part as an impostor, and we may have heard of the like; on the other, we read of Moses sustained as long on high, and of Elijah going as long on earth in the strength of divinely supplied food. How different were these from His, Who alone resisted the enemy in the wilderness, with no companion except the wild beasts, till angels came to minister at the close! The Holy One of God triumphantly resisted, but, in resisting, suffered to the uttermost.

Is it so with what men call “temptation?” How sadly we know that we have too often yielded instead of resisting, and that we gratify ourselves because we do not suffer! We “enter into temptation,” as Peter did, instead of watching and praying, as we ought. Our Lord “suffered being tempted.” He kept the evil outside; yet the spiritual sensibilities of His holy nature were wrung by the temptation which Satan presented. But there was nothing within that answered to the temptation without; and Satan, finding nothing in Him, was thus completely foiled. Was this in vain? It was part of the necessary fitting of our blessed Lord to be the sympathizing High Priest. He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. Before He became man on earth, He knew what it was to command. When glorified in heaven, He was still man able more tenderly and more powerfully to sympathize with the tried and tempted saints than if He had not been tried here below. For we are not to suppose that the love is less because He is risen from the dead. We are indeed assured that He ever lives to intercede for them. His sympathy is ever flowing freely and fully from above. Such is the way in which the Holy Spirit presents it in the Epistle to the Hebrews and elsewhere.

But on the Day of Atonement there was no question of sympathy with the sanctified, but graciously representing men to bear sin's judgment at God's hand. What is wanted for sin is not sympathy, but suffering. Not if a Christian should sin, that he is without a blessed resource; for we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. And He is the propitiation for our sins. In this lay the answer to the deepest of all need. Sin had put shame on God, and done violence to His will, nature, and majesty. God, therefore, must be vindicated in every respect about sin. He had been glorified as Father in the life here below of His Son, our Lord Jesus; there He found the only Man that perfectly and always met, not His every requirement only but His mind and affection, in an obedience and dependence that never quailed under sorrow and suffering. But a new question arose: would the Holy One of God stoop to be made sin? Would He bow His head under that intolerable burden? Would He, for God's glory, bear sin in all its enormity, and hatefulness, in its dread unutterable consequences to Himself? Would He give Himself up at all cost to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself?

The judgment of sin entails abandonment on God's part. Would Jesus drink that cup? He that would suffer for sins could only undertake it: how truly in Him was no sin! A man tainted with the least sin must suffer for his own evil. It was therefore a condition indispensable for atonement that the victim should be without spot or blemish. Where was the man who could suffer for sins without question of his own? Man had been challenged to convince Jesus of sin. God had borne witness of complacency in Him. Jesus alone could suffer atoningly; and this is what He did, and what the high priest's action represented on that day. Doubtless any one type is quite insufficient to set forth our Lord. He was both the high priest who offered, and the victim that was offered. Scripture plainly sets forth both in Him. The Epistle to the Hebrews incontrovertibly testifies the truth in full. One might almost equally refer to the witness borne by 1 John (2:2; 4:10): And He is the propitiation (ἱλασμὸς) for our sins. There we have the very word which describes the relation of our Lord to the Day of Atonement as the victim. More than this, Rom. 3 declares that God set Him forth as “the propitiatory,” or mercy seat (ἱλαστήριον). No wonder, though this be not all, scripture says that “Christ is all.” Accordingly the goat on which Jehovah's lot fell was beyond question to meet the exigencies of His character. For this reason the blood was brought, not before man who needed its atoning virtue, but to God where He is. The same truth appears substantially on the Paschal night. When the first Passover was instituted, the blood was put, not within the door but without: that precious blood was not for man to look on, in order to extract comfort from his sight of it. Rich comfort he was entitled to draw from it, but not by his looking. The blood was expressly and only outside; the Israelitish family was to be as expressly within. “When I see the blood, I will pass over,” said Jehovah. Israel could eat the flesh in security, but not without bitter herbs. So the true, deep, and all-important aspect of propitiation is ever that the blood is offered to God. No doubt it is for man; but the essential truth is, that it was put before God. Faith therefore rests on His estimate of the blood, not on one's own.

This is so true that, when the high priest deals with the goat for Jehovah's lot, we have in this the foundation of all for Israel, not a word said of laying his hands on its head, or of confessing Israel's sins. It is not affirmed that he did not, though the Jews say that he did; but we need not mind Jewish tradition more than what men say today. In scripture we have our lesson, and thus from God whom we thank for it, if indeed we know the value and safety of relying on what He says. Woe be to the man who attempts to speak for God without His word! The silence of God is to be respected in the next place to His utterance. What He deigns to utter, of course, has its own supreme place; but reverent faith abstains from filling up the blank that God leaves. We may be assured that He perfectly knew and provided for all the wants of those for whom He meant His revelation.

The offerer laid his hand on a burnt-offering if he brought one: it was his privilege; but here silence reigns about it. Why? Is it inexplicable? In no way. The hand was laid on for identification. In an ordinary sin-offering it was the transfer of the confessed sin to the victim; in the burnt-offering, of the accepted offering to the offerer. Here Jehovah's glory is alone in view. His outraged majesty had to be vindicated, His moral nature satisfied. The clearance of the sinful people was carried out to the full on the same day; but it was on Azazel, the second goat. The first goat is stamped throughout and indelibly with the truth, that not man, not Israel, but God's glory is primarily in question; it must be first, and fully must this be maintained.

For atonement God must be glorified; there is nothing sure, stable, or righteous without this. Scripture forbids the creature's necessity to precede God's moral glory. There was the most comprehensive and thorough confession over the second goat, but not a word of the sort as to the first. Confession is proper and necessary where man's sins are in full view. It is due to God in order to give righteous comfort to man; it is the just expression of self-judgment before God, that he may be forgiven. But there is and must be a far deeper claim—that God's holiness and honor be secured first and foremost in atonement. There is no adequate basis without meeting His glory and character; how and where was this effected? In an offering for sin that speaks to Him of Christ, without reserve devoted to His glory in sacrificial death, giving Himself up absolutely to bear all the consequences of sin in divine unsparing judgment.

Man, though the object of compassion to the uttermost, here disappears. Christ, the sufferer judicially, is alone before God. Alas! man likes not to be left out. The first man is all-important in his own eyes, and even becomes all the more sensitive when he is awakened to his need of forgiveness. He is slow to understand that everything should not be about himself. He needs pardon urgently and profoundly: why should he not have the answer to his own grievous wants in the first goat? God has judged otherwise, and He is wise and holy. God has laid down what is due to His own glory in atonement as the first of all rights, in the clearest and most convincing way, except to the infatuated persons who imagine that they can understand the things of God better than God Himself, and so are as ready to take from scripture as to add to it. Even from the shadow, not the very image, God has excluded human vanity and pride. He has here attested to those who tremble at His word that, while the fullness of His blessing is meant for man, this cannot be but through what the first goat tells us, and not the second alone. Both must be heeded, and in God's order. There is no other way of blessing: the soul receives this by faith, that God has been glorified in Christ's death. In order that it should be so, man bows down, and God deals with the victim his representative brings. Aaron here was just a type; but the anti-type was really the Son of man.

How strikingly this was shown in that the only occasion in which scripture represents our Lord Jesus saying “My God,” was on the cross! When He was here below, He regularly said “Father.” He never thought, He never felt, He never spoke, He never acted, except in the perfect communion of the Son with the Father. No wonder the Father was glorified in the Son. But now a total change ensues, and the Lord prepares us for this, conveyed in His words, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and” —the Father? No!— “God is glorified in Him.” That this is not casual appears beyond dispute from the words that follow. “If God” not the Father as such but God— “be glorified in Him, God shall glorify Him in Himself, and shall glorify Him straightway.” It was a question of His being made sin, and God as God is judge of sin, rather than the Father as such. We all know that the theologians talk about our “reconciled Father” (and I allow they mean the truth of atonement, where all my heart is with them); but no man can justify such language from scripture. God needs atonement. Sin is hateful and intolerable to His nature. If it is expiated, it can only be through a divine and unsparing judgment of an adequate victim.

Proverbs 12:1-7

We have next the contrast distinctly drawn between the course, character, and end of those that are open to divine discipline, and of such as refuse it; of him that obtains Jehovah's favor, of the malicious too, and of the righteous unmoved by that which sweeps away the wicked. Nor is the woman of worth unnoticed any more than the one who makes ashamed. The thoughts and words of both classes are confronted, with the dread issue.

“Whoso loveth correction loveth knowledge, but he that hateth reproof [is] brutish. A good [man] obtaineth favor of Jehovah, but a man of mischievous devices will he condemn. A man shall not be established by wickedness, but the root of the righteous shall never be moved. A woman of worth [is] a crown to her husband, but she that maketh ashamed [is] as rottenness in his bones. The thoughts of the righteous [are] judgment, the counsels of the wicked deceit. The words of the wicked [are] a lying-in-wait for blood, but the mouth of the upright shall deliver them. Overthrow the wicked, and they [are] no more; but the house of the righteous shall stand” (vers. 1-7).

As original uprightness was lost in the fall, even if there be a new nature by grace, soul-discipline is ever needed, and blessed in the genuine humility that values knowledge from on high. Pride and vanity are alike disdainful of reproof, and therefore go from bad to worse. Those unwilling to own their faults or to submit to faithful dealing sink below humanity.

He that is good in his measure (Rom. 5:7) has been so formed by his faith in Jehovah's loving kindness, and obtains fresh favor; whereas He condemns the man who yielding to his evil nature lives in spiteful devices.

Nor is it in the nature of wickedness to establish a man, for it makes slippery the high place he may reach; but the righteous have a root which, however assailed, shall not be moved.

If you wish a full-length portrait of a woman of worth, it is furnished in the last chapter of this book. Such a woman is not only a blessing but “a crown” to her husband. For even if naturally or spiritually beyond him, she will not fail to hide herself behind and help efficiently under him as her head, to the good order of children and servants, as well as in the circle of their friends or foes. On the other hand, what a curse is she that makes ashamed, however it may be! It is an evil ever felt to be hopeless in itself. How truly described as “rottenness in his bones"!

As righteousness means consistency with our relationships to God and man, “the thoughts” are a main part of it. Self-righteousness is really its opposite, and consists of outward observances if there be any pretense of ground for it. What value can these have, where the heart is far from Jehovah, proving it by disregard of His Anointed and by hopes resting on their own ways according to the precept of men? True righteousness is inseparable from being begotten of God; and thus the thoughts are right, as being the inward effect of a new life, which comes from God's object of faith on whom they rest. The counsels of the wicked, who know Him not, are deceit; for they flow from an evil nature assuming to be good.

And what are “the words” of the wicked but, as they are here characterized, “a lying-in-wait for blood”? If they have not life in Christ, they are the habitual prey of him who is from the beginning a liar and a murderer. “My soul,” says the Psalmist, “is in the midst of lions; I lie down among those that breathe out flames, the sons of Adam, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.” Smooth was the milk of his mouth, but his heart was war; his words were softer than oil, yet are they drawn swords. On the other hand, the mouth of the upright speaks to conscience and heart, and God knows how to give it effect, so that it shall deliver them.

As the wicked build on the sand, overthrow comes and is fatal; but the house of the righteous, being built on the rock, shall stand. Rain may descend, and floods come, and winds blow, but only to prove that it is founded and preserved. So is he who hears and obeys the word.

Gospel Words: the Blind at Siloam

John 9

On no healing of the blind has the Holy Spirit dwelt so long and impressively as on this. But it is evidently in furtherance of His design in the Gospel of John: to set forth the Son's person as incarnate, but rejected in His work here, as in His word just before (chap. 8). How blind are all who can now read or hear God's written testimony, and fail to recognize His signature in the address to their souls, that believing in the name of Jesus they may have life eternal!

It was indeed a desperate case, “And as he passed on, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind? Jesus answered, Neither did this man sin nor his parents, but that the works of God should be manifested in him. I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day: night cometh when none can work. When I am in the world, I am light of the world. Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle, and smeared the clay on his eyes, and said to him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam (which is interpreted, Sent). He went off therefore, and washed, and came seeing. The neighbors therefore, and those that used to see him before that he was a beggar said, Is not this he that used to sit and beg? Some said, It is he, and others said, No, but he is like him. He said, I am [he]. They said therefore to him, How then were thine eyes opened? He answered and said, A man called Jesus made clay, and smeared mine eyes, and said to me, Go to Siloam and wash; and having gone off and washed, I received sight. And they said to him, Where is he? He saith, I know not”! (vers. 1-12).

The Lord put aside questions, and presents God's working in grace by Himself here, as Light of the world to give it effect. In an action which figured His incarnation in Whom was life, He besmeared the blind man's eyes with that which would have hindered sight, till he washed in the pool (Sent). The humiliation of Christ enables none to see, unless by the word and Spirit they apprehend Him sent of God the Father to do His will; by which will (as Heb. 10 tells us) we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. The word was thus mixed with faith in him who heard.

To confess Jesus Christ come in flesh is by the Spirit of God. Thus only do we, blind by nature, receive the Light of life. Christ becomes all to us, who before had nothing but sins and darkness and death. Till then uncertainty reigns, as we see here among the neighbors. The man is clear as to himself and confesses the Lord more as he learns more. The self-righteous oppose, and seize on the sabbath when the sign was wrought, as proof against the Savior. The Jews believe not and summon the parents in vain to set it aside. But the great fact remains: Jesus gave the blind to see. Human affection may shirk the confession of the truth. Human religion may frown, revile, and persecute. But grace and truth only shine the more brightly. “One thing I know,” the beggar that was answers, “that whereas I was blind, now I see” (ver. 25).

Is not this characteristic of the gospel? It is the glad tidings, not only proclaimed in the name of Jesus, but known and enjoyed by the believer. “I write to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name's sake” (1 John 2:12). So it is not only that the believer has life eternal, but “these things I write to you, that ye may know that ye have life eternal, to you that believe on the name of the Son of God” (1 John 5:13). Christendom in its unbelief falls back behind the veil of Judaism, and denies to the Christian the happy certainty of what grace has wrought and now gives freely. The priest and his rites would cloud all peace and joy in believing. They may be disciples of Moses; they are not disciples of Jesus. They claim a sacrifice forever, continuously offered, instead of confessing that He sat down in perpetuity, because His one accepted sacrifice is so efficacious that God will remember our sins and iniquities no more. To unbelief it is always a-doing, never done.

Faith made the seeing man bold. To the perverse reasoning of unbelief, which refused the evidence of God's gracious power and rejected Him Who alone makes the Father truly known, he replies, “Since the world began it was never heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man [Jesus] were not from God, he could do nothing.” Impotent and incensed, they could only hiss in answer, “Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out” (ver. 34).

“Jesus finding him said, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? He answered and said, And who is he, Lord, that I may believe on him? Jesus said to him, Thou hast both seen Him, and He it is that speaketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe; and he worshipped Him” (vers. 35-37). May this be your portion, dear reader. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; and the one means of receiving Him is faith. Believe God's testimony to Him; and He is yours. This will enable you to judge yourself truly and confess your sins honestly; without it, you will only render a fair show in flesh. All other things, important as they may be, are subordinate to receiving Jesus. But He once received makes all else an easy yoke and a light burden.

1 Peter 1:20-21

The apostle next treats of the comforting truth, in order to establish the saint, that however new to them the gospel might be, it was all settled in God's mind and counsel before man fell, yea before creation. Redemption was no remedial afterthought, though of course implied in the sentence of Jehovah Elohim on the serpent in paradise, and shadowed in sacrifice ever after.

Hence we here read of Christ, “foreknown indeed before [the] world's foundation, but manifested at [the] last of the times for your sake, that through him believe on God that raised him out of [the] dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (vers. 20, 21). All the older English versions, save that of Rheims, add “who was” foreknown. But the absence of the article forbids this. It is assumed rather than asserted.

Such language is never employed about the divine dealings with Israel. Rich and large as are the promises to the fathers, they never go back into eternity as here. Men may reason in an abstract manner on prescience and omniscience; but the fact is plain, that God did not speak to the fathers nor through the prophets of blessings before the world's foundation. They were made in time, however enduring they may be.

Here we learn that which transcends the promises. Late in manifestation, Christ as God's Lamb was foreknown before creation. The gift of His Son to suffer and redeem was ever in the mind of God. He knew what the creature would be if put to proof, and that none could stand save those upheld by the word of His power. Meanwhile every means to instruct and to direct, to cheer and to restrain, to warn and to alarm, was tried; and this formally and fully in Israel separated from the nations for God's grand moral and religious experiment, vain as it must prove. God showed all along how thoroughly He knew the end from the beginning, though they believed it not, seeking to make their own righteousness out of that law which was meant to prove the impossibility. For through law is the knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20), as salvation is only through the faith of the Savior.

“Foreknown” could not suffice. Christ was “manifested” in due time; and the due time was “at close of the times.” Long had been God's patience; manifold His dealings in moral government, if by any means there might be fruit from man for His acceptance. But the fall, though in one man, was of the race; and the sample of the race under the special care of God proved the tree to be worthless, producing therefore bad fruit. If any one could have been conceived to change the result, it was the Lord Jesus, the Messiah of Israel and the Son of God. When He was sent, as He Himself puts it, the husbandmen said among themselves, This is the Heir: come, let us kill Him, and seize on His inheritance. And they caught and cast Him out of the vineyard and slew Him. But in Christ's rejection on the cross God made Him that knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become God's righteousness in Him. For therein only was God glorified as to sin. The Son of man bore His judgment of evil, as He had already glorified His Father in the unfaltering obedience of a life devoted to do His will. Hence as it was God's righteousness to raise Jesus from the dead and give Him glory at His right hand, so it is to justify every one who believes in Jesus.

It is accordingly written “manifested at the last (or, the end) of the times for your sake.” The most ancient and best MSS. (ABC), many good cursives, and old versions give this sense; not “at the last time” according to earlier editors. It is similar in force to Heb. 1:1. where the form is “at the last of these days.” In fact the gospel was sent out to Jew first, and to Greek. Among those who believed, the dispersed Jews to whom the apostles wrote received it as God's power unto salvation. When boasting is excluded, and ought to be silenced, God speaks, and speaks in love to all; for all are lost sinners. When we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for ungodly men. Such as owned their guilt and ruin before God cast themselves on Christ and His precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless. Nothing else could meet adequately either God or man. And as these believing Jews submitted to the righteousness of God, they became entitled to the blessing of the gospel.

But it is an error often made to confound what is here annexed with the statement in Rev. 13:8. For this scripture teaches no more than our text that the Lamb was slain from the founding of the world, a meaning only made possible by a mystical imagination. The comparison however of what is said in chap. 17:8 affords plain evidence that the name written in the book of life of the Lamb slain is the true connection with the world's founding, not that the Lamb was then slain. For the later scripture referring to the same truth omits “of the slain Lamb,” but affirms the writing in the book of life from that time.

Nor is this all. “From” the world's founding is not of the same import as “before” it. Let us respect and learn from the very words of God.

Those saints who are preserved from yielding to the Beast at the close of the age had their name written from the foundation of the world in the slain Lamb's book of life. With this we may compare the King's language to the blessed from all the nations, severed like sheep from the goats, to inherit the kingdom prepared for them “from” the world's foundation. But the phrase used in Eph. 1:4 as in 1 Peter 1:20 is pointedly different. As Christ was foreknown and loved by the Father (John 17:24) “before” then, so did God choose in Christ us who now believe “before” the world's foundation, that we should be holy and unblemished before Him in love. It is easy for a Christian to understand Christ foreknown before time began; but how wondrous the grace that God chose us to such an association and for such a purpose I He was known before creation, as He had a glory in personal right above it; we by grace are objects of divine counsel which His work suits in order that we may enjoy all where He is, and with Him.

Then the apostle carefully defines who they are that are thus blessed, though in no way confined to the believing remnant of Jews, “for your sake that through Him believe on God.” The testimony of the gospel is quite unlimited. “Disciple all the Gentiles (or, nations),” said the Lord (Matt. 28:15); “preach the gospel to all the creation” (Mark 16:15); “that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name unto all the nations” (Luke 24:47). Nor is He less explicit in the gospel of John: “for God so loved the world that He gave his Only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have life eternal.” Here as we have the result no less plainly unlimited as in the other Gospels, so does the Lord restrict life and salvation to those that believe the testimony of God.

There is a difference in the reading but not in the truth. Three MSS. (A B 9), supported by the Latin Vulgate, say “that are through him faithful.” The great weight of copies, uncial and cursive, with the ancient versions generally, support the usual text “that through him believe.” Faithful often says more than believing, in no case less. The substance remains the same. Not a doubt can there be to a renewed mind that it is through Christ that we are faithful toward God. The question is, if this be intended here, where faith appears to be set before us, rather than the fidelity which springs from it. If so, it is a truth no less certain than interesting that through Christ we believe on God.

Men talk of rising “through nature up to nature's God.” But how could this, even if true of any, avail for a fallen soul whose sins morally compelled the Creator to become a Judge? And what could His providence, real and gracious and mighty as it is, do to cleanse the sinner from his guilt or to give him reconciliation with God and assurance of His love? The law again, righteous and holy and good as it is, could only aggravate his misery if his conscience rightly felt his evil state, and God's just and necessary displeasure with a creature, originally upright, but now so alienated, self willed, and rebellious. No, it is the Lord Jesus Who alone could and did meet the otherwise insuperable difficulty. It was His to conciliate what without Him was irreconcilable on any ground of truth; but He only by His sacrificial death for our sins. In His cross divine love and light, grace and righteousness, majesty and mercy, unite to bless those who repent and believe the gospel. Thus only are loving-kindness and truth met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Hence then through Him we believe on God as the Savior God, giving His beloved Son for our offenses and raising Him again for our justification. It is not said here, as once to us when mere sinners, that through the Father's drawing one comes to Christ; but now we through Christ believe on God in the deep, intimate, and enduring way that is revealed to us as saints.

No one hath seen God at any time: the Only-begotten Son Who is in the bosom of the Father—He declared Him. It is through Christ that we believe on God, as Light and Love, Savior and source of all grace, Who sent Christ and drew us to Him, made us His children, sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. But we must not forget that by receiving God's testimony the soul believes on Christ. “Verily, verily, I say to you, He that heareth my word and believeth him that sent me hath life eternal” (John 5:24). Christ being received makes God known more fully to faith, as in resurrection He could say, I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and My God and your God (John 20:17).

Here it is intimated of those “that believe on God that raised him out of [the] dead, so that your faith and hope are (or, should be) in God.” The resurrection of Christ from among the dead and the glory given to Him on high are God's mighty and distinct evidence that He is for the believer absolutely and forever. If anything could have made this doubtful, it was our sins. But they were laid—yea, He laid on Christ (Isa. 53:6) the iniquity of us all. Christ bore our sins in His own body on the tree. Where are they now? When He made purification of the sins, He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. Not one sin did God leave on the believer; not one did Christ carry into heaven; for what He thus did was the will of God; so that our faith and hope are in God. The teaching is thus far the same as in Rom. 4:24, 25. We can no more doubt God for the future than for the past, as the apostle so triumphantly declares in Rom. 8. If God be for us (and this He has proved irrefutably to the utmost), who against?

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: First Corinthians: Part 1

Chap. 5 Special Design. 35A. 1 Corinthians

We now enter on a very different theme from that developed in the Epistle to the Romans, where the foundation of the gospel is in question, and the individual privileges and walk of the saint. The same apostle writes on the corporate walk of Christians, of the church. The difference of the divine aim is made evident in their respective addresses. To those in Corinth he writes, but to more, “to the assembly of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, to called saints, with those that in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours.” It is a remarkable superscription, and, as written by the Holy Spirit, surely means to warn against an imminent danger to which the new institution of His grace, His assembly, was to be exposed. The work of grace in each is of course presupposed. That they were saints by God's calling is not forgotten in addressing them in their corporate position. Further, there is care taken from the start to guard against all independency, “with all that in every place,” etc. (vers. 1-3). No countenance is given to the assumption that the church is free to change or innovate; it has to walk everywhere, and, we may add always, obedient to the word and in holy fellowship.

The usual thanksgiving follows for the grace of God given them in Christ Jesus, which assuredly from the apostle was no mere form. But we may observe that it is not said for faith as he says of the Roman believers, but for gifts of grace while waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who also would confirm them as blameless in His day. Solemn responsibility with encouragement he thus awakens: “God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (vers. 4-9).

Thence he turns to their state, and reproaches them with their divisions. They had set up schools of thought among themselves, like the Jews and heathen, saying, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. Assuredly Christ was not divided, nor was any servant of His crucified for them. The apostle thanks God that, as things were at Corinth, he had baptized only a few of them, lest any should say that he had baptized unto his name. His repudiation shows the mistaken place assigned to baptism. For he presses the superior dignity of evangelizing, which Christ sent him for, and the contempt which God puts on the world's wisdom by that which is its foundation, Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling-block, and to Gentiles folly, but to those that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Far from choosing the wise, powerful, and well-born, God had chosen the foolish, the feeble, the vile and despicable, yea things that are not to annul those which are, that no flesh should boast before Him. But he adds the position and blessing too: “Now are ye of him in Christ Jesus, who was made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption; that, according as it is written, He that boasteth, let him boast in the Lord” (vers. 10-31).

Hence when Paul first testified at Corinth, it was not the world's wisdom he urged, but Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ crucified. No truth makes less of man, and more of God, when those who heard were men, lea, guilty and lost sinners. But when believers can bear, they indeed need more; when they are not infants but grown men ("perfect” here as elsewhere), he could, and in fact, did lead them to learn of Him everywhere, incarnate, risen, glorified and coming again. Then he goes on to make known that all hangs for the truth on the Spirit of God, Who now does far beyond what the O.T. had revealed. We have Christ and redemption accomplished for the soul; and hence, as He is on high, the Holy Spirit is now sent down, God revealing by Him what had previously been reserved. Thus the all-important relation of the Spirit to Christ comes fully out. Revelation, communication by words, and reception, are alike and only by the Spirit of God. So foolish was it to cry up man's mind or the spirit of the world (chap. 2).

The Corinthians addressed were not “natural” as once; nor were they “spiritual” as they ought to have been. They were “carnal.” They falsely estimated their state, and, in fact, needed the food of babes rather than of men in Christ. The proof of their carnality, of their walking “as men,” was their setting up Paul and Apollos, as rival leaders with the saints as followers to each. The servants thus shrouded the Master to their loss, fleshly as they were. God gives the increase. The most honored fellow-servants are but God's journeymen; while the saints are God's building. If Paul was given as a wise architect, the sole foundation is Jesus Christ; and hence the serious question of what one builds on Him. Happy he who builds things precious that stand the fire! Sad is he, who, though saved, loses his building of what the fire consumes. Terrible is his lot who corrupts God's temple and is himself destroyed. Here the world's wisdom only ensnares. Besides it is real folly: for all things belong to the saints, not only Paul, Apollos, and Cephas, but world, life, death, present things and future: “all are yours, and ye Christ's, and Christ God's” (chap. 3).

The apostle then in the beginning of chap. 4 exhorts that he and others like him should be accounted as servants or officials of Christ and stewards of God's mysteries. These last are the Christian truths, previously hidden as being incompatible with the restricted object and the earthly character of Judaism, but absolutely essential to the gospel and the church. They have nothing to do with the notion of sacraments, which superstitious men have fancied. Now fidelity is requisite in a steward, and the Lord is the One that examines; not the saints, who have neither the place nor the power, but are responsible in matters of discipline as we shall see in chap. 5. When the Lord comes, He will make manifest the hidden; and then shall be to each the praise from God. He had applied the ease to himself and Apollos, not to set man up but to humble him and exalt the Giver (6, 7). In fact God appointed apostles to the extreme place in suffering at the grand spectacle that Christianity affords to the world, both to angels and to men. The light-minded worldliness in Corinth adds point to the comparison: “we fools for Christ, but ye prudent in Christ; we weak, but ye strong; ye glorious, but we in dishonor.” And as he had opened this in verse 8 by saying that they “reigned without us,” so in 11 he continues, “to the present hour we both hunger and thirst, and are in weakness and buffeted, and wander homeless, and labor working with our own hands. Reviled, we bless; persecuted, we endure; blasphemed, we entreat; we became as the world's offscouring, refuse of all, until now.” How overwhelming the contrast, not for the Corinthians then only, but for the still more selfish and vain development in our day, as in fact ever since!

Yet he tenderly assures them, that it was not as chiding but to admonish them as his beloved children, he writes (ver. 14). “For if ye had ten thousand child-guides in Christ, yet not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I begot you through the gospel. I entreat you then, become mine imitators.” “Teachers” is not the word in ver. 15, but a servile term expressly. And in his love had he sent to them one so beloved and faithful as Timothy, “who shall remind you of my ways that are in Christ, according as I teach everywhere in every assembly” (ver. 17). The church, as the Christian, stands in liberty; but it is the liberty of Christ, never the liberty of differing as we like, or to oppose others. The Spirit of God dwells there to maintain the glory of the Lord Jesus, Whose mind is one. Petty man sets himself up. The apostle lets those know who said he was not coming, that he was, and quickly, the Lord willing; when he would know not the word of the puffed up, but the power. It was love, and to spare them, that he did not come sooner (18-21).

In the next division we have the apostle availing himself of evil rumors which had reached him, not about their general party spirit on which he had dwelt so fully from chap. 1 to 4, but on special evils, the abominable case of incest as yet unjudged in their midst (chap. 5), their worldliness in going to law before the unjust (chap. 6:1-11), and their abuse of liberty, or licentiousness, denounced and corrected (12-20). As the portion is short, we may dilate the more.

Desperately evil as were these disorders, general or special, the apostle did not lose confidence in the words of the Lord during the early days of his work at Corinth: “Fear not but speak because I have much people in this city” (Acts 18:9, 10). With these evils of theirs weighing on his heart he wrote to them as “the assembly of God that is at Corinth,” sanctified (as they were) in Christ Jesus, called saints (or, by calling). The inconsistency of their practical state with their standing, individually and corporately, was extreme; but he remembered the Lord's assurance, and pressed home their responsibility. There is no sufficient ground for assuming a lost epistle from chap. 5:9 of this Epistle, any more than an unrecorded visit from 2 Cor. 13:1, 2, though not a few have argued for both. The worst enormity may glide into the church through its light state or individual pravity; and thus Satan incessantly seeks to dishonor the Lord and destroy those who bear His name. Then comes, as here, the testimony of the Holy Spirit to judge the evil and deliver the saints. It is the rejection of His testimony, the maintenance of the evil notwithstanding, for which they forfeit their place as God's assembly. From heinous evils, as here, the church may be restored, as the second Epistle proves; for incomparably less, if not judged, the church may have its candlestick removed, as we read in Rev. 2:5.

What a grief for the apostle to write about the common rumor of fornication among the Corinthian believers, “and such as is not even among the Gentiles, so that one should have his father's wife (5:1)!” But it was a great aggravation that they, the saints generally, were puffed up, and did not rather mourn, in order that he that did this deed might be taken away from among them (2). Though not on the spot, the apostle could, and does, pronounce on the case. “For I, absent in body but present in spirit, have, as present, already judged him that hath so wrought this, in the name of our Lord Jesus, ye and my spirit being gathered with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, —to deliver such a one to Satan for destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord (2-4).” Thus did it seem good to divine wisdom that we should have the extreme act of excommunication fully left on record. If the Corinthian assembly had known and discharged its duty, we could not have had it in so solemn a form. For in this instance the apostle joins the exercise of his own official authority and power with the duty of the church to put away the offender. He could deliver to Satan, and thereby to sore trial of mind and body, though with the good and holy aim of the flesh destroyed in order to the spirit's salvation eventually; as we learn in 1 Tim. 1:20 that he could act similarly in cases demanding it without the church. But, with apostle or not, the church is bound not to tolerate but to remove the wicked person from themselves (6-13).

In order to explain the principle further, and to show its application fully, the apostle uses the figure of leaven, intelligible to everyone familiar with its working, and especially to such as knew the care to get rid of it required at the paschal feast, which bore typically on the redeemed. Leaven represents corruption—evil in its tendency to spread and in its character of contaminating. “Your glorying is not good: know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened. For our passover also, Christ, was sacrificed: wherefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven nor with leaven of malice and wickedness, but with unleavened things of sincerity and truth.” Clearly Christ's sacrifice, set forth in the paschal lamb, is the ground and means by which Christians are unleavened. The feast of unleavened bread that follows figures the hallowed condition, that attaches to them imperatively. We who believe in Christ are now celebrating this feast during our earthly sojourn as pilgrims and strangers, if we rest on His redemption. But the Corinthians in their levity had ignored it; and the apostle most instructively rebukes them with the authority of that word which abides forever. If they did not yet know God's mind about discipline, divine instinct left them inexcusable. Granted that they had no elders, nor experience; but they had gifts, and if they had life eternal in Christ, they should have felt rightly. Instead of mourning, they were puffed up and boasting: never a becoming state, but how shameful at such a crisis! The will of God was now declared; theirs was to judge themselves and obey. Here we have authoritatively the fullest light from on high to guide us, and to guard from like error.

“I wrote [or rather “write,” the epistolary aorist] to you in the epistle not to mix with fornicators; not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or the covetous and rapacious or idolators, since then ye must go out of the world. But now I write [same aorist as before] to you not to mix, if any one called a brother be a fornicator or covetous or idolator or a reviler or a drunkard or rapacious; with such a one not even to eat. For what have I [to do] with judging those outside? Ye, do ye not judge those within? But those without God judgeth. Remove the wicked [person] from yourselves.”

Here the scope is shown to embrace not only the immoral but the evil generally, though in no way to give an exhaustive list; as other scriptures duly denounce other sins. For a plain instance false and wicked doctrine does not here find a place; whereas in Gal. 5 it is treated as “leaven” no less than immorality. In 1 John also fundamental error as to Christ's person is dealt with more stringently still as “antichrist,” or even not bringing Christ's doctrine. Thus is the church preserved from legislation and called to be true in this respect as in all others to Christ's glory. We have only to do God's will, as He did it perfectly.

In chap. 6:1-11 the apostle insists on the incongruity of the saints appealing to the tribunals of that world which they are destined to judge, yea, to judge even angels. Yet at Corinth, instead of bringing a difference before the saints, they like men who had no faith appealed to “the unjust” Even those of no account in the assembly could well judge such matters; for he speaks to make them ashamed. Why did they not rather suffer wrong? Alas! they did wrong, and to brethren, forgetting that wrongdoers (and he enumerates more than in chap. 5) shall not inherit God's kingdom. Their past evil was no plea; seeing that they were washed, were sanctified, were justified (a very observable order) in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

This introduces the abuse of liberty. It is not Christian to be under the power of anything. Even now the body is for the Lord; and as God raised Him up from the dead, so will He raise us. We shall be conformed to Him in that glorious change, and are to act now in faith of it. Our bodies are Christ's members. How shameful and disloyal to be joined to a harlot! For this was the habit, one might say the religion, of the old Corinthian community. Hence the enormity of fornication in a saint, who is one spirit with the Lord. Our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit Who is in us, and this of God. We are not our own, but bought with a price, and therefore to glorify God in our body. The rest of the verse in the Authorized Version and others is a spurious addition from bad manuscripts.

In this section of the Epistle we have answers to questions which seem to have been submitted to the apostle on marriage and meats, with a notice of the detraction of his authority.

There is a spiritual energy which raises one to whom it is given above ordinary conditions; but the institution of God, as here marriage, remains all the same. If Paul was a witness of the former, none the less does he maintain the latter. Marriage is the rule as laid down of God; but the Holy Spirit may and does exceptionally lift up this one or that for worthy reason above the need of marriage. It was a question of God's gift; so that he who marries does well, and he does better who does not marry. The contrast of this holy wisdom is seen in the world-church, which turns the exception of grace into an ecclesiastical rule of corruption, and builds up thereby a city of confusion hateful to God and ruinous to man. The apostle calls for mutual consideration in married life, as well as for prayer, as having to do with God and the adversary.

This leads him, in an interesting and instructive way, to draw the line between what he counseled, and what the Lord commanded by revelation, though the apostle was inspired to give both. He deals also with mixed marriage, and, looking at position and occupation, reminds us that God has called us in peace. Hence too, if one were called as a bondman, it was not to be a concern; but if one could become free, to use it rather. For the bondman called in the Lord is His freedman; likewise the called freeman is Christ's bondman. Bought with a price, they were not to be bondman of men, but abide with God in that wherein they were called. He presses also the time as straitened, and the passing away of this world's fashion, as reason for not setting the heart on change. Such is the outline of chap. 7.

In chap. 8 he speaks of meats of animals sacrificed to idols; and, quite allowing the nullity of an idol, he points out the danger for conscience in those who lacked that knowledge seeing a Christian at table in an idol-temple. Gracious thought for another is better than knowledge empty, and selfish, and sinning against Christ.

This largeness of heart in the apostle exposed him to the false charge of looseness and self from those really guilty, and brings in the parenthetical chap. 9 in which he vindicates his apostleship, and glories in its grace. He maintains title to eat and drink and lead about a sister-wife, as also the other apostles, specifying the Lord's brethren and Cephas. “Or I only and Barnabas, have we not a right not to work?” Yet he draws the plain title to support for all laborers—from the soldier, the husbandman, the shepherd, and the herdman. Nevertheless he used no such title, supported though it was by the clear case of those that served the altar in the law. While asserting the right, he refused to use it for himself (not “abuse”) in the gospel. It was God's grace in it that filled his heart and led his course, free from all yet making himself bondman, so inexplicable to man and hateful to the worldly mind, becoming all things to all that he might save some. A fellow-partaker with the gospel, he was living what others only preached, lest he, after preaching to others, should himself be rejected or reprobate.

This warning, though transferred to himself (as he says in chap. 4:6, “to himself and Apollos for their sakes” who were in danger), he follows up in chap. 10 by pointing out the ruin of so many in Israel of old, who all were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink (10:1-4). Is the Christian more indifferent, because privilege is now greater? Idolatry is a great danger for the professing Christian, as it was for the Jew. Yet what condemns it more than Christ's death? What more inconsistent with the Lord's table? For demons were behind the idols; and this is a serious reality. True liberty is profitable and edifies; it cannot be at the expense of God's glory, unto which we as Christians are called to do all things, giving no occasion of stumbling to Jews or Greeks or God's assembly. So it was the apostle pleased all in all things, not seeking personal advantage, but that of the many that they might be saved; and he called them to imitate him, as he did Christ (11:1).

We have here another section of the Epistle, as distinct, or nearly so, from what precedes as from its concluding two chapters. Before coming to the assembly which was compromised in more ways than one at Corinth, the apostle regulates the relative place of the man and the woman in themselves. The importance of this is the more evident from the humanitarian freethinking of our own day which leaves out God's mind and order. Paul wished them to know that the Christ is the head of every man (ἀνδρὸς), but woman's head is the man, and the Christ's head God. Hence not men, but women, in praying or prophesying were to have their heads covered before others in token of subjection, as the act otherwise seemed to deny it. For the woman was created for the man and of him, though the man by her; and angels looked on who should see godly decorum. Neither is without the other, but all things of God, which unbelief forgets or takes no account of. For woman to act like a man is to her shame, and that of the contentious person who ignores God's will (2-16).

Nor was it in private only. The Corinthians publicly were coming together for the worse. Schisms already existing would surely lead to heresies or sects, which in effect deny the one body of Christ, the church, though the approved are thereby made manifest. How sad too at such an occasion as the Lord's Supper the dishonor put on the poor! It was really on the church of God; so that such a supper was not the Lord's. Therefore as he emphatically received the Supper from the Lord, he here also delivered it to them in all its grace and holy solemnity for the remembrance of Him, the center of the church's worship. Here the Lord's death makes selfishness in any form hateful, yet fills the heart purified by faith with thanksgiving and praise, and claims vigilant self-judgment, lest any slight might bring on the Lord's chastening now, that one be not condemned with the world by-and-by. So the apostle rules the severance of a meal, even were it that called the love-feast or Agape, to hinder such disorder in future (17-34).

Thereon follows the greatest unfolding which scripture furnishes of the presence and working of the Holy Spirit in the assembly with the love so essential to right and worthy operation, and the Lord's regulation of it accordingly against abuse, in chapters 7-14. It is designedly apart from the Lord's Supper, though that Supper was in fact the most indispensable aim on the most important occasion for which the assembly met, the Holy Spirit acting in all holy freedom. But it seemed good to the Lord to treat of His Supper separately, and before entering on “the spirituals” (or manifestations of the Spirit) which are here explained. The apostle opens it by guarding against the imitative intrusion of demons, whose aim is to debase Jesus, the Son of God, as the power of the Spirit works in exalting Him. Now there are distinctions of gifts, but the same Spirit; as there are of service, but the same Lord; and of operations, but the same God that worketh all in all (12:1-6).

It is a question here, not of souls saved but of discerning spirits, who sought to dishonor the Lord, and deceive if it were possible the very elect. None the less but the more is the Holy Spirit sent down and here in the church to glorify the Lord and bless His own as His witnesses of Jesus in glory. The presence of the Spirit is more momentous than even the gifts He distributes and directs. It is that which constitutes the one body; and the assembly is bound to own and act on it; which is exactly what Christendom has in effect denied since the apostles, perhaps the most perverse of the perverted things the apostle warned of as at hand. There was but one Spirit, as also but one body; as faithfulness means walking by faith, so it is the shame of any to confess truth which they do not seek to carry out at all cost. The Corinthians were light and carnal, and their failure is turned to everlasting profit by the inspired instruction and corrective (7-13).

The gifts are manifestations of His power Who dwells in the church and works, though sovereign, to the Lord's glory; the one Spirit's baptism at Pentecost established that unity, which unbelief overlooks and in effect denies. Every true assembly is Christ's body, as the apostle told the Corinthians they were, though their state was bad enough to draw out the gravest rebuke. But it is the refusal to how to the word and judge the evil which forfeits the title of God's assembly; and the Corinthians did bow to their restoration, as the Second Epistle shows. Again it is in the assembly as a whole that God set, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, etc. (14-28). Ministry therefore (that is, gift in exercise) is set in the church. The gift in its variety is for all. There is no such idea in scripture as the minister of a church; which supposes and generates all sorts of error. The edifying gifts are on the same principle and from the same soiree as the sign gifts (miracles, healings, tongues, etc.), but far more important and permanent and set in the higher place, whatever Corinthian vanity might prefer.

There was however a quality higher than all, and of deep necessity for the right working of every gift, as indeed for the well-being of every saint, to the Lord's praise. It was love: a sad word among the Greeks, who readily claimed the most refined place of the first man; but how blessed and blessing and divine as heard and seen and proved to death and deeper still in the Second! And this is essential both for the individual Christian (who alone loves, as begotten of God), and for the assembly. Again, it accounts for its place here, between the presence and the operations of the Spirit in chap. 7, and the order of His action, for which every member is responsible, in chap. 14. It is striking to observe how the passive characters of love take precedence of the active, while the intermediate dwell on that joy in good which is truly godlike, as it well becomes the children of God now on earth. Now love never fails and abides forever.

Wanted of B.T. January and February, 1882,1883 (4 Nos.)

GOSPEL GLEANINGS, edited by W. J. H. No. 3, ld.
LONDON: T. WESTON, 53, PATERNOSTER Row, E.C.

LONDON T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly)

Isaac: 28. Rebekah's Advice

Gen. 27:6-17

Every scripture is inspired of God and is profitable. How much is passed by without notice in the life of Isaac! Inspiration implies special purpose. When a grave lesson was to be taught, there is no sparing the reputation of a saint: God speaks and writes holily and all is for our profit.

“And Rebekah spoke to Jacob her son, saying, Behold, I heard thy father speak to Esau thy brother, saying, Bring me venison, and make me savory meat, that I may eat and bless thee before Jehovah before my death. Now therefore, my son, hearken to my voice according to that which I command thee. Go, I pray thee, to the flock, and fetch me thence two good kids of the goats; and I will make of them savory meat for thy father such as he loveth; and thou shall bring [it] to thy father, that he may eat, so that he may bless thee before his death. And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother [is] a hairy man, and I a smooth man. My father perhaps will feel me, and I shall be in his eyes as one that mocketh, and I shall bring on me a curse and not a blessing. And his mother said to him, On me [be] thy curse, my son: only hearken to my voice, and go, fetch me [them]. And he went and fetched and brought [them] to his mother. And his mother prepared a savory dish such as his father loved. And Rebekah took the clothes of her elder son Esau, and put them on Jacob her younger son, the costly ones that [were] with her in the house; and she put the skins of the kids of the goats on his hands, and on the smooth of his neck; and she gave the savory meat and the bread into the hand of her son Jacob” (vers. 6-17).

We may assume that Rebekah acted on impulse in circumventing her husband's forgetfulness of the Lord's word, and Esau's profane and evil character. Who can suppose that she “went to inquire of Jehovah,” as when troubled by appearances before the birth of the twins? The sly Syrian character of her family asserted itself, in the assurance that Isaac was altogether in the wrong. But if right in her judgment, how sorrowful to tarnish it, not only by her own means of giving it effect, but by drawing her beloved child, the object of divine promise, into conduct so unworthy of faith!

In nothing be anxious, wrote the apostle; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God, as our gentleness should be known to all men. We walk by faith, not by sight. Do you say that this applies to faith since redemption? But what of the three young Hebrews in view of the burning furnace of fire? What of the aged Daniel with the den of lions before him? No petition, nor visit to the king juggled by vanity into the impious decree pressed by the ruling princes. No hiding of his devotions to God, so well known to those that were envious of his position. “And when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house (now his windows were open in his chamber toward Jerusalem); and he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime. Then these men assembled together, and found Daniel making petition and supplication before his God.” He obeyed God rather than men, and he took the consequences to His glory.

Rebekah and Jacob took the way of the flesh; and as they sowed, so they reaped; for God is not mocked, while He showed Himself faithful to His promise, and Isaac's folly was of no avail to reinstate the son who sold his birth-right. But how humbling to the family all round, and not least of all to him who ought to have obeyed God in subjection to His express will, and have upheld in faith the dignity of its head! How foolish and unworthy in Rebecca particularly! She of all best knew Isaac's piety, as she beyond doubt had the liveliest remembrance of the divine sentence that the older should serve the younger. It was therefore the graver failure in her not to be open with her husband in Jehovah's name Who would have blessed all around instead of having to chastise.

Even Jacob felt and expressed his qualms, lest the deceit of his mother which he was about to practice should elicit a curse, instead of a blessing from his father. But Rebekah's will was too much committed to her device; and she displayed no little aptitude in guarding her son from the danger he anticipated. In neither do we find conscience at work, still less any reckoning on God's gracious power to bring to naught the carnal design of Isaac to bestow that title to the blessing of Jehovah which Jacob truly valued, and Esau made of less account than one mess of food.

On me, said Rebekah, be thy curse, my son: only hearken to my voice, &c. Certainly Isaac had no curse to call on Rebekah; but as she was the prime mover in the wrong way to gain a right end, so had she most to feel the chastening of God's unfailing moral government. For soon after the transaction here recorded Jacob took his leave for the land of the sons of the east; and the mother never again saw her beloved child. He too through sorrowful years had to smart under the wily cheating schemes of his mother's brother, his own father-in-law. No flesh shall or can glory. It only remains to glory in Jehovah. He never fails; and alone, when every other failed as in this case, He accomplishes His purpose in mercy and wisdom. How worthy is He of all trust!

It was all skillfully done to deceive Isaac; and Jacob only too ready to comply with his mother to God's dishonor, Who would surely have defeated the father's desire to favor Esau. But unbelief is ever far from God, and is nowhere so low and hateful as when it works in believers.

Typical Aspects of Christ's Death: 1. Redemption

I. Redemption

Every believer learns and gladly owns that the pure and only source of blessing is God's love. He also confesses that the greatest expression of that love shines in the gift and death of His Only-begotten Son. But for love to make worthless sinners its object there must be a basis consistent with holiness and truth; and this is blessedly furnished by the death of Christ. No wonder therefore, in view of the gifts and death of Christ, that God in infinite wisdom appointed many a type to shadow the one mighty sacrifice, whereby He could not only take up the guilty but rescue them and have them in His presence, in peace and happiness according to His holy nature and character.

This first aspect of the death of Christ, connected with His earthly people, is divinely given in Ex. 12-14 Redemption or deliverance is a truth all-important for every soul in its start with God. As all are responsible to Him, so He not only knows the deep need, but has provided the means whereby it is met. This is a fact we do well to remember, as well as the way in which the type is bound up with the antitype.

In chap. 7 the ever to be remembered Passover is minutely recorded, when the only valid ground of difference was made known between the Egyptians on whom judgment fell and the Israelites who escaped it. An unblemished lamb must be not only provided beforehand, but slain on the fourteenth day between the evenings. Of necessity death settles the question between a righteous God and sinful man. Its blood, sprinkled on the lintel and side posts of the houses where the Israelites lived, would according to the pledge of Jehovah guarantee their safety. “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.” If the blood outside was for Jehovah to see and rest on, those inside were enjoined to eat the roasted lamb with bitter herbs, and to eat it in haste; having their loins girded, and ready to leave Egypt their place of slavery forever. Reality and solemnity marked the moment. Surely such a type has a voice in this day when boastful profession has given up, and will more fully give up, the truth that Christ's shed blood is God's appointed means for Him to act as a just God and a Savior to all that believe. It is therefore as incumbent on believers to maintain this cardinal truth with holy jealousy, as to learn and enjoy their present redemption and deliverance by it.

That Christ has come even Christendom admits. Scripture declares that He has entered heaven, having obtained eternal redemption as surely as “without shedding of blood is no remission.” In this both Old and New Testament agree in one. Scripture has bound up the Paschal lamb exclusively with Christ, Who alone could and did answer to it. Luke 22 furnishes a striking instance when the last Passover of the Jews was celebrated by the Lord with His disciples. Then, when hatred, opposition, and the power of darkness surrounded Him, He touchingly said, “With desire have I desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer.” This is followed by the stated object and value of His death; for He institutes the new memorial of what had not yet taken place, “His body given and His blood shed;” as the Gospel of Matthew emphatically says, “Shed for many for the remission of sins.” Then and then only, when the Lamb was smitten of God, was the fire of holy and righteous judgment expended, and by it not only were all claims met, but everlasting redemption accomplished and God in His every attribute relating to sin was glorified (John 13). Moreover He Who did no sin was made sin by God for us and is gone into the glory of God, the abiding proof of God's righteousness. The apostle Peter declares it when making known the believer's certainty of present redemption. The precious blood of Christ, the true Paschal lamb, gives peaceful assurance to all the redeemed that He has borne their judgment. The Lamb, foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, has come and died, was raised and is in glory; the everlasting Savior, infinitely beyond the safety of an earthly people, redeemed by the blood of a typical lamb.

The question of redemption by blood being settled, deliverance by power follows, Moses their deliverer, who enjoined the blood needed for their shelter, bids the troubled people “Stand still and see the salvation of Jehovah.” The sea in front and the foe behind were overwhelming difficulties to those who had not learned that God was for them. He Who gave them the symbol of His presence as a redeemed people in chap. 8 places Himself behind them during the anxious night of awaiting their pledged deliverance. Jehovah commands Moses to lift up his rod and stretch out his hand to divide the water so that the sea may become dry to Israel. “Go forward” was the word for them to prove its reality; and ere long they stood on the other shore and saw their dreaded foes drowned in the sea which had returned to its strength. Thus Jehovah “saved” Israel from Pharaoh and the bondage of Egypt, setting them free to sing with Moses this triumph and joyfully confess Him to be their strength, song, and salvation. Such was the typical value Jehovah then put upon the death of the slain lamb, and most unmistakably does the antitype furnish the full results. Not only does the Epistle to the Romans clearly state that there is no difference, all being guilty before God, but that the blood of Christ is the only means whereby He could pass over any in the past. In virtue of that blood He declares His righteousness in justifying the guilty (Rom. 3). Faith in the blood of His Son is a guarantee not merely of escaping judgment, but of God's being just and the justifier of him that has faith in Jesus. Now the sins are more than passed over; they are blotted out.

Besides this, He Whose blood was shed has been raised from the dead. It is an accomplished fact, that He Who was given up for our trespasses has been raised again for our justification (Rom. 4). Faith in God as to this is there enjoined, as faith in Christ and His blood in the preceding chapter. The antitype to the Red Sea is in Christ dead and risen. The illustrious power of God raised Him up from the dead. His resurrection is the soul's warrant for abiding peace with God. It is only for faith to go forward, not to stop at the cross, precious as is the basis God has provided there. Learn by Christ's death and resurrection that the sea is dry for the believer. By taking his place with a risen Christ he sees every foe gone, a complete deliverance from sin, Satan, and this present evil age. Yea more, he is called to rejoice in hope of the glory of God and know the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost, through Whom all is made known and made good, even so as to joy in God Himself.

May type and antitype ever lead to rest in the death of Christ, and we always rejoice in the declared triumphs of His resurrection.

Priesthood: 19. Birth Uncleanness

Birth Uncleanness

Lev. 12:1-8

Jehovah here gives a moral lesson of the deepest moment. Man since the fall is radically unclean. None slower to learn, or readier to forget, than Israel, yet neither son nor daughter was born without the continual memento. The mother who in this case was immediately concerned had to feel its consequence, and was even reminded of woman's part, when sin first entered, by the added sentence awarded if the babe were a female.

Sin is not at all limited to crime, or to glaring evil. It is a mischievously and unequivocally false version which is given in the A.V. of 1 John 3:4, where we read that “sin is the transgression of the law.” Millions have thence derived their notion of sin, and have thereby been misled into the great errors, on the one hand, of ignoring a vast deal of real sin, and on the other of arguing that all men must be under the law, inasmuch as it is certain that all sinned. But any such reasoning proceeds on a false principle. For the true meaning of the apostle's statement is, that “sin is lawlessness,” the far wider and subtler evil of doing one's own will without the check of divinely imposed authority. In the R.V. it is properly rendered, “sin is lawlessness,” which is absolutely true, and applies to all mankind whether they did or did not know the law. All transgression of the law is sin, but all sin is far from being transgression of the law. Hence the Jews are called “transgressors,” for they distinctively were under law; whereas scripture speaks of the Gentiles as “sinners,” not as “transgressors,” which they must have been if all men were alike under law. But this is expressively disproved by Rom. 2:12, where Gentiles are distinguished from Jews on that very ground: “for as many as have sinned without law shall perish without law; and as many as have sinned under law shall be judged by law.... in a day when God shall judge the secrets of men, according to my gospel, through Jesus Christ.” If Gentiles had not law, they had conscience, which made them feel guilty in dereliction of a natural duty, as is shown in the same context.

Here it is rather uncleanness before God as the universal effect of the dark inheritance of sin. One could not speak of sinning in babes male or female, but there was uncleanness in all. And Jehovah took care that from Himself Israel should know of it as to their own offspring. Here it is not about the nations He speaks but of the chosen people, that no flesh should boast.

“And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, saying, If a woman conceive seed, and bear a male, then (and) she shall be unclean seven days; as in the days of the separation of her infirmity she shall be unclean. And on the eighth day shall the flesh of his foreskin be circumcised. And she shall continue thirty-three days in the blood of her cleansing; no holy thing shall she touch, nor come into the sanctuary until the days of her cleansing are fulfilled. And if she bear a female, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her separation; and she shall continue sixty-six days in the blood of her cleansing. And when the days of her cleansing are fulfilled for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring a lamb of the first year for a burnt offering, and a young pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering, to the entrance of the tent of meeting to the priest. And he shall offer it before Jehovah and make atonement for her; and she shall be clean from the fountain of her blood. This [is the] law for her that beareth male or female. And if her hand cannot find enough for a sheep, she shall bring two turtledoves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering, and the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her; and she shall be clean” (vers. 1-8).

Thus was the uncleanness of man turned to divine account and mercy withal. The evil was owned before Jehovah. On the eighth day was the male child separated to Him by the sign of death to the flesh. Such was the covenant token, even before the law, though maintained by it, till a better circumcision not made by hands. But the mother continued for thirty-three beyond the seven days, apart from holy things or place, and then brought her Burnt-offering and her Sin-offering, which the priest offered in atonement, and she became clean. In case of a female child, the time of abiding unclean was doubled. The apostle even would not have us forget that Adam was first formed, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman having been deceived was in transgression. Grace reigns through righteousness unto life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord. A better sacrifice, a fuller holiness, and a higher life should then be given in sovereign grace, and this to all, Greek or Jew, who believe; for all were then proved alike lost sinners, now alike saved by faith in Jesus.

What a contrast is this chapter with the Rabbinic corruption of the law by tradition of man! What contempt of women and children, to say nothing of slaves! “Gather the people together” (says Deut. 31:12), “men and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear Jehovah your God, and observe to do all the words of this law.” This the oral law abjures. “A woman's wisdom,” says R. Eliezer in the Talmud (Joma, fol. 66, col. 2), is only for the distaff; “and what is worse, he cites Ex. 35:25 for his unbelieving folly and presumption. Had he forgotten so many that were highly favored, and even vehicles of the Holy Spirit's power? A woman specially suffered in moral government. Jehovah here proves His gracious consideration in an ordinance expressly marking His concern that they should be purified from that which recalled sin and entailed uncleanness. Sacrifice alone could effect this; yet not a Sin-offering only but the Burnt-offering in full acceptance. And such was the tender care of God, that poverty was comforted in His receiving a pigeon or a turtledove for a Burnt-offering, whereas the richest could not boast of more than a pigeon or a turtledove for a Sin-offering. What was imperative for the atoning clearance of the evil was the same. Rich and poor stood on the same level. For the joy of acceptance the pigeon of the poor was as valid as the rich woman's sheep. What a rebuke to every form of respecting persons! What grace that the Lord of glory was born of a virgin mother, whose poverty was shown in the offering proper to it! What a chasm separates the “Daily Prayers” of the Jew from the scriptures! “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who hast not made me a heathen.” “Blessed &c. who hast not made me a slave.” “Blessed &c. who hast not made me a woman.” The inspired wisest of men says, “A foolish man despiseth his mother” (Prov. 15:20); indeed the Ten words commanded from the first, “Honor thy father and thy mother” (Ex. 20:12).

With such shameless contempt for women, slaves, and Gentiles, none can wonder that the sons of Israel claim for themselves exorbitant honor. Thus in the Pentecostal Prayer of their Liturgy, they are taught to believe, that at Sinai were set all the generations of the people (i.e. their souls) with those who stood before the mountain, and to say, “there was no blemish in them, for they were entirely perfect.” The Talmud seeks to explain this egregious fable in the words, “why were the Gentiles defiled? Because they did not stand upon mount Sinai, for in the hour that the serpent came to Eve, he communicated a defilement which was taken away from Israel when they stood on mount Sinai; but the defilement of the Gentiles was not removed, as they did not stand on mount Sinai.”

The oral law, as we are assured, was bold and bad in our Lord's day, when He denounced it as making void the word of God; but it did not fail, as with Gnostics and others heterodox in Christendom, to increase to greater ungodliness. Yea, the very generation, that stood and heard the Ten words, set up the calf of gold and worshipped it directly after, before the tables of stone were brought down by Moses; and he, instead of regarding them as “healed from every blemish,” told them in his closing words (Deut. 31) “I know thy rebellion and thy stiff neck. Lo while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against Jehovah, and how much more after my death? . . . For I know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt yourselves, and will turn away from the way which I had commanded you.”

It is in vain that the Rabbis invent such fictions and teach the Jews to believe in themselves, instead of in the Savior and redemption through His blood. Only faith supposes and produces repentance. This the natural heart abhors. From nothing does man shrink more than truly acknowledging his own badness; but God leads him to it, and Jesus gives to the laboring and burdened soul rest. But to deny uncleanness even in a babe or its mother, to deny its universality, is Satan's lie, and as opposed to the Law and the Prophets, as it is to Christianity. Grace demanded a sacrifice here, as it gave one infinitely better in Christ; but even a babe is unclean in itself through the fault of the first parents.

The Day of Atonement: 5. The Two Goats Part 2

The Two Goats

The Father brings in quite another range of facts, truths, thoughts, and feelings. It is His gracious relation to the Son, and now by grace to the family of faith (for one does not here dwell on His more general Fatherhood as in Eph. 3:15; 4:6). Hence the watchful discipline and holy chastening, as a father towards his children. But, where full judgment of sin is concerned, all consideration of gracious relationship and its fruit is shut out entirely. God is the judge of sin; and there cannot in this be the least mitigation. What sin deserves ought not to be impaired. Mercy is here wholly out of place. Sin must be duly punished. All must be out, and the truth, holiness, and righteousness of God be vindicated at all cost in the execution of His judgment on sin. In the cross of Christ not one kindly ray of light from the Father broke the darkness which surrounded Him Who knew no sin, there made sin for us. Yet never was His perfection so precious in God's eyes as when bearing our sins He cried, “My God, My God, why didst Thou forsake me?”

This shows how complete was the change of our Lord's position on the cross. Was He not the eternal Son? This was unalterable: He could no more cease to be the Son in the Father's bosom, than the Father could cease to be His Father, Had it been possible and fact, His atonement had been vain for God or for man; but it could not be otherwise than it is. Was He not God? He Who is God can never cease to be God; just as a man can never become God. All such notions are the dreams of human vanity, and profane folly. He Who had deigned to become man was now on the cross made sin. And Who made Him to be sin? God alone: man never thought of such a marvel. God, the judge of sin, gave His beloved Son that He might in grace become man, not merely to exhibit perfect dependence and obedience throughout “the days of His flesh” in communion with the Father, but above all suffer to the uttermost all that God could expend in His unsparing judgment of sin on the cross.

Therefore it was that darkness supernatural surrounded our Lord so suffering at that moment. Far from ceasing to be the Son, He said “Father” on the cross, not only before He exclaimed “My God,” &c., but afterward, as if expressly to show that the relationship never ceased for a moment. Yet He said “My God” when actually the victim for sin; and it was no make-believe. If anything could be real since the world began, His sin-bearing was. As all had been genuine in the life of our Lord, all must be and was equally so in His suffering and death for sin. How blessed for us! That the blessing might be as righteous as full, it was Jehovah's lot, not for His people in the first place. Such is the force of the first goat. Its distinctive principle is propitiation.

When we come to the second goat, substitution is no less plain. In these two will be found some help toward a just appreciation of the day of atonement, as the truth stands fully revealed in the New Testament. For some time an active body of men pronounce themselves “thinkers,” and would gladly deny both truths. They wish to fritter all down to the manifestation of gracious feeling in our Lord, to a display of love in martyrdom, or to some kindred departure from God's dealing with sin on the Cross. It is the old error long before Socinus, in a new shape, and on the part of men who shrink from professing to be either Gnostics or Socinians. Such theories are utterly short of, and fatally opposed to, what God wrought in the death of our Lord Jesus. They contradict alike the type and the truth; but the New Testament alone gives the full light of God.

A type is like a parable in this, that it rarely runs on all-fours. What is given in either is but a striking analogy (in the type contrast, no less than resemblance) of some grand principle, but never the complete truth (or image, as it is called in Heb. 10). Evidently, and of course, a type is either human material, or what is lower than human, such as a goat, ox, ram, birds, &c. So a parable speaks of a sower, a marriage feast, a tree, or other suitable comparison. But these figures, being of a creature kind, are necessarily limited; what we have in our Lord Jesus is infinite. Had our Lord Jesus been a hair's-breadth less God than the Father, He could not have been an adequate sacrifice for sins before God the Judge; nor could He have fully declared God to man. Only God could perfectly meet what God requires. That the Son did it, in and as Man, was part of His perfection. Do you ask, “How can God meet God?” If all can understand that a man can meet a man, why should any disbelieve God? That there is unity in the Godhead, no Christian denies; while he fully believes three persons in the Godhead, even the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19).

Nor is the truth to be enfeebled in the least degree. He who allows no more in the Godhead than three aspects of one person is not a Christian, but a deceiver and an antichrist. He does not confess the fully revealed and true God, not the Godhead merely in three characters but in three persons; and so distinct that the Father could send the Son, and the Holy Ghost descend on that Son in the presence of the Father, and in the consciousness of the Son, as it was even outwardly before man also. Such is the early and immense fact recorded in the Gospels, a clear witness to “the Trinity.” What sympathy can one have with those who, overlooking such a fact, stumble over the term? Why be so servile to the letter, and so anxious to get rid. of a word because it is not in the Bible? The thing is distinctly there; the truth, not only open in the N.T., but pervading the Bible (in a more veiled form, like the O.T. in general) from the first chapter to the last. One cannot now read the first chapter of Genesis intelligently without seeing that there are more persons than one in the Godhead. Even the first verse of the first chapter yields a positive though gradual preparation for divulging it, at least after it was revealed.

Do you ask, how can this be? “In the beginning God created.” Perhaps all may not have heard, but it is nevertheless true, that in the original Hebrew “God” is in the plural, naturally pointing to more than one person; yet “created” is in the singular, a form not used where it speaks of heathen gods, but of the living God. With the gods of the nations the verb is plural. With the true God, although the subject be in the plural, the verb is often in the singular. Cases like Gen. 20:13, where the verb also is plural, prove that God (Elohim) was known to be a true plural. Could anything prepare better for revealing unity of the nature and plurality of the persons? Granted that none in the O. T. could certainly see the three persons as revealed later; even the believer had to wait for the N. T. for full light and truth. But when it came in Christ and by the Spirit, the peculiar concord where God's name occurs of old could not but strike those who heed every word of holy writ. Men who hold lax views of inspiration may no doubt dispute the force of any word, because their views are unbelieving and pernicious; for these necessarily enfeeble and undermine inspiration as God has revealed it, and as His Spirit reasons on it. No error has consequences more widely spread than limiting inspiration to God's thoughts in general, and denying it to His written words.

Under the law God was not yet manifested; on the contrary He was hidden behind a veil and a curtain. God was dwelling, as He says there, in thick darkness. Is this the case now? When God sent His own Son, it was no longer so, as John bears witness. Far from dwelling in the thick darkness, the true light came in Christ's person. Then the darkness apprehended it not; but there it shone when Christ was here, as it shone out yet more through the rent veil when He died and rose. All that lay concealed behind—incense, priests, shadows, offerings, sacrifices as well as the tabernacle itself, with its different measures of access to God—all was closed as to letter in the death of Christ. The Levitical system is clean gone that the spirit, the truth couched under it all, and more as yet hid in God, might be known clearly. In the incarnate Son God had come to man; but now, by His death, the way lay open for man in faith to come to God; and this the believer sees and knows to be the essence and distinctive privilege of the gospel. For it is the unmistakable truth of Christ that God did come to man in the person of His Son (Emmanuel); but the revealed effect of the atoning work of Christ is that the way is now made manifest into the holies. The veil of the temple was then rent from the top to the bottom.

If the striking type of the Day of Atonement fall short, assuredly it gives no small witness to the truth. Even the blood of the first goat was carried into the holiest of all. It was no emblem of carrying in blood after Christ died on the cross, as the letter would say. Carrying in Christ's blood! The literal idea must be in the type. There was no way possible but to carry in the blood shed of old; and none but the high priest could carry it in. But to imagine Jesus should have to do some subsequent act, in order to make His blood available before the throne in the heavens, is strange doctrine. The truth is, that the moment the blood was shed, the effect of His atonement was infinitely felt above, before He entered there as the great High Priest in person. The veil of the temple was rent, not from the bottom to the top, as if by any influence from below, but from the top to the bottom. God was glorified in Christ's work of propitiation. It was God, Who signified the consequence of that expiation in His own eyes even then, as He after wards caused the grand results to be proclaimed in the gospel of His grace.

Suppose a Jew to have looked in through the rent veil, what was there to see? The blood upon the mercy-seat, and the blood before the mercy-seat. The blood once sprinkled “upon” the mercy-seat was enough for God. But man requires the utmost means to assure him, and God graciously vouchsafes it: seven times was the blood sprinkled “before” the mercy-seat, giving complete evidence for man that he may safely and surely draw near to God. For God it was simply put on it once. It represented the atoning blood of His Son, Who had so truly taken the place of the victim for sin, that He cried out from the cross, “My God, My God, why didst Thou forsake Me?” Alas! for those who misuse those wondrous words of the Atoning Victim, as an excuse for their own unbelief, and dare to compare their darkness with His. It is false that God ever forsook His saints. Is such unbelief excusable? Assuredly it supposes the densest ignorance of the gospel. But it is also deplorable irreverence to compare your “hours of darkness “ with that which shrouded the Sin-bearer then, and then only. Search the New Testament through, and the Old too, and you will never find an excuse for the darkness of doubting. He who torments his soul with doubts may be a believer; but he is a believer who dishonors his faith by his unfaithfulness inwardly if not outwardly. Can you conceive God giving His word for one to hesitate about? Is not the doubt of a child of God worse and more shameful than that of an unbeliever?

Look at things according to God; consider what doubting Him means, what an insult to His truth and love in Christ Say not what the child pleads, after doing some bad or foolish thing, “Mother, I never meant it.” Nobody charges the child with wicked intent. But why meddle with what ought not to have been touched? So it is with those who are but babes in faith and spiritual understanding, sadly ignorant of God and of themselves. It is for want of simple rest in His Son and His word. Has not God given us the most ample grounds on which we should confide in Him? What could match the truth now before us—the Son of God taking on Himself the full consequences of sin at the hand of God? What! Was it not that God might be glorified in the Son of man made sin? This may be its most abstract and absolute form; but what is the blessed result for the soul that bows to God in faith? Not only that the believer is saved by grace, but that the gospel can go out to every creature under heaven. What does the gospel declare as its ground and vindication? That He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world (1 John 2:2).

Do you observe that certain words, printed in the italics of the Authorized Version, are here left out? The reason is, because they ought never to have been in. It is no pleasure to make such a remark on the common English Version. They are the words of one who values as a whole the plain English Bible beyond any other version in general use. But let God be true Who did not write those words. There is a marked difference in the two clauses. “He was the propitiation for our sins.” Who are the “our?” The family of God, you will answer: as this is the ordinary “we” of scripture: not, as is known, the only “we” there, but beyond just doubt the prevailing usage. For “we,” as a general rule, unless there be modifying circumstances clearly marked, regularly means the family of faith, as “we know,” “we believe, &c.” Does everybody know or believe? Certainly not; but the faithful, or Christians. So in this case Christ is “the propitiation for our sins.”

But is this all? Thank God, He is “also for the whole world,” not “for the [sins of the] whole world.” Had Christ been the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, as He is for the sins of believers, the whole world must be saved. If they were borne away, what remains for judgment? It is not so. There is a marked difference. What then is the preacher of the gospel entitled to proclaim? Life eternal in Christ, and everlasting redemption through His blood. Life eternal He gives; His work is no less valid before God. But for whom is either? For all that repent and believe the gospel. Not a hair's-breadth more does God allow. It is the revealed reply in its simplicity, its distinction, and its fullness. Man is not entitled to tell an unbeliever, “Christ bore your sins in His own body on the tree;” when one believes, God's word assures him of it.

Scripture is most precise as to the difference between propitiation and substitution. Another opportunity of going into substitution with more detail comes in a subsequent lecture; but the present suffices to indicate, in passing, the distinctive truth of each. Propitiation, as being Godwardly Christ's work, takes in not merely what God is toward His people, but what He is toward sinners, wherever and whatever they may be. Would you limit God, as the Jews did? He will not sanction it. The work of Christ's propitiation, being infinite before God, opens the door consequently to God's love in beseeching every creature on earth. Doubtless the type here or anywhere fails to set forth such love as this. No Jew could possibly understand it, nor did God reveal it before. The reason for the reserve was because the law stood in the way. Yet we now see a dim confirmation in the fact that nothing said or done limits the efficacy of Jehovah's lot, as we find in the people's lot. A not insignificant difference lay in the absence at first of express confession of Israel's sins, and of Aaron's laying on of hands. The people might see a shower of blessing for them only; but in God's mind was much more. His nature, word, majesty, and character, were met in the slain offering for sin. The effect of the antitype is that now God delights in sending His glad tidings to every creature. Still the fact remains that some who hear the gospel are, and some are not, saved. Sinners who hear it are the more guilty if they believe not, and must perish everlastingly.

Is it then that the saved are better than the unsaved? Do you presume that your superiority is the ground why you stand in the favor of God? Suffer me to have doubts of you, if such is your plea. You will not find scripture to support but condemn you. Not that one forgets for a moment that there arises the most decided difference in every soul born of God from every other that is not; but does your superior goodness earn the life of Christ, or enter into the remission of your sins? It flatly contradicts His word and nullifies Christ's work. Look only at the effect of such a thought. If true, God's favor must be turned away from every believer the moment he did not fully answer to the character of Christ, Whose advocacy too would be at an end. Is either true? Is justification of works? or is the access into God's presence and grace a fluctuating condition? Does salvation change like the cloudy face of the sky? Is not the believer's nearness stable and constant? According to the Epistle to the Hebrews, approach to God for the believer is as unbroken as the efficacy of the work of Christ for his sins. But, you say, God chastises. Certainly. So you chastise your child when it is needed; but do you love it the less, or is it less your child? On the contrary it is because you are its father, and love it dearly, that you have the rod, and are called to use it. (continued)

Proverbs 12:8-24

There is no danger that besets men, and even the righteous more than too keen a regard to their reputation. Here we begin with the secret of that which gives a quiet spirit, and of what calls forth contempt.

“A man shall be commended according to his judgment (or, wisdom); but he that is perverse of heart shall be despised.

Better [is] he that is lightly esteemed, and hath a servant, than he that aimeth after honor and lacketh bread.

A righteous [man] regardeth the life of his beast; but the tender mercies of the wicked [are] cruelty.

He that tilleth his ground shall be satisfied with bread; but he that followeth worthless [persons] is void of sense.

The wicked desireth the net of evil [men]; but the root of the righteous yieldeth [fruit].

In the transgression of the lips is an evil snare; but a righteous [man] shall come out of trouble.

A man shall be satisfied with good by the fruit of the mouth; and the doings of a man's hands shall be rendered to him” (vers. 8-14).

If the eye be single, the whole body shall be full of light, said the Lord. This gives a man to have a godly aim, and to seek it by faithful means. The same spirit imparts a sound judgment, which commends itself and him who makes it. A perverse heart leaves God, likes to oppose, and seeks self only. Such a one only makes difficulties and stumbling-blocks, and gets despised in spite of his vain efforts to rise.

As the rule, man walks in a vain show, and this deceives many. Hence he who despises appearances often gets despised, though of weight in a lowly way and able to relieve his labor by the help of a servant; whilst he who strains in paying honor to himself outwardly may come to want necessaries.

Next we find men tested by their treatment of the creation which God put into subjection to the race. Indifference to one's beast is unworthy, cruelty is worse. Hence the righteous is concerned for his beast's life, whilst even the wicked's tender mercies are cruelty. Jehovah's tender mercies are over all His works; and the day comes when everything that has breath shall praise Him.

We turn then to the contrast of diligence in one's duty with the companionship of idlers. He that tills his land shall have plenty of bread; whereas the follower of the worthless betrays his want of sense. In a fallen condition it is a mercy to eat bread in the sweat of the face. Idleness is not only profitless but a misery.

Ver. 12 confronts the desire of the wicked with the righteous in this, that the former yearns after the net, or prey, of men still more wicked, for his own advantage; but the latter has a root of stability which does not fail to produce good fruit in its season.

Words too as well as doings have their just place in moral government here below. The transgression of the lips is not only a great offense in God's sight; it is an evil snare to the guilty (ver. 13). Boast as they may that their tongues are their own, they learn to their cost that neither God nor man will suffer it. The righteous know what trouble is; but, instead of being snared by it, they come out of it. So of the Christian it is written that through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God.

On the other hand, the fruit of the mouth is of real account, not only for the good of others but for him who is enabled thus to speak. Giving of thanks becomes him who knows the Lord Jesus. It is no wonder if those who never speak for the use of edifying decry the communication of grace and truth. If it be so with our words, how much shall the excellent doings of a man be recompensed to him? God assuredly concerns Himself with our ways and our words. Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is for good unto edifying. For Christ pleased not Himself; but as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached Thee fell upon Me. Hence the need of patience, and the value of the comfort of the scriptures, while we wait for the fruition of our hope. The other side is no less sure: evil ways and words God will bring into judgment.

Gospel Words: Lazarus Raised

John 11

The Lord Jesus manifested His glory by His “'signs “; for such they were, and not wonders only or powers. Here the signs which He did reached a climax in testifying to Him as Son of God, For as the Father raises the dead and quickens them, so the Son also quickens whom He will. This testimony He gave in raising the young daughter of Jairus (as recorded in the three synoptic Gospels), and in raising the widow's son of Nain whilst being carried out for burial. But now, quite close to Jerusalem, a still more glorious sign was seen in raising up Lazarus not only dead but buried. It is also in exact keeping with the special design of the fourth Gospel, and divinely seasonable too at that moment.

The Lord did not come to the sick man at the appeal of the sisters, however truly He loved them all, but abode two days where He was. “This sickness is not unto death (said He) but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby.” He waited as ever for divine direction. After this He goes, though the disciples warn of danger, and He intimates that Lazarus was dead, as they failed to catch the meaning of His words. He knew the end from the beginning.

Martha went and met Him, but Mary sat still in the house. Yet the faith of Martha rose no higher than that He was Messiah, and that God would give Him whatsoever He should ask. When Jesus said, Thy brother shall rise again, she only speaks of the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth on Me, though he have died, shall live; and every one that liveth and believeth on Me shall never die. Believest thou this? Martha's answer was quite vague and not to the purpose: “I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, that cometh into the world.” And having said this, she went and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is here, and calleth thee. And she, when she heard it, rises quickly and comes to Him. Yet when she arrived and fell at His feet, she says like her sister, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.

The power of death lay on both, on all their hearts; and Mary wept, and the Jews that came with her. Jesus was deeply pained in His spirit, and was troubled, and wept. It was not only sympathy in love, but profoundly feeling trouble at death's power over not man only but saints. At the grave He speaks and acts in divine power over death, in communion with the Father. Martha's unbelief only draws out the expression of it. He is the resurrection and the life; and with His eyes lifted on high, He says, I thank Thee that Thou hearest Me. And I knew that Thou hearest Me always; but for the sake of the crowd that standeth around I said it, that they may believe that Thou didst send Me. And having thus said, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And the dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave clothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith to them, Loose him and let him go.

With this Lord and Savior you, my reader, have to do now. You are called on by God to honor Him whom man rejected and crucified. You are enjoined to believe on Him. You need Him as much as Lazarus, nay even more; for Lazarus already believed on Him and was beloved by Him. Can you say that you believe on Him? Do you receive Him as the Lord and Savior sent by God that you may have in Him life eternal? To receive Him thus on God's testimony is to believe on His name. His coming again will prove the power and blessedness of life in Him; for then it is that the sleeping saints shall be raised, and the living saints shall not sleep but be changed. It is the full result of His being the resurrection and the life, of which the raising of Lazarus was the pledge on a small scale. It accords with Christ's own words to Martha, “he that believeth on me, though he should have died, shall live; and every one that liveth and believeth on me shall never die.”

Martha did not enter into this blessed truth, though she believed on Him. She thought she knew all of moment in believing Him to be the Christ, the Son of God, that was to come into the world. And there are many saints who lose much joy and power by like vagueness. But she did believe on Him. And this let me press on you who read these lines, and yet cannot say that you believe on Him. Oh, if He is, as He says, the resurrection and the life, why do you hesitate to rest on such a revelation of Himself? It goes far beyond raising up the dead and buried man to renewed life in this world. It suffices for heaven and for eternity. It was not said only for that occasion; it is written by the Holy Spirit for you, and for every other who reads or hears these wondrous words now.

Do not then aggravate your guilt and state of spiritual death by slighting either the grace of God that appeals to you in the words of the Lord Jesus, or the wrath of God revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men that hold fast the truth in unrighteousness. Such may differ greatly in outward seeming; neither class have life, because they believe not on Him. They are both alike in that they will not come unto Christ, that they may have life. But without Christ, as life and propitiation also, happiness is as impossible as holiness. Life is the first want of one dead in sins. Christ is the only giver of life; and He gives it to all that believe on Him.

1 Peter 1:22

The apostle had appealed to their conscious knowledge of redemption by that which is of all things most precious to God—the blood of Christ as of a lamb unblemished and spotless. And if it was eternally before God, however late in accomplishment, God's raising Christ from the dead had through Him so acted on them, that their faith and hope were in God. From Him they looked for all good, and nothing but good, henceforth and forever. He has now further considerations of the greatest weight in urging the saints to mutual love; for this is only secondary to receiving Christ and the truth, without which is no love according to God's nature.

“Purified your souls as ye have in your obedience to the truth unto brotherly affection unfeigned, love one another out of a pure heart fervently” (vers. 22).

Thus the saints are authoritatively taught the true source of their purification. It is from God as certainly as it is to God. It is not ritual which could not purge the conscience, but in the fullest sense personal; it was not in their habits only, or even their thoughts and affections. They had purified “their souls,” that is, their inner selves in all extent. For a man's soul is essentially the seat of his conscious individuality, of his will, of his responsibility to God. His inner capacity is in his “spirit,” for or about which he is as responsible as for the things done through the body as the outer instrument; but his responsibility lies in the soul. Soul and spirit however are so closely joined, that but one of the two generally is named, as here. Only the one which is named in scripture, though not excluding the other, is always strictly correct and has its proper force. On the other hand men and in particular philosophers, as they shrink from facing their responsibility to God, constantly incline to count the “I” to be in the “spirit,” of which they are proud, rather than in the “soul,” awakening thoughts which they do not relish. What depths of sin and shame has not man's will led him into?

But those to whom the Epistle is addressed had no more hesitation in owning the truth as to themselves than the apostle had in crediting them with the grace in question. It is not a wish or a prayer that they should be purified, but rather is assumed as a settled fact, as surely as they were faithful. This is said in no levity, nor does it imply the least license; save that they were still passing through a desert world, exposed to a sleepless enemy. Hence were they dependent on their unseen God and Father, as He is unfailingly faithful to such. But the call to love one another is manifestly grounded on the assurance that they had purified their souls already; which involves the responsibility of continual consistency with this state of purity, and of self-judgment in case of failure. It is the regular Christian standing, which may be varied in the form of expression; but it meets us substantially in every apostolic Epistle.

Hence our apostle averred the like grace for the believing Gentiles, when he pleaded the cause of their liberty against Pharisaic brethren who sought to put them under law: “And the heart-knowing God bore them witness, giving the Holy Spirit just as to us also, and made no difference between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.” As in Acts 15:8, 9 “faith” is stated to be the subjective means, our scripture says yet more that it was by the Jews' “obeying the truth” objectively put before them. “Obedience to the truth” is but another and fuller way of expressing their faith. To have a solid and divine character there must be subjection to the truth.

Further, the purification of their souls is next shown to be “unto brotherly affection unfeigned.” Before we have purified our souls, there is everything not only to hinder such affection but to render it impossible. Sin, darkness, self, fleshly and worldly lusts, and under Satan's power make men more and more miserable, relieved only by pleasures as vain as the religious efforts of a bad conscience in lieu of happiness. How deep the ruin of the fall! God good and holy, whom man gave up and lost, was replaced by the liar and the murderer! Cain is the firstborn of Adam and Eve: what a witness of natural religion and of brotherly affection! Abel testifies to grace by faith. By birth we are like the one, by new birth our part is with the other. “By faith Abel offered to God a mere excellent sacrifice than Cain.”

God justified us by faith, giving us redemption through the blood of Jesus. Not otherwise were our souls purged, and thereby are we fitted for brotherly affection, such as God looks for in Christians. In ordinary circumstances any other feeling would dishonor and in effect deny the relationship which grace has established for our present and mutual recognition. Scripture clearly lays down the exceptional cases, and how we ought then to behave; but we need not now say more about it. This is the Lord's new commandment. By this, said He, shall all know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love among one another.

So the Spirit guards against mere forms or words by qualifying the brotherly affection for which their souls were purified as “unfeigned.” Pretense to a good that is not genuinely felt is hateful to God, and unworthy of His child. Hence the value of cherishing the sense of His presence to be kept from hypocrisy in this way as in every other. Let us never forget His marvelous light into which He carried us out of darkness. “Know ye not,” says the apostle Paul, “that ye are God's temple, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you”?

Hence the exhortation, which is not tautological as some have irreverently said, “Out of a pure heart love one another fervently,” or intensely. It is a simple charge that the object in view may be earnestly heeded. God's love to us is the spring of all our blessing, and never did it flow out so freely and fully as when man's sin proved how utterly undeserving he was, and no less wretched and helpless. Then it was, and at the lowest point, when God turned his evil in rejecting and slaying Christ, His Son, to the proof of His own all-over-coming goodness in making Him Who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become God's righteousness in Him. In the faith of Him and His sacrifice have we purified our souls, hitherto steeped in defilement, unto unfeigned brotherly affection. Let us love then the objects of the same divine love, who rest on the same sin-cleansing sacrifice. No doubt they were called to be holy throughout their course, because He Who called them is holy; but they were bound to love their brethren, not for any reasons of their own or for reasons in others, but “out of a pure heart” and “fervently “: had not God so felt and dealt with them? Even to heathen, when they believed in Christ, the apostle could write (1 Thess. 4:9), “ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another.”

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: First Corinthians: Part 2

Chap. 5 Special Design. 35B. 1 Corinthians

It is well to note in chap. 14:3 that we have no definition of prophecy here, only its description in contrast with “a tongue.” Edification is the great criterion for the assembly, as comely order is due to Him Who dwells there, and to the Head. Revelation, now complete in scripture, is distinguished from knowledge; and power is subject to the Lord's authority Who gives rules which bind even prophets who might plead divine impulse, as they impose women to silence in the assembly. They might use their gifts at home, though as subject to order, like Philip's four daughters who prophesied. The word of God did not come out from the assembly, nor does it come to one only. Through a called and inspired channel it is for all the church, being the Lord's commandment. “But if any be ignorant,” is his withering rebuke of the independent, “let him be ignorant.” God has not only spoken but written, and His word abides forever. May we be subject to the Lord, not in word only but in deed and truth.

Next comes the great unfolding of Christ's resurrection and its consequences. Some of the Corinthians doubted that the saints rise. They had no question as to the soul's immortality, but ventured to deny that the dead rise. The apostle treats the matter from its root in Christ, and thus decides it for the Christian, associated as he is with Him, as man is with the head of the race. It is for the apostle fundamental, bound up not only with God's counsels but with the gospel itself, which announces the glad tidings of Christ dead and risen. With this accordingly he begins, proved by the weightiest and fullest testimonies, his own closing them (15:1-11). Then (12-19) he reasons on Christ's resurrection out of (or from among) dead men as the incontrovertible truth which utterly destroyed their speculation. “How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?” For this denies Christ's, and if so Paul's preaching, and their own faith; nay, it would make them false witnesses of God Who in that case had not raised Christ, and they must be yet in their sins, as those put to sleep in Christ must have perished, and Christians alive be the most pitiable of all men.

This he interrupts with a sort of parenthetical revelation, terse, pregnant, and profound. “But now hath Christ been raised from out of the dead, first-fruits of those that are asleep, For since through man [is] death, through man also [is] resurrection of the dead.” Two heads have thus their families respectively characterized, dying, and made alive. “But each in his own order (or, rank): Christ first-fruits; then, those that are Christ's at his coming; then the end, when he shall give up the kingdom to the God and Father, when he shall have annulled all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign till he put all the enemies under his feet. Death, last enemy, shall be annulled. For he subjected all things under his feet. But when he saith, All things are subjected, it is evident that he is excepted who subjected all things to him. And when all things shall be subjected to him, then shall the Son also himself be subjected to him that subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all” (20-28). The resurrection of those that are His is at His coming, and to reign with Him. The end is, when He judges those that are not His, yet raised; and He delivers up the kingdom, all enemies put down, for the everlasting scene, when not the Father but “God” (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) shall be all in all.

Next he renews the reasoning, and refers in 29 to 18, and in 30 to 19, which clears up the sense. Why by baptism join such a forlorn hope, why share such a life of danger, if dead men are not at all raised? Paul's life was in view of resurrection; as theirs denied it who merely eat and drink. Let such not be deceived, but wake up righteously and sin not. Ignorance of resurrection is ignorance of God and holiness, to the shame of those that speculate. And why raise curious questions? God surrounds us with even natural facts of analogous character: wheat and other grain, after death of what perishes, spring up, not what was sown, but of those kinds and not different, yet in a new condition. There are also heavenly bodies and earthly. So too is the resurrection; and here again and yet more richly the last Adam, the Second Man, is contrasted with the first; and we who believe are styled heavenly, for we shall in due time bear that image, as now we bear the image of the earthly (or rather dusty) man, Adam (29-49).

Christ's life, and in resurrection, if men were to be His associates, alone suits God's kingdom and incorruption (50). This introduces a mystery or secret of God not revealed in the Old Testament: “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in an eye's twinkling, at the last trumpet; for trumpet it will, and the dead shall be raised, and we shall be changed” (51, 52). And this new Christian truth he connects with Isa. 25:8 and Hos. 13:14, the heavenly things with the earthly; for the Kingdom of God, as our Lord shows (John 3:12), comprehends both. All is wound up with a call to his beloved brethren to be firm, unmoveable, abounding in the work of the Lord always, knowing that their labor is not vain in Him.

This is fitly followed by the various details of chap. 16. As he directed the assemblies of Galatia to collect for the poor saints in Jerusalem, so he wished those in Corinth to do. Each first of week is a most proper day for the Christian, in the sense of his blessing and of that infinite grace which is its source, to lay by him in store as he may have prospered. The apostle would not use personal influence when he came; but whomsoever they should approve, these he would send with letters to carry their bounty to Jerusalem; and if well for him also to go, they should go with him. How incomparably better is God's way than man's societies and their machinery or devices! Christ and His work is the center of all. It was only when restoration wrought that in his Second Epistle he explains why he did not then visit them. But while tarrying at Ephesus, he would have no despising of Timothy if he came. And he lets them know how much he besought Apollos to go to Corinth, who, though not now, would come when he had good opportunity (1-12).

The apostle then charges them to watch, stand fast in the faith, play the man, and be strong. “Let all ye do be done in love.” They had failed in all: he despaired in nothing (13, 14). They knew the house of Stephanas, that it was the first-fruits of Achaia, and that they devoted themselves to the saints for service; so he besought them to be subject to such, and to every one working together and laboring. This is the more notable, as we never hear of elders in the two Epistles to the Corinthians; for if there had been, they must naturally have incurred special blame. Apart from such (who needed appointment by those who had discernment and full authority) there were, as we learn, laborers to whom the subjection of the saints was due, as we also find in other Epistles: fact of the utmost importance for the present circumstances of the church. Further, he speaks of Stephanas with two others he names, coming and by their practical love refreshing his spirit “and yours” he graciously adds. “Own therefore such” (15-18). Salutations of assemblies and individuals follow, as he affixes his with his own hand (19-21). But as he desired the fullest flow of holy affections with one another, he pronounced an unsparing curse on any one that loved not the Lord [Jesus Christ]: “Let him be anathema Maranatha” (our Lord cometh). This assuredly was no license for such to be in their midst (22). Not content, in the face of much he had suffered from them, with the prayer “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you,” he concludes with “My love be with you all in Christ Jesus, Amen” (23, 24). What more Christlike!

Scripture Queries and Answers: Resting on Christ's Work; Gone Out vs. Putting Out; Burning and Refined

Q.-Psa. 78:67, 68. Please explain the “why." W. H. G.

A.-God is sovereign, or He abdicates Godhead. One of the twelve tribes must of necessity take precedence; and He chose Judah. If any creature is entitled to ask “why,” surely it is a very plain answer that His Son deigned to be born of that tribe. But it is well to be content with God's wise, good, and holy will, if we could give no reason.

Q.-Rom. 8 &c. Is it possible for a believer to rest on Christ's work without having God's Spirit dwelling in him? W. S.

A.-Certainly not. But many did and do believe on Christ without at first resting on His work. It is hasty and wrong to assume that such have the Holy Spirit given to them, though born of the Spirit. See the case of Cornelius in Acts 10. He was a converted man of marked piety, which is not nor can be without believing on Jesus; but he did not appropriate the saving power of His work, till God sent the warrant, henceforth as open to the Gentile as to the Jew, in the gospel preached by Peter as by others since. Many fail to see this, and suffer through the error in various ways. The truth is quite plain.

Q.-1 Cor. 5:13. Is the public mention of one gone out from the assembly the same as putting out, as some fancy? E.

A.-Certainly not. It is a mistake in any case; in some it would be a gross wrong. The assembly cannot without absurdity put out one who has already gone out. Sometimes the going out is an act of mere ignorance; as for instance when one, used to a sermon every Sunday morning, grows weary of worship in spirit and truth, and pines for a discourse to relieve him of the distaste he feels for the Spirit's liberty of action in the assembly. How cruel and unjust to stigmatize the weak one, unspiritual though he may be, as a “wicked person”!

Wholly different is he who goes out because of necessary discipline, and yields to his self-will in abandoning the assembly which till then he had owned to be of God. He is, what the apostle denounces as, “an heretical man,” not necessarily heterodox, but factious to the last degree, whom (for he was outside) Titus was to have done with after a first and second admonition. If he were a brother of intelligence and experience, the sin is greatly aggravated; for it is rebellion against the Lord's authority in His house, were they but two or three gathered to His name. If the fact be known even in a very general way, it is a sin for any professing to keep the unity of the Spirit to receive such. If warned by competent witnesses, it is worse still. Can a meeting claim license to abandon the unity of the Spirit and turn independent for a season to gratify feeling? Even if it were only a person standing aside and under investigation, no meeting is free to receive: how much willfully outside, even if he had not joined a party in opposition! To receive in such circumstances is a violation of unity and order, of love and righteousness. Nor is it conceivable that any would agree to so deplorable an act of independency, save under the influence of partiality quite unworthy of holy brethren, to say nothing of His name that is slighted and of His word that has not been kept. We are bound if on scriptural ground to walk together in fellowship. An offender cannot be out and in at the same time, save to the Lord's dishonor. One “outside” is outside everywhere, save to people of loose principles. We are bound to walk as one.

Q.-Rev. 1:15; 3:18: why should πεπυρωμένος be translated “burning” in the first text, and “refined” in the second? Other versions, down to the most recent, vary the rendering in the two places, so that there most likely is a modifying cause which forbids the same force to be given to the word in both cases. May we have this cause explained, unless we can get a rendering that suits the Greek word in both texts? M.

A.-The contextual aim differs like the phrase, though the same remarkable word reappears. But in chap. 1: 15 it is part of the Lord's judicial attributes, not only “eyes as a flame of fire,” but “feet like brilliant brass (or copper), as though they glowed in a furnace,” penetrative and firm unsparingness to the last degree in judgment of responsible man. They were as though red-hot in a furnace. In chap. 3:18 the scope is wholly different; for there the Lord counsels the angel of the church in Laodicea to abandon his self-satisfaction in their empty riches and acquisitions, and to buy of Him what is alone genuine wealth before God, “gold tried by fire,” His own righteousness to suit His nature and presence; as also the white garments figure the practical righteousnesses which become the saint. The justified must be righteous. But so distinct is the connection that it is extremely difficult to suggest one English counterpart to both. For it is ἐν καμίνψ in the one text, and ἐκ πυρὸς in the other. This modifies the rendering of πεπυρωμένος. It is true that copper or brass, as in the altar of Burnt-offering, also represents divine righteousness; yet this, not as meeting God's nature on high, but rather as dealing with man's responsibility on earth. “Fired” as in a furnace or out of fire is literal, but would be somewhat harsh.

Patience: a Comment

Many since Chrysostom have assumed that “patience” is here laid down as the pre-eminent sign of an apostle. This is not said; but the truth is yet weightier. Irony and seriousness withal pervade these closing chapters of this touching Epistle. In the face of “the overmuch apostles,” surely none of the twelve, but pseudo-apostles (11:13), those pretenders who imposed on too many of the Corinthians, we read, “The signs indeed of the apostle were wrought out among you in all endurance by signs and wonders and powers.” Faith and love kept him from mentioning himself; so that the rebuke fell unsparingly on those who sought to exalt themselves by undermining him. “Patience,” instead of being “the supreme or at least first-named sign,” is the deep substratum of grace which lay under them all. It is characteristic of God (“the God of patience”); it shone above all in Christ; it distinguished the apostle beyond all others. But how strange “the inference” that “patience should, a fortiori, characterize those who are not apostles"! Are not premise and inference equally at fault? There is no need of straining what is so strictly personal; for we as Christians are “strengthened with all power according to the might of his glory unto all endurance (or, patience) and long-suffering with joy.”

WANTED OF B.T. JANUARY AND FEBRUARY, 1882, 1883 (4 Nos.).

OW TITUS & PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth, 2/-.
LONDON: T. WESTON, 53, PATERNOSTER Row, E.C.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row,

Published Monthly.

Isaac: 29. The Common Sin and Shame

Isaac: The Common Sin and Shame

Gen. 27:18-29

The scriptures do not spare us the needed lesson of what man is, even elect man. It is painful reading, and meant so to be, but full of profit; for many believers are slow to allow that flesh is no better in them than in the patriarchal family. Every one of them betrayed at this point the bad state morally of each. The usually blameless Isaac was so overcome by self-indulgence in his appetite as to lose sight not only of the profanity of the elder son but of Jehovah's will and choice of Jacob. Rebekah, however right as to the end in view, was utterly unscrupulous as to the means; and Jacob, not without conscience and fear about the deceit he was to practice on his blind father and lying personation of Esau, dreaded a curse instead of the blessing which he valued. But O what a God have we to do with, unmoved in His purpose of grace (else never could it stand)! unchanging in His righteousness which chastened every one of them for good even now, yet with pain because of their sins, that they might not be condemned with the world. It may not be that He brings good out of evil, as men say; but His own good to do us good, rising above every fault and dishonor. Thus “we know that to those that love God all things work together for good, to those that are called according to purpose” (Rom. 8:28).

“And he (Jacob) came to his father and said, My father: and he said, Here [am] I: who [art] thou, my son? And Jacob said to his father, I [am] Esau, thy firstborn; I have done according as thou didst say to me, Arise, I pray thee, sit and eat of thy venison, in order that thy soul may bless me. And Isaac said to his son, How [is] this [that] thou hast found [it] so quickly, my son? And he said, Because Jehovah thy God brought [it] before me. And said Isaac to Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou [be] my very son Esau or not. And Jacob went near unto Isaac His father; and he felt him and said, The voice [is] Jacob's voice, but the hands [are] Esau's hands. And he discerned him not, because his hands were hairy as his brother Esau's hands; and he blessed him. And he said, Thou then my very son Esau? And he said, I [am]. And he said, Bring [it] near to me, and I will eat of my son's venison, in order that my soul may bless thee. And he brought [it] near to him, and he did eat; and he brought him wine, and he drank. And Isaac his father said to him, Come near now and kiss me, my son. And he came near and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his clothes, and blessed him and said, See, my son's smell,[is] as a field's smell which Jehovah hath blessed. And God give thee of the dew of the heavens, and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and new wine. Let peoples serve thee and races bow down to thee. Be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee. Cursed [be] every one that curseth thee, and blessed every one that blesseth thee” (vers. 18-29).

Undoubtedly for the time Isaac was blinded in the eyes of his heart worse than in his physical sight, even in his foolish partiality to thwart the declared mind of God. And this Rebekah overheard and sought to counteract with a woman's craft and quick fertility of resource. Had she looked to God instead of her feeble husband and her fond son, how different all would have been! Even Abraham listened to Sarah's voice when he was deeply moved for Ishmael: how much more ought not Rebekah to have counted on her appeal to Isaac's conscience, backed by the divine oracle even before the birth of the twins, that “the elder should serve the younger”! But she did not now inquire of Jehovah as of old; she yielded to a low deceit, as sinful before God as it dishonored her husband and herself, reckless of its direct demoralizing of the heir apparent of the promise.

Alas! Jacob showed himself an adept to the manner born. “I am Esau thy firstborn,” replied he to his hesitating father; “I have done as thou didst say to me.” Not content with audacious falsehoods, he went on to hypocritical lying; for no sin grows less or better in the use. He meets his father's wonder at the quickness of the supply by his daring answer, “Jehovah thy God brought it before me.” His voice made a difficulty even to dull Isaac; but the feeling of the goat skins which overlaid his neck and hands so cunningly, and the smell of Esau's best clothes, especially after savory food and wine, removed further question from the aged father. And the blessing was given, both from Jehovah in covenant, and from God in sovereignty. Yet did its terms mainly consist of earthly abundance from the favor of the heavens, and the subjection not only of peoples and races of mankind generally, but also and specifically of his brethren and of his mother's sons, closing with a double sentence of larger and deeper import: “Cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be every one that blesseth thee.”

Neither Esau's “running” nor Isaac's “willing” could set aside God's purpose. As the apostle says in Rom. 9:18, “So then it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.” Without His mercy not one could inherit the blessing. But this does not at all hinder His moral government meanwhile, which passes over no fault on their part of His children, and this because He detests their wrongs, and loves themselves. Were they spurious and not His sons, He would leave their iniquities to meet just doom at the last day,

Typical Aspects of Christ's Death: 2. Atonement

II. Atonement

Redemption by blood and by power being set forth under the first type, the book of Leviticus furnishes the second scripture, in connection with approach to God, standing before Him, and worship. Let us bear in mind that it is the shadow, and not the very image. As with redemption given to an earthly people, in view of the antitype with higher, deeper, and eternal results, so also is it in Lev. 16 where is unfolded the way to God, and having to do with Him in His sanctuary. Thus we see the distinctive truth on the one hand of God appearing as the judge where sin is, but providing the sacrificial means, whereby He could pass over the guilty, and on the other of His appointing the way of approach, consistent with the holiness and majesty of His throne in the sanctuary, as typically seen here. True, the first type laid the basis for the grand and blessed truth of Jehovah come to dwell in the midst of His redeemed people.

With this Leviticus opens, followed by all the varied offerings, and the necessity of having priesthood established, where we at once see the sad failure in the offering of strange fire. But it is the appointed sacrifice, and particularly the use of the blood, on the great Day of Atonement that presents our subject of the way to God and its results. Here the claims of Jehovah and the need of those approaching Him are clearly set forth. There is no uncertain sound: the holiness of the throne and the guilt of the worshipper must find their meeting-place in death and shed blood. Whether for Aaron and his sons or for the people, Jehovah enjoined the death of the appointed victims. If the blood of the slain lamb must be sprinkled on the lintel and side-posts of the houses in Egypt, so that the eye of a sin-hating God might rest on it to free Israel from the pending judgment, equally so must the blood of the bullock and of the goat be taken and sprinkled for those having to do with Him in His sanctuary. Whether Aaron acted for himself and his sons or for the people, he represented all on the unique atonement-day. The word of Jehovah was, “Thus shall Aaron come.”

The blood of each slain victim must be taken within the veil and sprinkled with his finger both upon and before the mercy-seat. But before the blood-sprinkling there was the sign of perfect personal acceptance in the cloud of incense with which the same hands were filled to put upon the altar. Thus for Israel or any others it is established even in a typical way, that the only means of approach to God was by death and sprinkled blood. But this had to be repeated year by year, for no earthly victims could (as the Holy Ghost comments in Heb. 10) perfect those who approached as to the conscience. Not only are these aspects of death absolutely requisite, but the carcasses of the victims must be carried forth and wholly burnt without the camp. Independent of the Burnt-offering, afterward slain, and the many other things of moment on that typical day, the foundation-truth of this way and means of having to do with Jehovah in His sanctuary, and for the established relationship of an earthly nation for His worship as well as acceptance, could only be by death and shed blood.

How significant the voice for to-day, particularly when we consider this one death, His death, in which all centers for God and man. It is not to be wondered at that the Christ of God is thus shadowed. How urgent and momentous it is, that each evangelist should by the Holy Spirit not only present Him in His person, life, and character, but give solemn and varied aspects of His sufferings and death with their effects. Blessed indeed when in any measure God's light, purpose, and truth appear. In eternity we shall know, as we are known. What unfathomable depths of a death, known only to God the righteous Judge of sin, and to the Lamb, the holy and righteous Sufferer Who sustained the judgment due to it! It is especially in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, that His victim character as the Sin-offering appears. Both the sufferings of Gethsemane, and the actual death due to sin are recorded. There was the cup which justice mixed and He in holy horror anticipated. If He desired that it might pass from Him, yet drink it He would, to do the will of God. Then at the cross itself, when under the judgment of God, and making peace by His death and precious blood, He cried “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me”? This consummated the answer to every typical death. The wages of sin was paid, the glory of God vindicated and established, to the everlasting glory of Him Who bore the cross. It was when Jesus died that God gave witness to it by rending the veil, proving that the distance was gone and the way opened; man and God were brought together.

If the Gospels furnish the facts of the death of Christ, it is the Epistles that give the many and varied applications of the one death which is to God's glory, and to blessing without end. It has already been seen as to Ex. 12, both in 1 Peter and the Epistle to the Romans. Antitype to Leviticus is largely found in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Drawing near to God as a worshipper is blessedly seen after the truth of Aaron's Antitype has been gone into, both as to sacrifice and death, giving the entrance by blood into the heavenly sanctuary. It is important to see that there is contrast, particularly in the case of Aaron who needed a slain bullock and the blood of atonement equally for himself, his sons, and the people. But Christ offered Himself for others as the spotless victim to God. Aaron entered within the veil of the earthly tabernacle every year with the blood of animals, and then withdrew; but Christ entered heaven itself in the eternal value of His own blood.

Hence the question of sin being forever settled, Christ forever (or, in perpetuity) sat down on the right hand of God. Such is the mighty work and glorious seat of Him Who became the Antitype to all shadowed forth on the paschal night, and not least on the Day of Atonement. Well might the Holy Ghost come and bear witness to the value of such a death, and its infinitely greater results of blessed contrast, as compared with a nation of earthly worshippers, with Aaron and his sons their priests. Christ has entered heaven, having obtained eternal redemption: and before He comes the second time, the new and living way is open to the believer, who is privileged as a purged worshipper to draw near, not with a conscience eased for a year by the blood of bulls and goats, but ever purged and at rest before God by the blood of Jesus, the everlasting accepted sacrifice, triumphing over all dread of judgment.

Perfect thus as to conscience (with sins remitted to be remembered by God no more), and invited to draw near to God where Christ is, who would not glory in such a death and adoringly worship with all believers? It is the earnest of the everlasting and holy worship which the redeemed will render as its fruit on high.

III. Purification

The foregoing essays have shown, that sacrifice met the full judgment of sin, and opened the way of drawing near to God in holiness, righteousness, and peace. It remains to be seen in type and antitype what the third aspect presents in the same death of God's only and well-beloved Son. “The Lord's death,” ever living in the hearts of the redeemed for eternal praise and worship (but higher still) has, in the estimate of God Himself, righteously founded a basis for His own glorious power, even to create the new heavens and the new earth, where sin and death can never come to disturb His eternal rest. His rest is to be shared in unbroken blessedness by all who in faith have their part in Him and His work, whether we look back on typical days or in the present retrospect, since Christ came, died, and went to heaven, the antitype and substance for life, salvation, and glory.

It is not surprising therefore that the Book of Numbers furnishes a characteristically significant type of Christ's death. The book itself is assuredly as distinct as Exodus and Leviticus, giving us, not redemption by blood and power, nor the way of approaching Jehovah, but the wilderness with its daily walk and circumstances. This too did Jehovah regulate, their leader and protector, whose sanctuary went with them so that they might ever have to do with Him. It was a holy privilege and grave responsibility for a typically redeemed people brought to God, but traversing the wilderness on their way to the promised earthly Canaan. The same nature Israel had before leaving Egypt, sadly expressing itself toward God their Deliverer. For they murmured against Him, loathed the manna provided for their daily food, and despised the pleasant land to which He was faithfully leading them according to His own ways and means. Nothing therefore but His priestly and prerogative grace, as Aaron's chosen and preserved rod of fruit declared, could secure and take them in. How could such a stiff-necked, fickle, rebellious people be maintained consistently with what He is in the holiness of His nature and the majesty of His presence, although hidden within the veil of His earthly tabernacle? It is here the third typical aspect of the death of Christ in its force and suitability comes in. It is provided by Jehovah to meet defilement by the way; so that His people in their wilderness journey might have to do with Him day-by-day. The appointed sacrifice must be a red heifer without spot, that had never borne the yoke (a point of deep import), not only slain but all the carcass, &c. with its blood (save a part enjoined to be sprinkled) consumed in the fire, with hyssop, cedar wood, and scarlet. The whole was to be reduced to ashes, witness therein being given, that death in its extreme effects had taken place. In guarded jealousy a clean person must gather the ashes and lay them up without the camp in a clean place, to be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel as a water of separation. “It is a purification for sin.”

The same infinite wisdom which provided the lamb in Egypt to shut out God as a judge, and the bullock and goat for Aaron's approach as the representative of Israel, makes provision to maintain them by cleansing and purifying from all defilement by the way. What a blessed evidence even, to an earthly people of His loving nearness, and of their having to do with Him in consistency with what He is! It is a fact ever to be borne in mind by us now, leaving it to the same God to define solemnly and clearly what would defile His people; for His sanctuary is their standard.

Touching a dead body, or contact with death in any way or measure, made all unclean and unfit for Him. Such is the holiness of Jehovah for Israel; Whose love no less provided for the unclean person and even their vessels, in applying the ashes with running water sprinkled upon the unclean on the third and the seventh days. Otherwise they would be cut off. Here the privileges of the redeemed, not redemption, are taught. So it is blessedly seen in the antitype having in view communion (not salvation) for those already in relationship to Him. Of course the antitype must ever surpass the type; yet in this instance the sacrifice utters marvelous language in the victim reduced to ashes. Is it not in character with the prophetic Psa. 22 which opens with “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” and goes on to “Thou hast brought Me unto the dust of death?” This the believer sees made good in Christ's own sufferings and death on the cross when God and He settled the question of sin, exhausting once and forever the judgment due to it. Yet who but the sufferer and God can fully estimate its depth and infinite value?

Hence the ashes were laid up as the divine provision, not only for daily walk before Jehovah, but as we can see for present communion with the Father and the Son whilst passing through this evil and defiling world. He Who was God manifest in flesh, shedding light and love in character with what He was, and when in this dark world of sin could say “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again,” no less said “Now is my soul troubled, Father save me from this hour; but for this cause came I unto this hour.” This anticipated hour stands alone in the history of the universe, when He Who knew no sin and did no sin was made sin, and the full action of the divine fire in righteous judgment wholly spent itself on His blessed spotless person. There too, after the full moral test of man, the cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet find their antitype. The two extremes of man's nature in creature greatness and littleness, as well as the glory of the world, were judicially brought to an end in the judgment of the cross.

Clearly it was the one and same death where sin was consumed and God's own glory secured. Christ the Son of man had as the corn of wheat to fall into the ground and die; that by His death all fruit might come. The risen One associates His brethren with Himself and declares His Father to be their Father and His God their God. If such is declared in John 20 to be the fruit of His death, it is in the First Epistle of John that life and relationship in divine certainty are fully declared; as in John 13 is the antitype for communion and restoration associated with the red heifer. The pure source, God's love, and the means, Christ's death, are thus gone into, suitably to eternal life in Christ and relationship to His God and Father. But such grace needed to be, and is, clearly defined. All believers can now gratefully exclaim, “Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God!” and further, “Beloved, now are we children of God.” It is expressly written that such should know they have eternal life and their sins forgiven; yea, “fellowship with the Father and with the Son.”

To this the apostle John in the First Epistle addresses himself, that the children's joy might be full even in this world; a world knowing neither grace nor truth. If Jehovah in His sanctuary was Israel's standard for defilement, God is light in Whom is no darkness at all: such is the standard of those set in that light where the blood of His Son cleanses from all sin. No wonder the apostle says, “My little children, I write unto you that ye sin not; but if any one sin, we have an Advocate with the Father.” It is He Who (in John 13) with water in a basin girded Himself and began to wash His disciples' feet. Jesus, Who came from and returned to God, was on the cross the propitiation for the sins of His own, and also for the whole world. For all sinners were indebted to Him for a death so varied in its manifold aspects.

There is no new application of the, shed blood, which in its divine value is made good to believers once for all. If one sin, the word of God in the power of the Spirit is applied, in answer to loving action of the heavenly Advocate with the Father. This brings before the soul, not only its sin involving loss of communion, but the deep sense of the sacrifice and death of Jesus. This is the true Red Heifer reduced to ashes purifying from defilement along the way. There is the Passover, and the Day of Atonement, the basis for shelter and for acceptance; and there is no less provision also for needed restoration on the way to eternal glory.

Such are the course and ways of God in holiness and love, which all do well to heed in this day of deplorable laxity and worldliness. Let us cherish present fellowship in obedience to our God, Who has formed our relationship in the power of the indwelling Spirit. Happy thus to be journeying through the world, not to an earthly Canaan, but to the Father's house on high, introduced there by Him crowned with the return of Him Whose death secured it and all things. His promise abides for to-day as fresh as at first, “I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am ye may be also.” May communion with the Father and the Son in the power of His life and of the blessed hope be more fully known by all God's children in true separation from all that is contrary. That death He enjoins to be specially before His own on the first day of the week, when gathered to remember Him. Therein do we announce His death till He come. G. G.

Priesthood: 20. Leprosy

Leprosy

Lev. 13:1-8

What a voice to all is the next appalling type of sin, as a living death, and an uncleanness which God alone could meet! For there was no cure naturally. It was for the priest to pronounce on; but not a word about a cure: if healed by preternatural means, offerings were prescribed for cleansing, and this in a wonderfully precise and careful way. It is the standing type of sin in the law; to which the Gospels add palsy, as destroying all strength. Luke, the great moralist among the Synoptics, brings the two together in his chap. 5:12-26, as was his manner, guided by the inspiring Spirit. Here it is set out in a fuller form than any other subject singly in the book; and no wonder sin in the first is all pervading, and has dismal consequences in his surroundings and his home.

“And Jehovah spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a swelling, or a scab, or a bright spot, and it becometh in the skin of his flesh a stroke of leprosy, then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest, or to one of his sons the priests. And when the priest looketh on the stroke in the skin of his flesh, and the hair in the stroke is turned white, and the stroke looketh deeper than the skin of his flesh, it [is] the stroke of leprosy; and the priest shall look on him and pronounce him unclean. But if the bright spot [be] white in the skin of his flesh, and look not deeper than the skin, and the hair be not turned white, the priest shall shut up [him that hath] the stroke seven days. And the priest shall look on him the seventh day; and, behold, in his sight the stroke remaineth as it was, the stroke hath not spread in the skin, then the priest shall shut him up seven days a second time. And the priest shall look on him again the seventh day, and, behold, the stroke [is] become pale, the stroke hath not spread in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him clean; it [is] a scab; and he shall wash his garments, and be clean. But if the scab have spread much in the skin, after he hath been seen by the priest for his cleansing, he shall be seen again by the priest; and the priest shall look on him, and, behold, the scab hath spread in the skin; then the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it [is] leprosy” (vers. 1-8).

Even in the type it was a holy rather than a medical question. Leprosy was not a malady so much as a stroke or plague; and the priest looked on the suspect with minute direction from Jehovah. It was not the diagnosis of a physician. As the consequence was most serious to an Israelite, the most scrupulous care was due in the priest. Uncleanness from birth was a fact patent, and there Jehovah spoke to Moses for what concerned every mother and child. For leprosy He spoke to Moses and to Aaron. The leper represents, not a Christian but man in the flesh, Israel under the first covenant. Sin works and manifests itself; but haste to pronounce on evil when manifest or at work, is as far from God as indifference to it; both the reverse of grace. The priest, or spiritual man conversant with the presence of God, judges according to the written word.

There might appear in the skin of the flesh a swelling, or a scab, or a bright spot. The issues of leprosy differed in look like the motions of sin; but any of them indicate what is hateful to God; and the man must be scrutinized by Aaron or one of his sons. For us it is the mind of Christ, and as the judgment is of those within divine privilege, it involves the responsibility of pleasing God. We are not in the flesh like Israel, but the flesh is in us; and therefore we must mortify our members which are on the earth. All scripture is profitable to us, even if it be not about us.

The priest then was to look on the suspected plague or stroke in the skin of the man's flesh; and if the hair in the stroke were turned white, and the appearances of the stroke were not superficial but deeper than the skin of his flesh, leprosy was too surely indicated. Jehovah requires, not report, but personal inspection on the priest's part; and if there be proof of a present energy of evil at work, and yet more of no mere passing outbreak, but of persistent and deliberate and deeply penetrating evil, doubt is precluded, and the man must be pronounced unclean. There might be “the bright spot,” but no deep purpose underneath, and no active evil in result. In this case the priest shut up the case seven days, though he could not dismiss it as clear, for there was an appearance of evil plainly enough; but as there was no more, he waits patiently. On the seventh he looks again, and if there be no spreading in the skin but the stroke be at a stay, he shuts the man up seven days more. Then he looks, and if the stroke be pale and dim, and no spread of it in the skin, the man is pronounced clean. It is but a scab; and he is to wash his clothes, and be clean. But if the scab spread, after he had shown himself to the priest for cleansing, he shall show himself to the priest again, and the priest sees the spreading, the truth must be spoken, for the evil is at work; and the priest shall pronounce him unclean. It is leprosy. It must not be hid. “Thy will be done.”

The Day of Atonement: 6. The Two Goats Part 3

The Two Goats

It is a wonderfully blessed thing to know that God has been pleased to bring us who believe into nothing but favor; if it were not so, even after pardon, we should be lost over and over again. But salvation is a condition that attaches to the believer through his course; and how is this marked? That there is, not only propitiation to meet the character of God, that He may proclaim His love in Christ to every creature; but also substitution to secure an absolute cleansing of all the sins of every believer. The two things are purposely put in juxtaposition to give an adequate view of the difference between propitiation and substitution, which together constitute the atonement set forth by the two goats.

There is a continual tendency in the different classes, even of believers in Christendom, to ignore one or other of these truths. Take for instance those zealous that the gospel go out to every creature. It is notorious that most of these deny God's special favor to the elect. They overlook or pare down any positive difference on God's part toward His own children. They hold that a man throughout his course may be a child of God to-day and not to-morrow. This destroys substitution. They hold propitiation, and there they are right, and quite justified in preaching the gospel unrestrictedly to every creature, as the Lord indeed enjoined. But how their one-sidedness enfeebles the proper portion of the saints! They cannot but reduce to a minimum the rich unfolding of divine love in the settled relationships of faith, as He has revealed in the apostolic Epistles generally, whence they try to cull out appeals to the unconverted, or attenuate what is meant for God's children, if they do not dangerously extend their privileges to the unsaved.

But look now for a moment at the opposite side, which holds that all God has done and reveals is in view of the elect only, that all He has wrought in Christ Jesus is in effect for the church, and that He does not care about the world, except to judge it at the last day. This may be put rather bluntly; for I do not present such grievous narrowness toward man and dishonor of God and His Son in as polished terms as those might desire who cherish notions so unsavory and unsound. But it is true that a certain respectable class around us do see nothing but the elect as the object of God. Their doctrine supposes only the second goat, or the people's lot. They see the all-importance of substitution, but Jehovah's lot has no place as distinct.

How came the two contending parties of religionists not to see both the goats? The word of God reveals both. Why is it that those, who rightly urge that the message of God's grace should freely go out to every creature, fail to hold the security of the believer too? Oh what a blotting-out of Christ's love to the church! Such is the inevitable result of taking up one part of the truth and setting it against another. Thus we see the importance of holding, not merely a truth, but the truth. Here plainly there are two goats. The goat of propitiation is to provide in the fullest manner for the glory of God, even where sin is before Him. In fulfilling it, what was the consequence? Christ was forsaken of God that the believer should never be forsaken. He bore the judgment of sin that God's glory might be immutably established in righteousness. Thus grace in the freest way can and does now go out to every creature here below.

But there is much more. Besides opening the sluices that divine love might flow freely everywhere, we also find another line of truth altogether: the fullest and nicest care that those who are His children should be kept in peace and blessing. They had been guilty or indifferent as others to God. They were children of wrath and served Satan truly as the worst of those who refuse the gospel. And see how God has provided for their evil, when we come to the goat of substitution. “Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquity of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their iniquities.” Language seems almost to fail, in order to express the provision of grace in securing relief to the people, whatever their sins and iniquity. God took care, not only to indicate His own glory and nature, but to give them knowledge of salvation by the remission of their sins. The sins are all out to be borne away.

Even the type demonstrates, it is evident, that we require these two distinct truths to maintain the balance of God's truth. It is a blessed thing to hold the outgoing of God's grace to every creature, but not at the sacrifice of the security of those who believe. Thus only is manifested in any measure of truth that firm rock on which the elect stand. Their salvation is as sure as the message of grace is free. Supposing one blur the difference between the two goats, and crush them up, so to say, into one indistinguishable mass—the dead and the live goat—and deny any difference between them, what is the effect? Either that you become simply devoted to the gospel that God sends to every sinner under heaven, or that you become shut up to think only of the elect and their salvation. The worst is that each in his shortsight virtually makes out God. to be such a One as himself. It is plain that these two things are each of exceeding importance if not taken up exclusively. But, as parts of the truth, they are admirably held together; they compose God's truth. It is quite true that in the first goat God has secured His majesty, and His righteous title to send forth His message of love to every creature. Again, in the second goat He has equally cared for the assurance of His people, that all their sins, transgressions, and iniquities, are completely borne away. How could the truth of atonement be more admirably shown by types beforehand?

Only let us preserve the order of the subjects as far as possible. Therefore must one point out the way in which the blessed truth of atonement exceeds the type of both goats. It may seem hard for some to admit such a possibility; but it will be a privilege to be shown that there is an advance in truth connected with “the bullock.” This has its own peculiarity for those who are the object of that great offering; and its perfect answer and solution are given in the N. T. But the general distinction between the two goats, I trust, has been sufficiently cleared, and the necessity seen for them both. Let me confirm it by drawing attention to a verse given rightly in the Authorized Version, with a grievous defect in the Revised Version. It is no recondite point, nor open to serious doubt nor of any real difficulty. Being intimately connected with the subject before us, it claims a notice here.

In Rom. 3:22 we read these words, “Even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all, and upon all them that believe.” There we have the principle of the two goats, or the truth which answers to them. “The righteousness of God unto (εἰς) all” is what corresponds with Jehovah's lot. God is not the God of Israel only, as the Jews always sought to make out. Is He not the God of Gentiles also? It is exactly what the apostle says in this chapter a little farther on, “Yes, of Gentiles also, seeing God is one, who shall justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision through their faith.” But here we have it in the form, “The righteousness of God, by faith in Jesus Christ unto all,” after which words there ought to be a comma to make it strictly correct.

Next comes in the answer to the second goat, “and upon (ἐπὶ) all them that believe.” Here is implied the security of the believer. It is not “unto all them that believe.” “Unto” thus distinguished is a tendency or direction; and, even when meaning more, it may not reach all. This is exactly what the gospel is— “unto all.” The gospel addresses itself to every creature; as also every soul is bound to receive the testimony of God's grace, which puts upon them the responsibility of bowing in their hearts to it as from God. As it is “unto all,” he who does not preach it “unto all” misunderstands his duty as a herald of the gospel. On the other hand, the righteousness of God is not merely “unto all them that believe,” but “upon” them. What does “upon” represent here? The effect produced; which is not upon all mankind, but only “upon all that believe.” We have therefore to distinguish two objects in this verse: the universal aspect of the gospel in going out to every creature; and the positive effect upon all those that believe.

Here the A. V. exactly gives the truth; what of the R. V.? The revisers, oblivious of a mistake common even in ancient copies (of which some of the company seemed almost idolaters), followed the favorites blindly. Wherever a word is followed by the same word, perhaps in the next phrase one of the commonest slips (by writers to-day, as with early scribes) is to skip over the words between the two. The old copies, Ν A B C P, with two juniors and some ancient versions, would ordinarily have the greatest weight; but here they appear by a merely clerical blunder to have passed from the first “all” (πάντας) to the second with the fatal effect described.

That later copyists could have invented the admirably correct and comprehensive distinction, which the common text intimates, is too much to conceive. The distinction is also especially Pauline; which none of the copyists even understood, any more than some modern commentators. Theodoret may interpret unwisely, but he writes unhesitatingly about two clauses; as indeed they are attested by ancient versions older than any existing MSS. But a real conflation is ever feeble, if not false.

A slip might naturally ruin a nicely poised and fully stated truth, entirely beyond mediaeval mind to construct. The effect of the slip is, “The righteousness of God unto all them that believe.” Such is the form in which it is given in the Revised Version. What is the consequence? That they give us an unscriptural platitude. They unwittingly take from scripture its edge and fullness. “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him.” They have mixed up the two forms of the truth, so that one cannot get at either. The hotch-potch of both destroys the exact sense of each.

The change means that there is not a word “unto all” sinners as such, whilst all believers receive a mere offer of the gospel. “The righteousness of God is unto all believers,” if they like to accept it. Thus is effaced the effect of the gospel upon all that believe, while the mercy to unbelievers vanishes away, because His righteousness is only “unto all them that believe.” If the words omitted be read, the double truth is given in perfection. This the revisers virtually treat as a blunder of the scribes. But when did mere man ever invent so nice and full a statement of the truth? The change leaves not the smallest ground here for preaching the gospel to the unconverted; while the safety of the believer thereby and equally disappears. Yet this mutilated and emasculated sense is given, as if a perfectly adequate authority sustained it, although any one easily sees, when it is once pointed out, how readily the intervening words might be omitted. The twofold truth of God is marred in the passage, and we are deprived of that which answers in the antitype to both the first goat and the second. (concluded)

Proverbs 12:15-22

A fool's way and a fool's vexation introduce the verses which now claim our heed, where the utterance of truth and wisdom follows with weighty instruction in righteousness.

“The way of a fool [is] right in his own eyes; but he that is wise hearkeneth to counsel.

The vexation of the fool is known presently (in that day); but he that concealeth shame is prudent.

One uttering truth showeth forth righteousness, but a false witness deceit.

There is that babbleth like the piercings of a sword; but the tongue of the wise [is] health.

The lip of truth shall be established forever; but a lying tongue [is] but for a moment.

Deceit [is] in the heart of those that devise evil; but to the counselors of peace [is] joy.

No evil shall happen to the righteous; but the wicked shall be filled with mischief.

Lying lips [are] an abomination to Jehovah; but those that deal truly are his delight” (vers. 15-22).

For man with a fallen nature and in a fallen world to confide in himself is to play the fool. God is not in any of His thoughts. He is sure he needs no advice; he is right in his own eyes. What can his eyes do but help him to judge according to sight, which the Lord contrasts with judging righteous judgment? and what so dangerous as every question of self. For there is nothing a man dislikes more than thinking ill of himself, unless it is of believing good of God. Truly the way of a fool is right in his own eyes. He that is wise distrusts himself and hearkens to counsel; nor does he cheat God and his conscience by seeking counsel of the weak and easy-going but of the godly.

The vexation of the fool breaks out in immediate and uncontrollable anger. He forgets God, himself, and every body else. On the other hand he is prudent who conceals rather than exposes shame; he feels the insult, instead of despising his brother, and steeling his own breast in worldly pride. But his quiet spirit adds no fuel to the flame, and helps the offender perhaps to judge his unbridled impropriety. How prudent to ignore such provocations, to conceal shame not only from others but from ourselves!

To utter truth simply, and characteristically, in a world where men walk in a vain show, is a real display of righteousness; and the righteous Jehovah loves righteousness. There may be deeper and higher truth now that the Son of God is come and has given us understanding to know Him that is true. But righteousness is indispensable; without it pretension to grace is a delusion. Again, a false witness is an evident slave of Satan. To mistake we are all liable; but deceit is quite a different and a most evil thing, as mischievous to man as offensive to God.

Babbling or rash speaking is compared most aptly to the piercings of a sword; it inflicts wounds and pain; it flows from levity if not malice, and it has no aim of good. The tongue of the wise carries conviction to every upright heart. It may smite if duty call for it righteously, but it is a kindness: such wounds heal, as they prove and remove what only harms. The tongue of the wise is health.

The lip of truth may be gainsaid and disliked by such as have reason to dread it, but it shall stand forever. There is no need therefore to spend time in defending it or exposing those that are its adversaries. If one waits quietly, the more will its reality and importance appear; whereas a lying tongue is but for a moment save among such as love it; and where will the end be?

Of falsehood deceit is the essence; and here it is written that it is in the heart of those that devise evil. Thus it is equally akin to malice as to untruth. How awful that the heart which should be the spring of affection is really given up to devise evil! If others are deceived, still more is that heart.

But to the counselors of peace is joy.” Blessed are they, said the Lord; they shall be called sons of God. Theirs is joy now; theirs to enter into their Lord's joy by-and-by.

How triumphant is the Christian answer in Rom. 8 to verse 21! “No evil shall happen to the righteous.” Suppose “tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? But in all these things we more than conquer through Him that loved us.” Christ has changed all things to us. How terrible to reject, despise, or even neglect Him! For then all our evil falls on our own heads. Truly the wicked are not fuller of mischief now than of misery in that day and forever.

Jehovah concerns Himself about every lie. Lying lips are an abomination to Him, even as an idol that is set up to rival and ruin His glory. So those that not only speak but deal truly are His delight. How precious to Him was the One Who, when asked, Who art thou? could answer, “Absolutely what I also speak to you” (John 8:25). He is the truth.

Gospel Words: Blind Bartimaeus

No sight was more characteristic of our Lord's ministry than His grace to the blind. It has the first place given to it in the answer to John the Baptist's message. A special case is presented in Matt. 9:27, another in Mark 8:22, and the more general fact in Luke 7:21 with other cures, but the most marked of all in John 9. Yet there is this striking circumstance common to the three earlier Gospels, that the final testimony which the Lord offers to the Jews in or near Jerusalem opens with the healing of the blind man near Jericho. Only Matthew, as his manner is, tells us of two (compare 8:28, 9:27). Mark and Luke were led to dwell on what was for other reasons the more remarkable of them. It is idle to conceive separate occasions, one on entering and the other in quitting Jericho. For Matthew and Mark are express that the miracle was wrought on going out from the town. The phrase of Luke is so indeterminate as to fall in with that statement. He does not say, “as he drew nigh” or “when he came near” to Jericho; but while in the neighborhood. This was as true when He went out as when He came in.

“And they come to Jericho, and as he was going out from Jericho and his disciples and a considerable crowd, the son of Timmus, Bartimaeus the blind, was sitting by the wayside begging. And having heard that it was Jesus the Nazarene, he began to cry out and say, O Son of David, Jesus, have mercy on me. And many were rebuking him that he might be silent, but he cried out so much the more, Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stood still and said that he should be called. And they call the blind, saying to him, Be of good courage, rise: he calleth thee. And, throwing away his garment, he sprang up and came unto Jesus. And Jesus in answer said to him, What wilt thou that I should do to thee? And the blind said, Teacher (Rabboni), that I may receive sight. And Jesus said to him, Go thy way; thy faith hath healed (saved) thee. And immediately he received sight, and followed him in the way” (vers. 46-52).

Observe how the blind Israelites at the beginning of our Lord's ministry appeal to Him as Son of David. It was a matter of revealed promise that Messiah should open their eyes; and as they believed with their heart, they confessed with their mouth, and got the blessing. It was not so with the Canaanite, though she too believed, and with rare faith. But like many a believer, she at first applied on a wrong ground; from which the Lord led her into the right and true, that she might all the better enjoy the grace that awaited her. Here the call on the Son of David exactly suits the ways of God, when Christ finally presented Himself to the people, about to consummate His rejection to their own utter ruin for the present. It is the starting-point for His last Messianic offer to Jerusalem, where the blind that cried in faith were made to see, and those who said they saw were made blind for their unbelief and enmity.

O my reader, call on the Lord, like the once blind Bartimaeus. Hitherto you have been blind, and have followed blind leaders into the ditch. But Jesus still waits to heal and extricate you. Fear not. Be of good courage, if now you feel your need, and believe that all authority and power are His. Does He not call you as truly as He did the son of Timmus? Read not His words so unbelievingly. These things are written that you may believe unto life and salvation. Profit by the lesson of his earnest importunity. Many, who felt not their own need any more than his, kept rebuking him. It was not decorum—in their view who were traveling at ease to perdition. Such cries might be well on the sabbath perhaps, and no doubt on a dying bed; but they were wholly objectionable by the wayside and before a crowd.

The Lord heard as He ever does the call of distress and of faith, took His stand, and bade him be brought before Him. And how graphic the sketch, and instructive the eagerness of the blind man casting away his cloak that he might get to the Lord! Poor as he was, he must lay aside every hindrance and go to Him at once. And Jesus answered his heart, and drew out its desire: “Great Teacher, that I may receive sight.” And immediately was it given; he also followed Jesus in the way. For this His sheep do. It is their instinct of life in Him; as it is His word to them, that they may be kept in a world of evil, snares, and danger. But the Lord Jesus guides and guards His own, yet not without their hearing His voice and following Him all the way through. And a stranger will they not follow, as the rule (the only right and safe rule), but will flee from him; for they know not the voice of strangers.

Can you say, dear reader, that you have received sight from Jesus? If not, be assured that you are blind as well as in your sins. You are trusting baptism or religious observances or your clergyman in vain, if you suppose that any or all these can give you sight, or life, or propitiation for your sins. Only Jesus avails in answer to your faith, and even Jesus can give you all only by His death for you a guilty sinner. Look to Him, and be saved.

1 Peter 1:23

Yet the purification of the believer's soul, effected as it is already, is not all that enforces brotherly affection unfeigned and fervent. Our new birth as saints has this love essentially in its nature, as surely as it is through God's word. So the passage proceeds—

“Having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through God's living and abiding word” (ver. 23).

It is not without intention that the participle of the active perfect is employed in ver. 22, and of the passive perfect in ver. 23. Rigid Calvinism seems hardly compatible with the former, nor rigid Arminianism with either. Revealed truth, large no less than exact, insists on both as a settled standing of grace; on which is based the call to be imitators of God as children beloved, and to walk in love, as the apostle of uncircumcision exhorts us. It is not that purification precedes the new birth as matter of fact; for to be born anew is the first vital dealing of grace with the soul, but purification attests it.

Evangelicalism is here utterly lame and short, if we may judge by the theological text-books, and such discourses as meet the public eye. Of course, one could not expect sound doctrine from Romanist divines; but those considered orthodox Protestants are on this scarcely better. Their idea is a change on man by the Spirit's action through the word of God on his faculties, which are no longer devoted to self and Satan but directed to His service. But this is rather descriptive of the effect than a statement of the operating cause or means under His hand. Scripture is abundant and clear that a life is given to the believer (and Christ is this life, as the old one is from Adam fallen), which acts through our faculties on objects revealed by God and far beyond those of natural life. Thus, as our Lord taught, one sees and enters the kingdom, not only by-and-by but now by faith; or as the apostle puts it, translated by the Father into the kingdom of the Son of His love.

In vain do unbelieving professors, or saints misled by tradition, decry this now order of being as mystic. For the life of which the saint partakes was comparatively hidden from O.T. believers; yet they had it in Him Who had not yet appeared, but was truly hoped for. Now since Christ came, this and much more is cleared up; and the believer is assured that he has it as a present thing, whatever be the added blessedness at His coming again when the body is swallowed up by the life which the soul has already in Christ. For indeed it is life eternal, and so declared even now; and woe to him who is emboldened by the enemy to deny it! For this is the soil out of which grow the fruits of the Spirit working on the inner man to the glory of Christ its source, a life even now quite as real and incomparably more blessed and momentous than the old Adamic life. Calvin is almost as vague as the rest; only Leighton here speaks as one taught of God as far as he goes.

We have then been begotten again, as not even the Jews were, whatever their boast of being Abraham's seed and of never being in bondage to any, at the very time when they were undeniably slaves to the Romans for their apostasy, and of their father the devil, in believing his lie against Him Who is the true God and the life eternal. But the believer has been begotten, “not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible,” not of man or through man, but through God's living and abiding word. So the Lord declared to Nicodemus, Except one be born anew (i.e. of water and of Spirit), he can neither see nor enter the kingdom of God (John 3:37). That which is born of flesh is flesh; and that which is born of Spirit is spirit. The flesh does not become spirit, any more than the spirit becomes flesh. The life given is of God, in Christ, and by the Spirit who employs the word here figured as often by “water.” To bring in baptism here is not only foreign to the context, but opposed to all the scriptures which treat of the subject. James 1:18 is as adverse as Paul (1 Cor. 4:15), and John (15:3) no less than the text of Peter before us. Very likely all the fathers who discuss it join in gross and superstitious error; and Calvin may have been the first of the theologians, as Hooker says, who rejected the error; but so much the greater is their shame. This truth is transparent.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Second Corinthians

Chap. 5 Special Design. 36. 2 Corinthians

The Second Epistle does not admit of sections so defined as in the First, being less ecclesiastical and dogmatic. It is restorative rather than corrective, and overflows with the sense of God's compassion and encouragement in the midst of tribulation and sufferings. The address here, “to the church of God that is in Corinth” adds, not “with all that in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours,” but quite appropriately, “with all the saints that are in all Achaia.” It is less external and more intimate: not thanks for gifts and power but blessing for delivering grace.

The apostle's heart was full. He had drunk deeply of Christ's sufferings; but now his encouragement also abounded through Christ; and both, he assures them, were for their encouragement and salvation. If they had passed through sufferings, he would have them know what had been his in Asia, “when excessively pressed beyond power, so as to despair even of living.” Having the sentence of death within to trust in the God of resurrection, he yet confides, counting now on their prayers for thanksgiving also. And as conscience had begun its good work in them, he can speak of his own, and explain as he did not in the First Epistle why he had not gone to Corinth. Their state forbade it, not his levity, nor aught of fickleness as some said. This leads on to a wondrous assertion of God's immutable word of grace in His Son, and the no less power of our establishment and enjoyment by the Holy Spirit, with which he ends chap. 1, assuring them now of his love in desiring to see them at Corinth only with joy.

Little did the Corinthians conceive his grief and earnest desire for joy from them (chap. 2). Not only had he and they grieved, but sufficient to the one who had caused it by his evil was this punishment by the many. They should show grace now, lest he should be swallowed up with grief, and their obedience in confirming love as they had in judging. In blessed grace and ungrudging maintenance of the church's place, the apostle says, “To whom ye forgive anything, I also, for what I also have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, [it was] for your sakes in Christ's person, that no advantage be gained over us by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his devices.” What a contrast with either the assumption or the indifference of worldly religion! What a defeat he anticipates of Satan's aim! This again gives occasion for their learning how his heart yearned over them right through. At Troas though a door was opened in the Lord and he came for the gospel, he had no rest for his spirit at not finding Titus, but went on to Macedonia, where he met him and got good tidings of Corinth. Was this a loss? “Thanks be to God who always leadeth us in triumph in Christ and manifesteth through us the savor of his knowledge in every place.” The apostle identifies himself with the gospel, a sweet savor to God in the saved and in the perishing. And who is competent for these things? He was not as the many, trading with the word of God; he gave it as purely as he received it from God.

Chap. 3 contrasts the law with the gospel, and in particular exposes the mixture of the two, the favorite device of those who misread Christ. For did he begin to commend himself? Did he need letters of commendation to them or from them? They were his letter, written on his heart, manifested that they were Christ's letter! What grace for the apostle so to write of them! What an honor for them so to hear His competency was from God Who made us competent, new covenant ministers, not of letter but of spirit; for letter kills, but spirit quickens. Then in a parenthesis, which includes from verse 7 to the end of verse 16, he sets out the law graven on stones, as a ministry of death and condemnation, introduced with glory but annulled; whilst the ministry of the Spirit and righteousness is the surpassing glory, and the abiding in glory. The Lord is the spirit of what in the letter only kills; but where the Spirit is, there is liberty. Law was a veiled system like Moses' face; whereas in the gospel “we all with unveiled face looking on the glory of the Lord are transformed according to the same image from glory unto glory as by the Lord the Spirit.”

Therefore having this ministry, and being shown mercy, we faint not. Grace banished fear and dishonesty, and gave by manifestation of the truth to commend oneself to every conscience of man in the sight of God. So chap. 4 begins. All is out in the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ. Man is lost, man under law most guilty and blinded by the god of this age; God in the glory of His grace has the believer face to face without a veil. Self is not our object, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves your bondmen for Jesus' sake. But we have this treasure yet in earthen vessels, that the surpassingness of the power may be of God and not out of us; in everything afflicted, but not straitened, always bearing about in the body the putting to death of Jesus that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body. Such is the principle; then comes the fact: “For we that live are ever delivered unto death on account of Jesus—that the life also of Jesus, might be manifested in our mortal flesh.” This life works in others: we believe, and therefore speak, knowing Him Who raised up the Lord Jesus and will raise and present us with those we serve for His sake. Far from our fainting, the inward man is renewed day-by-day. Our momentary light affliction works for us a surpassingly eternal weight of glory, looking as we do at, not the seen, but the unseen and eternal things.

In chap. 5 we have the power of life in Christ tested not only by death but by judgment. The Christian is shown more than conqueror thereby, as, if dead, rising like Christ, and if living, mortality swallowed up of life (vers. 1-4). Nor does Christ's judgment seat abate the constant confidence, for our manifestation before Him will only prove the perfectness of His redemption, though there may be loss also. The glory begun abides. Then the love of Christ constrains, besides the sense of the terror of the Lord for such as meet judgment in their nakedness, so that we persuade men to receive the gospel. The judgment of charity is, that “One died for all: therefore all died;” and He died for all “that the living [which is only by faith in Him] should live no longer to themselves but to him who died and was raised.” Even Christ after the flesh is known no more, but dead, risen, and glorified. So if one be in Christ, there is a new creation; the old things are passed, behold, they are become new; and all are of the God Who reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ and gave us, the ministry of the reconciliation. This he explains to the end, characterized by God in this way and now based on Christ's work.

Chap. 6 describes this ministry of God's grace; not only in its source and distinctive properties and glorious end, but in its irreproachable character and its deep exercises through all circumstances. Assuredly the Corinthians were not straitened in Paul, as he could now freely tell them; it was in their own affections. But true largeness of heart goes with thorough separateness from all evil. The exhortation follows against any incongruous yoke with unbelievers. What has a Christian to do with helping to draw the world's car? Righteousness, light, and Christ forbid such a part. What agreement too has God's temple with idols? The saints are a living God's temple, more deeply than the O.T. expressed; wherefore the call to come out of their midst and be separate and touch no unclean thing was the more imperative. How they knew themselves received, God's Fatherhood, and their own sonship, the gospel had already proved. “Having then these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every pollution of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in God's fear” (chap. 7:1) is the real close of the chapter.

In chap. 7:2-16 the apostle concludes what had been interrupted by the marvelous exposition of the Spirit's ministration of the gospel, the matter of grief which grace had turned into blessing. He enlarges on what chapter 2 only touched, and lets them know what his letter cost him, when he knew its effect on them. It was grief according to God working out repentance to salvation unregrettable. Love is of God, and creates happiness rising above self, sorrow, sin, and Satan. The grief of the world works out death. The teaching is highly valuable, not only in a moral way but in the light of God cast on the assembly's clearance of itself from the evil which it is bound to judge in the last resort. “In everything ye proved yourselves to be pure in the matter.”

The way was now clear for the apostle happily to treat fully of that collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem, which he had briefly introduced in the last chapter of his First Epistle. Now that grace was doing its work, he can speak of the grace bestowed on the Macedonian assemblies in their own deep poverty and trial. And beyond hope it was; for they gave themselves first “to the Lord, and to us by God's will.” Taking nothing himself from the rich Corinthians, Paul was the more earnest for others; not as commanding, but, through the zeal of others, proving also the genuineness of their love. As they abounded in much, let them abound in this grace too. What a motive and pattern is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ! He simply gave in this his mind—he would not say more. It was expedient, or profitable, for those who purposed a year ago to perform. A willing mind was the great thing without burdening any. Titus too was jealous for them; and Paul sent with him the brother whose praise was in the gospel through all the assemblies and chosen by them as “our fellow-traveler with this grace.” For the apostle was careful to provide things honest not only before the Lord but also before men. Hence he sent a second unnamed brother (22) of oft-proved diligence, but now much more diligent “through his [not, I think, Paul's] great confidence as to you.” They were to show the proof therefore (chap. 7).

Yet another chapter (9) is devoted to the theme. He knew their ready mind, of which he boasted to the Macedonians, that Achaia, (of which Roman province Corinth was the metropolis) was prepared a year ago; and he would not that “we, not to say, ye,” should be put to shame. Nor does he fail, in awakening their souls to the joy of grace practically, to remind them that God loves a cheerful giver; and would have us abound to every good work, with thanksgiving to God as the result. Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift, the spring of all grace by us.

In the later chapters (10-13) he vindicates his authority, entreating them by the meekness and gentleness of Christ; let others boast of natural appearance or of fleshly arms. His arms were powerful according to God for overthrowing strongholds, and leading captive every thought unto the obedience of Christ. He was ready to avenge all disobedience when their return to it was fulfilled. If boasting somewhat more abundantly of what the Lord gave him, he would not be put to shame. As strong by letters when absent, so he would be present in deed. He had not gone beyond the measure God had apportioned, but hoped, their faith increasing, to be enlarged among them, and yet more to evangelize beyond them, instead of boasting in another's rule as to things ready. He that boasts, let him boast in the Lord; for not he that commends himself is approved, but whom the Lord commends (chap. 10).

Jealous over the beloved Corinthians, whom he had espoused (he says in chapter 11) as a chaste virgin to Christ, he fears lest their thoughts should be corrupted from simplicity as to Christ. In the most touching way he asks if he committed sin in abasing himself that they might be exalted, and in everything kept himself from being burdensome to them, though Macedonian brethren supplied his wants. God knew whether it was lack of loving them; but so he did to cut off occasion from some wishing it, against whom he thunders as deceitful workers. To speak of his own devotion, labors, and sufferings, he counts to speak as a fool; but we are indebted to that unworthy occasion for details of the deepest interest. They had compelled him in their folly (chap. 11). Was there any heroism in being let down in a basket through a window by the wall?

In chapter 7 he glories in what “a man in Christ” he knows (without saying who, for flesh had no part in it) experienced when caught up to the third heaven. Otherwise he gloried, not in anything man loves to attach to his name, but “in his infirmities.” He knew not even whether it was in the body or out of the body; so. completely was it apart from all living associations or nature, before God in the glory of His Paradise. Yet was it as a check to this unequaled distinction (of the deepest moment to all subsequent life and service), lest he should be exalted by the exceeding greatness of the revelations, that there was given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him. Nay more, he tells us that he prayed the Lord thrice for its removal, but had the answer, “My grace sufficeth thee, for power is perfected in weakness.” It is dependence in faith, the true and signal secret of all Christianity in practice. “Behold, this third time I am ready to come to you.” He had been at Corinth once and long. Only their state, and his desire to come when they were restored, hindered him when ready to come a second time. This is the true force of coming a “third time.” How painful to such a heart to rebut the imputation of craft, when they could not deny his personal unselfishness! or of their supposing he was excusing himself to them! All was really in love for their edifying; but he feared lest perhaps on coming he should find them not as he wished, and he be found by them such as they did not wish.

Chapter 8 closes this part and the entire Epistle with an overwhelming appeal, not only spoiled by false punctuation in the Authorized and Revised Versions, but making way for wrong doctrine at issue with the gospel. “Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me (who is not weak toward you but is powerful among you, for he was crucified of weakness, yet he liveth of God's power; for we too are weak in him, but we shall live with him by God's power toward you), try yourselves whether ye be in the faith, prove your, selves, Or recognize ye not as to yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you? unless indeed ye be reprobate” (3-5). As this alternative was the last thought which could occur to the childish vanity which questioned Paul's apostleship, the application turns on their own standing in the faith. As surely as they were in it, he was an apostle to them. If Christ were not in them, they were reprobates and not entitled to speak on such a question. Where was their vaporing now? But his prayer was that they might do nothing evil, and his joy to be weak if they were powerful, praying also for their perfecting, and writing thus when absent that when present he might spare severity. He adds a farewell message of suited tenderness and care, with a commendation which speaks to the hearts of all believers ever since. Who, accepting it from God, has not profited?

Scripture Queries and Answers: Persevering in the. . .; No Mention of the Jordan

Q.-Acts 2:42. Are we still responsible to “persevere in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles, in the breaking of the bread and the prayers”? How sadly loose the enclosed tract! LONDON.

A.-Assuredly. The Lord's name was the central object which by the Spirit gathered saints into unity, and became the standard to judge what was inconsistent in doctrine and ways. So the apostles taught; as the saints were called to walk in their fellowship. The breaking of the bread expressed it openly; and the prayers sought grace of the Lord in vigilance against everything that imperiled what was due to Him. Schisms wrought at Corinth from an early day; dissensions or disputes at Rome later. Alas! those internal workings of the flesh portended the “sects,” or outside factions, which the apostle told the Corinthians must also be where a contentious or an otherwise carnal will was unjudged (1 Cor. 11:18, 19, Gal. 5:20). To Titus (3:10) he gave authoritative instructions how to deal with the independency which refused to keep the unity of the Spirit: “after a first and second admonition have done with” such. There was no sense in putting out one who in self-sufficient in-subjection had gone out: “such a one is perverted, and sinneth, being self-condemned.”

There were of old persons among us who, never having adequately felt the ruin-state of the church, endeavored (perhaps unwittingly) to imitate the apostles in setting up elders, and in restoring the church. But this was rejected strongly by those who upheld the unity of the Spirit, as incumbent on the “two or three” wherever gathered to the Lord's name, in as thorough subjection to the word as when all stood in unbroken order and peace. It is false that any visible body was, or was sought to be, formed by learning better the duties of fellowship; or that acting together as “one” in a town, which scripture requires, led to manifest central authorities, which it rather helped to counteract, and is therefore distasteful to aspirants. Hence the effort of adversaries to brand the revealed truth or acting on it with the very evils which are their own.

Think too of the decency for one justly excluded from fellowship writing on “Fellowship”! and abusing persons, names, and their words to support the grievous laxity which they always abhorred Truly “the unjust knoweth no shame.” The tract is indeed deceitful claptrap, as opposed to truth as to holiness.

Q.-Heb. 11:29, 30. Please explain why there is no mention of the Jordan.

A.-The Epistle characteristically dwells on the actual walk through the desert (and so the tabernacle) rather than the land (save in prospect). Hence we have the Red Sea crossed, not the Jordan which would suit the line of truth in the Epistle to the Ephesians.

by W. Kelly
THE BOOK OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.
LECTURES ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, Cr. 8vo. cloth, 3/6.
AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, 8vo. cloth, 7/6.
ON THE LORD'S PRAYER, a New Edition, 3d.
THE FEASTS OF JEHOVAH, a New Edition, 6d.

Later THE DAY OF ATONEMENT, a New Edition in Prep. TITUS & PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth, 2/-. Ca. THE REVELATION LONDON: T. WESTON, 53, PATERNOSTER Row, E.C.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Isaac Blessing Esau

Gen. 27:30-40

We have now to hear of Esau and his blessing.

“And it came to pass when Isaac had ended blessing Jacob, and when Jacob was hardly gone out from before Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came from his hunting. And he also prepared savory meat, and brought [it] in to his father, and said to his father, Let my father arise and eat of his son's venison, in order that thy soul may bless me. And Isaac his father said to him, Who [art] thou? And he said, I [am] thy son, thy firstborn, Esau. And Isaac trembled with a trembling exceedingly great, and said, Who then [is] he that hunted venison and brought [it] to me? And I have eaten of all before thou earnest, and have blessed him: also blessed he shall be. When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a cry great and exceedingly bitter, and said to his father, Bless me, me also, my father. And he said, Thy brother came with subtlety and has taken away thy blessing. And he said, Is he not rightly named Jacob? for he hath supplanted me these two times: my birthright he took away; and behold, now he hath taken away my blessing. And he said, Hast thou not reserved for me a blessing? And Isaac answered and said to Esau, Behold, I have made him thy lord, and all his brethren I have given him for servants; and corn and new wine have I supplied him; and what then shall I do for thee, my son? And Esau said to his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father? bless me, me also, my father. And Esau lifted up his voice and wept. And Isaac his father answered and said to him, Behold, of the fatness of the earth shall be thy dwelling, and of the dew of heaven from above; and by thy sword shalt thou live, and thou shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt rove about, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck” (vers. 30-40).

It is all very touching in a natural way. One's indignation kindles at the underhand course of Jacob and Rebecca; one feels for the erring and deceived aged saint; one pities the bitter disappointment of Esau, worthless though he was, and ungodly as he had already proved. But we rejoice at the turning-point of grace in Isaac's soul when he bowed to God's thwarting his endeavor to gratify the son who had ministered to his appetite, forgetful alas! of the already declared will of Jehovah as to Jacob. When God's over-ruling broke on him, instead of reviling the wife and younger son, he bowed in self-judgment and trembled with a trembling exceedingly great, sealing in faith what his lips said unwittingly but under God, “also he shall be blessed.” He felt that, however others were to blame, the error was his own. God was but securing now what He had said before the sons were born. Faith now wrought, unhindered by the flesh which had lately darkened his eyes. And so says the Spirit in Heb. 11. It was not according to his proclivities, but against them; “by faith Isaac blessed,” not Esau and Jacob, but “Jacob and Esau [even] concerning things about to be.”

Jehovah, as the Lord God, is and must be free to act according to the good pleasure of His will, whether for the heavens or for the earth; for man to assert his is alike folly and sin. As a saint he is set apart to obey God, not merely in the Ten Words, but in every respect; as a sinner, he is Satan's slave, and only deceives himself when he boasts of liberty, freewill, and what not. Obedience is the essential duty of the creature; and no reasoning can lessen the obligation, though it may blind man already fallen. But it is a believer's shame to be deceived, as the whole habitable world is. Satan may accuse, but ought not to deceive him who has God's word and Spirit; as we have seen Isaac deceived for a while, but restored.

Still there was a blessing for Esau, and one far more suited to his nature than that which was reserved for Jacob. What did Esau care for the promises or the covenant? What relish had he for Messiah's kingdom? What reverence or readiness of subjection to Messiah Himself? The fatness of the earth was more to his taste, and the dew of heaven from above. Heaven itself was only a sentiment he gladly left for others to enjoy. He was, he flattered himself, a practical man; and the present world was to him a scene of enjoyable excitement, checkered enough to enhance its pleasures. Then what a fine thing to live by the sword when men opposed! He did not envy the poor spiritless creatures who lived, or said they did, by God's word. Such fanaticism he despised. It was true that the word declared that he, Esau, should serve his brother. This was a disagreeable sentence, which had to be proved, and he would do all he could to prevent it. Meanwhile the same sentence said, that he should some time get loose, or rove about, and break the yoke from off his neck. Well, this would be a joy indeed: let his brother have the rest. Esau was profane; and it is a growing sin in our clay, more glaring in Christendom than among the heathen. Without doubt the end of the age is at hand. The day of the Lord hastens; but the apostasy must first come, and the man of sin be revealed, the lawless one, in his own time, whom the Lord Jesus shall consume by His breath and annul by the appearing of His presence.

Priesthood: 21. Leprosy Tried and All Out

Leprosy Tried, and All Out. Lev. 13:9-17

Here we have on the one hand cases where the priest has only to see and pronounce unclean: so distinct are the symptoms. On the other hand others are presented of the saddest appearance when the priest on looking has to pronounce the person clean. How important to have sure instruction from above! To judge by appearance, and not by the word, is sure to be unjust and unwise. We have to walk by faith, and this can only be by God's word and Spirit.

“When a sore of leprosy is in a man, he shall be brought to the priest;” and the priest shall look on [him], and, behold, [there is] a white rising in the skin, and it hath turned the hair white, and a trace of raw flesh [is] in the rising: it [is] an old leprosy in the skin of his flesh; and the priest shall pronounce him unclean; he shall not shut him up; for he [is] unclean. And if the leprosy break out much in the skin, and the leprosy cover all the skin of [him that hath] the sore, from his head even to his feet, wherever the eyes of the priest look, and the priest looketh, and, behold, the leprosy covereth all his flesh, he shall pronounce clean [him that hath] the sore: it is all turned white; he [is] clean. But on the day when raw flesh appeareth in him, he shall be unclean. And the priest shall look on the raw flesh, and shall pronounce him unclean; the raw flesh is unclean; it [is] leprosy. But if the raw flesh change again and be turned white, he shall come to the priest, and the priest shall look on him, and, behold, the sore is turned white, then the priest shall pronounce clean [him that hath] the sore; he [is] clean” (vers. 9-17).

In the first instance the combined proofs of leprosy rendered the priest's sentence indubitable. There was a white tumor in the skin, the hair was turned white, and a trace of raw or living flesh was in the tumor. All pointed to the fatal evil in the man, and an actual activity of evil. Waiting is needless in such circumstances. It is too plainly an inveterate and energetic plague in the man. To shut him up would mislead: he is unclean, and the priest pronounces so. To wait, when evil is manifest, is trifling with God and marl,

Immediately follows what to most would seem utterly hopeless; yet Jehovah prescribes quite a different judgment. Here the leprosy has broken out much in the skin, and covered it all from the man's head to his foot, so that before the priest's eye the leprosy has overspread all his outside, and all is turned white. Yet, strange to say, the priest on looking at a sight so deplorable was directed to pronounce him clean, as indeed he was. Where sin abounded, grace over-exceeded. It is the denial of sin, and the assertion of one's own righteousness, which cut off hope. Where there is no hiding, but the sin is out and the sins laid bare all over, God delights in saving. So it was that the cross displayed all the iniquity of man, and God's love to the uttermost. See in the crucified robber a living application of this great principle: “We indeed justly” adjudged to a death of torture; yet the man who concealed nothing of his sins going that day to be in Paradise with the Savior Son of God.

Quite different it is when “raw flesh” appears in the man (ver. 14). For the evil is active then, and indicates a deep-seated source. Sin is still reigning within, a surer sign of ruin than anything on the surface. “He shall be unclean,” says the word; and the priest when he sees the living flesh can but pronounce him unclean; for so it is, leprosy beyond mistake.

But after that we hear in ver. 16 of the raw flesh changing again, and turned white. This is encouraging enough for the man to “come” to the priest; who sees him, and that the sore is really turned white, whereon he pronounces him clean. The sore instead of working with energy within is turned white without; and he himself comes in the consciousness that he is clean, that it may be certified according to God's will. Divine healing produces liberty of spirit.

Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor pathics, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God. And these things were some of you; but ye got washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God (1 Cor. 6:9-11). How real and great is the depravity of man left to himself and Satan! How real and still greater is the delivering grace of God in the name of the Lord Jesus and by His own Spirit! In Jesus He has revealed Himself to us; and, as we were the slaves of lust and passion under the power of Satan, He by Jesus wrought a work to rescue all who believe with a sure title, and made it good in our souls by His Spirit. For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, as well as power, love, and a sound mind.

Day of Atonement: 7. The Incense and the Bullock

The Incense and the Bullock. Lev. 16:11-19

The first acts of Aaron that now claim our consideration is the offering of incense, and the sacrifice of the bullock for the Sin-offering. This was expressly for himself and his house. But it is important here as elsewhere to bear in mind the scope, character, and limits of typical instruction. There is an analogy, because it cannot otherwise be a type; but there are bounds, because it is only a type and “not the very image.” Atonement, according to the full mind and intent of God, could have been but once accomplished, and only by the true High Priest, even Christ. A shadowy form was all that could be of old, for Aaron was sinful as the people were; but for Him whom Aaron represented, as He needed no Sin-offering, so was He Himself to be made sin for us. It is well to seize the difference and in some cases contrast, not merely in what is here so obvious, but because there are other points to be noted which may not seem equally plain, where nevertheless the same principle as really applies. We must not fail to read invariably the type in the light of Christ, instead of reducing Christ to the measure of the type. Great mistakes have been made since (if not in) the first century through neglect of the right use of Christ as He is now fully revealed. So it was, to my own personal knowledge, even among Christians more than usually versed in scripture fifty years ago at least; so it has been since, and may be at any time. Several portions of the word of God seem peculiarly liable to a kindred sort of misconstruction, and one might specify three. The earliest in point of place would be the types of the Levitical economy, and indeed generally. Next come the Psalms, as brining in the heart in all its varied feelings, about either the wants and trials of man or the anticipations given of God; but Christ's Spirit is there, and hence the need of not confounding the first man with the Second. Thirdly, there is the prophetic word, so open to bias and error where Christ is not seen duly, and His kingdom as distinct from the church. In all these three departments of divine truth (and it pretty much comprehends the O. T.), who is sufficient for these things? What need of dependence on God, and of watchfulness against our own thoughts, that we may have divine guidance!

There is here, as everywhere, but one safeguard. Human canons do not preserve, nor certainly is truth due to human tradition but to Christ kept by the Spirit before us. He alone from God is made to us wisdom; and it never can be otherwise. As He is the life of the Christian, so is He the true light that now shines, the only One who ever did enlighten, and does fully. Therefore we are only safe in following Him through God's word, these portions especially which without Him are indeed dark. But as there is “no darkness at all “in God, so there is none Christ does not graciously dispel, save what unbelief makes for itself in slighting or forcing His word. Reading it hastily we may find peculiar difficulty, where it lies outside our own relationship. For instance, we come in contact with that which is according to the status or measure of the Jew; but we are Christians and ought never to forget our own place. Again, there are depths of grace and glory in Christ, where it becomes us to bow our heads and adore, rather than to rush in familiarly on such holy ground. But there is no danger in keeping behind, yet close to, Christ; there is all possible blessing in hearing His voice. Let us now endeavor to conform to that only just, true, and full rule for interpreting the word of God. At this point it becomes particularly needful, because our theme concerns the utmost nearness to the presence of God.

We have looked a little at Jehovah's lot in the goat that was slain whose blood was also brought in. We are now called to examine the meaning and application of the sacrifice for Aaron and his house. Here the bullock necessarily has a special principle attached to it. Scripture never heaps together things unmeaningly as men sometimes do. The bullock, though it has a general aim in common with the first goat, is also expressly distinct and has marked differences. On the face of the chapter there was but one bullock, though there were two goats. As it was the largest sort of offering, so here it has a higher connection. The bullock was offered only for the priestly house. There was no complementary bullock to be driven away with their sins laid and confessed on its head, like the second goat which followed up the first, after a notable interval. The bullock and the first goat were slain as nearly about the same time as possible, the bullock first (ver. 11), the goat afterward (ver. 15).

But a remarkable type intervenes before the blood of either was carried within. And Aaron “shall take a censer full of burning coals of fire from off the altar before Jehovah, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring [it] within the veil; and he shall put the incense upon the fire before Jehovah, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy-seat that [is] upon the testimony, that he die not” (vers. 12, 13). What does this mean? The traditional idea is that incense represents the prayers of the saints: surely an irrelevant interpretation as applied, not only to the type before us, but to what is analogous in the book of Leviticus, and indeed wherever incense is offered under the law. In the special circumstances of Rev. 5 we do find the prayers of the saints symbolized by incense (ver. 8); but in the very same book (chap. 8:3), we read of “much incense” given, in order to impart efficacy to the prayers of all the saints at the golden altar which was before the throne. Here the distinctness of the incense from the prayers is beyond argument.

It is clear from this, sustained by a great deal more elsewhere, the incense cannot be assumed to mean absolutely or only the prayers of the saints. The royal priests in Rev. 5 present the prayers of the saints as incense; the angel high-priest in Rev. 8 puts to the prayers of all the saints much incense, which no creature could do—only Himself. Where would be the sense in adding the prayers of the saints to the prayers of the saints? We must therefore look for a larger truth in explanation; nor really is it far to seek. Early in Leviticus, and specially in Exodus, we may find seasonable help.

Thus in Ex. 30 we have the detailed composition of the holy perfume for Jehovah, which was not for man “to smell thereto” on pain of being cut off. This it was which beaten small was to be put before the testimony in the tabernacle of the congregation. It set forth the fragrant grace of Christ, the more tried so much the more abundantly sweet to God. It was what He peculiarly appreciated in Christ. Here the prayers of saints are out of the question. It prefigures the personal grace of Christ tried to the utmost, but even in the minutest as in the deepest thing agreeable to God Who alone could estimate it fully.

In Lev. 2 we have nothing to do with the prayers of the saints, but Christ livingly acceptable to God. Therefore incense enters as an important element in the “meal (not “meat”) offering.” Fine flour, oil mingled or anointed, or. both, with salt, composed it; so too ears of corn green or full. But the peculiar claim of “all the pure incense” is ever reserved for God. The remnant, after the memorial handful for the burning as a sweet savor to Jehovah, was Aaron's and his sons'; but “all frankincense” was burnt upon the altar. It was the expression of Christ's personal grace in its unspeakable preciousness to God. Our prayers here are clearly out of the question. Do not all these offerings at the beginning of Leviticus speak exclusively of Christ? If none but the presumptuous would dispute the bearing of the Holocaust, of the Peace-offering, and of those for sin and trespass, it ought not to be doubted that the Meal-offering has at least as much of the character of Christ offered up to God as any other oblation. They are all the reflection of Christ and His work, each in a distinctive way.

Surely incense in Lev. 16 has nothing to do with the prayers of the saints. Is it not the fragrant grace of Christ's presence which God alone could appreciate in Him, and in Him only? All went up to God. Elsewhere it was His grace rising up in intercession, when making prayers of saints acceptable to God. Ex. 30:34-38 as seen affords if possible a still clearer proof of the reference to Christ, where our prayers would be quite out of place. But time fails to dwell further on this interesting type, which attests the fragrance of Christ's personal grace to God, and can in no way point to the prayers of saints, whatever be His grace also in making them acceptable.

Before the blood then (not merely of the goat but of the bullock) was brought in and put upon the mercy-seat and before it, the incense rose up before God. Therein was the witness of the exquisite grace of Christ before God, of His personal sweet-savor, when tried by the fire to the uttermost, and this apart from blood-shedding; not apart from fiery judgment, but from that work which was essential to atone for sin. The blood was not yet put there; the incense preceded. But how did the incense rise? Was it not kindled by the holy fire of God? And this fire was closely connected with the Burnt-offering. The fire fell there, and thence was kindled the incense which rose up as a cloud before God and filled the most holy place. It was the fire of His consuming judgment; for this is ever the symbol of that which, testing the Lord in every way and to the fullest possible degree, only brought out the more the fragrance of His grace. The object in atonement was to lay a; ground for divine righteousness; so that God, in blessing to the full, should act consistently with t what was due to Christ and His work, which had glorified Himself even in judging sin. Yet before this basis was laid, there was in the incense the witness of Christ's ineffably fragrant grace God-ward. Such is the meaning of the incense which the high priest burnt in the most holy place.

After this “he shall take of the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it with his finger upon the mercy-seat eastward; and before the mercy-seat shall he sprinkle of the blood with his finger seven times. Then shall he kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people, and bring his blood within the veil, and do with that blood as he did with the blood of the bullock.” It is not, as if there were two offerings of our blessed Lord Jesus or two acts of sacrifice; but at least two objects of His work were here in the mind of God. In order to complete atonement for the people the second goat must be taken into account for that work, though typically it only appears when the high priest emerges from the sanctuary (vers. 20 and 32, 33). But the foremost shadow before us now is the blood of the bullock put upon and before the mercy-seat, put once upon and seven times before the mercy-seat. Once sufficed for God, where approach to Him was invited; man needed seven times. Alas! how dull has man proved to take in the fullest encouragement on God's part; for He it was Who thus in the figure provided all: He despises not any.

But why the bullock and why the goat? The blood of the bullock was carried in on behalf of the priestly family; in this type Aaron and his house. Here the Epistle to the Hebrews marks a contrast. If Aaron must be atoned for, it could not be so with Christ. It were blasphemy to include the Son of God in any such requirement. You might suppose such a caveat quite uncalled for. Alas! I remember a Canadian ex-clergyman who, getting into the minutiae of these types, and, dull indeed to see the guarded glory of the true High Priest, fell into this horrible snare, and was put away from amongst us because of so deep a dishonor to our Lord Jesus. Those who deem such a thought scarcely possible forget that we have an active, subtle, and deadly foe. Let us learn what it is to distrust ourselves, and to cherish confidence in the living God and His word.

Nevertheless it remains that the blood of the bullock was for the priestly family, as that of the goat was for the people. Is there anything in the New Testament to help here? Much. Take one scripture—and a familiar one—in the Gospel of John (11:49-52). The occasion came through an uncomely mouth; but it was God's giving. Caiaphas spoke wickedly, yet God prophesied through him as of old through Balaam. It is not that his heart who uttered the prophecy was in the truth. But if the unscrupulous high priest here prophesied that it was expedient for one man to die for the people, it is clearly the Spirit of God Who comments that He died not for that nation only, but that also He should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad. There we have the death of our Lord for two distinct objects. One cannot avoid perceiving that the children of God are a higher object than “that nation.” Indeed none so much as John, throughout the whole of his Gospel, shows that nation to be reprobate. Never was a people more unbelieving and rebellious. It is all over with them from the very first chapter: “He came to His own [things], and His own [people] received Him not.” The Jews, the rejecters of the Lord, are seen to be themselves rejected of God from the beginning of the fourth Gospel. The other Gospels gradually come up to the same conclusion, because of Jewish unbelief; but John starts with it. For which reason the Lord is introduced by John purging the temple of these wicked men before His public ministry begins; whereas the Synoptic Gospels give no purging of the temple till we approach the end. What could more than this purifying prove that the Jews were the unclean, notwithstanding their high pretensions? And high pretensions always rise more and more when judgment is at the door. Then are a privileged people most lifted up when they have lost all true sense of communion with God.

Thus the truth comes out plainly that the death of Christ was, not merely for the Jewish people, but to gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad. No doubt this purpose of gathering His children in one involved also another truth of all moment; for there could be no such gathering on God's part without a righteous removal of their sins. Thus the propitiation is necessarily implied, although it be not stated in these words. Atonement is the necessary prerequisite for such a blessing as the gathering together of the scattered children of God unless He could overlook His own dishonor or their unremoved guilt. And therein is one main moral reason why the church never had a place on earth, and never could be called to its own heavenly portion before the Lord Jesus. The atonement was not yet accomplished fact before God, Who could not, consistently with His glory, gather in one without it.

Proverbs 12:23-28

In this group of moral maxims we have the value of prudence, and of diligence; depression compared with even a good word; the righteous contrasted with the wicked, the slothful with diligence; and the way of righteousness all through.

“A prudent man concealeth knowledge; but the heart of the foolish proclaimeth folly.

The hand of the diligent shall bear rule; but the slothful [hand] shall be under tribute.

Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop; but a good word maketh it glad.

The righteous guideth his neighbor; but the way of the wicked misleadeth them.

The slothful roasteth not what he took in hunting; but man's precious substance [is] diligence.

In the path of righteousness [is] life; and in its pathway is no death” (vers. 23-28).

Few things betray the lack of common sense more than the habit of displaying any bit of knowledge one may have. But it meets just as habitually with a sharp and disagreeable corrective; for those who know more fully are apt to expose its shallowness and vanity. Ostentation characterizes such as have a smattering which often lets out how little is really known. The fault is more serious in a Christian, whose standard is, and ought to be, Christ the Truth.

The attention that takes pains is far more important and reliable than any ability where that is lacking. Ruling is the consequence without being sought. But the slothful neglect their duty and alienate their friends, gaining contempt and distrust on all sides, while sinking ever lower and lower. Who can wonder?

Heaviness in the heart renders the hand powerless, and hinders the eye from seeing the opportunities which God takes care to present. A good word gladdens the heart in the midst of manifold trials; and what an unfailing supply does scripture afford! If it be so with the O. T. characterized as it is by the law, how much is it with the N. T. where the gospel gives the tone! The very word means glad-tidings; and this it is truly beyond question, save to such as, believing in their wretched and guilty selves, have no faith in God. Its blessedness is, not only that it comes forth from the infinite love of God, giving His Only-begotten Son and in Him life eternal, but that He as Son of man meets all that could hinder or disable, in the cross where God made the Sinless One sin for us. It is therefore directly and expressly for those who have neither goodness nor strength, but are sinners and enemies, breaking their hard hearts with grace, to fill them with His light and love. As He said Who told it out with matchless simplicity and fullness, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.”

Righteousness has great weight to man's conscience, aware if honest of his Own failure, and keenly alive to its absence where he fondly expected it. For moral consistency is rare. Hence the righteous, not the bright, still less the crafty, guides his neighbor. It inspires confidence when a dilemma arrives or a danger threatens. But the way of the wicked does not impose on those who discern it. They may seek to flatter themselves, because it is easy, that it will pass and give them their desired ends. It misleads themselves, who often wake up to their own deceitful folly and sin too late.

Another trait of the slothful man is here pointed out. He may be active in the pursuit of his pleasure; but his sloth prevents his turning what he may have gained to any good account. He roasts not what he took in hunting, and has to sponge on others; whereas the precious substance of men is diligence. This is what avails in the long run, where the means and the opportunities may be ever so small.

But industrious diligence, though it may go with righteousness, is not always righteous, and often misses what is still better. “In the way of righteousness is life.” Therefore said the Lord, Take heed and keep yourselves from all covetousness; for not because a man is in abundance is his life in the things which he possesses. We cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore He bade us not be anxious about our life, what to eat, and what to drink, or what to put on. The very birds of the sky and the lilies of the field teach men a weighty lesson; yet the birds have no consciousness of God, though beholden to His continual care, and not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him.

Hence there must be total deadness toward God and His word, heart-indifference to Him Whom God has sent, if there be not a life beyond the creaturely existence of the day and the earth; and it is in the way of righteousness, not merely at its end, though it will have a glorious character above the present shifting scenes. Its pathway has no death. We cannot talk of its end; or if we do, we can say it is life eternal. The end of unrighteousness is death; and its pathway is strewn every step with those things whereof men who take note must be thoroughly ashamed. And how many souls has grace led by their sorrows to think of their sins, and to find in the Lord Jesus their Deliverer and joy, whilst awaiting another and enduring scene which has nothing to darken it!

Gospel Words: the Power and the Grace of the Name

John 18:1-9

How strikingly the divine design of the Fourth Gospel differs from the three Synoptics, as seen in their reports of Gethsemane on the night of the betrayal! Who left to his own feelings would have so dwelt on his Master's agony as the beloved disciple? Yet he says not one word about it, though he alone of the Evangelists was chosen to be near the Lord in that affecting and mysterious scene, when He repaired again and again to them and found them sleeping. It fell to the others to record His exceeding sorrow in realizing the depths into which He was just about to enter; because it bore directly on the rejection of the Messiah, on the work the Righteous Servant had in hand, and on the Son of man, as perfectly dependent on His Father in the hour of woe as in all the activities of power in loving service.

Here shines out the glory of His person. Had we only the witness of John, rich as it is, what should we know of His anguish in anticipation of all before Him as He prayed to His Father, and of His entire submission whatever it cost? If most appropriately Luke alone mentions an angel strengthening Him and His sweat as clots of blood, here we see and hear the Son of the Father, to Whom He had commended His own in chap. 17.

“Jesus having said these things went out with his disciples over the winter-torrent Kidron, where was a garden into which he entered, he and his disciples. And Judas also that betrayed him knew the place; because Jesus often resorted thither with his disciples. Judas therefore, having received the band and officials from the chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons. Jesus therefore, knowing all things that were coming upon him, went forth and said to them, Whom seek ye They answered, Jesus the Nazarene. He said to them, I am [he]. And Judas that betrayed him stood with them. When therefore he said, I am [he], they went backward, and fell to the ground. Again therefore he asked them, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus the Nazarene. Jesus answered, I told you that I am [he]: if therefore ye seek me, let these go away; that the word might be fulfilled which he said, Of those whom thou hast given me, I lost not one” (vers. 1-9).

What communion with the Father, what prayer, what intercession, what tender care for the feeble disciples, what self-sacrificing interest on their behalf, what vigilant love of the good Shepherd, what pity for Israel, what outgoing of heart for the sheep not of this fold, had not been known in that garden! Yes, Judas knew it, and took his measures accordingly under Satan to gratify the chief priests and Pharisees. Thither he led the band with lanterns and torches and weapons.

Men who do not know the Lord talk of His “limitations,” and forget that He is God, the Word become flesh, but no more ceasing to be God than a man can cease to be man. Jesus knew all things that were coming on Him, the same Jesus Who had gone through all in the profoundest grief yet dependence on the Father, for He was as truly man, the perfect man. Now when horrors began to thicken, what calm pervaded His every word and act! He went forth and said to them, Whom seek ye? They answered, Jesus the Nazarene; and on His reply, I am [He], they went backward and fell to the ground.

God indeed attested what was due to that Name; for He too was God no less than the Father and the Holy Spirit. Nor was there ever a moment more befitting. So Judas the betrayer stood with them, and he too with them fell to the ground. What a testimony to their conscience, as well as to His glory!

When the wicked Ahaziah sent a captain with his fifty to take the Tishbite prophet as he sat alone on a hill, again and again came fire down from heaven to consume the captains and their fifties. Jesus full of grace and truth came to save the lost. Not a word more did He utter. He owned Himself Jesus the Nazarene. It was enough. In His name shall bow all beings heavenly, earthly, and infernal, and every tongue confess Him Lord to God the Father's glory. It was but a witness then to that glory; but how blessed and suited and eloquent, if they had not had deaf ears, seared consciences, and hearts harder than stone! He Whose name laid them prostrate could have in a moment consigned them to death for everlasting judgment. But no! He came that God might be glorified in His death for sin, to set free every sinner that believes in Him.

And so it was of His grace that, after the manifestation of power, He asked them again, Whom seek ye? As they gave the same reply, He answered, I told you that I am [He]; if therefore ye seek Me, let these go away. O what grace now manifested on behalf of His own, so unworthy of His love, yet loved unto the end, loved though He knew all would forsake Him and flee, and that one who ventured nearer in that night of desertion would there thrice deny that he knew Him! It was a fulfillment of chap. 17:12; but great as it was, how little compared with all that those words mean and guarantee! And indeed such is His love that it covers all things great and small.

How are you who read these lines treating Him and His love? He, the Son of God and Lord of glory, was nothing to Judas and the Jews, but for the one to sell and the other to buy; and He submitted to be the willing prisoner, and the willing sacrifice, that you might hear and live. You have heard, but cannot live without faith in Him Who is the life eternal—life now that you may live of Him now—life evermore that you may have Him your life for the body and heaven as well as now for your soul on earth. But forget not that to hear and not believe on Him leaves you worse unspeakably than if you had never heard. Oh then hear, believe, and live.

1 Peter 1:24-25

What can be more apt for the apostle's purpose than the passage he cites from the prophet? In setting forth the blessedness of being born again he makes it more felt by contrasting with it universal nature, and nature at its best.

“Because all flesh [is] as grass, and all its glory as a flower of grass. The grass withered and the flower fell away; but the word of the Lord (Jehovah) abideth forever. And this is the word that as glad tidings was preached unto you (vers. 24, 25).

It is the twofold lesson of repentance and faith, which is thus appropriately attached to being born again. Hence in comforting His people it is not only the coming of a Deliverer that is in question, even if this Deliverer be Jehovah, but the necessity that the people should judge themselves in His sight. The voice of one crying in the wilderness needs the supplement of the second that cries so solemnly of fallen man, “all flesh is grass, and all its comeliness as the flower of the field.” Israel had flattered itself that they were wholly different from other men. But a voice which flatters not must cry that it is not merely the Gentiles that perish, but “surely the people is grass.” Where were the ten tribes? and why chased out of Immanuel's land? And where had Isaiah just announced to the king of David's house, that their treasures and their sons were to be carried away? Was it not to Babylon, the center of graven images and enchantments and sorceries, because of Judah's persistent love of idols? Which of human kind so guilty as the favored people, and its most favored tribe?

Nor was this all. For the scattered remnant to whom the apostle wrote knew of another sin still more heinous, into which they had lately fallen though long predicted by the same prophet (Isa. 49-57) with its terrible issue in receiving “the king,” the Anti-Christ of the last days, as must surely be accomplished in its time. Yes, “all flesh is as grass, and all its glory as a flower of grass.” Difference there is. Some are much fairer than others, refined, tender, generous, brave, affectionate, and religious after the flesh. There is not only the grass in general, but its flower. And men are apt to admire and even adore what is so pleasant to their eyes, their mind, and their feelings. But nothing is right truly, where God has not His rights: and He as plainly judged man's sin, as He clearly presented the only hope for the sinner in the woman's Seed, the virgin's Son, Immanuel.

Hence to believe in Him, now come and dead and risen and ascended, is the only salvation; and nothing more truly causes the penitent soul feelingly to own its natural ruin and its sins. For it is no light thing for man to sit in moral judgment on himself; and it is just what the Spirit of God works in him (not at first peace or liberty, far from either indeed but), the deep sense, not only of what he has done but what he is before God as a sinful man. That the Son of God is come from God, and by Him sent, not to condemn, but as a Savior encourages him to integrity in self-judgment. Without doubt it is deeply painful under the word and Spirit of God to be brought down in conscience of one's own evil in His sight into the dust of death; and the sight of Christ by faith by His very perfectness increases the self-loathing. How sweet then to have the testimony that the blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from every sin! that He made peace by the blood of His cross! that He is not only the Living Bread, coming down out of heaven, but by His death gives us to eat His flesh and drink His blood, so that I dwell in Him, and He in me!

The Pauline teaching, of not only His death for us but of our death with Him, carries out the truth still more thoroughly; but even in its simpler form by our Epistle we are enabled to write death on all humanity, and forbear to boast of what seems fairest outwardly. Nor is it an idea or sentiment, but a reality personal and experimental for our everlasting profit henceforth, not only in distrusting ourselves, but in tenderness toward others, and in boasting in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through Whom now we received the reconciliation.

The reason was certain and extreme. All flesh is as grass, and all its glory as a flower of grass. In human nature, fallen too as it is, there is no stability; its flower only and altogether evanescent. Withered the grass, fell away the flower. There can be no trust, no dependence on the creature. Are we then left to ourselves, our sins and our follies, just when we most evidently need the only true God, as good as He is great? Not so. We had no just claim; we shamelessly deserted Him when He showed us nothing but tender mercy; like Adam, we forgot His word and disobeyed Him, we believed the liar and the murderer, and hoped we might sin and not surely die. This was ruin now; and if this were all, it led to ruin everlasting. For sin breeds more sin; and such was and is the history of the race. But He spoke, even when judging the sin and sentencing the enemy, of One Who should vanquish him who wrought the mischief; and of the One to vanquish Satan keenly suffering as the woman's Seed, in the infinite compassion of God for the ensnared. If human nature at its best is feeble and failing, man needs what abides; and so in contrast with that which fades away, “the word of the Lord (Jehovah) abideth forever.”

Here, in ver. 25, it is not λόγος as in ver. 23; for the latter is used to convey the meaning or mind of God, whereas ῥήμα is the expression, what was actually said or written. Compare the distinction which our Lord Himself draws between His “speech” (λαλιὰ) and His “word” in John 8:43: they did not know His speech, because they were unable to hear His word. When the divine truth is received, the words that express it become understood, not before. Here ῥήμα “word” goes beyond “speech” and is applied to Jehovah's message; which not only withered up self-dependence, but gave them His word immutable and abiding forever. “And this is the word that as glad-tidings was preached unto you.” What a spring of confidence to those that preach and to those that hear the gospel!

It is not only His abstract mind, but His meaning expressed fully and communicated indelibly in the scriptures. He would give His people solid assurance of the comfort He held out so emphatically to them, even before He set out by His prophet the twofold and tremendous indictment of their guilt. For, as in Isa. 40-48 He arraigns their idolatries which sent them captives to Babylon, so in chaps. 49-57 He predicts after the return the deeper guilt of rejecting the Righteous Servant, His Anointed, and receiving, as they surely will, the Antichrist, the willful king of the latter day. But where sin abounded, grace shall surpass it all, as the rest of Isaiah triumphantly proves, and the elect remnant at the end of the age shall be His possession forever; no longer bondmen but above bondage, yet all the more truly His servants, His Onesimi, once severed but now indissolubly joined, once unserviceable but now serviceable to Himself and a blessing to all the families of the earth according to unfailing promise.

But the apostle also shows that the remnant of Jews who now receive Christ anticipate, as do the faithful from among the nations, the blessing in the gospel already preached. They have before hoped in Christ, as the apostle Paul expresses it in Eph. 1:12. If the mass are now blinded, if mercy shall prevail over every obstacle in the darkest days of the consummation of the age, neither these reasons nor any others hinder sovereign grace while Christ sits at the right hand of God. Those of the Jews who now receive the glad-tidings have their hope in Christ realized to the full, before the remnant becomes the strong nation of the new age. Such is the force of their pre-trusting in Him, while their brethren in the flesh refuse Him, and before the latter day bow to Him in faith. They are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. We are also those who from among the Gentiles have heard and believed the word of truth, the glad tidings of their salvation. For as there is no difference in the ruin, so there is none in the salvation according to the riches of God's grace.

Here too is implied the immense superiority of Christian blessedness over that of which the Jews so loudly boasted. They undoubtedly had privileges from Jehovah as the seed of Abraham: and they were born to them, if at least duly circumcised as they were, in witness of the uncleanness of the flesh. But their privileges were earthly, external, and temporal; and so it had been openly proved in O. T. times by the Babylonish captivity, as it was soon to be more overwhelmingly by the Roman scattering of much longer duration. Far different is the Christian's portion even now, and far brighter his hope. Hence in the Epistle to the Hebrews the emphasis on “eternal” or “everlasting.” Such is the salvation (chap. 5:9) as is the judgment (chap. 6:2); such the redemption (chap. 9:12), the Spirit (ver. 14), and the inheritance (ver. 15), as the blood is of an everlasting covenant (chap. 8:20). To this, without referring to other proofs, may be added the “better” blessings, as in 7:19, 22, 8:6 (twice), 9:23, 10:34, 11:16, 40.

Our apostle of the circumcision does not write so elaborately, but was led to base the greatness of God's gift to the believer on the being born again, of seed not corruptible but incorruptible through God's living and abiding word; a character and source of being quite above nature, in contrast with transitory flesh, even in Israel, and founded on His word spoken and written which expressly abides forever. This is the very word that was preached unto them with all its glad news, that they might know that they had through it received a new nature as incorruptible and everlasting as His word Who communicated both. The fervor of his heart breaks out in the simple earnestness with which he speaks of a boon so needful and so blessed for man as he is. He would have his brethren know it theirs now without a shade of uncertainty.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Galatians

Who can doubt the special aim of the Holy Spirit in this characteristic letter? It is not, like that to the Roman saints, a systematic establishment of God's righteousness in the gospel, on the plain and full proof of man's universal failure. Here we have the vindication of Paul's apostolate and of the gospel of grace against the Judaisers. It is a standing witness, on the one hand, how quickly the professing Christian is apt to surrender even the foundations of his blessedness to legalism; and on the other, of the Holy Spirit's care to raise the divine standard against the enemy, and rally men of faith around it. For God has here given us His own refutation of that early encroachment, so ruinous to the enjoyment of His grace, of Christ's work, and of the believer's standing and power. The Epistle is characterized by unusual severity of warning from first to last, and a total absence of those individual salutations in brotherly kindness which abound wherever it was possible. Not even the loose levity of the Corinthians troubled the apostle's spirit so profoundly, as the fall of the Galatians from grace.

Chap. 1 opens with Paul, “apostle not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ, and God the Father who raised him out of the dead, and all the brethren with me.” The legal party objected that he was not of the twelve, nor yet ordained by them in due succession. The apostle confronts this with the fact that the Lord Jesus and God the Father expressly called him to the apostleship in an immediate way and with resurrection's associations; and that all the brethren with him joined in his words now. Even his wonted form of general salutation has the stamp of the truth the Galatians were imperiling. “Grace to you and peace from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory unto the ages of ages.” In vers. 6-10 he bursts like lightning on their central error. “I wonder that ye so quickly change from him that called you in Christ's grace unto a different gospel, which is not another: only there are some that trouble you and desire to pervert the gospel of Christ.” Such as preached aught else, were it himself or an angel or any, he anathematizes. It were but pleasing men, which would make him not to be Christ's bondman as he was.

Next, he asserts direct revelation for the gospel he preached, affirmed already for his apostolic authority. It had shone on him, when devoted to the law and a persecutor of the church of God. But His grace revealed His Son in him, that he might preach Him among the Gentiles. The essential design was that he should not take counsel with flesh and blood, not even with the apostles before him. So he went elsewhere, and even when he did go up to Jerusalem, it was but for a short visit to Cephas, and seeing only James the Lord's brother, as he solemnly averred; afterward he went to Syria, and Cilicia; so that he was only known in Judea by the report, to God's glory by him, that the persecuting Saul now preached the faith he once ravaged.

In chap. 2 the apostle furnishes fresh light in this connection on his memorable visit with Barnabas to Jerusalem, when he took Titus with him Assuredly it was to receive neither authority nor truth. He went up by revelation, which is nowhere else intimated, but characterizes his special place. Nor was it apostles who laid before him the gospel, but he before the chiefs, privately, what he preached among the Gentiles. Could any say he was running or had run in vain? Nor was it entertained to circumcise Titus, whatever bondage false brethren might desire to impose. Add to the gospel, and its truth continues no more. It was seen by the reputed pillars that He, who energized Peter for the apostleship of the uncircumcision, energized Paul also for the Gentiles. God's order for both and grace given to Paul being recognized, James and Cephas and John gave Paul and Barnabas right hands of fellowship, only with due remembrance of the poor, in which Paul was zealous too.

But from ver. 11 he goes farther, and recounts his open resistance of Peter at Antioch because he was condemned. What a rock for the church, if Christ had really resigned His place to His servant! Away with a pretension so blasphemous, ignorance so deplorable. Christ alone was and is the Rock. Peter shilly-shallied when certain came from James; “and the rest of the Jews dissembled likewise with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their dissimulation.” How solemnly instructive for the Galatians, for all other Christians and ourselves also! “They did not walk uprightly according to the truth of the gospel” is the unsparing censure of the apostle. What a withering rebuke of their own folly in listening to the adversaries of him and the gospel! His argument is unanswerable, and stands in abiding record. “If thou being a Jew livest Gentilely and not Jewishly, how forcest thou the Gentiles to judaize?”

It was grievous inconsistency in Peter, who on a most critical occasion proved himself not only feeble as a reed, but false to the Lord's charge in Acts 10 and his own faith, afraid of those he ought to have fed and guided aright. It was flinching from the common standing of justification by faith, and not by law-works even for born Jews. But the worst of all remained; for he had left law for grace in Christ to justify him, and, in turning his back on this now, he not only made himself a transgressor, but in effect Christ a minister of sin! Paul on the contrary for the Christian says, Through law I died to the law, for all was met in Christ crucified. The sinner was in Him condemned, that he should go free, the flesh only and utterly dealt with by God for him who believes; and himself living, no longer the old I, but a new life, Christ living in him: a life in faith of the Son of God “Who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Adding law makes void the grace of God; for if righteousness be through law, Christ in that case died gratuitously.

As chap. 2 ends with the great truth of Christ living in the Christian by faith in the Son of God, in contrast with the law, so chap. 3 shows that the reception of the Spirit was not by works of law but by report of faith. How senseless then to perfect in flesh, with which law deals, what they began in Spirit! Thence he turns in ver. 6 to Abraham who believed and had not the law, but the promise, “In thee all the nations shall be blessed,” but solely by faith. For as many persons as are by works of law are under the curse; for which Deut. 27 is cited. There, when the two mountains were taken by six tribes on each for blessing and curse, only Ebal had the curses, and not a word of the blessings on Gerizim! Granted that in fact the blessings were pronounced on the appointed mountain; in effect, as God knew, it must fail; and hence the silence of this inspired book. On the principle of law there is no blessing but curse for sinful man. “The just shall live by faith,” as Hab. 2:4 testifies when all was ruin; where in vain law held out living to him that shall have done its demands. But Christ has redeemed from out of the curse by having become a curse, as elsewhere Deuteronomy attests (21); that the blessing might come unhindered, the promise of the Spirit through faith (1-13).

Then in a deep unfolding the notion of annexing law to promise is excluded. For the promises were addressed to Abraham, and to his seed, 430 years before the law, and hence cannot be annulled by it. The promise was in grace. Law was added for the sake of transgressions till the Seed came to Whom was made the promise, which has no mediator like the law with Moses between God and man. There are two parties in law, one of them sinful; there is but one in promise, God, and therefore all is sure in the end. They are not against each other, as they must be if joined: each serves its proper aim. There is no righteousness by law; but the promise by faith of Jesus Christ is given to believers. Law was but a servile child-guide; but we are all, Gentiles as well as Jews, God's sons by faith in Christ Jesus; and Him it is, not law, we put on in baptism, in Whom there can be no distinction in the flesh; and if of Christ, we are Abraham's seed, heirs according to promise (14-29).

In chap. 4 the apostle points out the immense change wrought for the saints through Christ's work and the sending of the Spirit. Previously the heir, a child or infant, did not differ from a slave under the elements of the world; but now he was redeemed by the Son and became a son. And so were the Gentile believers, sons with the Spirit in their hearts crying, Abba, Father. Such is the true relationship of the Christian (1-7). For Gentile saints, after being known of God, to turn to the weak and beggarly elements (i.e., of the law) was really a return to their idolatry in principle. “Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you lest I bestowed upon you labor in vain. Be as I [am], for I [am], as ye, brethren, I beseech you: ye have not injured me at all” (8-12). He was freed from law by Christ's death. They as Gentiles had nothing to do with law. They inflicted no wrong in saying so of Paul. Compare Rom. 7:6 and Gal. 2:19. How the new delusion had alienated them from him I Had he become their enemy by telling them the truth? Their zeal should not be only in his presence (13-18). They needed that he should travail again in birth to have Christ formed in them (19).

“Tell me ye that desire to be under law, do ye not hear the law?” Then he speaks of Abraham's two sons: one by a bondwoman, the other by a free woman, one born after the flesh, as the other by promise, allegorizing the two covenants, and answering respectively to Jerusalem in bondage, and to free Jerusalem which is above, our mother, entitled to rejoice after desolation. We then, as Isaac, are children of promise, and persecuted by him born after the flesh as of old. “Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free” (21-31). How convincingly the tables were turned on these retrogradists from grace to the law!

The beautiful use, which the apostle drew according to divine design from the story of Sarah and Isaac on the one hand, and on the other of Hagar and Ishmael, leads into the teaching of chapter 5, the freedom with which Christ freed us. So, therefore, is the Christian to stand, and not be entangled again in a yoke of bondage—the enemy's effort. To receive circumcision was to become debtor to do the whole law and to fall from grace: Christ would profit nothing in that case. We, believers, are justified by faith, and by the Spirit on the same principle of faith we await, not righteousness but its hope, even the glory into which Christ is gone. For in Him neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails aught, but faith working through love; as of God it ever does. Who stopped them when running well, that they should not obey the truth? The persuasion was not of Him that called them. It was a corruption tainting the lump as a whole. For his part, his confidence as to them was in the Lord, that they would have no other mind; and their troubler whosoever he be shall bear the judgment (or, guilt). “And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why am I yet persecuted? Then is done away the offense of the cross.” For Judaism was ever his sleepless foe. Indignantly he adds, “I would that those who unsettle you would even cut themselves off” (vers. 1-12).

“For ye,” he says emphatically, “were called for liberty” —on that condition. “Only [use] not liberty for occasion to the flesh, but through love serve one another” —the gist of the whole law. Were they fulfilling it in biting and devouring one another? To walk in the Spirit (which grace gave, not law) is to fulfill in no way flesh's lust. No doubt the flesh opposes, but so does the Spirit, that we may not do the things which we would: a scripture perverted in the A. V. But if led by the Spirit, they are not under law: grace is the spring. “Now manifest are the works of the flesh, such as fornication, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, enmities, strife, jealousies, angers, contentions, divisions, sects, envyings, [?murders], drinkings, revels, and such like; of the which I forewarn you, as I forewarned you, that they who do such things shall not inherit God's kingdom.” Could they not recognize these sad traits of late? Law acting on flesh provoked them. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, self-control: against such things is no law.” Did they really know this fruit familiarly? “And they that are of Christ Jesus crucified the flesh with its passions and its lusts. If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also direct our steps. Let us not become vainglorious, provoking one another, envying one another.” What can approach these burning words which close the chapter? The Spirit is the power of good, not the law, moral any more than ceremonial. Law's power is to slay sinners.

The next chap. (6) follows it up. Even if a man be overtaken in some fault, does the remedy lie in the law? In nothing but grace. “Ye that are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of meekness, considering thyself lest thou also be tempted.” The general rule is, to bear one another's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of the Christ, if they desired a law. The flesh boasts, and only deceives itself while burdening others. Faith proves its own work without claiming that of another. Each shall bear his own burden. Meanwhile there is ample room for love, as for the learner in the word toward the teacher in all good things (ver. 6). God holds to His order: whatever a man sows, this shall he also reap, —corruption from the flesh, from the Spirit life eternal. Let us not be fainthearted then in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not. So then as we have opportunity (season), let us work good toward all, and specially toward the household of faith.

The conclusion is touching. “Ye see in how great letters I write to you with my hand.” He habitually employed an amanuensis, as was usual in those days. To the Galatians he would write himself; and so in large uncouth letters he wrote the entire Epistle. (Contrast with the aorist here the present in 2 Thess. 3:17). Once more he thunders against those who would revive flesh and restore law and circumcision to the denial of the cross of Christ. In that cross only would he glory; which put shame on the world, and he accepted its shame with Christ. In Him is new creation. This is the rule for our steps; and peace be on such and mercy, and upon those of Israel who are really God's. Let none trouble him henceforth: he bore in his body the marks of suffering for Christ, whose grace, he prays, to be with their spirit. It is controversial throughout, yet with the deepest feelings of love underneath.

Separate State and the Resurrection (duplicate Revised)

When we have learned a truth, even in power from God, such is the narrowness of the human mind, that we are in serious danger of making it a shut-door against other truths, and thus of stopping short of the largeness of God's thoughts. Indeed the more imposing a truth, the greater is the peril of its becoming all-absorbing. “But the Advocate, who is the Holy Ghost (blessed and divine safeguard!) whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” “When he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all the truth,”

Thus Jesus, after speaking of the many mansions in His Father's house, and of going there to prepare a place for His own, said, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.” It is clear that He did not mean death, nor the destruction of Jerusalem, nor the end of the world. He Who was going away promised to come again. If it was a real and personal departure of Jesus, it was to be as real and personal a return, not to reign over them in their place, but to take them to His place that He and they might be in heavenly bliss together. Right therefore it is, that our hearts should feel how very distinct a thing our going to Him is from His coming to receive us unto Himself in such sort as this.

Again, our souls may have drunk somewhat into the triumphant strain of the apostle when he cries, “Where, death, is thy sting? where, death, is thy victory?” Death is not our joy, but He that has won the victory, the Living One Who became dead, and, behold, He is alive for evermore and has the keys of death and of hades. Hence can the Christian say that all things are his, life or death, things present or things future. But death is not, nor ought to be, the object of His affections. Christ is the Bridegroom; not Christ known after the flesh, for henceforth as a new creation we know no one thus. We know Him the risen and ascended Man; and He being of heaven, we look for Him to come for us to fetch us there. For us He is the Heavenly; as even we are so too by His grace, and no longer of the man of dust as once.

Meanwhile in the Spirit knowing Him where He is, we long for that which will fully express His power and glory, assured even now of His love in all its fullness. We long for His coming and the resurrection of all that slept in Christ; we long for His coming that in those surviving till then the mortal may be swallowed up of life without even dying. Happy as it is assuredly to be rid of the body of humiliation as now, happier still in the departing to be with Christ, it is not all that our hearts are set on. Living or dying, we long for His full triumph, and the consummation of His joy, in having all His heavenly ones as Himself and with Him at His coming.

For we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in an instant, in an eye's twinkling, at the last trumpet. For sound it will, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. “Far better” than the present life is our departure to be with Him in the separate state; yet it is not His victory, but rather the last experience for the body of that which sin brought in. It is “when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then (and not before) shall come to pass the word written: Death is [lit, was] swallowed up in victory.”

Nevertheless it is an error to depreciate the blessedness of those who, absent from the body, are present with the Lord. When the word of truth in its simplicity and its fullness is depicted, this may not be touched. To the dying robber, who prayed the Lord to remember him when He should come in His kingdom, Jesus said, “Verily I say to thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” He thus proffers a blessing beyond and better than he asked, to the renewed mind a dearer prize than any outward display, however glorious: the joy of being with Christ Himself, that very day, where the Father delights to love and honor the Son. It is not that the presence of Christ will be lacking in the kingdom, nor shall we be less able to enjoy it in that day. But He promised him this blessed companionship at once on high before He comes in His kingdom. This none should disparage: no honor or reward can equal it; and thanks be to God, we shall have it forever.

The saints then that were put to sleep through Jesus, as 1 Thess. 4:14 beautifully puts it, shall not be separated by death from God's love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nor did Stephen when stoned only look to the coming of Christ, though this he surely did, but says, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit;” as the Lord had said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” So Paul later says, “To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain... having the desire for departure and being with Christ—it is very much better” (Phil. 1:21-23). There was not nor could be a doubt between death and resurrection. The hesitation was about “living in the flesh,” as being needful for others in loving service; but as for himself individually, to depart and be with Christ was “very much better.”

The best of all is for Christ to come; and so at the end of chap. 3 in the same Epistle we have the proper hope for Paul and all. “For our citizenship, (or, commonwealth) is in the heavens; from which also we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, who shall transform our body of humiliation into conformity with his body of glory according to the working of his power to subdue even all things to himself.”

This quite agrees with the apostle's language in 2 Cor. 5, where in the face of death and the judgment-seat he expresses the common Christian confidence and willingness to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. But here he speaks of what is the best of all. “We groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed (i.e. death and the separate state), but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.” He longed for the change at Christ's coming.

But we must beware of a prevalent error which denies the heavenly blessedness of paradise and seeks to make a purgatory of it. Scripture is wholly opposed to this falsifying of its character. Even where it first occurs, the aim is to reveal that the converted robber can forthwith be with Christ. Such is the immediate efficacy of His redemption for one who truly believed in Him, though only at the last brought to God.

Not less inconsistent with the low and superstitious idea is the light conveyed by the apostle Paul's words in 2 Cor. 12:2-5. He identifies being caught up to “the third heaven” with being caught up into “Paradise.” It is the highest view of heaven that scripture discloses; it leaves no room for the idle dream which consigns to some lower receptacle a soul whose fitness to partake of the inheritance of the saints in light is not achieved. For this meetness is taught by Col. 1:12 to be already conferred by grace on all believers here. The scheme, so widely preached now, is a dark unbelief of the gospel, derived from mere Jews and Gentiles, not from scripture, and meant to comfort those who die in their sins without Christ by a hope wholly unwarranted. There is not the smallest ground for it in inspiration.

The testimony of our Lord in Rev. 2:7 is if possible more explicit and absolutely decisive. For to the overcomer in the church at Ephesus He promises that He will give him to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of God. No one can question that this contemplates the future glory when that which is perfect is come, and the redeemed are changed into His image even for their bodies. Yet He calls it paradise; and in Rev. 22:2 we see it fulfilled. Both texts therefore of this wondrous final book of scripture concur to explode as unfounded the assumption that paradise is not heaven. It is its most favored quarter, where Christ went when His atoning work was done; where those who die in faith of Him and His work go to be with Him; and where they shall taste its sweetest enjoyment, when they have their bodies changed into the likeness of His glory at His coming. The revival of patristic tradition is a revival of heathenism, entirely at issue with what has now been manifested by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and in-corruption to light through the gospel (2 Tim. 1:10).

Answers to Queries

Eph. 4:5. Unity is in this verse distinguished from that in ver. 4, as the unity of the Christian profession, not that which is necessarily vital and everlasting. It is excellent in itself; but those who have the external privileges might not personally be born of God. The unity of ver. 6 first goes out universally on the one hand, and embraces at the end of it what is intrinsic and divine in the deepest way.

Rom. 9:21, and 2 Tim. 2:20. Vessels to dishonor are the reprobate in both scriptures. But in Romans it is in the general sphere of the wicked; in 2 Timothy, in the narrower one of those who, while nominally Christians, have no conscience toward God, and defile or destroy His house; whom God will destroy.

TITUS & PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth, 2/•. THE REVELATION BRIEF SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND Labors OF JOHN NELSON DARBY, by G. W. Turner, 4d.

LONDON: T. WESTON, 53, PATERNOSTER Row, E.C.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published monthly.

Isaac: 29. The Family Distracted

Gen. 27:41-46

Grace alone secures salvation to sinful man, yet only to such as believe. But God ever carried on, as now also, a righteous government, whereby He deals with every fault among His own. So it was then. The sin of Isaac threw all into confusion, and gross evil ensued on the part of Rebekah and Jacob. So great indeed was the complication, that Esau, ungodly as he was, at this sad and shameful moment seemed more an object of pity than any other concerned, whilst those who really cared for Jehovah's will and blessing exposed His name to dishonor by the deceitful means they employed to gain it. O what sorrows and shame they make for themselves who forget that God cannot fail to accomplish His own purpose, and who in their haste for a good end do not scruple to adopt wicked means!

“And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him. And Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand, and I will slay my brother Jacob. And the words of Esau her elder son were told to Rebecca. And she sent and called Jacob her younger son, and said to him, Behold, thy brother Esau, as touching thee, comforteth himself that he will kill thee. And now, my son, hearken to my voice; and arise, flee to Laban my brother to Haran; and abide with him some days, until thy brother's fury turn away; until thy brother's anger turn away from thee, and he forget what thou hast done to him: then I will send and fetch thee thence. Why should I be bereaved of even both in one day?

“And Rebecca said to Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth. If Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these, of the daughters of the land, what good should my life be to me?” (vers. 41-46).

Thus Esau soon turned from wailing and tears to murderous hatred. It was not Jehovah that he valued, but the blessing; as he had already proved how far he estimated the birthright when he sold it for one mess of food. He was a profane person. This was no real excuse for the misdoing of Rebekah and Jacob; but it aggravated the sin of Isaac. Henceforth hatred of his brother, even to take his life, filled Esau's heart, though he had received the promise of all he cared for, save the supremacy of his brother which his pride could not brook. So he plots with himself, when his aged father departed, or at least the days of the mourning were over, to slay his brother. Truly Esau went in the way of Cain.

But He whose eye is over all hearts kept aged Isaac for a long while to come, and the days of mourning did not arrive before Esau with four hundred men met Jacob to his sore distress; but God turned the heart that meant to slay him to receive the trembling man with kisses and tears. So truly does God dispose, let those propose as they may who know Him not. Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?

Rebecca was the one to send her beloved child away, whatever it cost her. It was meet that she should be the instrument of his exile whom she had so guiltily instructed; it was meet that she should never again behold in the flesh the one whom she knew was the object of God's favor and the true heir to the promises, as Isaac also was, to the exclusion of both Ishmael and Esau. God is, and must be, and ought to be Sovereign; but God is just, and cannot look on cunning with impunity, while He can have no terms with profanity and ungodliness. She herself therefore has to do the greatest violence to her own feelings as well as Jacob's, and urges his fleeing to Haran, that he might abide with her brother Laban. “Some days” did she say? Ah, poor Rebecca, for many a long year to be cheated by Laban, as you and Jacob cheated Isaac No, never will it be thine, whatever come of Esau's fury and anger, to send and fetch thy Jacob thence. Indeed it is striking that her death is in scripture without notice, We know from chap. 35 that Deborah, her nurse, died in Jacob's company, and was buried beneath Bethel under the oak which thence derived its name of Allon-Bachuth, Oak of weeping. It is certain that Rebecca is not spoken of when Esau and Jacob met at the funeral of their father; whence we may fairly gather that she had died, we know not how long before the most aged of the patriarchs.

But this at least can be said of Rebekah that she shared with Isaac bitterness of spirit over the Hittite wives of Esau, and that she was the more faithful of the two in grief at Esau's godless ways. This was what she pressed on her husband as to Jacob, that he might be saved from so ill an example. Yet there was an impatience in the tone which left not a little to be desired. But scripture tells us things as they were, even of the saints: as it alone reveals God to us.

Priesthood: 22. Occasions of Leprosy

Occasions of Leprosy

Lev. 13:18-28

BUT we have next to consider how leprosy might disclose itself, and the care which should be taken not to confound other symptoms with that loathsome sore. Zeal for God is not to extinguish tenderness toward man: Jehovah Himself maintains and requires both.

“And when the flesh hath in the skin thereof a boil and it is healed, and in the place of the boil is a white rising, or a white reddish bright spot, it shall be shown to the priest; wand the priest shall look on it, and behold, it looketh deeper than the skin, and the hair thereof is turned white; then the priest shall pronounce him unclean; it [is] the sore of leprosy broken out in the boil. But if the priest look on it, and, behold, no white hairs [are] therein, and it [is] not deeper than the skin, and [is] pale, the priest shall shut him up seven days; and if it spread much in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it [is] the sore. But if the bright spot have staid in its place and have not spread, it [is] the scar of the boil; and the priest shall pronounce him clean.

“Or when the flesh hath in the skin thereof a burning inflammation and the place of the inflammation becometh a bright spot white-reddish or white, then the priest shall look on it, and, behold, the hair is turned white in the bright spot, and it looketh deeper than the skin, it [is] a leprosy that is broken out in the inflammation; and the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it [is] the sore of leprosy. But if the priest look on it, and, behold, no white hair [is] in the bright spot, and it [is] no deeper than the skin, but [is] pale, the priest shall shut him up seven days. And the priest shall look on him the seventh day, and if it have spread much in the skin, the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it [is] the sore of leprosy. But if the bright spot stay in its place, not spread in the skin, and [is] pale, it is the rising of the inflammation; and the priest shall pronounce him clean; for it [is] the scar of the inflammation” (vers. 18-28).

An ebullition of temper or other extreme excitement, when passed, may leave effects in evil ways and words, and not a few might be disposed to judge severely. But here the standard is the sanctuary of Jehovah, and the judge is he who is familiar with His presence. In the case first named the boil is healed; but in its place there may be a white rising, or a bright spot white-reddish. This is too serious to pass over. It must be submitted to the priest. The boil was not to prove, but it may give occasion for, leprosy, hitherto latent, to betray itself. And there is enough ground to call for the inspection of the priest: for indifference is according to God as intolerable as the meddling of what has no divine sanction.

Merely human considerations are out of the question; even to be an Israelite cannot bar the due intervention, but rather the contrary. The word and will of Jehovah must rule in His appointed way. And the priest must submit to the divine directions as carefully as the Israelite. Does the mischief look deeper seated than the skin? Is the hair turned white? If so, the energy of evil lies therein and works; and the priest shall pronounce the man unclean. It is the sore of leprosy broken out in the boil. On the other hand, if the inspection of the priest finds no white hairs, and nothing but a superficial appearance, there is no off-hand clearance, but a remand for seven days, when the suspected person is again examined. Then if there be much of a spread in the skin, the sore is plain, and the priest must not hesitate to say so; but if there be no spread and the bright spot remain simply as before, it is only the scar of the boil, and the priest shall declare him clean.

The next case is not that of an ulcer, said to be healed. There is a burning inflammation, and the raw flesh that burns has a bright spot, white-reddish or white, for symptoms may differ a little. Here again the inflammation is no more leprosy than the boil or ulcer; the suspicion of worse is in the bright spot. Here too the priest must look on according to the command of Jehovah. Is there an active energy at work turning the hair white? Does it seem deeper than the skin? These indications tell the fatal tale. If so, it is a leprosy that is broken out in the inflammation. The priest cannot rightly shirk from his painful but bounden duty. Magnanimity in such a case is wholly misplaced, and a yielding to the devil. It is the sore of leprosy, and the man must be pronounced unclean. But if when the priest looks, and there is no sign of activity or of an evil seat underneath the surface, but rather of a fading away, the priest is entitled to wait and hope that it is but a passing evil and not a persistent habit. After the seventh day that the suspect is shut up, he looks again, and if it has spread much in the skin, it is too clearly the sore, and the man is unclean. Whereas, if there was no such spread, but the bright spot remains in its place, the priest is called to pronounce him clean.

Compare with these cases the brother sinning “against thee” in Matt. 18:15-17. It may be a fault unknown to any other soul; and grace goes and seeks the erring man's good. But he refuses, not only the one, but one or two more, and even to hear the assembly. Slight as the occasion may have been, the issue is to prove self reigning, sin unjudged and increasing, and the man disqualified for all fellowship of saints. “Let him be to thee as the Gentile and the tax-gatherer.” It is quite a different occasion from that of which we read in 1 Cor. 5 where the wickedness was plain and known, and not a sin against another, unsuspected by others

The Day of Atonement: 8. The Incense and the Bullock Part 2

The Incense and the Bullock

Let us now a little more closely examine the Epistle to the Hebrews, which, as already remarked, is a divine comment on these Levitical types. We need not guess, nor argue at length; it is enough, and best of all, to believe.

In Heb. 2:13 we have Isa. 8:18 applied to the saints now being called. They are the children God has given to Christ. Then in Heb. 3:6 we read, “Whose house are we.” Christ had just been treated as the Apostle and High Priest of our profession. In the beginning of the chapter after His introduction in His high priesthood, we are told that He has a house over which He acts with divine rights, not merely as a servant: “Whose house are we.” The “we” in this Epistle is no doubtful matter. It means not mere Hebrews, but such as were bearing Christ's name, sanctified by His blood, and made free of the holiest of all—the children given to Him. Does any one conceive that this relationship is peculiar to Christian Jews? Is the privilege to be denied to those who now believe generally? Of every Christian it is no less true, though one rejoices to own it was primarily written to believing Hebrews. It is the common but high privilege of every Christian.

Nor can one admire the one-sided rashness which treated the treatise on the Old Testament types (if one does not call it an Epistle), the inspired commentary to these Hebrews, as a child's book. Rather is any such depreciation a childish remark. The Hebrew saints, to whom the Old Testament was expounded, were no doubt children, when they ought for the time to be teachers; but who does not throughout discern the voice of Him that speaks from heaven? The object of the teaching (Hebrews 5, 6) was to bring these Hebrews, out of the word of the beginning of Christ, elementary as this was, into the full growth or “perfection” which flows from knowing Him on high, after He had made purification of sins. Do you call this a picture book of the nursery? So speak if you will of the Old Testament types. They were part of the rudiments of the world to which Israel was in bondage; and they were all but pictures in part.

But the Epistle to the Hebrews, far from being a nursery book, is a profound and most instructive communication of the Holy Spirit to lead on the Christ-professing Jews into the present elevating and heavenly associations with Him glorified; whilst it made no less clear and certain that those who despise, and still more those who give Him up, are forever lost. They have been dull of hearing; and it is always so with men proud of their ancient religion: nothing so much hinders growth in the truth. There is no veil over the eyes so impenetrable as religious habit or tradition. Given two persons converted: one of the mere profane world, the other perhaps respected in the professing church. Which of the two ordinarily goes forward steadily in the truth? Not the man who devoted himself to the study of theology for the last ten or twenty years past. He is generally an unapt scholar when he repairs to scripture, even seriously. Such is the effect of old religious prejudice. He needs to unlearn quite as much as to learn; which makes progress difficult and slow.

The Hebrew confessors are thus seen to be dull in rising to the height of Christianity, as they saw feebly into its depths. They were impeded in learning because they had so much to unlearn.

They are not the only persons now who are thus entangled. As Christendom grows old, the same difficulty repeats itself, though it be less excusable for Christians now than then for the Jews who believed. The truth fully revealed gives meaning to those ancient shadows. They had before them the material; but they needed the teaching of God's Spirit, Who glorifies Christ. Yet the ancient oracles had been used, not only for the conversion, but for the help and blessing, of souls then for some fifteen hundred years, to say nothing of times antecedent. But these were the persons who proved so slow in spiritual understanding. Therefore it is the more incumbent on all bred in religious habits, and accustomed to a groove of set forms and phrases, to watch against this danger, of which scripture gravely warns.

This, the richest specimen the Bible furnishes of expositional teaching (for it is more particularly of this character), was intended to educate the believing Hebrews into the true meaning of the old types. But to restrict the light or the privileges revealed therein to the Hebrews, to say that they, and they only, were the house of Christ, were sheer ignorance and an intolerable wrong. “Whose house are we” is a principle as truly applicable now as then, and to Gentile Christians no less really than Jewish. But it may be presumed that nobody here would have the least difficulty as to this, and that all concede that the truth applies to believers now in all its forms, and will as long as there are Christians waiting for the Son of God from heaven. But if it be granted that we too are the true Aaron's house, the bullock was beyond doubt for them, in contra-distinction from the people; and we shall find that this is as important in doctrine as for practice. For it is to be noticed that the blood of the bullock has exclusively to do with those who enter the holy places, or the sanctuary of God. The blood of the goat was brought there too; for God must be glorified in reconciling Israel or any others. But the first goat cannot be severed from the second. They coalesce and constitute the necessary atonement for the people who await the coming out of the great High Priest. It is not so with those concerned in the bullock. There is no waiting on His appearance for their acceptance. In this case there is no fresh type nor future time that draws one back to the earth, as there is unquestionably in the second goat applied historically. The bullock has to do at once and only with the presence of God for those entitled to enter there by grace.

On the other hand, if we look at the two goats, the counterpart of them both attaches to the earth and the earthly people in an unmistakeable way. In that transaction how much was before the eyes of the people! God ordered it thus for the purpose of giving them the visible token that their sins were gone never to be remembered more. No such thing was necessary for, or suited to, the priestly house.

But understand what is meant. There is a time when souls ever so truly converted are not up to the Christian position. Do you ask, Who are in so anomalous a condition? Why, you and myself have been, if we are not, among them. Time was when it was a question, and a great question to us, to be born of God, yet not knowing our sins forgiven. One grieves to think that many a saint on earth thinks the remission of sins rather a high claim, and a very questionable privilege whether it be his own. Do you think thus? Then let me tell you, that you have scarcely got beyond the portion of a devout Jew or Gentile before redemption. If this be so, are you yet really on Christian ground? One is not denying that you are a Christian; but how many converted are on Jewish ground, so far as their state of mind or experience goes.

He who merely looks to Christ with the hope that he may go to heaven at last and not be lost when he comes into judgment, has but imperfectly learned by faith the Christian's alphabet. Is this the gospel? The sooner he learns more of God in Christ, the better; and even this chapter is admirably adapted to show, when read in the light of this Epistle, where and how far he has fallen short. The sacrifice of the bullock, teaching us what it omits, gives us precisely enough (though in type) the place into which the young believer is meant and bound to advance. It is likely that the Hebrews at that time were not much beyond what has just been described; and the apostle wrote that they might be Christians in deed and in truth. Therefore one may observe the great stress wherewith the Epistle teaches not merely that Christ has personally gone through the heavens, but that He is in the highest place and in all the virtue of His work for us, that we now by faith may draw near into the holiest. Of course it is but in spirit: we are not personally there; we are still on earth, not yet in heaven. But have we no entrance into the favor of God by faith, beyond where we are? or do we merely look up to heaven as the future home of our hearts? Is the true sanctuary open to us now in spirit, or is it not?

It is a common argument of those who are accepted as soundly evangelical to say that there is but one priest, even Christ on high; and that therefore the sacerdotal pretension of a certain school in Christendom is simply the trash of Popery. To this last we agree with entire cordiality. If the gospel be true, the notion of any on earth being priests for the rest of Christians is evident and pestilent falsehood. It is a revival of Jewish principles, which were in figure nailed to Christ's cross, dead and buried in His grave. But if this be all, you fail to take the full and positive standing of the Christian. Do not content yourself with saying that among Christians there are no priests for others on earth, Christ being the only Great Priest in the presence of God. There is far more than this in what is now revealed. What more, do you ask, is required to supplement it? “Whose house are we?” Why do not evangelical men hold, preach, and practice this? Why do they not tell the saints on earth that they are all and equally priests? It is not merely that such they are to be in heaven. No doubt their title will be perfectly owned there, and we are to be priests of God and of Christ in the resurrection (Rev. 20:6); but have we not from God the self-same title now (Rev. 1:6)? Why not then believe it?

If any scruple to believe the Apocalypse, why overlook the Epistle to the Hebrews? Does not Peter also say that Christians are a royal priesthood, and, what is still more and better, a holy priesthood (1 Peter 2:5-19)? The royal priesthood is to be displayed before the world; the holy priesthood is to draw near into the presence of God. It is the more intimate of the two. If the royal priesthood shines more before men, should it not be dearer to a saintly heart to draw near to God in praise and thanksgiving? John speaks of Him that loveth us and washed (or, loosed) us from our sins by His blood and made us kings and priests unto God. Are you not misinterpreting the word of God when you infer that, whilst Christ loves us now and proved it by His atoning blood, He is only going to make us kings and priests?

My brethren, be not so weak in faith, but so foolhardy in fact, as thus virtually to set about improving Holy Writ. Were it not better simply to believe it? Leave unbelief to dull and dark men of learning, who tell you how hard it is to understand the scriptures. Certainly it is hard to unbelief or the presumption that would mend the perfect word of God. Without faith you will never understand the scriptures. The true way to understand them is simply to believe. Be content to receive them as of God without understanding first. Scriptural understanding follows faith.

Cherish confidence in God that His word cannot but be right. Christ is the key in the hand of the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. Then the heart opens, and what once seemed difficult becomes an everlasting and increasingly enjoyed privilege.

Why is it then that Christian people have it, and will have it, that Christ alone is priest, and that there are now no true priests at all? Scripture affirms that those, whom Christ is not ashamed to call brethren, are priests, and that they are now called to exercise the highest function of drawing near within the rent veil. It is not at all meant that every Christian is a minister of the word, very far from it indeed; but one must repeat that every Christian man and woman is really and truly a priest of God. The importance of this truth is no less than its sure warrant.

One might well ask, Can you for a moment question what scripture reveals on this head? Nor need one merely go on the tare words, though they are written by Paul, Peter, and John, three witnesses unparalleled even in scripture. It may be added that if the gospel were better known, there would be no hesitation about that which is now urged—that Christians are the priestly house of Christ, the true sons of the true Aaron. They alone answer to that type, which is ignorantly slipped over by most as if it were nothing. What privilege of the priest exceeds Liberty of access to the sanctuary? We have seen that even Aaron of old had it in the scantiest degree. (continued)

Proverbs 13:1-6

Here we have the temper, the means, and the traits of blessing in contrast with those of evil and shame; and we do well to weigh the words of Jehovah.

“A wise son [hath] his father's instruction; but a scorner heareth not rebuke.

A man shall eat good by the mouth's fruit; but the soul of the treacherous [is for] violence.

He that guardeth his mouth keepeth his soul; he that openeth wide his lips [shall have] destruction. A sluggard's soul desireth, and hath nothing; but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat.

A righteous one hateth lying; but the wicked maketh himself odious and cometh to shame.

Righteousness guardeth him that is upright in the way; but wickedness overthroweth the sinner” (vers. 1-6)

A wise son bows thankfully to the divine provision of the family circle, and heeds his father's correction; and the more when forced to feel folly is bound up with a child's heart, not excepting his own. But what hope can there be of a scorner? of one who cannot conceive himself to blame, and counts him an enemy who is faithful enough to tell him the truth?

The next case is not the duty of receiving, but the privilege of communicating good. Yet here too a man shall eat good by the fruit of a mouth that utters what is good to the use of edifying. And Jehovah of old impressed this on Israel by Moses, and on their sons. “Thou shalt talk of them [His words] when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou goest on the way, and when thou liest down; and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign on thy hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and upon thy gates” (Deut. 6:7-9). Were any words to compare with His? If this were irksome, what a tale it tells? The soul of transgressors brooks no superior, no restraint. Violence is its issue; and what can its end be?

But there is a bridle needed also. Hence he that guardeth his mouth keepeth his soul. As a good man said, one should think twice before speaking once. If any offend not in word, he is a perfect man (of thorough integrity), able to bridle the whole body also. How much of sorrow and shame he spares himself, and others who avenge a little folly by despising the wisdom they themselves lack! On the other hand, he that goes about blatant, opening his lips wide to tell all he thinks, feels, or hears of others, shall have the destruction which his malicious folly deserves.

Then we have the person too indolent to take trouble for good or ill, the sluggard. “A sluggard's soul desires, and hath nothing.” All begins and ends in wishes; with which the apostle dealt trenchantly in 2 Thess. 3:10. How different the lot of the diligent! They shall be made fat, says the wise man. In every sphere it is true in the main; unfailingly so in the things of God who raises above many a mistake, and values purpose of heart and ways.

There are men of the world who would be ashamed to lie in daily life, and are severe against it in others, yet they blink at it in politics and religion! But “the righteous hateth lying” whereever it may be, and most of all in that which concerns Him Who is the Truth. Nor can one wonder; seeing that “he is begotten by the word of truth,” is sanctified by the truth, and grows by it day by day, as he is set here in the responsible testimony of the truth. Yet no one is more tempted by Satan to betray the truth. Never was there a more pernicious cheat than to fancy that a Christian has immunity from falsehood, and is sure to speak the truth always. Still he is called to be truthful in love. This goes much farther. He that does not hate lying is a wicked person, “maketh himself odious” to all right-minded souls, “and cometh to shame.”

“Righteousness guardeth the upright in the way.” Such a one is not only bold as a lion, for what is man to be accounted of? Consistency in his relationship with God and man is the shield which Satan assails in vain; yet as a Christian he loves to be kept by God's power through faith, for grace is dear to his soul, and he knows well that he is indebted to Him for all. On the contrary “wickedness overthroweth the sinner.” Self and sin are all that he takes pleasure in; and the end of those things is death. No one is so terrible to him as God, no name hated so much as Christ, if he only told out the secret of his heart. The more he hears of Him, the more he hates his Judge, and spurns the hand meanwhile stretched out to save even him.

Gospel Words: Malchus Healed

Luke 22:50, 51; John 18:10, 11

The moral perfection of the Lord shone only the more brightly in His new and last trial. Satan, foiled in his effort to tempt Him out of His path of obedience, came now to kill Him in it. But nothing moved Him out of that way, nothing provoked Him, even when the disciples slept instead of praying, unable (even Peter and James and John) to watch one hour with Him.

When the crowd of men with swords and staves laid hold on and seized Him, Peter (too hasty to await the answer to the appeal, Lord, shall we smite with sword?) drew his, and smote the high priest's bondman, and took off his ear. This the Lord rebuked: “Return thy sword to its place; for all that take the sword shall perish by the sword. Or thinkest thou, that I cannot now call on my Father, and he will furnish me more than twelve legions of angels? How then should the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be?”

He abides the righteous Servant. He came to suffer for sins, Just for unjust, that He might bring us to God, and fit the children of God to share His glory on high when He takes all the creation heavenly and earthly, and reigns over Israel and the nations on earth in His day. Those who believe now are called to suffer with Him, as the Lord had taught His own when correcting their thoughts and desires about His kingdom. “Ye know that the rulers of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and the great exercise authority over them. But it shall not be thus among you; but whosoever will be great among you, he shall be your servant; and whosoever will be first among you, let him be your bondman; as indeed the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:25-28).

But Peter, ever rash as yet, thought of nothing but his Master's danger; and, in fleshly zeal seeking to defend Him, he stood reproved. It was human nature, but contrary to Christ and His word. If carried out, it would have made redemption impossible, like his warm and hasty error in Matt. 16:22, for which the Lord bade him, Get away behind me, Satan, and added, Thou art an offense to me; for thy mind is not on the things of God but on the things of men. Peter failed not only to appreciate Christ's death, but to apprehend that the Christian must deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Him. He did in his measure and spirit what the Lord told Pilate was not for His servants to do, because His kingdom is not of this world. It is of heaven, and of no worldly source.

In the Gospel of Luke (22:51) we first hear that Jesus said in answer, Suffer ye thus far, and with a touch He healed the cut-off ear. Even at such a crisis as this He is thus presented as the gracious Son of man, anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power. If He was no longer going about doing good and healing all that were under the devil's power, because God was with Him, He was just as ready to heal one wounded by His thoughtless follower.

John lets us know particularly the names, not only of His follower but of the wounded man. And here the healing has its significance, like every other word and fact in this Gospel as illustrating His personal dignity. As the mention of His name hurled to the ground the band which came to capture Him, and to which He thereon gave Himself up, with the words, Let these go away; so now the answer to Peter spoke His glory and His grace in a way peculiar to the last Gospel. “Put the sword into the sheath: the cup which the Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?”

Blessed Savior, as Thou in Thy love and light and lowliness art alone in Thy perfection, so art Thou in the ineffable sufferings which were in that cup for Thee to drink And Thou Bidst drain it, that God might be glorified, and we who believe might be saved worthily of God. Yet do we rejoice also that as God was glorified in Thee, and in Thy death especially and infinitely, so did He glorify Thee in Himself, and this immediately in heaven, before the world-kingdom of our Lord and His Christ come, who shall reign unto the ages of the ages.

Nor need poor souls who are in their sins wait for that displayed kingdom. While Jesus is glorified on high is just the time during which the Holy Spirit is sent forth, not only to dwell in the church, but to proclaim the gospel, the glad tidings of God to guilty and perishing man. Doubt not then but believe the witness God bears to the Lord Jesus, His Only-begotten Son. Great as is your need, many as are your sins, His grace is far greater. It is as infinite as His person. Come as you are that you may find Him as He is, full of grace and truth. Does not this suit you who have nothing but sins? Receive of His fullness: it is open to all who believe. Then will you live to Him.

1 Peter 2:1-3

If the plague of leprosy were healed in the leper, however this might be (for it was beyond man), it was required that he should be pronounced clean by the blood of a bird slain over running water sprinkled on him, and a living bird dipped in it let go into the open field. Thereon he that was to be cleansed had to wash his clothes, shave off all his hair, and bathe himself in water. Only so should he be clean. So it is here. The believer knows, feels, and owns his own nature corrupt, withered, and fallen, as grass under the blast of Jehovah, but has a new nature given which is as incorruptible as its divine seed by His word living and abiding forever. On this he is called to act.

“Putting away therefore all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envyings and all evil-speakings, as new-born babes long for the guileless intelligent milk that by it ye may grow unto salvation, if indeed ye tasted that the Lord is good” (vers. 1-3).

It is well that the English reader or any other unacquainted with the original should bear in mind the force of the opening word; which means an act done once for all, as the aorist implies, the tense of what may be called factness, not of gradual process. Again, it is not in the active, but the middle voice, which in transitive verbs refers back the action to the agent, giving this emphasis variously according to each word. We may compare James 1:21: “Wherefore putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, accept with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.” They are indeed exhortations of marked agreement, in substance of united practical aim, yet characteristic of each writer, and both of them distinct from the apostle Paul's way of dealing with the great principle of the case in Christ's death and our death with Him. They are equally given of God and equally needed by His children.

First, our apostle calls on the saints to have put away, if one may so phrase it, “all malice.” That the word, though sometimes meaning “wickedness” in general, here refers to that special root of evil is evident from the other forms of iniquity with which it is joined. It appropriately begins the list as the opposite of love, the fervent love, which he had been enjoining on them as became brethren. Every kind of malice is unworthy of those born again, born of God Who is love; for it may hide its spirit of hatred, and assume many a disguise to accomplish its nefarious ends. What a complete contrast with Christ, and how close the resemblance to his enemy the devil, whose occupation is to tempt, and to persecute, as well as to accuse Next, “guile” follows with no less moral truth, and “all guile” because of its manifold aim, and the desire with which men shun its discovery. For however much addicted to deceive others, they are inwardly ashamed of a habit so base. “Guile” naturally succeeds “malice” in order to do the man deadly mischief, and withal escape detection. It is the reverse of that transparent truthfulness to which we are called as representing Him Who is the truth, just as Satan is a liar and its father.

This opens the Way for “hypocrisies,” the pretenses to be what we are not, and not to be what we are. Hypocrisy is opposed to sincerity, and is simply playing a part in that which is mere fable it be not the most solemn of realities as well as the most precious. How awful to make the truth of God a game of man for a little while “Envyings” are the other side and in the next place. For as hypocrisy has its spring in claiming to have the good we lack, envy seeks to deny and defame the real good of others. God be praised that He fails not to work here and there in ways of love, devotedness, patient grace, zeal for the truth, delight in His glory, compassion for the wretched and the unworthy. There is ample scope for detraction among such as manifest no such qualities, and are vexed to find others credited with what is so excellent. Here the believer must beware lest he yield an ear to this evil spirit and get defiled by it.

Lastly, and fittingly therefore, comes the warning against “all evil speakings,” for what a variety of shapes this wears! And how readily it cheats many a one under the plea of care for the Lord's honor and just censure of what is wrong? As “envyings” utterly misbecome those who are blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, so “all slanders” are a deep offense in His eyes and can but please the great adversary of souls. Let us set our face against both and avoid the very suspicion of either.

Then we hear the positive exhortation: “as new-born babes long for the guileless (or, pure) intelligent milk, that by it ye may grow unto salvation.” No one can doubt that it is the milk of the word that nourishes the believer. It was the word of God whereby he was born again; it is the same word whereby he is fed. There is no contrast here as in 1 Cor. 3 and in Heb. 5 between milk for the immature and solid food for the adult, blame being put on those who did not profit by the word, rising from elements to higher truths. Here the Spirit of God dwells on the suitability of the food provided for the babe when born; and all are encouraged to desire earnestly the pure nourishment which God supplies so liberally. It is milk for the saints' intelligence; as a mother's breast yields nourishment to her babe physically, so God's word is to our spiritual understanding.

The general sense is quite plain. The only question is how to represent best the language of the apostle. That which in the A. V. is translated “of the word” occurs only in one other passage of the N. T., Rom. 12:1; and there it is rendered “reasonable,” as it is frequently employed by ordinary writers of the Greek tongue. “Intelligent” seems well to express its force in both texts, a better word than “rational.” Why Beza who held this as to the text in the Epistle to the Romans changed it to “sermonic” (of the word) here does not appear, as he regarded them both as alike in sense. The Peschito Syriac has here “of the word “; the Harclean S. “rational,” as both give “rational” in Rom. 12:1. But it is hard to understand on what principle it can bear both meanings together.

This we may leave, as it is merely the delicate point of a rendering, where the substantial truth remains untouched. The call is of all moment. God puts the highest honor on His word, not only for its quickening power in the hand of His Spirit, but for the constant refreshment and strengthening of the new nature that He imparts.

To put baptism in place of the one, or the Lord's Supper in place of the other, is a daring departure from what is here clearly revealed. The aim of those precious institutions is, one for initiatory confession, the other for the constant communion of the saints. But to turn baptism into the means of being born of God is to falsify the truth, to contradict scripture, and to efface the nature of Christianity. “Ye are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you,” says the Lord in John 15:3. “In Christ Jesus I begot you through the gospel,” says the apostle in 1 Cor. 4:15—the same Epistle in which he thanks God that he baptized none of them save a few individuals! So James tells us (1:12) that the Father “of his own will begot us by the word of truth, that we should be a certain first-fruits of his creatures.” We have no earthly mother, more than the Lord had an earthly father save legally.

The sacramental system sins against the Trinity in usurping the divine prerogative. Nor does our apostle differ from the rest (1 Peter 3:20). Baptism signifies not life-giving but Christ's death unto which we were baptized; and His death as not only salvation to those that believe, but the privilege of being identified with His death. Thus died we to sin and no longer live in it. Nor is it by the Eucharist, blessed as it is, that the new life is sustained but in Him Who died for us to Whom the Eucharist points. It is of Him coming down from heaven, the Incarnate Word, of Him dying and giving life to the world, and ascending where He was before, that John 6 speaks, in no way of His Supper. Peter does not go beyond salvation's sign in baptism.

The teaching here is that as through the word of God, not baptism, we have been born again, so by it, not the Lord's Supper, we “grow unto salvation.” To be born again on the one hand is as strictly individual as growth is. Each has to do with God directly in believing and profiting by His word, whoever or whatever may be the channel. Without faith neither can be; and the essence is that one receives the testimony immediately on God's own word for one's own soul. Hence “he that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself “; whereas “he that believeth not God hath made Him a liar, because he believeth not the witness which God hath witnessed concerning His Son” (1 John 5:10). On the other hand in the Lord's Supper it is a question of communion when individual want has been settled between the soul and God; and we are there together to enjoy His grace and presence. “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not communion of the body of Christ? Because we, many, are one loaf, one body; for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:16, 17).

But a strange omission has prevailed since the Complutensian Edition and that of Erasmus, followed by Beza, Stephens, the Elzevirs, and Mill, to say nothing of others. Colinaeus (1534) is the only one of the early editors who adheres to the great body of the oldest and best MSS., versions, and Patristic quotations, and reads (εἰς σωτηρίαν). It may have been drop either as a supposed scholastic addition or by those jealous of trenching on sovereign grace toward sinners. But here it is a question of saints growing in grace and in knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ according to the terms of the Second Epistle (3:18). Certain it is that any difficulty, in receiving the words so fully attested, is solely due to ignorance of our apostle's doctrine. For though he does speak of “salvation of souls” (1:9) as a present privilege, and symbolized in baptism (3:21), he still more frequently regards salvation as a complete whole for body as well as soul, and therefore to be revealed in the last time, even in the revelation of our Lord for whom we wait. Compare 1:5, 7, 13, 4:13.

Verse 3 furnishes a weighty proviso: “if indeed ye tasted that the Lord is good.” It is a reference evidently to Psa. 34 (33) 8 where there is a most touching call from the inspired writer that others might share his joy in Jehovah. “O taste and see that Jehovah is good; blessed is the man that trusteth in Him.” Here it is to the Christian so much the sweeter, in that the apostle identifies the Lord Jesus with Jehovah, as it is the truth. To have proved it for and in our inmost soul is the condition of growth in the word; but it is a condition that is assuredly verified in all who believe on Him. Yes, they can and do say in their hearts, that the Lord is good. They have tasted it in the word all through.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Ephesians

Chap. 5 Divine Design. 38. the Epistle to the Ephesians

In writing to the Ephesians the apostle takes his stand on ground wholly different from the Epistle to the Galatians. There he combats return to law in every shape, ceremonial or moral, and insists on grace in Christ crucified and risen, on promise before the law and accomplished only in Christ, so that blessing should flow even to Gentiles, and the promise of the Spirit be received by faith. But to the Ephesians he shows divine and eternal counsels.

The Christian is blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ (1:3); and this by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who was both man and Son of His love. The same God and Father chose us in Him before the world's foundation, far above earthly ways and beyond promise. He chose us that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love (4). If He would have us there, He could not but have us like Himself. But He was pleased to fore-ordain our relationship, even for adoption or sonship, through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will (5) for the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved (6). In Him (for we were evil) we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of offenses according to the riches of His grace (7), which He made to abound toward us (not like Adam for the earth) in all wisdom and intelligence (8). He also made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself (9) for administration of the fullness of the fit times: to head up the universe in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things on the earth; in Him in Whom we also were given inheritance, for if sons of God, we were heirs. We were thus fore-ordained according to the purpose of Him Who works all things according to the purpose of His own will, that we should be to the praise of His glory. “We” are the believing Jews that had pre-trusted in the Christ (12). In Him ye too (Gentile saints), having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, in Whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, Who is earnest of our inheritance for the redemption of the possession, for praise of His glory (14). Jew and Gentile are alike thus blessed in the highest degree, far beyond the promises to the fathers.

So delicate and precious and rich is the apostle's preamble, that one does best to give it just as it is. The glory of His grace embraces the whole sweep of the purposed blessing; the riches of His grace, what more than meets all our need now; the praise of His glory, when we enter on the inheritance. But the choice of God and fore-ordaining go back into eternity before there was a universe to inherit with Christ. The summing or beading up in Him of the whole heavenly and earthly, will be administered when the various seasons run out, and the inheritance, heavenly and earthly, will be displayed; and we, of all others, share Christ's glory over all, and have the earnest as well as seal already, in the Holy Spirit given to us.

Then, we have from verse 15 and at least to the end of chap. 1 the apostle's prayer for them, founded on the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory (17), of Whom he desires the enlightenment of the eyes of their heart to know what is the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of His power toward us that believe, according to the working of the might of His strength which He wrought in the Christ, when He raised Him out of the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenlies, far above the most exalted of creatures now and ever, and subjected all under His feet, and gave Him [to be] head over all things to the church which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all (23).

The prayer almost imperceptibly passes into the teaching of chap. 2. To the hope of God's calling as in chap. 1:3-6, with its accompaniments in verses 7, 8, and the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints (for He takes it in them as in the Christ) in verses 9-11, with the way Jews and Gentiles come in, and the Holy Spirit's relation to both blessings, he adds the wondrous power displayed in raising and exalting Christ. Now in chapter 2:1-10 he shows it to be the same power that wrought in the Ephesian saints, and so in all Christians, quickened with the Christ, raised up together, and made sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus, that God might display in the coming ages the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Thus were and are they saved by grace through faith, His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God before prepared that we should walk in them. All were alike dead in offenses and sins. God thus wrought to bring believers into this new estate of living association with Christ on high.

From verse 11 the apostle would have those once Gentiles remember their then far off condition, without one of Israel's privileges. Now they were made nigh by the blood of the Christ; and in the same nearness were the believing Jews. For Christ, our peace, not only took away all obstacles, but made both one, forming the two in Himself into one new man, one body. Though Jews had once been outwardly nigh, and Gentiles afar off, through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. Strangers and foreigners the Gentile believers were no more, but fellow-citizens with the saints and of God's household, all alike being built on quite a new foundation—that of the apostles and prophets (of whom he speaks in chap. 4:11), Jesus Christ Himself (not Peter) being the corner-stone. In Him all the building framed together increaseth unto a holy temple in the Lord; “In whom ye also,” he says, “are builded together for God's habitation in the Spirit.”

Thus we have the church viewed as Christ's body, and God's house, in which distinct respects his Epistles often regard it. The article seems necessarily wanting in verse 21, though excellent old MSS. insert it; but according to correct usage, as the building is not complete, it could not be there. Yet this does not warrant “each several,” as in the R. V. For, though as the ordinary rule, πᾶσα without the article, requires “every,” there are known exceptions, as “all Jerusalem” (Matt. 2:3), “all the house of Israel” (Acts 2:36), “all Israel” (Rom. 11:26). It is not a proper name that really accounts for this; a whole viewed in its parts excludes the article, yet means “all.” The mistranslation is therefore not only superficial, but directly upsets the unity of the building on which the apostle here insists as everywhere else.

Chapter 1 revealed the counsels of God in Christ risen and seated on high, followed up by the apostle's prayer to the God of our Lord Jesus; and chapter ii. showed us how grace has brought us in, not only as individuals, but collectively, and the temporary setting aside of Israel, believing Jews and Gentiles alike, to be Christ's body and God's habitation in the Spirit. Chapter 3 connects with the subject Paul's special administration of this mystery or secret.

Therefore are the Gentiles the objects of grace in a way wholly unheard of in other generations, as now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit—the same power which builds all the saints together for God's dwelling. It was by revelation made known that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, fellow-members of the body, and fellow-partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel, of which Paul was become minister according to the gift of His grace given him according to the working of His power. This of course could not be, nor be revealed, till the cross had closed the Jewish system and opened the door in Christ ascended for the Creator of all things to make known heavenly counsels and ways in Him to any and everybody that believed. Equally clear is it that when Christ comes for His own to be with Him in the Father's house, and subsequently appears to execute judgment on Babylon and the Beast, on the Antichrist and all other enemies, He will restore Israel specially and bless the Gentiles in general under His blissful reign over the universe.

Meanwhile the gospel where these distinctions are obliterated and unknown goes forth, and the unsearchable riches of the Christ announced, as Paul did pre-eminently and far beyond all prophecy. This was in order that now to the principalities and the authorities in the heavenlies might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God according to a purpose of the ages (or, eternal) which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord, in Whom we have boldness and access in confidence through the faith in Him. The apostle would not have them discouraged at his tribulations for them, it was their glory, which roused the enemy (3:1-13).

“For this cause” (repeating the phrase which opens the chapter, and carrying out the parenthesis into a new prayer founded on its wondrous intimations) he bows his knees to the Father [of our Lord Jesus Christ, an addition favored by many MSS., Vv., etc.] of Whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. Here, however, it is not as in chapter 1 that a spirit of wisdom and revelation might be given to the saints to know the hope of His calling and the glory of His inheritance and the greatness of His power in Christ risen and exalted; it is to be strengthened with power by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ might dwell in their hearts through faith, rooted and grounded in love, that they might be able to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height (he does not say of what, but evidently of the mystery), and to know the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge; that they might be filled unto all the fullness of God. This is not for spiritual intelligence of God's counsels and of what God had wrought in Christ to give them effect, but for present power of the Spirit in realizing Christ dwelling in their hearts, and thus entering into fellowship with all the saints into the boundless glory, and His love deeper than the glory which will display it another day. Now to Him that is able to do far exceeding above all we ask and think, according to the power that worketh in us (and not only for us), to Him be the glory in the church in Christ Jesus unto all generations forever and ever. Amen (vers. 14-21).

Paul, the prisoner in the Lord, beseeches the saints on the ground of all he has made known, to walk worthily of the calling wherewith they were called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love, using diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the joint bond of peace. This leads him to set forth unity fully: “one body and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all, and in you [or, us] all” (4:1-6). The relationship determines the duty: what then must be ours, so blessed of God? It is easy to see that verse 4 sets out the vital, as verse 5 the professing, unity; while verse 6 is universal in its early clauses, yet the most intimate grace in the last. We are exhorted to be faithful in every case.

Next, the various workings in each for the blessing of all to Christ's glory are shown in verses 7-16. All is founded on Him ascended on high, as this depended on His descending into the lower parts of the earth, and also ascending to the highest, that He might fill all things. He it is Who gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, unto work of ministry, unto edifying of the body of Christ. What is the term of this? Until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at a full grown man, at the measure of stature of the fullness of Christ. For His gracious aim is that we be no longer babes, tossed and carried about by every wind of the teaching [that is] in the sleight of men for the spread of error; but, holding truth in love, we may grow up into Him in all things, Who is the head, the Christ; from Whom the whole body, fitted and compacted together by every joint of supply, according to the effectual working in measure of each one part, works for itself the increase of the body unto its own edifying in love.

It is not here, as in 1 Cor. 12, the Holy Spirit testifying in this creation (and hence by tongues, healings, etc.) to God's glory in Christ, Who has defeated Satan before the universe. It is Christ in His love to His own sending down from His heavenly seat the gifts of His grace to His body and to every several member. Thus here only we have the assurance that, while His members are on earth, His supplies of grace cannot fail. The foundation has been laid so well that it were folly to expect it re-laid; but all that perpetuates and edifies it were unbelief to doubt till He come. With this goes the promise of the other Paraclete, the, Holy Spirit, to abide forever in and with us (John 14), Who guides into all the truth. Hence the very babes in Christ are said (1 John 2:20) to have unction from the Holy One. No Christian need distrust.

Thereon the general exhortations proceed. They are warned against any allowance of their former walk as Gentiles, alienated from God's life in every way, inward and outward. Not so did they learn the Christ, if albeit they heard Him and were taught in Him according as truth is in Jesus. What is this? Their having put away as to their former behavior the old man corrupt as to its lusts of deceit, and their being renewed in the spirit of their mind, and their having put on the new man which according to God was created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. Therefore putting away falsehood (this goes beyond lying) they were to speak truth, as being members one of another. They were not to allow continued anger. Instead of stealing they were to give, and to speak what was good for edifying, and not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God by Whom they were sealed for redemption's day. So all bitterness and heat, wrath, clamor, and abusive language, with all malice, must be put away from them; and they were to be kind one to another, compassionate, forgiving each other, even as God also showed them grace (vers. 17-32).

Grace toward faultiness, however, is not all. Chapter 5. opens with the more positive call to be imitators of God as children beloved, and walk in love; as Christ also loved us and gave Himself up for us, an offering and sacrifice to God for an odor of sweet smell. It was perfection in Him—for us, but to God; and it is our express pattern of love. But the danger of unclean sin is as carefully urged as of violence just before; and this in the levity of speech as in lust. Thanksgiving is a great antidote; as is our sense that those who so indulge are incompatible with the kingdom of Christ and God. Grace to believers in no way precludes God's wrath on the sons of disobedience. We, who were once darkness but now light in the Lord, should be far from such partnership, and walk as children of light, the fruit of which is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. The Spirit comes in, not in verse 9 but later in verse 18 as power, after love and light have been fully treated as the source, principle, and character of the walk for the new creation, proving what is agreeable to the Lord. The Christian is disposed to sleep, and is therefore to awake and rise up from among the dead, and Christ shall shine upon him: an evident allusion to Israel's portion by-and-by. Hence the need of walking carefully as wise, buying up the fit time, intelligent in the Lord's will, and filled with the Spirit in songs of praise of a Christian sort, certainly not with the world's dissolute excitement. Entitled as we are always and in all things to give thanks to Him Who is God and Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, let us not fail in doing thus, submitting ourselves to one another in Christ's fear (5:1-21).

This leads to the application of the same principle in our relationships; where the subject one is regularly first exhorted in each pair, wives to husbands, children to parents, and slaves to masters (verses 22-6:9). The wife and husband give occasion to a grand unfolding of Christ's love for the church or assembly as the model. He “loved the church and gave himself up for it, that he might sanctify it, purifying it by the washing of the water in virtue of the word, that he himself might present to himself the church glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any of such things; but that it might be holy and blameless.” Christ thus loved the church before He gave Himself up for it; and not content with that infinite self-surrender to sanctify it, He purifies after a divine fashion, as He will consummate His love in the glorious issue. His love sees to it all, and He uses the word now, as He will personally at length present it to Himself according to His own perfectness. So is the husband to love his own wife, and the wife to fear the husband. Children are not only to submit but to “obey” their parents in the Lord. If the law bade them pay honor, how much more the gospel? But fathers are not to irritate their children, but bring them up in the Lord's discipline and admonition. So were slaves to obey their masters according to flesh, but “as to Christ.” What a privilege, and beyond all other emancipation! Masters were to do the same things, in the equity they expected, forbearing threat, and knowing they had a common Master in the heavens.

Then follows (vers. 10-20), after the call to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, the whole armor of God we are to put on. It is not the righteousness we become in Christ, but practical as against the enemy. The sword of the Spirit, being God's word, is our one offensive weapon. That panoply we need that we may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. “For our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against principalities, against authorities, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual [hosts] of wickedness in the heavenlies.” We are contrasted with Israel arrayed against the Canaanites. Wherefore he bids us to take up the whole armor of God that we may be able to withstand in the evil day, as it is now till the Lord take His great power and reign. First, we are to be girt about our loins with truth, the inward movements thus braced before God; then to put on the breast-plate of righteousness, the confidence of an irreproachably right course; next, the walk animated by the gospel's peaceful spirit; besides (or, in) all, we must take the unwavering faith in God, which is the shield to quench all the inflamed darts of the wicked one; and receive the helmet of salvation in the assurance of what God wrought for us.

But even God's word will not avail against the foe unless the Spirit guide us in wielding it. Thus all demands simple and constant dependence on God. Hence “praying at all seasons with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the saints, and for me,” added the blessed apostle, “that utterance may be given me in the opening of my mouth with boldness to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am ambassador in a chain, that I may be bold in it as I ought to speak.” In what a place of nearness to God stand the faithful—in common interest with Him, and hence with the greatest of apostles as with the weakest of saints, for Christ's glory! Hence as the apostle shared Christ's love to them all, so he was assured they in their love would delight to hear all particulars of him; he sent Tychicus therefore to comfort their hearts, as a joint and band in the body.

The salutation is in keeping: “Peace to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace with all that love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruptness.” Without the Father and the Lord, what is anything else? Without incorruptness, even the love, or rather what is called love, were vain.

Christian Science

Not many of our readers may know of this new society, sprung up in American soil, already too fruitful in monstrosities, though not without votaries in Europe generally as well as in Great Britain and its Colonies. Unlike Mormonism, which appealed to superstitious feeling in the humblest class, the later delusion finds its prey among educated folk of easier means, whose ears are inclined to the bombastic phrases of philosophic skepticism, without conscience and without faith. As founded by a woman, Mrs. Dr. Mary Baker Eddy, we need not wonder that women predominate among its million-and-a-half with a sprinkling of men from all grades. For it is a day when the true God is daringly blasphemed; and “Christian Science” is not its least guilty form.

“Metaphysical” (not faith-) healing is one of its marked characteristics; had it aspired to no more, one might have left it to perish as a craze among kindred vanities. For is there in Bedlam any mania more certain than the notion, as well as the reasons given for it, that “man is never sick, for mind is never sick, and matter cannot be”? “Sickness is a delusion.” “There is no such thing as suffering in the universe of a good God.” “Tumors, ulcers, tubercles, inflammation, pain, deformed back [a singular limitation among so many deformities], are all dream-shadows, dark images of mortal [I] thought that will flee away before the light."... “haemorrhage and decomposition are beliefs, images of mortal thoughts superinduced upon the body.”

To state such wild vaporings sufficiently exposes them to any persons of sound judgment. The unsound may be left to the logic of facts as the best disproof. Nor should such verbiage have called for a notice in these pages, but that the vagary claims to be a religion! as well as a science, and not a new religion but the oldest Christian religion!! yea its clear and intelligible apprehension, according to the rules laid down by the Master Himself!!! Such a pretension, along with its suicidal basis of “NO PERSONAL GOD,” calls for the sternest denunciation. Mind without a personal subsistence is the shallowest of delusions. The self-existent God has affections and will, no less than purity, wisdom, and power according to His own infinitude. He is love and light in the beautiful yet true figures of scripture. But to deny implicitly His creation of angels and men, as well as of the heavens and the earth, is to fly in the face of His holy writ. To say that there is no other mind but the One, and no other will but His, is to contradict the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, nay the surest and saddest facts before us every day.

Through one man, says the great apostle, in entered into the world, and death through sin. When man fell, “dying thou shalt die” began; and Adam was only a father after he sinned. The race is a fallen one. Physical maladies are the symptoms and evidence of the mortality that is the portion of every child of Adam. Nor did he deny the sufferings of this present time, though he counts them not worthy to be compared with the coming glory to be revealed to us. For we know, says he, that the whole creation groans together and travails in pain together until now.

If this craze were consistent, it would deny death as well as sickness and pain. But its inconsistency is palpable and extreme. For if there be no reality in sickness, there can be no room for “healing “; which last they make one of the chief pillars of their system! Nor could there be reality in the miraculous powers which Christ both displayed and conferred on His servants at the first as a sign to unbelievers. How can “Christian Science” come like an angel of light to sick, suffering, and diseased humanity, if “sickness is a delusion,” and “there is no such thing as suffering in the universe of a good God”? Is it not plain that “Christian Science” is the real delusion, not sickness or suffering? Christ healed them as real diseases; He will completely clear them away when His world-kingdom comes.

The truth is that this pretentious folly is only a revival of heathen Pantheism. In it Christ has not even the place allowed to Him in the Koran of the false Prophet of Mecca. For He in it is owned to be the Judge, if not the Savior. But Mrs. Eddy leads her followers to deny a Personal God which the Moslems acknowledge, and consequently the everlasting judgment which remains for the unbelieving. An impersonal God of infinite love is a mere abstraction incapable of either love or judgment. The True God is He that sent His Son into the world to save sinners, but only such as believe. All others who hear add to their other sins the crowning one of rejecting the Lord and Savior, and of disbelieving God. Scripture is clear and decisive that He Who is to take the wicked is the same Jesus Who once suffered for sins, Just for unjust. What an awful aggravation of their unbelief, when the risen and glorified Savior sits to judge those who denied the true God as well as His Son! To say that “sin” is an illusion is to sink morally lower than an unbelieving Jew. The very heathen were not so false or audacious, though they had no adequate idea of what sin is in God's sight. “Christian Science” in denying the reality robs Christ of His moral glory as well as His grace, as the Taker away of the sin of the world.

Yet if there be no personal God, if He be but the mind of which we are part, it is a necessary consequence to deny Satan, sin, and judgment, incarnation and redemption; and all profession of believing Christ or the Spirit or the scriptures in any real sense; all must be unreal, and in time thrown aside as inconsistent with their own system. It is an antichrist, and neither “Christian” nor “Science.”

Think again how such a system destroys all the highest relations, and duties of the Christian. It were absurd to worship a principle: one can only worship a living personal God. Our communion is with the Father and with His Son by the Holy Spirit; with an impersonal Being this cannot be, as indeed it is folly to talk of its mind or will or love: “His” we cannot say, save improperly.

A living and personal God we are called to serve, and Him only, as the Word when become flesh did perfectly; and He is the truth, as also every form of Pantheism undermines responsibility which must be to a person. Adherence to a principle is quite a different thing. Pantheism or “Christian Science” is incompatible with relationship to God, and hence overthrows the foundation of morality, as it still more evidently shuts out grace, redemption, the new creation, and the new relations God forms in all who receive Christ the Lord by faith.

Azazel

Q.-Lev. 16:10. No one can be surprised at the uncertainty of such as trust either the ancient fathers or the modern Germans. But one does wonder at the dilemma of the late Archdeacon Hardwick in “Christ and other Masters” (Procter's Ed. 1874, p. 504): “How...could the goat as mentioned in ver. 10 be sent to or for Azazel, if Azazel were the goat itself?” Pray explain this. X.

A.-The answer is simple enough. Azazel does not mean the goat simply, but the goat of dismissal. It is all a mistake that the phrase leads directly to the notion of either a person or a place. As the first goat was that on which Jehovah's lot fell for sacrifice, the second was allotted to signify in a striking light the people's sins sent away into oblivion. The foundation was laid in the goat sacrificed to Jehovah. The goat on which the lot fell for Azazel (i.e. for this specific sign of dismissal) was set alive before Jehovah, to make atonement with or on it (i.e. in conjunction with the one slain), to send it away as Azazel into the wilderness, or as said in ver. 22 to a land apart. This was the place; and it is wholly unfounded to conceive Satan or a demon, or any other being. Jehovah forbade everything of the sort in the next chapter (Lev. 17:7), and is as far as possible from sanctioning such wicked folly here or anywhere else. It is sad to think of a pious man like Hengstenberg carried away by a notion so gratuitous, to say nothing of its impiety. The true and only sense is as evident as it is satisfactory, adding substitution to propitiation, and thus completing atonement, as far as the type could.

Isaac: 30. Isaac's Charge to Jacob

Gen. 28:1-5

Rebekah did not speak in vain; Isaac acted on her word as to Jacob; as God directed Abraham to listen to Sarah's voice when she demanded the dismissal of mocking Ishmael and his mother.

“And Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Padan-Aram, to the house of Bethuel thy mother's father; and take thee a wife thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother's brother. And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest become a congregation of peoples. And may he give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee and to thy seed with thee; that thou mayest inherit the land of thy sojournings, which God gave to Abraham. And Isaac sent away Jacob; and he went to Padan-Aram to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean, brother of Rebekah, Jacob's and Esau's mother” (vers. 1-5).

How pointed the distinction from the blessing Isaac heard from the angel of Jehovah when he called to Abraham! Then on the gift of his son, his only son, to die as far as he knew, came the promise of blessing in the widest terms, and seed multiplied as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand on the seashore. Nor was it only for the numerous seed to possess the gate of the enemies, but “in thy seed” (where no number is named, the one Seed of the apostle's interpretation), the true Son raised as truly from out of the dead, “shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” So indeed they are now as Christians. Nothing of the kind is in the blessing Isaac gave Jacob. Nor is this in any respect faulty, but faith speaking according to God's mind in a wholly different case, as we shall see more fully in the sequel.

Indeed it was a charge with which he opens, “Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan.” So Isaac in his day was to marry not from the people of the land, but from Abraham's land and kindred; yet how different the manner! Most emphatically he, the bridegroom, must not leave Canaan; but Abraham's servant, the elder of his house that ruled over all that he had, goes under solemn oath to fetch a wife thence for Isaac. Here on the contrary Jacob is asked to go to Padan Aram, and take a wife thence of the patriarch's kin, of Laban's daughters. So early must Jehovah visit Jacob according to his ways. “Jacob fled into the fields of Aram; and Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he kept [sheep].” He became an exile from the land of promise, to be cheated in a strange land by his kindred, the sad recompence of his own crooked ways to gain what Jehovah had given and would have secured in His holy way of faithfulness and truth.

“And God Almighty bless thee,” prayed Isaac, “and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee that thou mayest become a congregation of peoples.” So it was of old, so it will be yet more in the future. Here, as before, it is strictly blessing on earth. Not a word drops that points to heaven or eternity. Enlargement on earth is assured, but nothing is said of a higher order. Even when Isaac asks God to give him “the blessing of Abraham,” to him and to his seed with him, it is narrowed to this, “that thou mayest possess the land of thy sojournings which God gave to Abraham.” The stopping short thus of higher and deeper and larger things is surely significant, where Jacob comes before us. Such precision is as marked in this earliest of the scriptures; and the lack of observing it is not less apparent in critical eyes, which, failing to learn what is immeasurably above them, set up to judge them as human documents to God's dishonor and their own shame.

Of an opposite school are those who seek to read the church into every scripture, because they do not see that the glory of Christ will have an object of His love on earth as well as for the heavens. They have fallen into the Gentile conceit, which Rom. 11 was written to denounce and correct. God has not cast away His people Israel. They stumbled at the stumbling-stone, and rejecting their own Messiah, are rejected themselves, while the Gentiles are called, and the church is being formed wherein is neither Jew nor Greek, but Christ is all. But the Gentiles have been as faithless to their privileges as Israel, and must as surely be cut off. Divine mercy will then restore His ancient people when Christ returns and brings in His Kingdom in power and glory.

Israel is here in question for the earth, as the call of Rebekah to be Isaac's spouse typifies the bride for the heavenly Bridegroom. As to the administration of the fullness of times, which will only be when Christ appears, room must be left for all things to be headed up and centered in Christ, the Heir of all, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth—in Him, in whom we also were allotted a portion, being marked out beforehand according to God's sovereign purpose. The Christian is not part of the inheritance, but heir of God and joint-heir with Christ. This truth was early lost. The church judaized wholly after the apostles. Even Irenaeus, one of the best of the early ecclesiastics, betrays this confusion, which has gone on deepening ever since.

Priesthood: 23. Leprosy of the Head or the Beard

Leprosy of the Head or the Beard.—Lev. 13:29-44

Another case appears, evil indications on the head or on the beard. This at once arrests attention. For the comely was thus turned into its opposite, and deadly evil darkened what should manifest beauty of its kind.

“And if a man or a woman hath a sore on the head or on the beard, and the priest look on the sore, and, behold, it looketh deeper than the skin, and yellow thin hair [is] in it, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean; it [is] a scall, leprosy of the head or of the beard. And if the priest look on the sore of the scall, and, behold, it looketh not deeper than the skin, and no black hair [is] in it, the priest shall shut up [him that hath] the sore of the scall seven days. And when the priest looketh on the sore on the seventh day, and, behold, the scall hath not spread, and no yellow hair is in it, and the scall doth not look deeper than the skin, he shall shave himself, but the scall shall he not shave; and the priest shall shut up [him that hath] the mall seven days a second time. And the priest shall look on the mall on the seventh day, and, behold, the scall hath not spread in the skin, nor looketh deeper than the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him clean; and he shall wash his garments and be clean. But if the scall hath spread much in the skin after his cleansing, and the priest shall look on him, and, behold, the scall hath spread in the skin, the priest shall not seek for yellow hair: he [is] unclean. But if in his eyes the scall be at a stay, and black hair hath grown up therein, the scall is healed, he [is] clean; and the priest shall pronounce him clean.

“And if a man or a woman, hath in the skin of their flesh bright spots, white bright spots, and the priest look, and, behold, in the skin of their flesh [are] pale white spots, it [is] an eruption that hath broken out in the skin; he [is] clean. And if a man's hair have fallen off his head, he [is] bald; he [is] clean. And if his hair be fallen off from the front part of his head toward his face, he [is] forehead bald; he [is] clean. And if there be in the bald head or bald forehead a white-reddish sore, it [is] a leprosy that has broken out in his bald head or his bald forehead. And the priest shall look on it, and, behold, the rising of the sore [is] white-reddish in his bald head or in his bald forehead, as the appearance of leprosy in the skin of the flesh, he is a leprous man, he [is] unclean: the priest shall pronounce him utterly unclean; his sore [is] in his head” (vers. 29-44).

The suspected evil here infected what in part characterized a woman, as it wholly did a man, The priest must see to it and discern. Was it in appearance deeper than the skin? Still more, was there in it yellow hair? If so, there was an energy of mischief at work, contrary to the constitution in its normal state. As the presence of black hair was an indication of health, yellow thin hair showed the fell disease in an active form, and the priest had only to pronounce unclean. It was not only a scall but leprosy of the head or of the beard. If however the priest on looking saw the sore to be on the surface, though no black hair was in it, there was hope. But he was to be shut up for a full term of waiting; and if on the seventh day under the priest's inspection, there was no spreading and no yellow hair, and the scall was only skin deep, he must shave himself (not the scall), and again be similarly shut up. If after the fresh time of seclusion, the priest on looking found neither spreading of the sore nor deepening, the person was entitled to be pronounced clean, as he was called thereon to wash his clothes and be clean.

Everything, it is plain, marks the holiness Jehovah demanded in His people; and this, not under a man's estimate of his own state, nor yet on the perfunctory opinion of a fellow Israelite. What was offensive in His eyes and unfitted for any part in His congregation must be subjected to him who was used to His sanctuary and bound to judge by His word according to that standard; for there Jehovah dwelt. The same principle applies still, and more fully since Christ came and accomplished redemption. He too is the ever accessible and vigilant priest who cannot fail to discern and act to God's glory.

But there is also provision against a morbid judgment and despair, which Satan knows how to work for injury and ruin, as well as the more common danger of too light and self-sparing a scrutiny. A man or a woman might have in the skin of their flesh “bright spots, white bright spots.” Here again priestly discernment is prescribed; and if they were of a pale or dull hue, it was not leprosy, but a different eruption that had broken out in the skin. The person was clean. Grace is as opposed to severity as to laxness. It is holy, but neither hard nor careless or compromising.

Another case comes next, which there was still less reason to confound with leprosy. Weakness is nothing of the sort. A man's hair might fall off his head in general, or from the parts of his head toward his face. He might be bald, or forehead bald; but in either instance it was no more than infirmity; and infirmity is not sin, any more than sin should be called infirmity as is too often done. The apostle gloried in his infirmities, his trials and sufferings. No saint could make light of a single sin; still less could he glory in sins. Whoever does so proclaims himself a leper; and his pretension to be a saint is utter delusion.

But where there is weakness, as here in a bald head or forehead, there might be worse, “a white-reddish sore.” Then it is most serious, and none other than leprosy breaking out there; and the priest looks on him, and sees it to be really so. “He is a leprous man; he is unclean: the priest shall pronounce him utterly unclean; his sore is in his head.” It is a hopeless case. Delay was uncalled for; waiting, an idle form. Human mercy, or magnanimity, in such a case would be of Satan. “Holiness becometh thy house, O Jehovah, forever.”

The Day of Atonement: 9. The Incense and the Bullock Part 3

The Incense and the Bullock

How is it with the Christian? Liberty of access he has, not merely into the holy place but into the holiest of all. By Christ's blood is now given boldness at all times for all saints; whilst Aaron entered tremblingly but once a year, with incense and blood ever renewed, into that which was but the figure of the true sanctuary. So greatly does the gospel exceed the highest privilege of not only priesthood but the highest of the priests. Yet it would ill become one to suppose for a moment that Christians are high priests: God forbid! One would no more think of claiming to be high priest than of calling Christ our elder brother, as do Moravians and the like. It is one thing for Christ to call us brethren, quite another for us to call Him brother. It is gracious for the King to show some condescension to you or to me, but altogether an impropriety for us therefore to forget his majesty and to slight his royal place. Reverence becomes us, and especially in the presence of not only unmerited favor, but of the infinite personal glory, of the Savior, which make the blessing so immense to such as we are.

It is no question of words, but of the momentous fact by divine grace, that, when a man receives the gospel of God by faith, he is entitled to know from that moment that in virtue of Christ's cross he is brought nigh to God. Now if thus reconciled and nigh, can you tell me of any privilege more truly precious? Was it not on the face of things that only priests could enter the sanctuary? The people were without praying, and the priest came within to burn incense. As long as the temple and the law had a standing, the people could only be outside. Is this, according to the gospel, the actual position of a Christian? Time was, no doubt, when we stood without; and it was a rich and needed mercy to come under the truth of the second goat as well as the first. But when we entered on the near and proper ground of Christian privilege, what then? We find ourselves in evident and weighty contrast with Israel, who have not yet the blessing. They abide in unbelief outside, and only outside. Is this then where we are now? Is it not true that grace calls us in faith to follow Christ within the veil? It is not only that there we have a hope sure and steadfast, and that which enters within the veil; we have also full assurance of faith, and so are emboldened to enter into the holiest by His blood.

There is a new and living way consecrated (or, dedicated) for us—for all who believe on Him. All who are associated with Him are not more called to bear His reproach from the world than they are to draw near where He is glorified in the presence of God. This is not and never will be the portion of the Jew. Christ will come and reign over Israel here below. Believing now we become heavenly. The moment a Jew does receive Christ as His portion, he ceases to be a Jew, he becomes a Christian. And Christ in heaven is the common portion of all Christians, whether they be Jews or not. They thus acquire a title of access into the holiest of all by the blood of Jesus. Hence what believers want, in order to have the force of Christian worship and walk, is not a negation but the positive truth, as here that Christians now are priests of God. They are God's house, and Christ is the anti-typical Aaron, to say nothing of John 4:23.

This, our priestly place, is the unquestionable doctrine of the New Testament. It is not merely where the word “priest” is used, or the sanctuary is in view. Nearness of access to God, by the faith of Christ through His blood, is everywhere the truth of the gospel, from the fundamental Epistle to the Romans right through the whole extent of the New Testament. Is there any part of it (unless it be the Epistle of James, which, without taking up redemption, rather looks to new birth in those begotten of God), which does not present the substance of the truth now lying before us?—that we come under the bullock as well as the incense, to speak Levitically? We have therefore special privileges adumbrated by Aaron and his priestly house, and indeed a vast deal more.

Mark this difference: though the blood of the goat entered within the veil, Israel never got beyond the brasen altar; we, on the other hand, draw near into the holies before the mercy-seat. We come even boldly unto the throne of God. We are entitled to behold the glory of God there in the face of Jesus Christ. You may perceive that other scriptures are here mingled along with this type which comes before us; but it is scarcely desirable too straitly to sever one truth from another. These are only used in order to show the fullness of the Christian roll of blessing. How comes it to pass that we have our privileges shadowed not only by the sons of Aaron but by Aaron himself? that they really can only be measured by Christ on high? It is because, as we know from other parts of scripture, we are made one with Christ. Yet union is not the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews simply, because it is not God's object there. But he that wrote to the Hebrews is none other than the apostle who brought out the mystery concerning Christ and concerning the church, as no man ever could before or ever did since.

It was enough here to set out the peculiar and heavenly status of the Christian in virtue of Christ's work and priesthood. He is associated with Christ in perfect nearness to God. For who could think of Christ as one that separates from God? He is the very One that brings us nigh. Because of His own person, all the more acceptable to God because displayed in the dependence and holiness of man here below, Christ was entitled to the presence of God. But He would not go alone, He loved His master, He loved His wife, He loved His children; He was the true Hebrew servant, and would serve forever and ever. He laid down His life, that. He might take it again in resurrection. He was the corn of wheat which, having fallen into the ground, died bearing much fruit. He gave Himself for us, and Whom He loved He loved to the end.

Very different were we, apart from that life which was laid down for us that we too might live of His life. We had belonged to the first man, as now to the Second, the last Adam, forever. What does this import? It is what God teaches His children, even you. It is what we are meant to enjoy here as given to Christ. As is the Heavenly, such are they also who are heavenly. It stamps His whole character, His own associations, His proper relationships, as far as possible, upon the Christian. Is it then the lot or attainment of some only? His grace confers it upon all. There is no Christian save in this near position. It is in no case left us to choose our own place before God. It is God that has chosen us, having given Christ for us; and God will have nothing less as a measure and character of blessing to us than the measure of His own beloved Son, the First-born among many brethren. Here again one may observe another expression of it according to the scope of the Epistle to the Romans. But almost everywhere is presented the same blessed association with Christ.

This, in short, is just the truth which the Spirit presses habitually (Col. 3:11): “Christ is all and in all.” Do we desire to know, not merely where Christ will be by and by, but where Christ is now? Then, according to the mind of God, He is not only “all,” but “in all,” i.e. in all Christians. Himself is the whole spring and character of Christian conduct. He is our life. It is in vain to look for Christian ways, unless you are in, and believe in, your relationship to Christ. Our ways are according to the relationships we fill. Our duties flow from what we are thus. It is not merely a question of right and wrong, of what we ought to do or be. This was law. But now it is a question of being consistent with Christ Who to us is all and in all. This is what we have as Christians. And what then is the standard of our consistency? Christ, and Christ as He is in the presence of God.

Everything thus supports and carries out more and more manifestly the meaning of this instructive type—the blessing figured by the incense and the bullock, for those that belong to the Lord, while He is now within on high. Mark the force of this. Are we not brought into association with Christ while He is in the sanctuary? Properly speaking, there was no Christian until Christ entered the sanctuary. There were disciples before. A disciple might be a Christian or he might not. For we read of disciples not merely in the Gospels but even in the prophecy of Isaiah (chap. 8). Thus there were disciples who merged in the church of God, as we see in the Acts of the Apostles, as there were disciples long before the church began. A disciple therefore is not necessarily or properly a Christian.

Even when the church began, a disciple might not have the full Christian character, though he ought of course. Those who still went up to the temple to offer sacrifices under the law should have left the Jewish condition for the Christian. On what ground? Christ's death on the cross, known intelligently to faith, and the gift of the Holy Ghost consequent upon His blood-shedding. It is Christ on high that stamps the full and proper Christian character upon us. But this evidently falls in with our relationship to Christ as God's house; indeed all our characteristic blessing now depends upon His being there in virtue of His atoning work. We could not of course have title to be there but through His death. Therefore we must all come in through the narrow door of His cross. And no soul will stoop so low save by being born again, as there is no means of reconciliation with God, still less of being His family, unless our sins are borne away. But the goat of substitution, supplementing that of propitiation (for they constitute the atonement for the people), does not give the full measure of the Christian. It is the necessary foundation for guilt outside. Without it there could be no remission of sins, not to speak of the full privileges of Christianity. But there are privileges beyond it, figured by the bullock and the incense.

Take as an illustration the initiatory sign of Christian faith. We all know that baptism is this, without going into controverted points of mode and subject. What does baptism mean? Is it a sign of life? The Romanists will tell you so, and others who are like them, which they ought not to be. Baptism, contrariwise, is a sign of Christ's death. Hence the Lord instituted proper Christian baptism after, and not before, He rose from the dead. What then is really taught in that initiatory institution? That one is buried with Christ. Is this life? Is it not plainly to be put into the place of death with Christ? Where also would be the propriety of being buried with Him through baptism unto “life"? Were it a sign of life-giving to a soul destitute of it previously, one could understand the figure of the womb or the breast of the mother church; but how incongruous with the death of Christ, and with burial? The ordinary doctrine that connects baptism with new birth is unmitigated Popish error, or rather the delusion of the Fathers before Popery. Baptism is not even the sign (still less the means) of life, but of death and burial with Christ. The Old Testament saints had life, ages before baptism or even circumcision. Christian baptism is the sign of a new and distinctively Christian privilege which none could enjoy before our Lord died and rose.

The Old Testament saints hung on God's promise; and perhaps some believers may be “grasping at the promises” now. Would to God all knew better! Do not suppose that anything is meant disrespectful to the ancients, or unkind to anybody here or elsewhere. Would to God you might be aroused from clinging only to what was then of faith, true and right according to God when there was nothing more! But now that an incomparably “better thing” is revealed, why do you saints so obstinately cleave to that which fails to express the full grace of God toward your soul? It is not merely a promised Messiah, but the rejected and crucified Son of man, Who was dead, and is risen and now glorified in heaven. Has all that He wrought made no difference? The atoning work is done. It is no longer promise, but accomplishment. This has made a vast difference for God; surely it ought to make at least as great a difference for you, and it would if you by faith understood the gospel. We are brought into proportionately greater privileges.

The work the Father gave the Son to do is accomplished to His glory, Who has therefore glorified the Son and is now giving every blessing short of our resurrection for His heavenly kingdom. We are even seated in heavenly places in Christ, though not yet taken in person to be seated with Him in heaven. How strong and holy is the great basis of Christianity as revealed in 2 Cor. 5! Him Who knew no sin He made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. What a blessed character of righteousness is thus come to us before God! It is what Christ is made to us from God.

When the Holy Ghost was given, it was, as our Lord said, to convince the world of three things—of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Of sin, on what ground? Because they violated the law? Not so, nor because they had an accusing conscience, but “because they believe not on Me.” A Gentile only thinks of himself; a Jew perhaps of the law, as some others seem to know no better, though they ought; but scripture puts the true measure. Christ brought in the perfect standard. “The law made nothing perfect.” There is now the introduction of a better hope, and the rejection of Christ therefore becomes the great sin. If He had not come, and spoken, as well as done, beyond all others, they had not had sin; but now they had no excuse for their sin; they had both seen and hated both Him and His Father—yea, hated Him without a cause. The test-sin therefore is the not believing on Him. Whatever people may argue for other things, that is God's present and full standard.

But what is His demonstration in respect of “righteousness”? As the world is by the Spirit proved to be unrighteous, because it rejected the Holy One; so God the Father has proved His righteousness, because He has received the rejected Christ to His own right hand. “Because I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more.” From this point of view Christ is lost to the world. When He comes again, it will not be to present Himself in grace or to preach the kingdom. He will come to judge both quick and dead; He will judge the habitable earth in righteousness. It will not be the day of grace as now, in order that men may believe on Him. This will be all past. The world proved its unrighteousness by crucifying Christ; the Father, by receiving the rejected Son, so that He is thus seen no more. Righteousness is proved in Christ gone to the Father at the right hand of God in heaven: and thereby we who believe are made God's righteousness in Him. We are identified with Christ at the right hand of God. What a high character of righteousness this is! Truly it is the righteousness of God, though infant tongues among the children of God have not yet learned to lisp it aright. But oh! what a blessed privilege! It is not merely a perfect life of obedience under the law on the earth as a whole, nor a making reparation for countless failures of His people in all the isolated details of their lives; but as God showed His righteousness in raising up and glorifying the rejected One, so do we also by grace become God's righteousness in Him. That man in Christ should be in God's glory on high is His righteousness; that, in an unbelieving world, we who believe should be identified with Him in that glory by virtue of His work of redemption is another wondrous result of the same righteousness of God.

This, one can see, is connected in the closest way with the sin-offering, the bullock slain for Aaron and his house. No doubt the believers of Israel looked for the Messiah to come in the due time and bless the people. But when the Son of man comes, He will after solemn judgment reign in Zion expressly, but over the earth (Psa. 2, Zech. 14), where will be a temple, veil, priesthood, etc., once more. Now Christians from among the Jews for themselves merge their earthly expectation in the better and heavenly hope, suitable to knowing Christ as we do on high, instead of in connection with the earth. For indeed there is now but “one body and one Spirit.” Therefore do we (if we understand our calling, though we rightly begin as poor sinners outside) enter within the sanctuary, whence the Spirit is come out, while Christ is there, to unite us to Him. It is where Christ is hidden from man, hidden in God, that we, Jews or Gentiles, now know Him. Instead of His coming forth from the sanctuary to give us remission of sins, as it will be verified by grace to expectant Israel by and by, the Holy Ghost is sent down by the Father and the Son to associate us with Christ in the glory where He sits now. This distinctively is Christianity. Would to God that every one of us entered into this and more as our proper portion It is not now laid before us, as a merely interesting doctrine, but as truth bound up with Christ's glory, and hence of the deepest moment for the Spirit Who blesses our souls in glorifying Him.

Along with it goes the third truth which the Spirit demonstrates already to the world, judgment; “because the prince of this world hath been judged” (John 16:11). It was Satan who united the otherwise irreconcilable enemies, the Jews and the Gentiles, as a God-hating world in crucifying His Son the Lord of glory; being judged himself in that heinous misjudgment, he was shown this world's ruler in such daring rebellion against the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is now here, because the rupture is thus full and final, to carry out divine purposes entirely outside and above the world to God's glory.

As the Jew then was in danger of overlooking the relationships, and hence the duties, of Israel, so are we exposed specially to forget our own place and our own responsibility. An active and subtle foe would ever dishonor God by our failure as by theirs. We need, therefore, to be watchful that we neglect not that which most nearly concerns the glory of God by us. And as Christ is objectively the truth, so is He the only one Who works by the Holy Ghost and the word to keep us from all mistakes and guide us into all the truth. We should be wholly unfit for any such call of grace, unless, having life in the Son, we had peace through the blood of Christ's cross. But as believers, we have eternal life in Him, the self-same life of Christ which was shown and tried and proved in all its perfection on the earth. And our consciences are purged by the blood which rent the veil and opened the way into the holies, God in all His moral being and majesty being forever glorified thereby. It is because Christ is in the holiest, and we by faith know Him while there, the Holy Ghost is sent down not only that we may enjoy the blessed fruit of Christ's work, but that we may enter freely, boldly, in spirit where He is. When the Lord comes forth for the people, there will be quite another condition.

But one ought briefly to point out, how before He quits heaven we have in ver. 16 the reconciliation of the holy place and the altar, no man being there but the high priest while He makes atonement for it till He comes out (vers. 17-19). The counterpart of this we read in Heb. 9:23, “The heavenly things themselves, with better sacrifices than these.” Such is God's nice care for His dwelling, to which we allude by the way. No man was to be with the high priest in this unutterably solemn action. He does it all Himself. He was for this purpose alone with God. Nothing mingled with the atonement of Christ. That it should be absolutely fit for the divine glory, the highest perfection for His own to enjoy, He does the work in His own person to the exclusion of every other. This made all sure. How precious to God the Father, and how blessed for us, whose souls should delight not only in the work, but in Him Who did all, suffered all, perfectly to God's glory, that all might be of grace! (concluded)

Proverbs 13:7-12

Walking in a vain show is natural to man as he is; but it does not always put on the same mask. The most prevailing snare is to pretend to have more than one possesses; but we must be prepared also for some pretending to have less than they have, in order to escape a duty or from other selfish motives.

“There is that feigneth himself rich, and [hath] nothing; [there is] that feigneth himself poor, and [hath] great wealth.

The ransom of a man's life [is] his riches; but the poor heareth no threatening.

The light of the righteous rejoiceth; but the lamp of the wicked shall be put out.

By pride cometh only contention; but with the well-advised [is] wisdom.

Wealth [gotten] by vanity diminisheth; but he that gathereth with the hand shall have increase.

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick; but a desire [that] cometh to pass [is] a tree of life” (vers. 7-12).

The knowledge of Christ who is the Truth is the only sure means of making the believer truthful in deed as in word. But even he has no force beyond the constant dependence of faith. To be content with the fact that one believed is a snare and may be ruinous; faith is unreal, if it be not a living faith, and a believing life.

The richest and wisest of men was a fitting oracle to tell men how greatly they err that count riches to be happiness. They make him envied and plotted against; so that a rich man's life, even if otherwise well spent, is one of exposure to dangers and deceits, and hence of no little uneasiness to the sensitive. What a sad use of riches to be the ransom of one's life! Here at least the poor man lives in peace. To the wicked it is aimless to threaten him who has nothing to lose, nothing to excite the covetous. He that has mercy on the poor, happy is he; whilst he that oppresses them, reproaches his Maker, and shall give account of his ways. When Christ reigns, He will satisfy the poor with bread. Even in the evil day his poverty protects him largely, while the rich man is proportionately exposed.

What a true and striking contrast between “the light” of the righteous, and “the lamp” of the wicked! Their course and end are according to their source. There is no real righteousness in God's estimate apart from Him Who revealed Himself and justifies us by the faith of Christ. The light of the righteous therefore rejoiceth, as in it sins are effaced, and sorrows turned into profit and consolation. The lamp of the wicked may flare wildly for a while during the pleasures of sin for a season; but ere long it dims, flickers, and shall be quenched.

Pride is the root of contention. What is emptier than self-applause and self-seeking? What so rules, not only those who affect great things in high life, but among the most debased of mankind? So it works in every circle of the world, and still more disgustingly in the church, to which Christ has given the exemplar of what perfectly pleases God and edifies man by love in the truth. Pride leads to confusion, contention, and every evil work. The old man is ever proud in one way or another, being as self-sufficient as he is regardless and forgetful of Christ. Faith alone makes a man “well-advised” in a divine sense. With those led of the Spirit is wisdom; for Christ is before their eyes and their heart. He indeed from God is made to us wisdom, and all else we need; yet, whatever we have, what do we not need?

Then again we are reminded how wealth goes as it came. If got by light, unworthy, or dishonest ways, how it flies! For in such a case it has wings, not weight, and vanishes by no less vanity than it appeared for awhile. “But he that gathereth with the hand shall have increase.” God honors industry; and some that are great lords add luster to their rank by being more truly working men than those who live by it and are too apt to boast of it. Such should every believer be, and put to shame those that eat without work! How happy too when “increase” enables one to give to the needy! how sad that any should take advantage of grace, instead of seeking to eat their own bread!

Next we are told of the blight created by disappointment, and the cheer given by receiving what the heart sought. “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick; but [when] desire cometh, it is a tree of life.” Some may have proved both experiences, and know how true it is. But we do well in the things of this life to judge our thoughts and desires before God by His word, and ever to say in truth, “Thy will be done.”

Gospel Words: Unbroken Net

We have seen in Luke 5 the remarkable manner in which the Lord called Simon Peter and his companions, already disciples, to be fishers of men. There was then a miracle wrought, which acted powerfully not on the mind only or the affections, but on the conscience. After a night's toil in which they caught nothing, the Master spoke, and at His word they let down the nets. This done, they enclosed a great multitude of fishes; but their nets were breaking, and their partners came to help them, and filled both their boats, so that they began to sink. It was the beautiful picture of the gospel work to which they were thenceforward called, where they apart from Him could do nothing, and His power wrought. But yet He allowed the weakness of human responsibility to be felt; for the nets were breaking and the boats sinking under the weight of the very blessing given.

Here at the sea of Tiberias after His resurrection we see them at Peter's instance again fishing; and this night too they took nothing. “But when morn was now breaking, Jesus stood on the beach. The disciples however knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus therefore saith to them, Children, have ye aught to eat? They answered him, No. And he said to them, Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. That disciple therefore whom Jesus loved saith to Peter, It is the Lord. Simon Peter therefore, having heard that it was the Lord, girded his overcoat about him (for he was naked), and cast himself into the sea; and the other disciples came in the small boat (for they were not far from the land, but about two hundred cubits off), dragging the net of fishes. When therefore they went out on the land, they see a fire of coals there, and fish laid on it, and bread. Jesus saith to them, Bring of the fishes ye have now taken. Simon Peter therefore went up, and drew the net to the land full of great fishes a hundred and fifty-three; and though they were so many, the net was not rent. Jesus saith to them, Come, dine. But none of the disciples dared inquire of him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord. Jesus cometh and taketh the bread and giveth it to them, and the fish in like manner. This is already the third time that Jesus had been manifested to the disciples, being risen from the dead” (vers. 4-14).

This was not a miracle only but a sign, as indeed is ever the case in the fourth Gospel, and in special connection with the two fore-going manifestations of the risen Lord, which give the key to what has just been cited. The first was when the Lord made Himself known to the disciples gathered on the first day of the week, His own very resurrection day, when He breathed on them, and said, Receive the Holy Spirit. It was His risen life communicated in the power and character of His resurrection, His blood already shed, peace now given, and themselves sent on a mission of peace. It is the type of the Christian and the church.

Eight days after was the second manifestation, when Thomas, who had been absent before but was now present, was convicted of unbelief; as the Lord took up his words of doubt and bade him reach here his finger and see His hands, and put his hand into His side, and be not faithless but believing. The slow disciple could only answer, My Lord and my God! just as the converted Jews will say at the end of this age. Indeed the Lord intimated the same thing when He said to him, “Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed [as Israel will do by-and-by]: blessed are they who have not seen and believed “; which is the proper faith of the Christian now.

The third manifestation is equally notable. “After these things Jesus was manifested again to his disciples” in Galilee of the Gentiles. It is not said to be on the first day of the week, nor eight days after; but simply after what foreshadowed His work in bringing Israel out of their unbelief. Now He sets forth Himself for their millennial work of bringing to Him from the sea of the nations, in which converted Israel will be honored by His grace. Here there is no breaking of the nets, no sinking of the boats. The net is drawn to land full of great fishes, as becomes the type of that vast ingathering. Whatever be the ruin of the Gentiles deceived by Satan at the end, there will be no failure among the blessed among the nations any more than in Israel. This is no small contrast with all that has been seen since Pentecost. And it is not without a bearing on that new day for the earth, that they found a fire of coals already there, and fish on it and bread. Those, who are used of grace for bringing in of the Gentiles on a great scale, learn that the Lord has wrought a work before them, and that they are invited to enter into the communion of His love in that previously hidden work; for eating here as elsewhere is its well-known figure. They partook of the fish ashore before what they had just caught on a larger scale.

Is not Jesus a wondrous and unwearied Savior? Think of it in all these three manifestations of Himself after He rose. What was it to the disciples who forsook Him and fled? What was it to Thomas so gloomily denying the good tidings? What will it be to a Gentile remnant, and to all the nations in the future day? And are you, my reader, to be left out of the blessing? It can only be because you harden your soul against casting yourself on Him now. If you are poor, He is rich; if you have no merit, and sins only, He is All-worthy, and died for you. Is not His death all that God values on your behalf? Believing on Him, you are justified. His work claims it, and God delights to prove that it is not in vain. Therein is His righteousness. He owes it to the cross of Christ; and it is yours if you believe. But beware of slighting the divine message. Put not His word of grace from you, nor thus judge yourselves unworthy of life eternal. God is not mocked in the end. Despise Him not now to your own ruin both now and forever. It is “the hour when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live.” Is any case too desperate?

1 Peter 2:4-5

The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ begot us again unto a living hope according to His abundant mercy, through (not the incarnation, but) resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It was not, as the Jews expected, unto an inheritance of earthly glory, ease and power superior to all disasters and adversaries, the kingdom as it is to be, but unto an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, reserved in the heavens for those who are guarded by God's power for salvation ready to be revealed. All intrinsically has been accomplished, at a last fit time, wherein they exult, for a little at present, if there is need, put to grief by varied trials to the proving of their faith. After mention of redemption by the Lamb's blood and its practical end, the apostle refers to our being born again of incorruptible seed through God's living and abiding word, and that new nature nourished on the guileless or pure milk of the word unto salvation. All is in contrast with the law at Sinai lightening against disobedience and transgression, but powerless to give either life οr righteousness, the indispensable wants of sinful man. But grace has already supplied both abundantly in Christ, and hence, to the faith that receives Him for whom we wait, for salvation to the full, having tasted already how good He is, and so anticipated Psalms and Prophets that proclaim it for a future day.

Now we enter on privileges already conferred, represented by figures singularly interesting to the Jewish mind and its associations of honor and reverence. For, speaking of the Lord, the apostle says “Unto whom approaching, a living stone, by men indeed rejected but with God chosen, precious, yourselves also as living stones are being builded up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (vers. 4, 5).

However sure and enduring may be the counsels of grace, God allows no reasoning to weaken the need and the value and the duty of constant dependence on the Lord. So He Himself said, “Verily, verily, I say to you, Unless ye ate the flesh and drank the blood of the Son of man, ye have no life in yourselves.” It is truly an act by faith once for all; but where real, a continual participation follows. Hence He adds, “He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath life eternal, and I will raise him up at the last day; for my flesh is truly food and my blood is truly drink. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me and I in him.” It is not life eternal only, but communion as a constant thing: so the Christian abides in Christ and Christ abides in him. To pretend that once to have eaten and drank supersedes always eating and drinking proves its unreality, its selfishness also, and its contrariety to God.

So here it is said, “Unto whom approaching “: from the time of approach it is real and full of blessing. Assuredly a soul is not left free and assured, if one go back and walk no more with Him, as some of His disciples did, of whom John 6, tells us. Christ is the center and touchstone and foundation of Christianity. Those who left Him were fruitless branches of the Vine. The apostle hoped better things and akin to salvation of those who abode (Heb. 6:9). The converse is written later that “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have abode with us, but that they might be made manifest that none are of us” (1 John 2:19).

Christ is then called “a living stone, rejected indeed by men but with God chosen, precious.” “Living” is a word near to Peter's heart, since so he was enabled to confess Christ, “the Son of the living God,” and heard himself for it pronounced “blessed” by his Master. “The Christ” or Messiah was indeed truly given of God; but this truth does not raise above the earth over which He will reign from Zion His center in Israel. When the Jews were denying Jesus, as they still do, to confess Him as the Messiah was to be born of God. But the Son of God, as revealed in the Gospel of John, is often far more; and “the Son of the living God” gives strong emphasis to our Lord as the conqueror of him that has the power of death. Hence the person of the Lord thus revealed is the rock on which He would build His church, now that the Jews, not the fickle crowd only but the chief priests and elders and scribes, were rejecting Him, and would even to the death of the cross.

The new building of God was to rise when the chosen nation publicly and finally, as far as their responsibility went, forfeited all for the time; a heavenly work and witness displaced the former earthly one. And the new one, here peculiarly called “My church,” He declares superior to “the gates of Hades,” which is more than death. As resurrection was to mark Him out Son of God in power, to begin the new as First-born, not of all creation only but from out of the dead, so was that which Christ builds beyond Satan's power to destroy. Thus is its distinctness made plain and certain from that which man builds, which was to be corrupted and the object of divine judgment more irreparably than Israel, as shown through the N. T. from Matt. 13, 2 Thess. 2, 2 Peter and Jude to Rev. 17 For it is revealed that the apostasy shall come before the day of the Lord; and there is no restoration for Christendom, as there will be for Israel thenceforth and forever.

Meanwhile if Israel do not yet own Him as the Shepherd and their Stone, this He is, and a Living Stone as the apostle of the circumcision here designates Him to those who come unto Him. Shall the unbelief of the mass of Jews make of none effect the faith of God? Far be it: the remnant who believe are all the more blessed. He, a living Stone, imparts His own virtue to those who come. Did men, did the builders in Jerusalem, vent their contemptuous rejection of Him Who came into the world, not to reign, but to bear witness to the truth, to bring God into it and to put sin out of it, and thus met hatred as none ever had, and on the cross wrought atonement? What was He ever, and then especially, with God? Was He not His choice One? His servant, whom He upholds, though forsaken even by God as none ever was, yet so He must if made sin for us. Yes, He is Jehovah's chosen, in whom His soul delights; and as He put His Spirit upon Him, so Jesus shall bring forth judgment to the nations; He shall not cry, nor lift up His voice, nor cause it to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He not quench; He shall bring forth judgment in truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till He have set judgment in the earth; and the isles shall wait for His law (Isa. 42.). Here however it is by the way; for the Spirit of God is occupied with a very different servant, deaf and blind, ensnared by the idols of the heathen with all the ruinous consequences, instead of being true witnesses, like Him of His choice, Who becomes from chap. 49 the great topic in His rejection with its blessed results; that in the end Israel may really become His servants to the joy and blessing of all the earth.

But the apostle writes in the gap of Christ's rejection, before the day of blessing and glory dawns on Israel, the land, and all the nations; and he shows us Christ, dead, risen, and ascended, the object of God's delight, and the hinge of all that is good for the believer now. He is a living Stone, rejected indeed by men, but with God chosen, prized. So he preached at Pentecost. Him given up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye through hand of lawless men did crucify and slay, Whom God raised up. . . Let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God made Him, this Jesus Whom ye crucified, both Lord and Christ. And as Peter received a new name from the Rock which Christ alone was, so the saints who believe acquire a nature from what He is, as he here tells us; “yourselves also as living stones are being builded up a spiritual house.”

In nature no object lies more obviously void of life than a stone. But this only makes the power of grace the more impressive. Even John the Baptist could tell the haughty Pharisees and Sadducees, who pleaded their descent from Abraham, that God was able of the stones to raise up children to Abraham. Here the apostle predicates of the believing remnant that they themselves as living stones were being builded up for God's use and to His praise. But it was all through the One, even our Lord Jesus. He does not develop the unity of the Spirit like the apostle of the uncircumcision; but he not obscurely hints at the association of the saints. They are being formed into a spiritual house.

It was no longer a question of the mountain consecrated by Samaritan pride, nor yet of Jerusalem and the house, where the Jews said one must worship if one worshipped at all. That hour in principle passed away with the cross of Christ, as the Epistle to the Hebrews demonstrated at a later day. The only temple God owns is the church as a whole, unless it be individually the temple of a Christian's body; for the Holy Ghost by His indwelling so constitutes both (1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19). Here the language is less full and precise. The general import sufficed for the purpose in hand. They composed, as being living stones, a spiritual house. Assuredly such and so near a relationship to God was a high honor put upon them even now when passing through the world; and we shall find that it entails corresponding duties on all so invested.

This he follows up by another title of honor and living nearness to God, “a holy priesthood.” Nor does the Holy Spirit now recognize any other priesthood as accredited by God. The entire Jewish religious system came to its end with Christ's death: temple, sacrifice, rite, and priesthood. Heathenism was an imposture, Satan's evil imitation or delusive substitute. Christ is not entered into holy places made with hand, answering to the true, but into heaven itself now to appear before the face of God for us. As He according to scripture is the sole and great High Priest, become higher than the heavens and seated on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, the sole priestly house (the same scripture acknowledges) consists of all the saints of God. They are alike washed, sanctified, and justified. They had and have also access by faith into the favor of God “in which we stand.” In Christ Jesus they were become nigh by the blood of Christ. Whatever the distance between Jew and Gentile, and between God and both, we out of them both who believe have through Christ the access by one Spirit unto the Father.

Though nearness to God is the most precious and essential mark of a priest, the proof is not merely the principle furnished in the Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, and Ephesians just referred to. In our text the apostle Peter explicitly characterizes the Christians only as the “holy priesthood” which the N. T. owns. The apostle John speaks to the same effect in Rev. 1:6; and the Epistle to the Hebrews, in the fullest treatment of the necessity arising out of the priesthood changed in Christ, from first to last treats Christian brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, as the true and present analogue to the family of Aaron. Early in it we read that Christ is Son over God's house; Whose house are we (Heb. 3:6). Later (10:19) we read again, “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy [places] by the blood of Jesus, a new and living way which he dedicated for us through the veil, that is his flesh, and [having] a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from a wicked conscience and having our body washed with pure water,”

Here the privilege attributed to all saints is greater than any son of Aaron ever enjoyed, or even Aaron himself; for it applies to all times, and with a boldness he never knew. Faith is entitled thus to approach where Christ is now through the rent veil in virtue of His blood and the Spirit who makes its efficacy good to our conscience and heart, as our settled status. Hence as we read in our text “to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ,” the functions are open to us and binding on us, far beyond using oxen, sheep, goats, cakes, or incense. And this we find confirmed in Heb. 13:15: Through Him therefore let us offer up sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, fruit of lips confessing to His name. The proof of our priestly place is remarkably complete. Hence it follows that the caste of a priesthood now on earth on behalf of the Christian saints, and separate from them, is an imposture not only unsupported by scripture, but wholly opposed to its plain and ample testimony. Nay more, it is subversive of the being and nature of the church, and incompatible even with the fundamental character of the gospel, and of Christian standing.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Philippians

Chap. 5 Divine Design.—39. the Epistle to the Philippians

No where is special aim more evident than in this Epistle. In saluting the Philippian saints the apostle associates Timothy with himself as “bond-men of Christ Jesus,” and them “all,” with overseers and deacons (1:1, 2). For the assembly there was not immature like that in Corinth; it possessed those local charges for which experience provided such as apostolic authority set over the saints in due time. But the absence of the apostle, a prisoner in Rome and object of their loving remembrance, gave occasion to much that is characteristic in it for the Christians soon to lack that care altogether. No Epistle breathes so distinctively of confidence in God and joy in all his remembrance of them; and this, not founded on the enriching powers of the Spirit as to the Corinthians, nor on the heavenly counsels of God as to the Ephesians, nor on the fullness of the Head as to the Colossians, nor yet on the broad and deep foundations of the gospel as to the Romans. This letter surveys and reciprocates what Christ is for every day's communion, conduct, worship, and service. It is therefore in reality, and in all forms, and in the highest sense, Christian experience from first to last. Their state warranted, as it called forth, the full opening of his heart to them.

In verses 3-11 he thanks his God because of their uninterrupted fellowship with the gospel, that He Who began a good work in them will complete it till Jesus Christ's day. It was right for him to think thus as to them all because they had him in their hearts. Both in his bonds and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, were they not all partakers in his grace? For God was his witness how he longed after them all in the bowels of Christ Jesus. And he prayed that their love might abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment, unto their proving the things that are excellent, that they might be pure and without a stumble for Christ's day, being filled with fruit of righteousness that is through Jesus Christ unto God's glory and praise. He looked for the due result of Christ and His work in them, not merely that they should be kept from inconsistency and failure, Then from verse 12 to the end of the chapter he speaks of his bonds and how God had thereon wrought in His good way, as man in his evil. He would have them know that his matters, sad as they looked, had come rather for furtherance of the gospel; so that his bonds became manifest in Christ in the whole praetorium and to all the rest. Nor was this all. For the most of the brethren, trusting in the Lord by his bonds, dared more abundantly to speak the word without fear. It was not without alloy. Some indeed also preached Christ for envy and strife, and some too for goodwill: these of love, knowing that he was set for the defense of the gospel; but those out of faction announced the Christ, not purely, thinking to arouse affliction for his bonds. But grace prevails, and his heart had joy in Christ.

“What then? Notwithstanding [or, Only that], in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is announced, and in this I rejoice, yea and will rejoice. For I know that this will turn to me for salvation through your supplication and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but in all boldness, as always, now also, Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live [is] Christ, and to die gain; but if to live in flesh [is mine], this [is] to me worth while. And what I shall choose I know not. But I am pressed by the two, having a desire for departure and being with Christ, for [it is] very much better; but to remain in the flesh [is] more necessary for your sake. And having this confidence I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for furtherance and joy of faith, that your boasting may abound in Christ Jesus in me through my presence again with you” (vers. 18-26).

How clearly faith by grace made him, bondman though he was, master of the situation! His desire drew him away to Christ: the need of the saints detained him. God gave him, as it were, the decision for their sake. “Only behave worthily of the gospel of Christ, that, whether coming and seeing you or absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand in one spirit, with one soul striving together with the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by the adversaries; which is to them evidence of destruction but to you of salvation, and this from God; because to you was granted on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him but also to suffer for him, having the same conflict as ye saw in me and now hear of in me.” Living the gospel, living worthily of it, was his earnest desire for them, yea, suffering for Christ.

Chapter 2. Zeal was not wanting in Philippi, yet does it not endanger difference, lowliness, and love? Where is the corrective but in Christ? “If then any comfort [be] in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfill ye my joy, that ye have the same mind, having the same love, joined in soul, thinking one thing, nothing in faction or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind esteeming one another better than themselves, regarding not each his own things, but each those of others” (vers. 1-4). This brings in the image of Christ. “For let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who subsisting in God's form did not count it an object for seizing to be on equality with God, but emptied himself, taking a bondman's form, having come in likeness of men; and, when found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted him and granted him the name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus should bow every knee of [beings] heavenly and earthly and infernal, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ [is] Lord to God the Father's glory” (vers. 5-11).

For the Philippians were in contrast with the Galatians (Gal. 4:18), and obeyed not as in his presence only, but now much more in his absence. They are exhorted accordingly to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, now that they had not the apostle's care; for it is God that was working in them both the willing and the working for His good pleasure. What source of confidence so great, along with distrust of self! Murmurs and disputes were to be far from them, that they might be blameless and simple, God's children irreproachable in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom they appeared as lights in the world, holding forth life's word for a boast to the apostle against Christ's day that he ran not nor labored in vain. Again he refers to death before him, but here as a libation poured on the sacrifice and ministration of their faith to his joy, and theirs also. Yet he hoped in the Lord to send Timothy to them, as he graciously felt for his refreshment by knowing how they got on; for only he shared Paul's care genuinely. Alas! even then all were seeking their own things, not those of Jesus Christ. They knew Timothy's service with Paul in the gospel work. Whatever the cost to himself, he would send one so dear to him and them, when he could report matters. Meanwhile he sent Epaphroditus, his tried fellow-worker and fellow-soldier (what links of honor!), but their messenger and minister to his need (what communion!), not only as longing after them all, but distressed at their hearing of his sickness, So he was, adds the apostle, nigh to death; but God had mercy not on him only but on Paul also, that he might not have sorrow on sorrow. Yet him he had sent, that they seeing him might rejoice, and he himself be the less sorrowful. What unselfish love all round, the mind that was in Christ Jesus! Him therefore they were to receive in the Lord with all joy, and to hold such in honor; because for the work's sake (whether Christ the Lord, or God, were in question) he came nigh to death, risking his life to supply what lacked in their service toward Paul (vers. 12-30). Truly this is Christian experience.

Chapter 3 presents our Lord in a way quite different from that of chapter 2. It is not the uttermost humiliation in obedience of the Son's Person become man, emptying Himself and humbling Himself to the death of the cross: that service of love beyond compare, which creates, fashions, and maintains Christian devotedness in the saints. Here the central truth is Christ glorified, as the object set before the believer to detach him from every idol, to shine on the path with sure and heavenly light, to fill the heart with His own excellency, and to keep the glorious goal before him, whatever the trials of the way.

The apostle exhorts his brethren for the rest to rejoice in the Lord. He deserves and desires it; and well may we. Did any complain of sameness? To write so was not irksome to this wondrously endowed soul; for them it was safe. Yet he finds room with energetic contempt to denounce the Judaisers, as the dogs, the evil workers, and the concision, of whom they had to beware. He declares that the circumcision are we who worship by the Spirit of God, and who boast in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh, though if any had such ground of confidence, the apostle had more. It is of fleshly religion he speaks here and throughout, not of fleshly license (vers. 1-5).

Next, he states his own case. Was he not circumcised the eighth day, of Israel's race, of Benjamin's tribe, a Hebrew of Hebrews? as to law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, persecuting the church; as to righteousness that is in or of law, found irreproachable? But the Christ he had seen in glory made him regard this gain as a loss. Nor was it a hasty estimate, but so he counted all things because of the excellence of the knowledge of Him, his Lord, for Whom he suffered the loss of all things. He was still counting them dung, that he might win Christ and be found in Him, not having his own righteousness which is of law, but that which is by faith in Christ, the righteousness of God on condition of faith. The same Paul in Rom. 9 would have the Jews know that, far from disparaging, he exalted the privileges of Israel beyond their estimate; here he shows that the Christian has in Christ far better things than Israel's hopes (vers. 5-9). And so he continues, “that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformed to His death, if by any means I might attain to the resurrection from out of the dead” (vers. 10, 11).

Nothing then satisfied him short of that portion. Flesh and earth are quite left behind. Therefore he adds, “Not that I already attained, or have been already perfected, but I pursue, if I may apprehend (or, get possession of) that for which also I was apprehended by Christ.” We shall then be like Him and in the same glory. Yet he carefully tells his brethren that, as this was not true of him yet, “one thing” (he does); “forgetting the things behind [not past evils, but present progress], and stretching forth toward those before, I press unto the mark for the prize of the calling upward of God in Christ Jesus” (12-14). All the full grown should have this mind; and, if in anything they were otherwise minded, God would reveal this also to them; but whereto they were arrived, let them walk alike. How wholesome even for saints in good estate! Nor does the apostle hesitate to bid them imitate him and mark those that followed his example. Others, alas! did very differently, enemies of Christ's cross, and earthly-minded, whose god is the belly, whose glory is in their shame. For our citizenship subsists in the heavens, whence also we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, Who shall change the body of our humiliation and conform it to the body of His glory, according to the working of the power He has to subject even all things to Himself (vers. 15-21). Salvation here looks on to that final change.

Chapter 4 opens with strongly expressed affection, and the call to stand fast in the Lord. Two sisters he exhorts severally by name to the same mind in Him; and he beseeches his true yoke-fellow, Epaphroditus probably, to help those women in that they shared his own conflicts in the gospel, with Clement too and the rest of his fellow-workers whose names are in the book of life. How sad their lot whose names were not there! They did not love the Lord, whatever their labors (vers. 1-3).

The saints in general here again he calls on to rejoice in the Lord “always,” and again would say, “Rejoice.” How blessed from Paul the prisoner in Rome under Nero to saints at Philippi suffering in Christ's behalf! Yet he would have their gentleness known to all (in view of the Lord at hand), their anxiety in nothing, their requests to God in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving; and he assures them that the peace of God (and it is constant), which surpasses all understanding, should guard their hearts and their thoughts in Christ Jesus (vers. 4-7). For the rest, he urges brethren to think, not on the dark side but on whatsoever things are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and of good report, if any virtue or any praise: what they both learned and received and heard and saw in him, let them do; and the God of peace, which is yet more than the peace of God, blessed though it be, should be with them. This indeed would be Christian experience—to live Christ (8, 9).

Then, as we easily see from verses 10 to 20, he speaks of his joy in the Lord at their renewed thought for him, though he spoke not of want, having learned to be content in whatsoever state he was. For he knew both to abound and to be in want, and declares he can do all things through Him that empowers him. But he appreciated their fellowship with his affliction, which they only had shown him thus in the early days of the gospel: not that he sought the gift, but the fruit that increased to their account. He could say that he had all things, and abounded, that he was filled, having received from Epaphroditus their things, which he does not hesitate to call “an odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God.” On their part or on his, it was to live Christ. “And my God,” he adds, “shall fill up your every need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Now to our God and Father [be] the glory unto the ages of the ages, Amen,” Then he salutes “every saint” in Christ Jesus, as he unites withal that of the brethren who were with him, and indeed of all the saints there, specially those of Caesar's household; for so did Christ work in His own. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit” is the suited close.

Moses' Faith and the Passover

Q.-Heb. 11:28, 29. Why is it said that Moses kept the passover through faith, and that the Israelites passed through the Red Sea by faith? Was Moses the only one who had faith as to the passover? and had all the people faith who crossed the Red Sea? Compare for them Heb. 3:16-19. H.

A.-Moses not only kept but instituted the passover according to Jehovah's word: it was the sole occasion when the sprinkling of the blood took place. And this was really if secretly the basis of Israel's deliverance that followed through the Red Sea as by dry land. But it would be too much to assume that any as yet understood the antitype in Christ's blood, death, and resurrection for those that believe. Yet the people as well as Moses did believe that God would according to His word screen and deliver, however sadly the mass fell in the wilderness by unbelief. It may be noticed that the last word of ver. 28 prepares the way for the general form of ver. 29. The experiment made by the Egyptians was wholly their own doing without reference to God's word, and so without faith; just as men perish now, even in Christendom.

TITUS & PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth, 2/-. THE REVELATION 2/-.

" CHRISTIAN SCIENCE," id.; 13, 6d.; 50, 1/10; 100, 3/6. THE LORD'S PRAYER, a New Edition, 3d. THE FEASTS OF JEHOVAH, a New Edition, 6d.

Later THE DAY OF ATONEMENT, a New Edition in Preparation.

BRIEF SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND Labors OF JOHN NELSON DARBY, by G. W. Turner, 4d.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Isaac: 31. Isaac's Death

It was a long while before the close of this life came for Isaac; indeed his was a greater span than fell to Jacob or even to Abraham. But the last forty years of it gave no occasion for the Spirit of God to dwell on. He had canceled his sorrowful desires on behalf of Esau, when he trembled at the discovery of his willfulness; and this was confirmed afterward, when he summoned Jacob to repair to Padan-Aram with his renewed blessing.

Jacob too with his large household and retinue had come back to the land of promise after an absence of more than twenty years, with many a sin and a sorrow, among his children. This delayed his steps; but he now found his way at length to his father's house. The record is brief but affecting.

“And Jacob came to Isaac his father to Mamre, Eiriath-Arba, which [is] Hebron; where Abraham had sojourned, and Isaac. And Isaac's days were a hundred years and eighty years; and Isaac expired and died, and was gathered to his peoples, old and full of days; and Esau and Jacob his sons buried him” (vers. 27-29).

As the Holy Spirit says little, it is not for a believer to say much. But one may remark how truly our patriarch lived to the end of his long life, confessing himself a stranger and sojourner on the earth. Isaac had not even to require a foot of the land of promise, as did Abraham a burying place for Sarah and those who followed. He too knew what famine in the land was, but he did not, under its stress, go down into Egypt like his fathers. And his marriage stood in the strongest contrast with Jacob's, who was forced to leave the land for the country of his kindred, and there cheated of the wife he loved to have another, parents of the twelve tribes of Israel, with many an experience of sorrow, yet blessed and bright in his end, while waiting for the end of God, when glory shall dwell in the land. Isaac remains in the land peaceful and comparatively unseen, but in no way signalized by victorious energy like Abraham, nor even an exile and wanderer like Jacob. His very wife was sought for him, and evidently given him by God from afar, brought across the desert by the father's trusty and honored servant, object of purpose, prayer, and thanksgiving beyond all other brides of whom scripture speaks, as already in due place shown by her typical bearing.

Now Jacob, after varied vicissitudes, comes to Isaac his father. It was at Mamre, or Hebron, once the city of the four, where was the cave of Machpelah, where Abraham and Sarah rested in hope of the resurrection. For this was ever the faith of God's elect; and as they, so in due time slept Isaac in or according to faith, having not the land but its promise, and assured of its fulfillment in Christ's day, but waiting patiently till closes man's day of corruption and violence, when Jehovah alone shall be exalted.

For the burial of their aged father, old and full of days beyond the good old age even of Abraham, came Esau and Jacob; as Isaac and Ishmael had buried their father. Death has a powerful and subduing voice for the heart of man, even where faith is not; and it was surely not for those who believed to forbid the presence of their near of kin at the grave, but rather to welcome them where many a self-seeking and haughty soul has been bowed under the solemn issues of salvation on the one hand and of judgment on the other. The days of mourning were not at hand, when Esau's rage turned to kill his brother Jacob; and when they came, God who has power over all hearts so wrought that no such intention remained. Jacob too had passed through dealings of God which turned to good account his manifold and humiliating trials, at length strengthened in heart to confide in His mercy, above fear of human vengeance, and ashamed to betake himself to any further device of his own. Esau still lived to himself and for present enjoyment of the world and its things, Jacob saw the promises, and from afar greeted or embraced them, like his father and his grandfather; and they that say such things show clearly that they possess not but seek after a better fatherland, that is, a heavenly.

Priesthood: 24. Leper Outside

The Leper Outside.—Lev. 13:45, 46

In these verses is set out the diseased condition of the convicted leper. It was, while he lived, death to all the privileges of the people of God; the standing type of a sinner, not only before Him, but under command to declare it to man.

“And the leper in whom the sore is,-his garments shall be rent, and his head shall be uncovered (or, go loose), and he shall cover his upper lip or beard, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean All the days that the sore [shall be] in him, he shall be unclean: he [is] unclean; he shall dwell apart; outside the camp his dwelling [shall bier (45, 46).

Thus vividly did Jehovah, while prescribing for the solemn separateness of an Israelite under this fell disease, look onward to the discovery of what every man is in the light of Christ. For He alone gives us the full truth of every one and of everything. It is not that the law did not indicate much that was true, and the prophets yet more. But, as John 1:9 so strikingly tells us, the Word, even Jesus, is the true light, which, coming into the world (for this is the only legitimate rendering), pours light on every man. It is not limited like the law to Israel. It shines on Gentile as well as Jew. It is no lightning flash as of death like the effect of the same law; yet it discovers, fully and at once, the true state of each. No prince is exalted above its penetrating power, any more than the most abject slave is beneath it. It was the Word incarnate here below, divine light yet in man, having its range universal on the race here below. Far from any boasting of Him as Light of east or west, north or south, such was the unbelief that not even Palestine owned Him, though born its King with a title pure, perfect, and indisputable, alike human and divine, Immanuel. He was in the world and the world had been from Him, and the world knew Him not. He game to what was His own, and His own people received Him not, guiltier than the besotted world. Yet was He love, as well as light; grace and truth (in contrast with the law) came into being through Jesus Christ; and thus was “every man” the less excusable. None received Him but such as were born of God; only these were enlightened by Him.

Yet here the shadow is now at least plain enough. The sinner according to God's figure before us is of all men most miserable; and now we can say that such in God's estimate are all men, if we read the type in the light of Christ. Hence the leper's apparel was to declare his misery and his grief. “His garments shall be rent, and his head shall be uncovered, and he shall cover his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean!” Sorrow for others or at their evil it is not, but the deepest mourning for himself. The goodness of God leads the sinner to repentance. Despise not then the riches of His goodness and forbearance and long-suffering: why in presence of this, if hitherto unconcerned, perish forever? Why, according to one's hardness and impenitent heart, treasure up to oneself wrath in a day of wrath? It is the way of mercy, because it is the way of truth; and if one be in the humbling truth of his sins before God, will not He be found in the truth of His grace? The Lord Jesus gives the soul both repentance and faith. To be a sinner, refusing to own it at God's call, is a place of the utmost danger. The presence of Jesus the Son of God lays bare my real evil; His going away to the Father, the rejected One, demonstrates righteousness only there, and nothing but sin left in I the world. If I heed God's word, I cease to deny or excuse my sins, frankly confessing my ruin, with the cry, Unclean, unclean, in His ears.

To be light-hearted and indifferent is to defy the just sentence of God. Nor will it do to betake oneself to the external trappings of woe. We are not Jews: rites and ceremonies are but letter, and avail not. The gospel meets the sinner expressly as lost, powerless, ungodly, and His enemy; but all this is dire reality, and no form of speech. If we are insensible to our state, it is worse than form; it is hypocrisy. Christ came not to call righteous ones; but He will have sinners feel and own their sins; and if they do not, a worse thing befalls them than if they professed not His name. Hence the all-importance of life, eternal life, which where possessed makes our evil intolerable; and whether at the beginning for our state, or afterward for particular acts, it leads the believer to be grieved unto repentance. For grief according to God works out repentance unto salvation not to be regretted; whereas the grief of the world works out death.

Where the conscience answers to God's call, the outer signs of the leper's distress are reproduced in the depths of one's moral being. As the Corinthians broke down and cleared themselves in the matter of their sin and shame, which, if unjudged, would have unchurched them as corporately denying Christ's name, so one only bears aright His name individually as a Christian by inward and true renunciation of evil, each of his own. Where faith is genuine, repentance is; and this makes the truth taught by the bearing of the leper as plain as it is impressive and important. It is rending of the heart for the converted soul, rather than of his garments; real acceptance of his dishonor by his sins, bitter as it is, instead of claiming honor for his “head"; it is the “beard” no longer a display of his vigor as a man, but covered in spirit with shame. He owns himself defiled irreparably as far as he is concerned. He betakes himself to solitary confession, instead of presuming to mingle with the faithful; he truly feels that he is but a dog, and not a sheep. So the Canaanite woman was brought by grace to own the simple truth, and thereon was blessed beyond her hopes. It is the turning-point for establishment in grace, and spirituality of mind, though dependence withal on God is ever requisite.

Day of Atonement: 10. Azazel

Azazel, or the People's Lot

The subject-matter calling for present consideration is the detail which God gives us of the scapegoat. This will be made somewhat clearer by recalling, for comparison in a general way, the force of Jehovah's lot or the first goat. For there were, as we have seen, two goats on behalf of Israel. Unquestionably they together constituted the sin-offering (ver. 5), and both were set before Jehovah (ver. 7); but the first goat is of the two the more important in its aim. Its aspect is not toward the people but toward Jehovah. It was strictly and manifestly Godward. This is to be particularly noticed; because the constant danger of the heart when awakened is to think only of what will relieve it of its newly-felt distress. One becomes absorbed with a remedy for the disease which the Spirit of God gives the soul to discern, that utter ruin through sin by which it is then truly burdened, and for which it pours out its groans and lamentations to God for mercy.

Now the first goat or Jehovah's lot takes up quite another necessity—His glory, as being struck at and violated by sin. That one soul should be in fact delivered, Jehovah's lot were essential, and in the first place as it is. Before there could be on any righteous basis the issue of saving sinners, God must be glorified about sin, and here Jehovah's lot finds its place. Therefore it is that by virtue of the blood which was carried within the veil, and put upon the mercy-seat and before it, God has His deep satisfaction in the infinite work of His Son, our Lord Jesus; for it has replaced man's iniquity by His own devotedness exclusively, to the uttermost and at all cost, to God's nature and glory. God found His rest in that blood which spoke of divine love and perfect suffering for sin. The incense was rather the sweet savor under judgment of His personal grace.

But the obedience was perfected in shame and suffering up to a death of judgment on sin itself, and such a death as could never be known by any save the Son of God. The work was done, so that all hindrance from sin is taken away; and God can righteously send out the message of His grace to every creature under heaven. We saw that this could not be revealed while the law had a standing. The law necessarily looked at Israel only. They were the people, they only, under it. All other nations were without and unclean, or, according to the ancient figure, dogs, whatever might be the pitiful affections of God; though God was always plenteous in mercy, and in Himself love, as truly as light. Still, whatever might be not only God's nature but also His purpose, as long as the barrier of the law was before Him, until it was righteously taken down, there could not be as yet the expression of that grace which in the death of 'our Lord Jesus swept away every obstacle between God's love and man in his sins.

We must remember that all this time, while the day of atonement was pre-figured for Israel, the law was in power over them. It would have neutralized the law if the grace had been revealed which treats a Gentile, even who believes, exactly as a Jew. Law in point of fact is the system which insists on the distinction between the chosen seed of Abraham and the nations. That this is now done away is essentially true of the gospel, as well as of the church of God; and both the gospel and the church are the fruit, not of the type but the anti-type, of Christ. The Day of Atonement which Israel observed once a year kept up the difference; but the grace and truth which came by Jesus and shone out in the cross, as well as the light of the glory, have now set aside every shadow of the sort. This entirely accounts for the fact that we bear nothing at all about the Gentiles in the type. At the same time we may notice again how little is said of Israel in the first goat. The reason is plain. God was in the highest degree concerned; He therefore must be glorified; His nature must be vindicated, as must be also His majesty and His truth in atonement.

All this was the object sought in the first goat, as far as a figure could show it. There was Jehovah's lot. But was this all that atonement includes? Far from it. That which far more nearly concerns and immediately contemplates the sinner comes before us in the second goat; and this it is of which we have been reading just now.

“And when he had made an end of reconciling (or, atoning for) the holy place, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and altar, &c.” But this goes along with the first goat. So it was with the bullock, save that it had the special idea of providing for the priestly house. Both in the first goat and in the bullock there was not only the vindication of God as to His own glory in having to do with those who were sinful, but, further, the making good the heavenly places set forth by the sanctuary, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar.

This is not at all left to be interpreted by our imagination. In the first chapter to the Colossians we have the answering truth: “And, having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself.” What is meant by “all things?” Persons on earth, or those in heaven? Neither. Creation at large is here, “All things.... whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens.” To prove that such is the meaning, you have only to read on, “And you hath He reconciled.” Nothing can be more exact. The reconciling of “all things,” not of us only, is bound up with the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. There we hear of God's great future purpose, when peace was made through the blood of His cross, “by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself.” Notably there next follows the application of Christ's reconciling work to those who now believe.

It is the order we have here too: “And when he hath made an end of reconciling the holy place, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar, he shall bring the live goat; and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all' the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins.” Here is given a most lively picture of that which the soul, when awakened, feels to be an intolerable burden. The high priest is seen and heard occupying himself simply and solely with the distressed heart and burdened conscience of Israel, All that which might well have overwhelmed the soul God provides for according to His goodness. “Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins.” One may well repeat the quotation. Can one conceive language more fitted to take up whatever was thus resting heavily as a heart trouble? How deeply affecting that God should testify so strongly His desire, that they should not be charged with undue weight upon their souls! “Aaron.... shall confess over him all the iniquities, etc.”

It has been already pointed out that in the first goat there was no laying on of hands, any more than there was at that time confession of any sins. Nevertheless what was done exceeds in importance; for there is nothing that so completely goes to the root of sin as God's judgment of it in death; nor does anything more testify to the canceling of the defilement of sin than the fact that the blood was put on the mercy-seat and before it. It was God met in what sin deserved, and His witness borne that, if sin cannot escape the presence of God, He has provided that the blood which cleanses from all should penetrate there. Thus, what abides before God is not the sin, but the blood which makes full atonement for the sin. Still the sinners were as yet outside. There was no question at all of putting blood upon them. Therein lies one serious misapprehension, and indeed ruinous mistake, as to atonement.

Men only think of the sinner in the work of our Lord Jesus. But not so: the primary aspect of atonement is toward God. Sin is judged before Him. But the sinner is fully considered in his place; and when he does come before us, we have the utmost minuteness of confession. Is there anything that has a more searching and purging effect than confession? Romanism knows how to avail itself of confession; for the weaker is the faith of any one, the greater the comfort that he takes from pouring out the acknowledgment of his sins into the ear of a fellow-mortal. God is little or nothing in such a case; but the man's own hardened mind feels intense relief from the assumption that the priest to whom he confesses stands authoritatively in the room of God, and is entitled to absolve man in His name.

Now whatever of truth there is in confession comes here before us in its most important form. Not that one in the least would deny that there is confession on the part of the soul. We know from the First Epistle of John, that “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This is an important truth morally, the “cleansing from all unrighteousness.” The desire to hide aught from God is a wrong, and there never is a wrong done to Him but what involves with it loss to the soul that is not delivered from evil. But what is it that opens the heart and gives confidence in confession? The certainty that another has charged Himself with the whole of our sing in all their enormity. Who He is is not doubtful. Jesus is the only Man Who knew, and felt, and owned all the sins. We do not speak of His death only as propitiating, nor of our conscience; for much of true and bumbling grief consists in the feeling that our self-judgment is so shallow. This then could not give rest to the troubled soul. How blessed to have an absolutely full confession by one so competent as the High Priest!

According to the language of the New Testament, the mediator between God and man is a man, Christ Jesus. Were He not God, it were little indeed; but, being God, it is an infinitely essential and comforting truth that He was also the responsible man Who knowing every secret thing of every man, told out all the sins and iniquities of every believer to God in the same perfection as He suffered sacrificially. He became man that there might be an adequate representative for our sins laid, felt, abhorred before God. The same One, Who to judge must search the reins and the hearts of all, does here in grace identify Himself with “innumerable evils,” with our iniquities, as His own, so as to be unable to look up. It is not priestly work within the holies, but the Holy One our substitute in absolute integrity of confession, represented here by the high priest. He it is whose hands are laid upon the head of the goat. The blood was shed and carried into the presence of God, as the groundwork; yet the sins were none the less but the more confessed unsparingly. God was thus furnishing in type the fullness of Christ's work for Israel; for Israel comes up in the most distinct manner when we have the second goat. Then and there the sins are confessed in all their extent and variety of guilt.

The same principle is in what our Lord said to the sinful woman of whom we read in the house of Simon the Pharisee. Grace does not in the least degree extenuate the sins of the saved. This could not be in salvation according to God. Christ makes no excuse for her, whatever the traps that may have been laid for her in her life of folly. She had not always behaved as she did of late; yet had she been long a sinner in the deepest sense, as were those who despised her. But she was now, as alas too few are, at the feet of Jesus. There she was, it is true, without a word; but all she did, and all she felt, were perfectly open to His gaze, though she stood behind Him. He did not need to have her before His face. All was in the light to Him; and if not a word was uttered, her ways, thoughts, feelings, were fully and equally known to Him Who reads the life of every soul. To Him only she looked for the mercy she needed. Therefore, said He, “her sins, which are many, are forgiven.” Yet surely here there was no glossing over her sins.

It was not enough to say, “They are to be all met shortly in the atoning blood;” they are none the less aggravated but the more, because of the grace which gave in Christ the blood that alone can cleanse all away. They are felt every one in all its own heinousness. They were laid upon the head of the live goat; for such was the form which God prescribed to give Israel satisfactory witness that their sins were gone, and, as far as the figure was concerned, gone never to be found again.

No doubt under the law eternity does not strictly appear; but what was yearly to the Jews is forever to the Christian. We are not left to an inference of reasoning in this matter, but have the positive and distinct revelation of God in the Epistle to the Hebrews (10:1, 2). What God then testified was, at least to worshippers once purged, “no more conscience of sins.”

Have you, my dear friends, such a clearance by the blood of Christ as gives you “no more” conscience of sins? How rare a thing it is to find a child of God freed from all burden or doubt! In a mere man there is no sign of hardness more terrible than to have “no” conscience of sins. The quickening work of the Holy Spirit produces the deepest sense of sins before God. But the effect of the work of Christ is that, while the sense of sin is awakened in the highest degree, the soul is delivered from all dread or anxiety, because of the judgment on the cross which our Lord has already borne. Faith rests on this as the word of God for one's own guilt. The soul at first believing on Christ has a deep and divinely given conscience of his sins; but he also believes what God wrought by Christ's cross to blot out sins and give peace with Himself. Thus it is he is so purged as to have no more conscience of sins. To doubt that they are effaced is to dishonor Christ's work, and God's grace.

Let it be observed in this case that there is no vagueness. The live goat is most definite in its application. We hear confessed over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins. It is not mere piece-meal work; not just thus far and no farther; not 999 sins out of a thousand, or even 9999 out of ten thousand. Far be it from our hearts to make light of that which is abhorrent to the very nature of God, of which we now partake, as the apostle Peter lets us know. He that is born of God sinneth not, as says John. But there is on the one hand the fact that we have sin, and we did sin. Any endeavor either to deny sin in us, (1 John 1:8) and that we have sinned (10), or to make an apology for it, is as obnoxious to God as destructive morally. On the other hand, God has brought in Christ to annul sin from the universe finally, as He now does for every one that believes. But sacrifice (prefiguring Christ's) was the way of Abel by faith. It was the way of Cain to offer the fruits of the earth, wholly indifferent to the curse of God, as if He were as oblivious of sin as such an offerer is. Certainly such a one soon betrayed murderous hatred of him who was accepted when himself was refused. No hatred is so deep as against God's light and love.

Alas! it is the too constant history of souls, that when they find themselves and their worship unacceptable to God, they turn away in despair, and seek to bury themselves in the pursuits and hopes and enjoyments of the world. This was “the way of Cain.” If you, on the other hand, have been awakened to feel your sins and your sinfulness, have you now “no more conscience of sins”? This is what the apostle Paul contrasts as a Christian privilege of the first magnitude with an Old Testament worshipper resting on his annual sacrifices. Their effect was temporal; consequently they had to be repeated, whenever the anxious calls of another year arose. This could not perfectly suit either God or man. No adequate sacrifice had yet abolished sin before Him; an inadequate one could not make the comers thereunto perfect. Once the worshippers were divinely purged, they had no more conscience of sins.

This is what alone meets God and the believer, a basis of righteousness, where the Christian is perfectly cleansed. One is not now speaking of his being dead and risen with Christ, which line of truth does not occur in the Epistle to the Hebrews; still less is there any question of being members of Christ. A more fundamental need is met by the sacrifice of Christ, which none can overlook without loss and danger, not to speak of the fresh and deep interest with which it invests the Old Testament. In Heb. 2 we are “all of one;” but we are nowhere there exactly said to be one spirit with the Lord. The body of Christ and the baptism of the Spirit are not revealed there. It never rises up to the revelation that we are one with Christ—members of the body of which He is the Head on high. Indeed to have introduced that truth in the Epistle to the Hebrews would have been wholly out of harmony; because the Spirit here occupies us with the divine idea of the sacrifices and the priesthood. Such are the two pillars of the Epistle to the Hebrews, resting on the personal glory of our Lord, Son of God and Son of man in one person. Hence, instead of learning that we are one with Him glorified, we are taught in all its force that He died for our sins, and that He now appears before the face of God for us. “For us” and “head of the body” are two totally different departments of truth. It would have brought in complete confusion to have mingled them in the same communication.

The same writer, one does not doubt, was inspired by God to make both known; for all should explode the precarious theories, old or new, that Barnabas, or Titus, or Silas or anybody else than the great apostle Paul wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is not a mere question of tradition which is never sure; but holy scripture (2 Peter 3) intimates it clearly. However differing in style as being addressed to Christian Israelites, below the surface it bears the intrinsic marks of Paul most thoroughly in its depth, height, and comprehensive sweep. For instance we see from the very beginning Christ in heaven in the full rights of His work on earth. There He is seated at the right hand of the majesty on high. It is not that He is traced up to heaven merely as by Peter; but there He is found throughout the whole Epistle. It was thus that Paul was converted; he only saw Christ in heaven. Therefore it is that he calls the good news the gospel of Christ's glory—the glory of God in Christ's face. It was so that it pleased God to reveal His Son in Paul who learned that to persecute His saints was to persecute Him. The Epistle to the Hebrews bears the imprint just as strongly as any other, though in a remarkably different form, as from the apostle of the uncircumcision writing to the circumcision.

What we gather from Hebrews then—returning to the great truth before us—is, that God would give the Christian the distinct knowledge that all his sins are so completely gone that he is already free to draw near habitually into the holiest of all. How could the witness to that clearance be represented so well as in a figure of a live animal—the second goat—charged with all the iniquities and transgressions and sins confessed upon its head, and, by a man appointed, or in readiness, to be sent into a solitary land, i.e. let go in the wilderness?

You must drop from your mind all thoughts of resurrection here. It is well known that some are disposed to see the resurrection in the type. It seems rather a taking thought that, as with the two birds in the cleansing of the leper (Lev. 14), so as we have had in the first goat death, resurrection should follow in the live goat. But when the matter is looked into somewhat more closely, it will be found that the interpretation will not really hold. When Christ rose from the dead, it was in view of His going to heaven, whereas the live goat here is sent into the wilderness. But the wilderness cannot represent a scene of glory: heaven is anything but a land that is not inhabited. No; resurrection has no place whatever in this type; which is just God giving a lively figure of the dismissal of the sins that were confessed, to where they could never be found again.

It is beyond controversy that in the New Testament the resurrection of Christ is treated as the blessed proof that our sins are remitted: as it is said, “He was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification.” But we must be content with the type that God has given us here. We must not interweave truths that are really distinct by a forced connection of our own. It is quite enough to say that, as the sequel of Jehovah's lot, we have here the people's lot; and that in this case the sins, confessed by the high priest and laid on the head of the scape-goat, are by this most significant action sent away never to be found more. If this be really what is intended by it, certainly it cannot be denied to be of the deepest moment to souls. (continued)

Proverbs 13:13-18

Slighting the word is of the most serious import. It is near akin to unbelief in the Lord; and its commonest occasion is also akin. For men doubt the Deity of the Lord, because in His grace He deigned to become man; and they because they see Him to be man refuse Him to be God. This is heinous iniquity; for it takes advantage of His love, in glorifying God and thereby saving our souls by His redemption by suffering for our sins, to dishonor Himself and deny His personal glory as the Son. Similarly the word comes through the human vessel from Moses to the apostle John; and men lay hold of the human element to deny the divine, thus depriving it, as far as the hostile will can, of its divine authority.

“Whoso despiseth the word destroyeth himself; but he that feareth the commandment shall be rewarded.

The teaching of the wise [is] a fountain of life, to turn away from the snares of death.

Good understanding procureth favor; but the way of the treacherous [is] rugged.

Every prudent one acteth with knowledge; but the foolish layeth open folly.

A wicked messenger falleth into evil; but a faithful ambassador [is] health.

Poverty and shame [shall be to] him that refuseth instruction; but he that regardeth reproof shall be honored” (vers. 13-18).

The first of these admits of an alternative rendering, though in effect it may come to the same sense. But competent persons understand the opening clause to mean “shall be held accountable” or “fall in debt to it.” The Sept. strangely translates the verse, and adds to it: “he that slighteth a matter shall be slighted by it; but he that feareth a command hath health. To a crafty son there shall be nothing good; but a wise servant shall have prosperous doings, and his way shall be directed aright.” The Latin Vulgate departs still more widely from the Hebrew and hardly calls for citation save in a note. What God exalts above all His name man despises at the peril of his own ruin; but to stand in awe of injunction is to insure recompence in due time. What a man sows he assuredly reaps.

The word leads to and forms the teaching of the wise man, which is here described as a fountain of life. Such teaching refreshes as well as quickens, and guards from the destructive temptations which beset the path.

Again, the value of “good understanding” makes itself felt in a scene where folly abounds and the levity which so often veils our happiness. It procures favor, because it morally commends itself without an effort; whereas the way of the treacherous is indeed “hard” or rugged, as they themselves, and all that are ensnared by them. Fidelity is a jewel in a world of pitfall through deceit.

But “knowledge” has its use as well as a good understanding; and every prudent man works with it, instead of trusting himself unaided by it, or being content to go forward blindly. The foolish one spreads out folly: what else has he to lay bare? How blessed for Christians that, whatever be the personal deficiency of each, of God are they in Christ, who was made to them wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption! Yet no man is so foolish as one professing the Lord's name, who depends on and seeks himself to the dishonor of his Master.

Next, we have the strongly drawn opposition between “a wicked messenger,” and “a faithful ambassador.” The one comprehends the widest class of varying degree; but even its most insignificant member falls into evil, and he can do nothing but mischief. The other is not only a messenger of the highest rank but discharges his office with integrity, as “a faithful ambassador.” If the former by his wickedness can but fall into evil by his wickedness, the latter “is health” wherever he goes in a world of sin and misery.

Verse 18 contrasts the refusal of instruction with the readiness to take reproof to heart, a rare and precious trait in anyone. Poverty and shame must be his who has no ear for the instruction which enriches all, and which all need. But what honor falls to the wise and lowly mind that welcomes and weighs reproof! Grace alone can make it real.

Gospel Words: Two Masters

When man fell, he abandoned God as Master; he gained by sin another master, even Satan, the great rebel against the true God. The race followed the fallen parents. “Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned” (Rom. 5:12). Such is the moral history of man, recorded in Genesis, there summarized, here reasoned on by the apostle. So vain, so blind, is every man, that he is apt to go no higher than himself in accounting for sin. But it is not so: neither Jew nor Gentile originated sin. It began with the head of the race, long before those distinctions. It was an innocent man too, though Adam was not deceived, but the woman being quite deceived was involved in transgression (1 Tim. 2:14). Sin became the state of all, while each added his own sins also. Satan thus became master in fact of the race; and from the first the guilty pair hid away from God's presence, before “He drove out the man.”

Henceforth all for good turned on another, the Second man, the Last Adam. Sinful man can neither atone for sins nor get rid of sin. And from the fall Jehovah Elohim clearly intimated the great truth that deliverance can come only from the woman's Seed, who, Himself bruised, should bruise the Serpent's head, that is, destroy the mysterious enemy. Jesus, the Son of God, born of the virgin, alone answers to this earliest oracle, and to every other in scripture. How many besides His incarnation converge in Him and can apply to no other, in His life, death, resurrection, and ascension! Above all He was to suffer once for sins, Just for unjust, that He might bring us who believe to God. For no external rite could adequately meet the dire need. It was not purifying only, but atonement there must be by One who, being God and man in one person, suited and alone could suit God and man, the Holy One whom God made sin for us, that we might become His righteousness in Christ. Hence repentance toward God, and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ, must be in man.

There is thus faith-obedience, the root of all other obedience in practice. It is not mere outward separateness by circumcision or anything akin. The sanctification of the Spirit is thereby secured in a new life imparted to the believer for Christ's obedience as well as His blood-sprinkling. We thenceforth obey as He did, not as slaves under law like Israel with the solemn sanction of the victim's blood on them and on the book of the law, threatening death on disobedience; we obey as sons, on whom grace rests, and as we are begotten of God, so have we Christ's blood that cleanseth from every sin. As we were in baptism buried with Christ unto His death (for nothing short could suffice even as a starting-point), so we also, as He was raised from the dead, should walk in newness of life. What then? Shall we sin because, even if once Jews, we are no longer under law but under grace? Away with it. Know we not that to whom we yield ourselves bondmen for obedience, we are bondmen to him whom we obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? Through Christ and His work set free from sin, and become bondmen to God, we have our fruit unto holiness and the end life eternal.

Thus it is that sin shall not have dominion over us. Not law but grace gives power; and grace and truth came through Jesus, as John 1 expressly declares in contrast with law, which however good in itself could only slay one in whom sin was and worked. For sinful man salvation hangs on Him. Without His blood is no remission; in virtue of it He washed us from our sins, and in newness of life (His life as risen from among the dead), we are fitted to walk worthily and please God.

But Satan ever seeks to mislead. And no one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to the one and despise the other. “Ye cannot,” said our Lord, “serve God and mammon.” This tests those who bear His name. Never was mammon more widely sought in Christendom than now. How is it with your own soul? Are you, a professing Christian, a slave to mammon? A divided heart is a disloyal one. No one can serve two masters. Think of the young ruler who in sorrow turned away from following Christ, because he loved his possessions. Think of the apostle who for a paltry sum sold his Master. How true it is that, hating the one, we love the other, or holding to the one, we despise the other! Mammon commands the world; and if we love the world, or the things in the world, we serve mammon. But what does a man profit if he should gain the whole world, and lose his soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Ye cannot serve two masters, God and mammon.

1 Peter 2:6-8

The holy building, of which the apostle had just spoken, consists of living stones which derived so striking a peculiarity from the Living Stone. This, familiar in general to those who knew the Bible, he proceeds to base on a prophecy repeatedly cited in the N. T.

“Because it is contained in scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a corner-stone, elect, precious; and he that believeth on him (or, it) shall in no way be shamed. To you therefore that believe [is] the preciousness; but to disobedient [ones] a stone which the builders rejected, this became head of corner, and stone of stumbling, and rock of offense; stumbling as they do at the word, being disobedient, unto which also they were appointed” (vers. 6-8).

Isa. 28 turns from “the drunkards of Ephraim” and their judgment to the still more terrible stroke which must fall on the guilty “scornful” rulers in Jerusalem. For these, to escape the overflowing scourge of the king of the north, or the Assyrian, will have made a covenant with Death and with Sheol are at agreement. But lies shall prove no refuge, nor falsehood hide them. For Jehovah who is to rise up, after the fashion of the overwhelming victories He gave David of old, will do His strange work, only on an unexampled scale—a consummation and that determined upon the whole earth. Thus the willful king within and his covenant shall come to naught with the apostates of the people; and no less the king of the north without and the multitude of the besieging foes, as chap. 29 adds. But in the face of this unparalleled tribulation, of which all that has befallen the people is but an earnest, the prophet declares from the Lord Jehovah, that He lays in Zion for a foundation a Stone, a tried Stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. For that day will prove the downfall, final and irretrievable, of all the powers of the world, west or east, as well as of the unbelieving mass of the Jews, when the godly remnant that trust in Immanuel are forever vindicated. Then shall He Whose name is Branch grow up from His own place, and He shall build the temple of Jehovah; even He shall build the temple of Jehovah; and He shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon His throne; and He shall be a priest upon His throne, which no Son of David ever was save in a small typical degree, but He who is also the Root of David.

Here it is not the temple of glory as by-and-by, but a spiritual house, and a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices during the day of Christ's rejection by Israel. But do the believing Jews forfeit all because the mass reject Him? Far from it. They enter into the “enjoyment of the promises, as far as these were compatible with the present ways of God; and if there be not the reception of all, God has provided some “better thing” for or respecting us, as another points out (Heb. 11:39-40). They have in measure the blessedness of believing without having seen, when the prophecy is, not merely applied, but fulfilled to the letter. The trust in Christ which refused idolatry, antichrist, and the seemingly overwhelming power of the world, will surely be blessed, though objects of mere mercy at the end, if they have not the power of faith breaking through every obstacle in peace as ought to be now through the word.

It is interesting to note that the apostle Paul, in Rom. 9:30-33, seizes this portion with the aim of explaining how Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, failed; while Gentiles, that did not pursue it, yet attained it. The latter believed, and thus gave glory to God; the former clung to works, though far from what the law demanded, and thus betrayed their own vain self-righteousness, as they also stumbled at the stumbling-stone, despising their own Messiah. For the law is not of faith, whereas the blessing is, and thus open to the Gentile that believes, not to the Jew that disbelieves.

Moreover the introduction of Zion is seen to have a notable meaning. For, as thus figuratively used, it expresses the mountain of God's grace in contrast with Sinai, the mountain of the people's responsibility under law, where all was failure, not because the law was not good, but because man is bad and ruined so that he cannot do without a Savior. Zion appears after the utter breakdown of the kingdom under Saul, man's choice; for it was only wrested from the Jebusites to be the city of David, God's choice. But a greater than David is here, the Christ, Whom Jehovah lays as a cornerstone, elect, precious, beyond all comparison. He that believes on Him shall in no wise be put to shame; as all must be who trust in an arm of flesh, most of all those of Israel who despised Him to whom law and prophets ever pointed. For the world-kingdom Jehovah has anointed His King upon Zion, the hill of His holiness; and Christ, not now but in that day, will ask and have the nations for His inheritance, and the ends of the earth for His possession, breaking all that oppose with iron scepter, as the vessels of a potter are dashed in pieces. “For Jehovah hath chosen Zion; He hath desired it for His dwelling: this is my rest forever; here will I dwell, for I have desired it.” The key to all this, is that Zion will be the earthly seat of His anointed, His beloved Son.

But Zion and the earth vanish for the present as the center and the sphere of the divine dealings. For the rejected Christ is in heaven at God's right hand, angels and authorities and powers being subjected to him; and as He suffered for us in flesh, the Jews that believe are called to arm themselves with the same mind, no less than the Gentile saints and not to count as strange the fire-kindling among them that comes to them for trial, but, as we share in Christ's sufferings, to rejoice that at the revelation of His glory also we may rejoice exultingly. Such is the genuine Christian lot for the present, put to grief by varied trials that the proof of our faith, more precious than gold that perishes though proved by fire, be found unto praise and glory and honor in that day.

Assuredly the precious value of Christ will be manifest then. Kings shall shut their mouths at Him; for that which had not been told them shall they see, and that which they had not heard shall they understand. And nations shall come to Zion's light and King, to the brightness of its rising. Yet how infinite the mercy now, that the chosen people's ruin (not only under law but worse still in rejecting the Messiah and the gospel too) did not hinder the believing remnant from anticipating the blessing in its Christian form and fullness! All turns on Christ dead and risen and on high. “To you therefore that believe is the preciousness.” His rejection was the occasion of making good to God's glory all that was promised, and a vast deal more which it was given to the apostle Paul to communicate. But even here how rich is the grace that is unfolded! If they could not but sorrow over their unbelieving brethren after the flesh, in what had grace come short to him that believed?

Now they understood the import of many a scripture hitherto obscure through unreadiness to think that the rulers and the people of the Jews could be so hard and dark and rebellious against Jehovah. Not only did they overlook the solemn warnings of His word in their hands or hearing, but they fulfilled the voices of the prophets by condemning His righteous servant, marked out by those divine oracles, and by wonders of divine power and goodness, only surpassed by His personal glory and by moral excellence on every side without a parallel.

Take a sample. Isa. 53 was no enigma to them any longer; on the contrary it afforded the most luminous explanation of what had come before them in facts as certain as important. “Who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of Jehovah been revealed? For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground; he hath no form or comeliness; and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their face, he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our sicknesses and carried our sorrows: yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; with his stripes we were healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all.”

Now the Jews are profoundly unbelieving, not only as all natural men but judicially blinded, because it was in the face of the fullest evidence and long-suffering withal to the uttermost. But their self-judgment will come at length in the day of Messiah's power and their national deliverance. Then shall they see and confess it all, as other scriptures attest; and they will understand that Jehovah wrought atonement for all their sins by what was their destructive and inexcusable sin. Into this work, already in itself accomplished, the believing remnant enters now in all its value, like ourselves from among the Gentiles. But as yet the mass are insensible. “To you therefore that believe is the preciousness, but to disobedient a stone which the builders rejected, this became head of corner, and stone of stumbling, and rock of offense.” How evident the solution of the riddle and how could it be otherwise if Jesus be the Christ and Son of God? Psa. 118:22 and Isa. 8:14 are as clearly fulfilled as the fuller prediction; while we have to wait for the earthly triumph when Israel shall own it all, Jesus is made head of the corner in heaven, and those who now believe, Jews or Gentiles, enjoy the blessing by faith. This too has even now more excellence for the heart than the visible glory when it appears as it surely will, to say nothing of the heavenly glory which will also be displayed above the world in that day.

The present state of the Jews exactly answers to the dark back-ground of the picture. And the words which follow are as solemn morally as they are sure in fact: “stumbling as they do at the word, being disobedient, unto which also they were appointed.” There is neither here nor anywhere else the dogmatic reprobation of the Calvinistic school; which has no more to justify it from scripture than the opposite error of the power for good of the Pelagians. All the evil is man's; as the good is exclusively of God's grace. He never made man to be a sinner, nor does He take pleasure in a sinner's death, still less in his everlasting destruction. But He is supreme; and, bold as man may be in willful disobedience, God's will stands. He presents His grace and truth in Christ; and men stumble at the word which reveals Him. To this they were appointed, not to be disobedient, but, being so, to stumble in this way, which God had in His wisdom appointed as their trial. They refuse and contemn the word, which others, by grace self-judging and believing Him, receive to salvation, peace, and joy. Compare Jude 4.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Colossians

Chap. 5 Divine Design.—40. the Epistle to the Colossians

The distinctive aim is as legible here as elsewhere. It is not Christian experience as in the Epistle to the Philippian saints, nor the blessedness of the saints in the heavenlies in Christ as to those in Ephesus, but the glories of Christ in respect of both earth and heaven, as man and as God. Nor is any notion more contrary to truth than to conceive that to the Ephesians an amplification of this to the Colossians even if both were admitted to be genuine. That they are in the closest mutual relation is apparent; for the body of Christ is as prominent in the Ephesian letter as is the Head in the Colossian. But for this very reason each has its own special object; and both are of the highest interest and importance, as giving the truth in question fully and without confusion. Why they were severed by the Epistle to the Philippians it is hard to say; for internal considerations point to the writing of the Epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians about the same time, whereas that to Philippians has no such link, and while it may have preceded them as Dr. Lightfoot contends, it rather seems from its tone to have been the later of the three.

However this be, which is comparatively immaterial, here we have the complement of the letter to the Ephesians, as it appears evidently written at nearly the same time. Here we learn the fullness of Christ for the saints, Christ in them; as there were revealed the privileges in Christ for the saints and the church. They thus lend one another the most necessary and remarkable help. But they also differ quite as strikingly; for to the Colossians the apostle dwells on Christ our life, even where the word may not be used, and only once (1:8) speaks of the Spirit; whereas to the Ephesians he unfolds the Holy Spirit's functions as he does nowhere else.

The apostle did not write alone as to the Ephesians, but joins with himself “Timothy the brother to the holy and faithful brethren in Christ that are in Colosse.” After the usual wish but curtailed, the former give thanks at once to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, continually praying for them, having heard of their faith and love on account of the hope that is laid up for them in the heavens (1-5), “of which ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel which came to you as in all the world, bearing fruit and growing, even as also among you since the day ye heard and rightly knew the grace of God in truth; even as ye learned from Epaphras our beloved fellow-bondman, who is a faithful servant of Christ for you, that also declared to us your love in [the] Spirit.”

The rich unfolding of God's call and inheritance found in Eph. 1:3-14 has no counterpart here, because of the dangers which menaced those addressed. Nor here is it only “for the hope.” “For this reason we also, since the day we heard, do not cease praying and begging that ye may be filled with the right knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, to walk worthily of the Lord unto all well-pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work and growing by the right knowledge of God; strengthened with all strength unto the might of his glory unto all endurance and long-suffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father that made us meet for sharing the portion of the saints in light; who rescued us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption the forgiveness of sins” (9-14).

Before proceeding with the setting forth of the glories of Christ's person that follow, remark that the walk, power, and thankfulness are directly, not of Paul and Timothy that prayed for them, but of the Colossian brethren. Thus then, while present fruit and growth are sought, thanks were to be that the Father qualified “us,” not the writer nor those written to only but all Christians, for sharing His presence in the light. The Vulgate, followed by Roman Catholic theologians, &c., is utterly wrong in the perversion “made worthy “; as are most Protestants too in blotting out this blessed standing to make it a gradual process.

“Who [Christ] is image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation, because by [or, in virtue of] him were all things [or, the universe] created that are in the heavens and that are on the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or lordships or principalities or powers; they all have been created through him and for him; and he is before all and by [or, in virtue of] him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, who is [the] beginning, firstborn out of the dead, that he in all things might be pre-eminent” (15-18).

“Image” observe, not likeness. The word was God. Like would be only resembling; “image” represents, as Christ perfectly represented here below the invisible God. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” as He said to Philip. So when born of woman, He was firstborn of all creation. Even Solomon His type, was by sovereign grace made firstborn, though younger than many of David's sons. The glorious reason follows for Christ—because He created all. How conclusive! No matter when born, He was chief of creation. The A. V. is right: the R. V. dangerously wrong in giving “in him were all things created.” It expresses not the instrumental means as near the end of the verse, but the intrinsic power by which the work was done, here of universal creation. The mystical idea of the Revisers, for which there is no ground, seems refuted also by the tense which points to historical fact, as distinguished from the abiding continuance of the past act in the latter clause. Besides it opens the door of universalism in opposition to all truth. Nothing can be clearer than the universality of creation here attributed to our Lord, heavenly and earthly, visible and invisible: they, the whole of them, have been created “through” Him, and not only so but “for” Him as the end in view. And as He existed before all, so does the universe hold together by, or in virtue of, His power.

But a wholly new glory succeeds, on which the church specially depends, and from which she derives her being and character. “And he is the head of the body, the church; who is [the] beginning [which is distinctive here, and not said of Him either when a divine person only, or when the Word became flesh, but only as risen], firstborn out of the dead.” He rose the conqueror over sin and death to be the Beginning, and the suited Head of the body, that in all things He might become first in rank. Anything short would have dishonored both Him and the Father.

Next comes His work of reconciliation in its future scope for the universe, and in its actual and complete application to the saints, due to the glory of His person. “Because all the fullness was pleased in him to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to him- [or it-] self, having made peace through the blood of his cross—through him, whether those on the earth or those in the heavens. And you, once alienated as ye were and enemies in the mind by wicked works, yet now he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and unblemished and unimpeachable before him, if at least ye abide in the faith grounded and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel which ye heard, that was preached in all the creation under heaven, of which I Paul became servant. Now I rejoice in the sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the tribulations of Christ in my flesh for his body, which is the church, of which I became servant according to the dispensation [or, stewardship] of God that was given me unto you to complete the word of God: the mystery that had been hidden from the ages and the generations, but now was manifested to his saints, to whom God would make known what [are] the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you the hope of glory, whom we announce, admonishing every man and teaching every man, that we may present every man perfect in Christ; where unto also I labor in conflict, according to his working which worketh in me mightily” (19-29).

Here we have a twofold reconciliation (answering to His twofold personal supremacy over creation as a whole, and of the church), of which last not even His incarnation, however blessed and essential, but His death was the basis; for not till His cross was sin forever judged before God. Again, the apostle mentions his twofold service, corresponding to Christ's person and reconciling ministry of the gospel in its unrestricted extent, ministry of the church in filling up the blank (left in the word of God) by the revelation of the hidden mystery, or secret unknown in Old Testament times. It here emphasizes the Gentiles having part in it, not you in Christ, but “Christ in you, the hope of glory” on high, instead of Christ reigning over the earth, with Israel His center and all the nations blessed according to the promises and the prophecies. For that the apostle toiled mightily, as he also endured afflictions for the sake of Christ's body, the church (atonement His only, but those afflictions of holy love left for His own to share), that he might present every man full-grown in Christ, of which toil He was not only the object but the power, being Head.

So above man, so opposed to fallen nature, is the truth of Christ, as to involve conflict as well as toil, in such as serve Him. What can one do better than to transcribe the apostle's burning words? For I would have you know what conflict I have for you and those in Laodicea and as many as have not seen my face in flesh; that their hearts may be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding unto right knowledge of the mystery of God, in which are the treasury of wisdom and of knowledge hidden. And this I say that no one may delude you by persuasive speech. For though in the flesh I am absent, yet in the spirit I am with you, rejoicing and seeing your order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him, rooted and being builded up in him, and confirmed in the faith, even as ye were taught, abounding in [it] with thanksgiving. See lest there shall be one that leadeth you astray through philosophy and vain deceit according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and ye are filled full [or, complete] in Him, who is the head of all principality and power, in whom also ye were circumcised with circumcision not done by hand, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ; buried together with him in baptism, in which ye were also raised together, through faith in the working of God that raised him out of the dead. And you being dead in the offenses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he quickened you together with him, having forgiven us all the offenses, having blotted out the handwriting in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and hath taken it out of the way by nailing it to the cross; having stripped he made show of the principalities and powers, openly triumphing over them by it. Let none therefore judge you in eating or in drinking, or in respect of feasts, or new-moon, or sabbaths, which are a shadow of the things to come; but the body [is] of Christ. Let no one cheat you, in a voluntary humility and worship of the angels, treading on things which he had not seen, vainly puffed by the mind of his flesh, and not holding fast the head, from whom all the body, being supplied and knit together by the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God” (chap.. 2:1-19).

None on earth knew as the apostle how all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hid in the mystery, or secret, God now reveals in Christ. Philosophy which flatters men's minds was as vain to penetrate and unfold it as the law which condemned his unrighteousness and left God in the dark. Man was thus exposed to worship of the angels, not those who beheld by faith all the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Christ bodily, and themselves made full in Him Who is the head of all principality and power; and this in virtue of a redemption which gives in Christ the fullest force to the old rite of circumcision and the actual sign of baptism. For the truth goes farther than His death and resurrection, and declares that God quickened ourselves together with Him, having forgiven us all our offenses. Hence the reflected light of ancient ordinances, as but shadow, passes away for such as hold fast the Head, unfailing in His gracious supply.

And he thus applies it— “If ye died with Christ from the elements of the world, why as alive in the world do ye subject yourselves to ordinances (Handle not, nor taste, nor touch, which things are all for corruption with the using), according to the injunctions and teachings of men: things such as have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship and humility and unsparingness of the body, not in a certain honor, unto satisfaction of the flesh” (vers. 20-23). But more, “If ye then were raised together with Christ, seek the things above where Christ is sitting at God's right hand: mind the things above, not those on the earth. For ye died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also be manifested with him in glory” (3:1-4). The Christian is not only quickened, but quickened and raised together with Christ, and thus he has new life in its highest character. It is hidden because Christ is hidden, hidden with Christ in God. When Christ our life shall be manifested, then shall we too be manifested with Him in glory. How close and blessed is the association Practical consistency is next pressed. “Put to death then your members that [are] upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil lust, and covetousness, which is idolatry, on account of which things cometh the wrath of God upon the sons of disobedience; among whom ye also walked once when ye lived in these things. But now ye put off also all the things, wrath, anger, malice, blasphemy, shameful speech out of your mouth. Lie not to one another, having put off the old man with his deeds, and having put on the new that is being renewed into knowledge, according to his image that created him; where there can be no Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman, but Christ is the all, and in all.” Thus Christ and His work, and our association with Him dead and risen, become the standard of every-day walk for the Christian. Higher there cannot be, if our union with Him on high be added; lower is not acceptable to God Who thus blessed us in Him, but a slight to His grace.

Nor is it only deliverance from the corruption and the violence of the flesh, as we already had from its philosophy and its religion; the positive is not omitted. “Put on then, as elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another and forgiving each other, if any should have a complaint against any; even as Christ forgave you, so also [do] ye. And over all these [put] love, which is the bond of perfectness; and let the peace of Christ rule [or, arbitrate] in your hearts, to which also ye were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing each other, with psalms and hymns, spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to God. And every [thing] whatever ye do in word or in deed, do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God and [the] Father through him” (3:5-17). It will be noticed that the peace and the word are Christ's; all here is to exalt Him, and detach from every rival.

Then from ver. 18 follow special relationships on earth, but in the Lord: wives and husbands, children and fathers; bondmen and masters; (the first verse of chapter 4 being strangely dislocated from the close of chapter 3). The Lord, the Lord Christ, is the key-note. He is the masters' Master in heaven, From ver. 2 is the call to perseverance in prayer and watching with thanksgiving, and prayers for him that he might speak the mystery of Christ, to which he attributes his bonds, that he might manifest it as he ought to speak. He exhorts that we walk in wisdom toward those without, redeeming the fit time; and that their speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt. Tychicus and Onesimus would make known to them all about Paul and things at Rome, and the former would report their matters to him. Then follow from ver. 10 the salutations of many fellow-labourers by name, with instructive comments, greeting to the brethren in Laodicea and the assembly in the house of Nymphas, direction as to the Epistle and a companion one, and a charge to Archippus, not to be slighted. And as in his early letters, so in this late one, Paul's salutation is with his own hand. He reminds them of his bonds, and prays that grace be with them. It is altogether a needed and noble Epistle.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Who Wrote Hebrews; Why "Believe Also on Me"?

Q.-The Epistle to the Hebrews, who wrote it? Learned men contend for Apollos, Barnabas, Silas, Titus or Luke. Is there any real ground to doubt the prevalent belief that it was the apostle Paul?

A.-The difference of style has been pleaded, the absence of Paul's name, and the circumcision addressed in it, all proved by the nature of its contents. But there is nothing in any or all these circumstances to weaken the claim of the apostle. That it expounds the law more fully than does any other of his Epistles, that he withholds his name and title purposely, the one as writing outside his allotted sphere of the Gentiles, and the other as presenting the Lord Jesus in the light of the apostle of the Christian confession, may satisfactorily account for its peculiarities. Here he is the inspired interpreter of the O. T. rather than unveiling the mysteries of the N. T.

But it is certain from 2 Peter 3:15, that Paul wrote an Epistle to the Jewish believers as Peter addressed both his Epistles to the same. This is here distinguished from “all” the rest of his Epistles, as written to Jewish Christians, according to the wisdom given to him, and speaking of the grand scenes which await the coming and the day of the Lord, as Peter was then treating of these things in his way as directed of the Holy Spirit. In them were some things hard to understand which the untaught and ill-established wrest, as also the other scriptures (for it too was scripture), to their own destruction. That such an Epistle of Paul's should be lost would be a harsh and intolerable supposition; but if so, it must be the so called Epistle to the Hebrews. It is in fact the only Epistle attested as Paul's definitely by another inspired writer of the N. T. Yet this is the one which more than any other has been denied to the great apostle. What a proof of men's trusting in their own wisdom, and of their blindness to divine authority

Q.-John 14:1. Why “believe also on Me”? Were they not already believers? A Disciple.

A.-It is the change from Jewish faith to Christian. Henceforward it was to be no longer a present and visible Messiah, but the Lord invisibly known in heaven. As they believed in God without seeing Him, they were now to believe in their Master on high, when they ceased to behold Him here below.

TITUS & PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth, 2/-. THE REVELATION

" CHRISTIAN SCIENCE," id.; 13, 6d.; 50, 1/10; 100, 3/6. THE LORD'S PRAYER, a New Edition, 3d. THE FEASTS OF JEHOVAH, a New Edition, 6d.

Later THE DAY OF ATONEMENT, a New Edition in Preparation.

BRIEF SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND Labors OF JOHN NELSON DARBY, by G. W. Turner, 4d.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

published

Jacob: 32. Jacob Born and Young

Jacob: Jacob Born and Young

Gen. 25:30-34

If scripture speaks briefly of Isaac, it has much to say of Jacob, as it had not a little of Abraham. Yet the difference between the divine accounts of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is marked and instructive. The grandfather was preeminently a man of faith, in whom God's call was conspicuous, head of a chosen race, as Adam of mankind. Isaac was distinctively the son of Sarah the freewoman; “in Isaac shall thy seed be called,” Abraham's child and heir. In wandering Jacob, supplanter of Esau yet wrestler of God, His merciful purposes for the earthly people appear in their rich and striking variety. Jacob gives occasion to the exercise of God's sovereignty as to the twin children of Isaac and Rebekah. For they being not yet born, nor having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him that calls, it was said to their mother, The elder shall serve the younger. It had been shown before in casting out the bondwoman and her son; but so it was now far more emphatically in Jacob chosen, not Esau. No flesh shall glory; in Jehovah certainly, as it ought to be. Is man only to think and talk of his rights? Sinful man! Has God alone no rights? Is He to be a mere register of man's wrongs? Ah! his wrongs, not rights: this is the truth, as no believer should forget from the dawn of a vital work in his soul.

Without dwelling long, we may notice the youth of Isaac's sons, already traced in the sketch given of their father. Esau did not become a sojourner in the land of promise; but, being at home there and without a heavenly hope, he made the early career of Nimrod his own, if he never thought of him. From the outset he was as unlike Abraham as one of the family line could be. His love of excitement and of reckless adventure made him despise the parental circle, and the monotonous duty of caring for the herds and the flocks. Others might look for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God; but it had not the least place in Esau's heart. For him the present life was all, and the chase in particular as giving scope to courage and address in overcoming difficulties and gaining personal distinction. Therefore was he a cunning hunter, a man of the field; whereas Jacob was a homely or quiet man, dwelling in tents, with warm domestic affections; and he valued too the link with God, though with a heart as yet little if at all cleansed by faith. So the history appears to intimate for many a day.

But those who seek their pleasures without a thought of God like Esau do not find their own path free from the world's sorrow. And his extremity became Jacob's opportunity. The cunning hunter came in from the field without his venison, hungry and faint; and the keen edge of appetite, so whetted yet foiled, made him the more sensitive to the dish of red lentils which Jacob had cooked. And so he, who at other times would have been too proud to ask a favor of his brother, whom he heartily despised as a milksop, stoops to beg: “Feed me, I pray thee, with the red—the red there, for I am faint.” Quick as thought, without prayer to God, but full of that which his mind at least prized, Jacob makes his bargain: “Sell me now (or, first) thy birth-right.” Truly it was the “worm Jacob,” and different indeed from the “Israel” of a later day. But Scripture tells the truth; and the two men were seen as they really were “Behold,” said Esau, “I am going to die, and of what use can the birth-right be to me?” Why so impatient? Could he not hold out a quarter of an hour? The mother's tent was near; could he not wait long enough to ask of them who had never refused his cry of need—never put him off with a stone or a serpent?

No; he must have the tempting food on the instant. In his impetuous haste and self-will it seemed death to wait a few moments longer. Alas! Jacob took advantage of it; and brought in God, whom he himself was selfishly slighting, to bind Esau who had no fear of Him whatever: “Swear to me first.” And he did swear to sell his birth-right to Jacob. How fleshly the act on both sides! Instead of securing Jacob in the sight of God, it was part of those evil days on which he had to look back with shame and sorrow when grace really governed his soul. And it could do no more than widen the gulf between the brothers, rankling as it might, and not unnaturally, in his heart who was drawn into the oath by the pressure of a passing need. So Jacob gave his bread and dish of lentils; and Esau “eat and drank, and rose up and went his way” in the graphic terms of the history, with the solemn comment: “so Esau despised his birth-right.” What great moral principles are for us in these apparently simple tales of domestic life in early days! Let us not, like unbelievers, leave God out of the account: none can, save to his irreparable loss.

Priesthood: 25. Leprous Raiment

Leprous Raiment Lev. 13:47-59

So apt to spread is the taint of sin, that the concluding paragraph of our chapter is devoted to leprosy in raiment made of any material, or a skin serving the like purpose.

“And if a sore of leprosy is in raiment, in woolen raiment or linen raiment, either in warp or in woof, of linen, or of woolen, or in a skin or anything made of skin; and the sore is greenish or reddish in raiment or in the skin, or in the warp or in the woof, or in anything of skin; it [is] the sore of leprosy and shall be shown to the priest. And the priest shall look on the sore, and shut up [what hath] the sore seven days. And he shall look on the sore on the seventh day: if the sore have spread in the raiment, either in the warp or in the woof, or in the skin, whatever work is made of skin, the sore [is] a corroding leprosy; it [is] unclean. And they shall burn the raiment, or the warp or the woof, of woolen or of linen, or anything of skin, wherein the sore is; for it [is] a corroding leprosy; it shall be burned with fire. But the priest shall look, and, behold, [if ] the sore hath not spread in the raiment, either in the warp or in the woof, or in anything of skin, then the priest shall command that they wash [the thing] wherein the sore [is], and he shall shut it up seven days a second time. And the priest shall look on the sore after the washing; and, behold, [if] the sore have not changed its appearance (lit, eye), and the sore have not spread, it [is] unclean: thou shalt burn it with fire: it [is] a fret [on what is] threadbare or napless (lit. bald in head or forehead). But if the priest look, and, behold, the sore be dim after the washing thereof, then he shall rend it out of the raiment or out of the skin, or out of the warp or out of the woof. And if it appear still in the raiment, either in the warp or in the woof, or in anything of skin, it [is] a breaking out: thou shalt burn with fire that wherein the sore [is]. But the raiment, either the warp or the woof, or whatever thing of skin which thou hast washed, and the sore departeth from them, it shall be washed a second time, and be clean. This [is] the law of the sore of leprosy in raiment of wool or linen, either in the warp or in the woof, or in anything of skin, to pronounce it clean or to pronounce it unclean” (vers. 47-59).

Thus according to the law of Jehovah leprosy might betray itself in a man's external circumstances, typified by his apparel, whatever this might be, as well as in his person. Everywhere it must be dealt with, but not on such moral grounds as an Israelite might apply. Its appearance was for the priest to discern. It was for him to see and pronounce according to the law of Jehovah which bound him as well as the suspected thing. The appearance of leprosy externally as well as in the person were too serious to be ignored or put off. In Israel the priest must be consulted without fail or delay; but he must look into it as before God and speak accordingly.

We have the authority of the inspired Jude (23) for giving this type a present bearing. For what else is the allusion in “hating even the raiment spotted by the flesh?” Of course the language is figurative in the Epistle; but figures are used in scripture as in all other communications, not for enfeebling the sense but to make it vivid and impressive. So it is in the scriptural phrases, derived from O. T. types of washing us, whether in water or in blood: both are used and carefully distinguished, and the truth meant by each is of the greatest moment. But the allusion in that solemn warning of the departure, not only from righteousness but from grace and the faith once delivered to the saints, may help souls to see that every scripture is not only God-breathed but profitable as the apostle says.

The surroundings of a man lay bare his leprosy. Our ways may display even more than our words. People talk about the heart being all right as an excuse for what stumbles in the eye, the hand, or the foot. The Lord, who really searches the heart and can alone judge as He soon will, pronounces now that each or all must be got rid of at all cost, rather than keeping all to be sent into the everlasting fire, the Gehenna of fire. Habits disclose the deadly taint very plainly; but it is the spiritual man who alone can truly discern. Such have the mind of Christ, who indeed is “the priest” to pronounce absolutely. But even with Him, though unfailing, there is no haste. He did not speak from Himself, but the things which He heard from His Father. He would impress on us the divine authority of the word, that what we say or do be in obedience. If the circumstances are persistently bad, they must be absolutely judged. Nothing less than “burning” will do as ordered by the priest on God's part. If “washing” avail to correct, a further application is enjoined, and if the change more appear, the priest pronounces clean. If not, all is wrong, for it is leprosy. The standing type of sin, at least in the O.T. aspect, is thus carried out beyond the person to his environment; and there the surroundings might disclose the fatal taint. Wherever it was discerned by the spiritual eye, immediate and unsparing judgment must follow.

Day of Atonement: 11. Azazel Part 2

Azazel or the People’s Lot (continued)

Now we come to an important difference between the two goats. The first goat, we have seen, was not expressly limited like the second; the bearing of the Antitype assuredly is infinite. It was not only that the first goat was slain, and the blood carried into the holiest, but we hear of it also atoning for the holy place, the tabernacle, and the altar. The application of the blood goes far beyond man. Just in the same way in the New Testament the blood of Christ is not at all limited to His people or that to which it is applied. Its efficacy is also boundless for all those who come at God's call, and believe in Christ.

But the assumption that His blood has no scope beyond the elect is a serious error. Not that to me God's electing love is a doubtful question, but as sure as any other truth of revelation, and a spring of solid comfort to the household of faith, humbling to man's pride and glorifying to the God of all grace. One may be quite willing to allow, therefore, that election is behind the second goat, if such an expression may be allowed. For there limitation comes; but the first goat typically is unlimited in its range. For this reason is grounded upon it the going forth of the gospel to every creature under heaven. What can be less limited, if other truth be safeguarded? Nothing can be conceived more disastrous to the unmeasured width of the gospel than to address the elect merely. The Lord commanded that it be preached to every creature. Therefore you do well to act on His word, and need not fear for God's glory. Be assured that God has found a ransom and is fully vindicated. Do not imagine for a moment that you are in danger of going beyond what the blood of Christ deserves, and what God estimates of His ineffable sacrifice. Were there a thousand worlds to save, were there sinners beyond all that exist to hear God's glad tidings, there is that in the blood of Jesus which would meet every sinner of every world. Such is the unlimited value God finds in the death of His Son.

Yet if God did no more than proclaim the gospel, no person would hearken or could find peace. You may be arrested by the gospel, you may receive the word straightway with joy; but the word so received by nothing deeper than I the affections comes as quickly to naught. The soul requires more than that, and the believer by grace is the object of a deeper work. The truth pierces the conscience under the hand of God's Spirit; and the believer being thus brought to God, in a true self-judgment as well as sense of His grace in the person and work of Christ, is justified from all things. Hence one is not entitled to say to an unconverted person, “your sins are blotted out, and you are justified from all things.” It is going beyond the word of God for a servant of His to tell an unbeliever that by the work of Christ he, and all the world, are saved; so that all they need is to believe it. On the contrary, till you believe God about His Son, you are yet in your sins. “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved and thy house.”

In going beyond God's gospel, you are preaching a spurious one of your own. You are bolder than man ought to be, without the word of God and even against it. That the blood of Christ is capable of meeting every needy soul is assuredly true. But you have no warrant to tell a soul, until there is faith in Christ, that his sins are all gone. When he believes the gospel, you are entitled to tell him, in virtue of the truth figured in the second goat, that Christ bore his sins in His own body on the tree, and bore them away forever. The work of propitiation is seen under the first goat. When the sins are confessed and sent away, then is the comfort of knowing that all the heavy burden is clean gone never to reappear. This one cannot say to every soul. Here it is that the limitation to Israel has its importance. The people are concerned in the second goat in a very definite manner. In the former case it was Jehovah's lot; in the second place, it is the people's lot. By the “people” is not meant everybody, but (as far as Leviticus speaks) the chosen nation, and that nation only. But why reason like a Calvinist to limit Jehovah? Would you narrow the glad tidings of God?

No doubt if you believe the gospel, you are one of God's elect, you are one of His children, crying, Abba, Father. Now you know from His word that you were the object of God's love before the world was made; but you had no right tο appropriate one word about it until you believed ιn His Son. Till then all beyond was outside you; the fact is that you were a child of wrath like another. But when the soul confesses Christ, when the blood is owned in its propitiating value, then you have a true title from God to near, “Your sins, which are many, are forgiven.” Then the full truth can apply unhesitatingly to the soul which believes and repents. For there sever is a divinely wrought repentance without a divinely given faith, nor a divinely given faith without a kindred repentance. Be ready to comfort a soul whenever there is either the one or the other apparent. For in some cases the soul is fuller of joy in Jesus as the Savior than in judgment of self; in others it is filled with the anguish of its sins before God, so as to cloud the sense of pardoning love. This should not be, for the gospel is plain. Yet what can be more wholesome for the soul than to pass through a searching self-judgment in the sight of God? Be not uneasy about such a tried one, nor hurry it too much. Do not turn him away prematurely from these profitable exercises of conscience, along with looking to Christ and the cross. Let him bow to an overwhelming sense of his own evil, while learning what the grace of God has wrought in the Lord Jesus; but do not enfeeble that deep work of unsparing self-judgment before God. You may now say confidently in the Lord's name, “Your sins are completely borne away.” This is for any just the teaching of the scapegoat.

Be it repeated that here you have not the broad truth of the work of expiation effected by His blood that grace is sending out to all the world—the work which has forever vindicated the glory of God where sin had put dishonor on Him, and which leaves Him righteously free to bless according to all that is in His heart. Here we see the witness to what is imperatively needed for the unburdening of the soul. Yet the second goat would be ineffective and vain without the first. If God be not first approached with atoning blood, it is the merest delusion to extract from the scapegoat the shadow of a comfort that your sins are borne away.

But the New Testament speaks so plainly that we may turn profitably to a few scriptures in illustration. Take the earliest that can be in order, the first chapter of Matthew: “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for it is He that shall save His people from their sins.” “Save His people” does not mean save everybody. By “His people” is not meant those of all the nations. Jesus is shown to be the divine Messiah. Jehovah's people are the persons whom He will save from their sins, and not merely come to govern, as a Jew might have thought. His glory is divine; He is truly Emmanuel, which is, being interpreted, God with us. Yea, if possible, He is more than Emmanuel, He is Jehovah. He was therefore to be called Jesus, which involves the ineffable name of Jehovah, “For He shall save His people from their sins.” Thus all is definite. The Savior accomplishes the gracious purpose of God.

In the same Gospel of Matthew, later on, we have not merely words about the Lord, but His own words. Some have the feeling that when we have the very expressions of our blessed Lord, there is more in them than in any other communications of scripture, though these may ever so forcibly set forth the same truth. There is indeed a majesty and a depth in the utterances of our Savior, which is quite peculiar and characteristic of Himself; but the authority of scripture through—(out is really and precisely the same. The moment you bring in varying degrees of authority, you undermine the essence of its power by introducing uncertainty; and uncertainty as to God's word is deadly. However this be, in Matt. 20:28 it is written, “Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for” —all? Nay; for “many.”

There is indeed a true sense in which our Lord is ransom for all; and the apostle speaks of it in 1 Tim. 2, “the testimony to be borne in its own seasons.” But a nice difference distinguishes the two texts. When, as in Matthew, it is a ransom for many, we have it clearly defined. The “for” is “instead of” (ἀντὶ) many. It is strict substitution. When, as in 1 Timothy all are in view, it is simply “on behalf of” (ὐπὲρ) all. “For” has not always the same sense in scripture. It is the more needful to make the remark, because so many are apt to reason, that if “for” means one thing in one place, it must have the same force in another. Now take Rom. 4:25: He “was delivered for our offenses,” and next “raised again for our justification.” The “for” (ado, though it be in Greek the stronger case of the same word, does not mean the same thing in the two clauses. “For our offenses” expresses the reason why He was given up; but His being raised is in order to our justification, not because we were justified, which would contradict the truth, and particularly the words immediately after in chap. 5:1.

Perhaps the prejudices of some may be wounded at hearing this; but let me try to convince you, if indeed open to conviction, that what has been said is true. It would involve the consequence that a man is justified before he believes, which is clearly a falsehood. It is by faith that one is justified, and not before he believes. If this last were allowed, just think of the inevitable consequence. One is a child of God while still a child of wrath! under guilt and condemnation while justified! Can you conceive anything more heinous as well as monstrous, as it might well be, by flying in the face of scripture? None but the believer is justified. Before he believed, he was neither washed, nor sanctified, nor justified. It is here not a question of God's purpose, but of man's faith. Beyond just doubt there was divine purpose before man or the world was made; but what has this to do with the epoch when a man is justified? how absurd to argue that a man is justified before he is born! That God has a purpose of grace about him is another truth; but in order to justification, he must be born again and believe the gospel, receiving Christ at God's word. You cannot have a man justified without knowing Him. Justification is a condition of immunity into which a person is brought by faith. “Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Justification, it is allowed, must have an adequate basis, or, according to men's ordinary theological language, rest on a duly meritorious cause. But the antecedent ground before God must not be confounded with the means or principle by which the soul is brought into it. If scripture decide, a man is not justified until he believes in Christ, and has consequently peace with God. Peace with Him is a state of mind that the man cannot have without knowing that he has it. It is dangerous work, and ruinous to the soul, to tell a man that he has peace with God, if he have no enjoyment of it. Peace is that blessed change which possesses the soul when, through believing in Christ, he gives up warfare against God. When he receives not only the Savior but the atoning work which the Savior effected, he rests on Him before God. Then, and not before, having been justified by faith, he has peace with God to the praise of Christ, not of his faith, though without faith it cannot be.

So also, if we appeal to the First Epistle to the Corinthians, we read in chap. 15 how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures (ver. 3). Now this is a great truth to lay before an anxious or truly inquiring soul. But you cannot apply it save in a vague and general manner to an unbeliever. You can freely say that He tasted death for every one (perhaps indeed every “thing"), Heb. 2:9. If He had not died as a sacrifice for sin, if He had not shed His blood as propitiation, there could have been no gospel to a guilty world. But it is when the soul believes God as to the efficacy of Christ's death, that the burden of guilt is taken away; for this has the surest warrant of God to every one that believes. Where faith is, we cannot exaggerate the assurance He gives to the soul. Accordingly in Gal. 2:20, if we turn now to the next Epistle after those to the Corinthians, Christ “loved me and gave Himself for me.” Impossible to have language more individual. It is not merely the general truth that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Here the soul, now believing, is entitled to claim the love of Christ specially, “He loved me and gave Himself for me.” Are you entitled to preach this to an unbeliever? No scripture warrants or admits of such a license.

But we may briefly look back at the third chapter of the Epistle to the Romans too, more cursorily now though it was recently used at greater length: “Whom God set forth as a propitiatory through faith in His blood, for showing of His righteousness, for the passing over of sins that are past through the forbearance of God; for showing, at this present time, of His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.” Evidently there is no such thing as justifying unless there be also the believing in Jesus. Faith in God's message must exist in order to justification.

Proverbs 13:19-25

As hope deferred makes the heart sick, so the fruition of what is desired is pleasant, but not unless the desire be governed by the fear of God. Without His will not anything is wise, good, or sweet. Hence we read what follows, “The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul; but [it is] abomination to the foolish to depart from evil.

He that walketh with wise [men] becometh wise; but a companion of the foolish will be destroyed.

Evil pursueth sinners; but to the righteous good shall be repaid.

A good [man] leaveth an inheritance to his children's children; but the sinner's wealth [is] laid up for the righteous.

Much food [is in] the tillage of the poor; but there is [that is] lost through injustice [or, want of judgment].

He that spareth his rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him seeketh him early with discipline.

The righteous eateth to satisfy his desire; but the belly of the wicked shall want” (vers. 19-25).

There is no sweetness for the soul at God's expense. He it is that is looked to, instead of leaving Him out. But when He leads and sanctions, sweet is the accomplishment of what is desired. If He chastens what is wrong or leads to it, He has pleasure in gratifying His children beyond any earthly father. But to the natural heart, foolish in excluding Him and His will, what is so repulsive as to depart from evil?

As the fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom, so the heart values the company and counsel of the wise; and walking with them furnishes good lessons. But a companion of the foolish too surely proves where his heart is, cannot avoid being depraved by their evil communications, and unless delivered shall be destroyed.

For who can evade the witness that “evil pursueth sinners,” whatever their apparent prosperity for a while? The leaving them for a season only precipitates and makes more terrible the end of unavailing sorrow and despair. How truly shall good be repaid to the righteous? God will be no man's debtor. The Christian without doubt is called to share Christ's sufferings, not perhaps for Him, but assuredly with Him. No such earthly prosperity is promised him as was to the pious Jew. On the contrary they that desire to live piously in Christ Jesus must endure persecution. But the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to compare with the coming glory to be revealed unto us. In every way and time good shall be repaid to the righteous. God can never cease to be God.

A good man resembles Him who found him evil and by grace made him a partaker of a divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world through lust. Blessed of God, he leaves an inheritance, if not of gold or silver, better still, and abiding to his children's children. The wealth of the sinner, great as it may seem, is laid up for the just. Ungodliness may prepare, devise, and entail; but God cares for those who serve Him. Thus the just shall put on the clothing meant for others, and the innocent shall divide the silver if He think fit.

Again, how true it is, in God's ways, that “much food is in the tillage of the poor”! The soul that looks to Him does not murmur nor aspire after greater things. The little that is given is accepted with thankfulness, and diligent labor is applied, with the result of “much food.” On the other hand, who does not know of great possessions squandered for want of judgment, if not for actual injustice? There is that is destroyed by lack of judgment. The language is divinely accurate, and in no way exaggerated. It may not as yet appear always; but it is the fact, and often plain enough to warn the heedless.

There is another form of following God's ways in the due correction of the family. How many of the godly have spared the rod, and thus failed in love to their sons! Here is laid down the warning and the sort of love: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him chasteneth him, or seeketh him early with discipline.” To spare is really to please one's self, and harm deeply one's son.

Further, the little things of daily life test whether we have God and His will before us. “The righteous eateth to satisfy his desire [or, soul]; but the belly of the wicked shall want,” as the retribution even here of this selfish indulgence. “Whether then ye eat or drink, do all things to God's glory.” This keeps us and pleases Him.

Gospel Words: Prudent Builder and the Foolish

“Other foundation can no one lay than what is laid, which is Jesus Christ,” says the apostle (1 Cor. 3:11). Have you Him as your foundation, dear reader? If it be of faith, you will not doubt of His sufficiency. “He is the Rock; His work is perfect; for all His ways are righteousness.” So an Israelite could say of Jehovah; and Jesus is Jehovah. But He is more, and now more is revealed, especially since He the Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us, full of grace and truth. Nor this only: “Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.”

He is the One for your soul, for your guilt, for your sins. If the Son of God became the Lamb of God, and you believe on Him, surely you need not, you cannot rightly, question that He avails perfectly for you. Yea, you are bound, if you believe Who He is, to receive without hesitation what God's word declares He undertook and has done. The atoning work is done; it is not future for you; nor is it a-doing either, but is done; and its efficacy is perfect for every soul that believes God about Jesus, His Son. His blood cleanseth from all sin. You who say that you believe do God wrong, if you receive not His word and rest not with confidence on the foundation that is laid. There is none other: Jesus is the one foundation for lost sinners.

God commends His love to us, in that, we being still sinners, Christ died for us. Do we ask more? We being still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. We had nothing but sins: He gives all the good we want, having suffered for all the bad that was in us. Such is the Savior of sinners. None that is pretended even resembles Him. The Virgin mother needed Him for her soul, as did every other saint. All men need grace to save them through faith; for all are sinners. Neither angels nor the archangel can avail in any degree; they are but upheld by the word of His power. Nor will God save a sinner but through faith in His Son Who humbled Himself unto death, even the death of the cross, to glorify God and to suffer for sins, Just for unjust. Whoever denieth the Son hath not the Father either; he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also (1 John 2).

But in our text, which closes the sermon on the Mount, it is another truth: not redemption (which was not there the object) but the absolute necessity of obedience in all who call Jesus Lord. To say Lord, Lord, without doing His Father's will, is worthless. Many shall say in the future day of account, Have we not prophesied through Thy name, and through Thy name cast out demons, and through Thy name done many works of power? But He will answer, I never knew you: depart from Me, workers of lawlessness. It was hollow profession, whatever the works of power, which only aggravated the guilt and will add to the endless remorse. There was no life possessed in Christ, and consequently no obedience, to which every believer is sanctified (1 Peter 1:2). Without holiness none shall see the Lord (Heb. 12:14). The point is here that obedience is indispensable from each one that bears His name.

Hence the Lord concludes, “Whoever therefore heareth these my words and doeth them, I will liken him to a prudent man which built his house upon the rock; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and fell upon that house, and it fell not; for it had been founded upon the rock. And every one that heareth these my words, and doeth them not, shall be likened to a foolish man which built his house upon the sand; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and fell upon that house, and it fell, and its fall was great” (Matt. 7:24-27).

It is not redemption only that sinful man needs, but life eternal. In Jesus only are both found, and the believer receives both. Many there are who profess His name, and boast of redemption in Him, the forgiveness of offenses, but never think of present life in Him. Alas! they deceive themselves. To the defiled and unbelieving, whatever they profess, nothing is pure; but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. They profess to know God, but in works deny Him. They say, Lord, Lord; but they are false to His name. Had they believed, they would have had life in His game, and brought forth fruit of righteousness. But not having Christ as their life, they had no fruit unto holiness, and never grew because they had no true knowledge of God. Life, life eternal, as a present ground for serving God in obedience, is as essential as redemption. Woe is to such as have neither. Still more bitter is the woe of such as deny either: they are enemies of the truth.

Thoughts on Romans 8:18-38

This chapter began with “no condemnation.” It is the deliverance for the soul up to ver. 11; then the full and complete deliverance for the mortal body. Next is the presence of the Holy Spirit leading us across the desert into the liberty of glory. For as yet we have but the liberty of grace, not that of glory, because these bodies are still subject to vanity and other miseries.

We do well to consider the way God secures us now by the power that wrought for us; secondly, the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. For He is active in giving us the hope of glory, besides being the Paraclete who guides and strengthens us on our way.

Verses 1 to 11 present our position. Then we are shown how to distinguish this new life, and into what one is brought when one has this life. One learns from God what he is. The Epistle to the Colossians attributes to life that which in the Epistle to the Ephesians is assigned to the Holy Spirit. Both of course are quite true, and each is important. The indwelling Spirit gives me the consciousness of relationship, and witnesses with my spirit that I am God's son, when I say “Abba, Father.” This is the presence of the Spirit with me, giving the positive witness in myself of His indwelling.

Then we read in verse 17, “If children, then heirs.” The Spirit always draws consequences from God's own word, reasoning from a certain known blessing. Man under law reasons from himself; as to whether, if he does something, God will accept him. This is not the Holy Ghost's reasoning; for He ever reasons from God to man. “If sons, then heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.”

That we are sons is a settled relationship for those who believe in Christ. We are just as much sons now as if in heaven. But if we are sons, we are also heirs; and who is Heir of all? Christ Having received all things as man, He takes and associates us with Himself. Thus we are joint-heirs with Him: wondrous thought and the truth The world may not be so outwardly gross now as in heathen times; but it is more guilty and really worse, because of despising the Son of God and neglecting so great salvation. He has brought a new element into the world. Did He not come here below Himself, the Only-begotten Son of God, a man in the reality of flesh and blood, and now risen from the dead? He suffered and was tempted, He was rejected and crucified; but in everything He passed through, He was always Himself. And this is what we ought to manifest. For we have Himself as the new life in us though in earthen vessels. We have this everlasting element of Him, not of the world. By indulging the old man or the flesh, we give Satan a handle. But if He is our life, how can we mix with the world? It can never have one tittle in common with the life the Christian has with God. Whenever one has anything to do on common ground with it, the flesh comes in it, and not the Spirit.

Know you not what the life of Christ down here was? Ours is the same. Christ was not of the world but a stranger, and a man of sorrows. So are we, so must we be. The life I have as a Christian has its own character from Him. If we have seen what it was in Christ, it is the same in all Christians, however full of failure and inconsistency. It is the same path, and the same glory. If we are to be glorified with Christ, we must suffer with Him, not only (or perhaps) suffer for but certainly with Him. It is quite impossible the life of Christ in me can pass through this world differently from Himself. If we enjoy ease with the world, it is not the life of Christ. Mercies and comforts we are given by the way, This I do not deny or speak of, but of having to do with the course and spirit of the world. We are not of it, and have nothing to do with it as members of it. “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed unto us.” You have divine life in an earthen vessel, exposed to trials of many kinds. Therefore it must be a suffering life, and if not walking according to the flesh, conflict.

“For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain, together until now. And not only so, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”

Here is a most blessed passage where we find a whole scene depending on Christ, the First-born from among the dead, coming to bring many sons to glory. The world was ruined by man's sin; and all is under the bondage of corruption. The creature is subjected to vanity, man walking in a vain show. If God takes his breath, he is gone in a moment! The world is all one great falsehood, a painted system, gay outside, thoroughly rotten inside. Christ went down into death, came into the place of corruption, but never saw corruption. He was raised up, the victorious head of an entirely new system, and we are joint-heirs with Him. Thus the whole creation is associated with our deliverance and waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. Creation waits for us, because the grace of God has intervened in Christ and taken up man the worst creature of all, the one who brought in all this ruin.

“For it was the good pleasure of [the Father] that in him should all the fullness dwell; and through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross; through him, I say, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens” (Col. 1:19-21).

God has taken up first the wicked race, and makes the believer in Christ a new creature. “Of His own will begat He us” with the word of truth that we should be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures. He takes up a distinct portion in the Second man. Meanwhile He leaves them in their bodies not yet changed, though associated with Himself, so as to have all the blessing. “If we suffer with Him;” it is always “with Christ.” The Holy Spirit constantly insists on this. Creation, looked at as a whole, must wait for us. How entirely associated we are with Christ! Scripture does not admit of any other thought. How will it be when Christ comes? For immediately we shall be with Him; we are as to the body to be identified with Him. And when He, our life, shall be manifested, then shall we also be manifested with Him in glory. Christ comes in person to fetch the joint-heirs. The rapture (as it is called) is not an isolated truth, but connected with all our relationship to Christ. It is impossible for a person knowing Christ not to be looking for His coming for him. A link would be broken if Christ appeared without the saints appearing with Him. All hangs together on what our own place is with the Lord Jesus. While He is hid in God, so are we; when He shines forth, so do we. The liberty of grace is what we have now. “Stand fast in the liberty wherewith,” etc. We are as entirely free before God as Christ is, loved as He is loved; but we have not yet the liberty of glory. We wait for the redemption of our bodies, having the Spirit as the earnest of it. We have the first-fruits of the Spirit and of everything else, being sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, and the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession (Eph. 1:13, 14).

When that day comes, the Holy Ghost will be poured out on all flesh fully. This earth will become a scene of righteousness and peace and blessing. Their hearts in the millennium will stop on earth because Christ will be King over it all and reign down here.

Why does the Christian go through a rent veil? Because his heart follows Christ where He is in heaven; but Israel will be blessed on earth. The first-fruits were given on the day of Pentecost. Ourselves have the first-fruits of the Spirit; yet even we ourselves groan within ourselves, because we know we are redeemed, and yet our bodies are not yet. We long for the glory, earnestly desiring to be there. Our waiting is connected with the creature, for the body is part of it; but we have the first-fruits of the Spirit, and conflict is the consequence of the certainty of the glory that awaits us. “For we are saved by hope; but hope that is seen is not hope.” Many are hoping to manage Christianity with the world, trying to mix flesh and; but they cannot do it. Now I am a poor prisoner in my own inheritance; but if I do suffer, it is not selfish suffering. Because the Spirit takes part in it as a divine Person in us, He gives the character and tone of Christ's life. The groanings come from the Spirit, the expression according to God of all these sorrows. The very thing that tries me, the vanity I am subject to, brings divine love into the wretchedness of the creature. I do not know what to ask for. I see misery, and it makes me groan. In the case of Lazarus why should the Lord groan? Lazarus was dead, Mary and Martha weeping and the Jews making lamentations, but what could they do? They could only express the power of evil without one atom of power to get out of it. Christ groans when He sees the power of evil, and then comes in with power to deliver. We do not know what to ask for, but we have the Spirit making intercession for us; and He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit (same expression as at the beginning of the chapter). It is the spiritual mind, but withal the Spirit Himself at work in the heart of a saint. He has, as it were, taken part in all the sorrow pressing on the spirit.

It is the expression of sorrow and the voice of the Holy Ghost bringing down a blessing from God to one in the sorrow. Two sides of the Spirit's work we have seen, first, witnessing that we are sons, the Spirit of adoption, and second, revealing hope of glory. Thus, instead of being left in the sorrow and wretchedness the creature is heir to, we have the Spirit working in us, not only another thing working in us, but God working for us.

Inward work is no ground on which to stand: it is not a foundation, but a fruit and proof of being on the foundation. God is at work in us, but the work He has done for us is what we reckon on. We know God makes everything work together for good. We do not know what to ask for, but everything is working for good. The spring of all the work is God Himself. We get back to what God is for us, not only the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, but God for us (ver. 29). To be conformed to the image of His Son (ver. 30). “Called, justified, glorified:” not a word about “sanctified” here, because it is the work for us, and not in us. Like Noah in the ark, God shuts us safe in here. All is to be done for us, God does it all, God Himself carrying on all to conform one to the image of His Son. It is in God's mind to make me like Christ:

groaning, and rejoicing now. If God has called me, He has justified me; then “glorified” can be said. If God works in us, He looks for fruit as proof of His working in us; but He has done all for us. If He spared not His Son, He will give us everything; and no one can accuse of anything: nothing will be laid to our charge, why? Because it is God that justifieth. Who is going to condemn if He does not? Two things are taken up, God's relationship to us, and Christ's. Christ being for us, He enters into everything through which we pass. I cannot get into any place where I have not Christ's love, “nor height nor depth can separate,” and everything works together to show it out.

We would have had things different if allowed our own will. What! you say, am I never to have my will? Never, if you are one of the saved. Only think of God being at work everyday with such a heart as mine and your's with all its self will and foolishness, going on patiently breaking all down! It is impossible anything could happen to me without having to give thanks to God for it. If I do not see God in it, I may find it very hard often, as a father might appear severe in sending his son to a strict school.

God does act with most blessed tenderness toward us, but He works all for our good, in the smallest matters; not even a sparrow overlooked, the hairs of our head all numbered. We are not judges. Some little thing may influence the career of my life more than the largest thing. We cannot see to-morrow. All is changed; a year hence, and everything is different. If God has not met us in love, we can understand nothing; we have not got the key to anything without reckoning on God's love. If we so reckon, we have the key to everything that happens. All is sent in love (trying to be sure) because no chastening for the present seems good. Two things are needed, first, to believe in His love; second, to have the will broken. When the will is broken, we shall always be able to thank Him for everything, because it comes from Him: this is the key to everything, but ever to remember that this world is not our rest. Oh! when we look back and see the wonderful patient grace that has borne with us, what contrasts the object of God in His work for us (i.e. to conform us to the image of His Son), and our object to have our own will and comfort down here! May the Lord give us to trust His love in everything. J.N.D.

1 Peter 2:9-10

Nor is it only that Christians now are a spiritual house, a holy priesthood; and this not as a mere title, but to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. They stand in the fullest contrast with such as stumble at the word, the disobedient. The roll of blessed privilege is unfolded here thus far.

“But ye [emphatically, are] a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for a possession, that ye might set out the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness unto his marvelous light; who once [were] no people but now God's people, the unpitied, but now pitied” (vers. 9, 10).

It is true that as “a holy priesthood,” the exercise of the heart by faith is toward the God who brought us to Himself by His grace in Christ, and could righteously bring us thus near by His blood. We hence approach within, and offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. What the sons of Aaron did in the sanctuary after a material sort, which derived all its value from being a shadow of Christ and His acceptance to God as a perfect and constant odor of rest, the saints are now exhorted to do, As the Epistle to the Hebrews expresses it, “By Him therefore let us offer sacrifice of praise continually to God, that is, fruit of lips confessing to His name.” Can any privilege be higher or more intimate than to be in His presence, walking in the light as He is, delivered from the egotism which breaks out into the variance of separate will, and cleansed by the blood which effaces every sin? to adore the Father, the only true God? to pour forth our thanksgivings for all the grace that has reached even to us? to praise Him for all that He is and has done, and given us to receive and know?

Christ is the ground and substance of it all, and hence without cloud or change, and the Holy Spirit given, that a divine power and character might be in vessels though still earthly. This is a wondrous assimilation to the everlasting worship which shall be in heaven and throughout eternity; but we own it now and are invited to it now, not as a title merely, but as a joyful occupation, especially as gathered to His name. It will be perfect, without alloy in the day of glory to which we look on; but it does become us to abound in it here, seeing that the light and the love and the known accomplishment of that work which secures the blessedness of all to God's glory are already ours, and Christ is revealed to us in that glory as the fullest witness and pledge that it is ours.

Never should we confound worship with the ministry of the word. Precious as this is, it is but the means of conveying to us the truth, which received by the Spirit fits us for the praise and adoration of our God. It is rather the service of the Levite than the approach and the offering of the priest. But no communication of blessing from God to our faith, however essential as the basis, has the same nature, character, and effect as worship; for this is the return of the heart, when made free of His presence and strengthened by His Spirit, to present our thanksgivings and praises in the communion of all saints, acceptable to God through the Savior.

Yet it is not all. The believers are also viewed on another side. They, and they only, are “a chosen race,” at the very time when the elect nation had proved itself more than ever guilty to its own ruin. Now to a remnant of the Jews is this word primarily addressed; not as if it were not true of all who believe, but that those might be comforted who were saved from that perverse generation, over which a fresh judgment was suspended, about to scatter them once more, and more than ever. If Israel's place was for the time forfeited, the believing remnant get the blessing and are pronounced “a chosen race.” The distinction in Christianity acquired a higher character and more personal.

Next, they were “a royal priesthood” (which the Aaronic was not), but rather after the pattern of Melchizedek in its display of the blessing. In the day that is coming He will exercise that priesthood, sitting as Priest upon His throne, instead of bearing us up as He now does within the veil. Meanwhile those who are His are even now said to be a royal priesthood to manifest His praises before the day of His power. It is not of course preaching the gospel to the lost that they might be saved, but telling out His virtues or excellencies, as our testimony to Him who alone is worthy and exalted of God.

Then again they are “a holy nation,” when the nation, who ought to have been so, stood with the stamp on it of evil to the uttermost, not of idolatry alone but of disdaining the Holy One of God, the Messiah. Had they not cried in their blind and mad hatred, His blood be on us and on our children? The remnant, on the contrary, who owned Him and were washed from their sins in His blood, were now “a holy nation” accepted in His name.

Finally they were “a people for a possession.” If God was morally bound to discard at length the people who were always resisting the Holy Spirit, as their fathers had done, those of them who believed on Christ became “a people for a possession.” They were the more dear, because their faith broke through the manifold hindrances by which unbelief, pride, and judicial darkness encompassed the Jewish nation. Few as they were, compared with the mass hurrying on to destruction, they were “a people for a possession” to God, that they “might tell out the excellencies of him that called them out of darkness unto his marvelous light.”

Such is the Christian position here below. By-and-by Israel shall have the place in power and glory before all the nations, where the blind people, see and the deaf people hear in the rejected Messiah the Lord Jehovah, the only Savior. Then will it be plain that “this people have I found for myself; they shall show forth my praise.” And men shall know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides Him, who is Jehovah, and none else; and the heavens from above and the skies shall pour down righteousness, and the earth shall open and bring forth salvation, and righteousness shall spring up together. But even now, while the rejected Christ sits on the Father's throne, and the Spirit is sent forth to glorify Him after a spiritual sort in a world of darkness and rebellion against God, those who confess Christ are to tell out His excellencies. And well they may: seeing that He called them out of darkness unto His marvelous light. If these should hold their peace, as He said, the stones would immediately cry out. They were once as dark as any. So were all who now believe, darkness itself as the apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians, but now light in the Lord. And truly the light is wonderful unto which He called us, Himself the genuine light which never deceives nor grows dim. Though it has not yet arisen to shine on Zion, as it will surely come, it has shone in our hearts who believe, the light of the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ. Now it is only from heaven and for heaven, as we wait for Him. But He will return and appear in manifest and indisputable light for Zion and repentant Israel; and the earth, which darkness still covers, shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah and of His glory as the waters cover the sea.

Meanwhile those He called out of the Jews are consoled by the assurance that in Christ all that can be theirs, consistently with walking now by faith and not by sight, is their assured portion. The failure of the ground (their own obedience), taken in Ex. 19:5, 6; 24:3-7, does not compromise those who believe. Christ has established what could not but fall through their disobedience. Their faith rests on Him, not on themselves; whosoever believeth on Him shall not be confounded; and they did believe on Him who secures all for the weakest that is His. Hence they anticipate Hos. 2:23 before it can be verified to Israel, as ver. 10 clearly proves. They are warranted to appropriate now the prophet's words. It is due to Christ whom God delights to honor. But it is full of interest and instruction to apprehend that Paul, writing to both Jews and Gentiles that believed, quotes Hos. 1:10 no less than ii. 23; whereas Peter, writing to the believing Jews of the dispersion, does not go beyond the latter. Each inspired writer was perfectly guided of God for the divine aim in view. This Wiesinger totally failed to discern, and Alford, who endorses his error, confuses the two truths, and thus destroys a distinction of all moment for spiritual intelligence. The once “no people” were now God's people; the unpitied as to their settled state, which the perfect implies, were now pitied. How truly great His mercy now! And it is good and wholesome for the soul to feel habitually that it needs nothing less in the day of temptation in the wilderness. So the apostle Paul reminds the believing Hebrews in the close of chap. 4 Indeed it is what the priesthood of Jesus constantly implies. All saints should cherish His sympathy and God's mercy throughout our earthly path.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: 1 Thessalonians

Chap. 5 Divine Design. 41. the First Epistle to the Thessalonians

This Epistle has an interest peculiar to itself, as being the first inspired writing of the apostle. It is addressed to an assembly gathered a short time before by his (with others') labors, fresh in zeal and all due spiritual affections, but necessarily immature in knowledge. This led, it would seem, to the remarkable character of the inscription, “Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, to the assembly of Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” There they are viewed in the closest and highest association, babes in the Father and the Son (1 John 2:24). The workmen used toward them were giving thanks always for them, with mention in their prayers.

Could it be otherwise with those who remembered unceasingly, not their “work” only but its “faith,” their “labor” of love, their “endurance” of hope of our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and Father? All the great springs of power wrought in their souls and ways, and this in God's sight: what a testimony, as brethren beloved by God, to their election (vers. 1-4), and to the power of the gospel, truly in the Holy Spirit and much assurance, according to the life of those who preached it (ver. 5)! Hence they became imitators of them and of the Lord, having accepted the word in much tribulation with joy of the Holy Spirit, so as to become a model to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia (ver. 7). Nay, more: the word of the Lord had sounded out from them, not only in these two Roman provinces, but in every place their faith God-ward had gone forth; “so that we have no need to say anything, for they themselves report concerning us what manner of entering in we had unto you.” What a wonder then, or at any time! “And how ye turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to await his Son from the heavens, whom he raised out from the dead, Jesus the deliverer from the wrath to come” (8-10). Yes, it is the faith, the walk of love and truth, and the hope.

In chap. 2 the apostle depicts the true workman in guileless suffering and unselfish love, as pleasing God, seeking no glory from men, but gentle as a nurse and faithful as a father, that they should walk worthily of God, “who calleth you unto His own kingdom and glory” (vers. 1-12). “And for this cause also we give thanks to God unceasingly that, having received God's word reported from us, ye accepted, not men's word but even as it is truly, God's word, which also worketh in you that believe.” This only brings into living relationship with Him, and keeps there; proved by endurance of suffering for it, as the assemblies in Judea, and the apostles, yea, in the highest degree the Lord Himself, from the envious hatred of the unbelieving Jews, on whom is come wrath to the uttermost (13-16). It is true that Satan may hinder, and grace may call us elsewhere; but he presents the Lord's coming as the unfailing joy when all the fruits of love shall, without fail, bloom in His presence Who produced them. “For ye are our glory and joy” (17-20). We all then should look thus to His coming, which more than makes up for all drawbacks.

From chap. 3 we learn that as persecution followed the apostle, so it pressed on the young saints in Thessalonica; and Timotheus was sent by him to them, that none might be moved by these afflictions, though he had forewarned of all, and that the tempter might be foiled (vers. 1-5). But Timotheus on his return filled the apostle with good tidings of their faith and love (6-8), as the apostle attests his joy before God, and prays “our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus to direct our way unto you; and the Lord make you to increase and abound in love toward one another, and toward all, even as we also toward you, unto the establishment of your hearts unblameable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints” (9-13). When He comes with His saints, not before, will be manifested in perfection that holiness which flows from and is maintained by love.

In chap. 4 the apostle presses purity and love, proper to the disciples of the Lord Jesus, and called for by habits which ignored both. Not only is He the avenger of unclean wrongs, but God gave us His Holy Spirit as power in sanctification (vers. 1-8). So the saints are themselves God-taught to love one another, ambitious of being quiet and doing their own affairs, and working with their own hands, in order to a reputable walk and need of nobody. Not till then does the apostle correct the fancy that the dead saints would lose much at the Lord's coming (13-18). The Thessalonians were so absorbed by that hope as to conceive that only those who survived till then would be in its full blessing. Had they overlooked His own death and resurrection? Did they leave out of His triumph Stephen, James (John's brother), and many another fallen asleep, to say nothing of the Old Testament saints? The apostle assures that God will bring with Jesus those put to sleep through Jesus: so mistaken was it that we, the living that remain to His coming, shall anticipate those put to sleep. Then he explains as a new revelation how this is to be effected. “For the Lord himself with a shout, with archangel's voice, and with trump of God, will descend from heaven; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we, the living that remain, shall be caught up together with them in clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” What cheer so great?

Chapter 5 takes up the manifestation of the Lord with His own when He judges the world; that is, His day, which was no new truth but familiar in all prophecy. His day so comes as a thief in the night, and with sudden destruction. It does not so overtake Christians who are sons of light and of day. Such then should watch and be sober, putting on suited armor; because God set us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, that, whether we wake or sleep, we may live together with Him. “Wherefore encourage one another,” etc. (vers. 1-10). Then follow short but precious exhortations: to recognize those laboring and taking the lead; to be in peace among themselves; to admonish, encourage, sustain, and be long-suffering; none to render evil for evil, but always to pursue the good mutually and toward all. “Always rejoice; unceasingly pray; in everything give thanks, for this is God's will in Christ Jesus concerning you. The Spirit quench not; prophesyings despise not; but prove all things; the good hold fast; from every form of wickedness hold aloof. Now the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly, and your spirit and soul and body be preserved as a whole blamelessly at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who will also perform” (11-25).

Then the brethren are asked to pray for the apostle and those with him; as all the brethren were greeted with holy kiss. And with remarkable solemnity he adjures them by the Lord that the Epistle be read to all the [holy] brethren, and wishes the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ to be with them. None thought less of himself than the apostle; yet none had so deep a sense of the all-importance to the saints, everyone, of these special communications from the Lord as the Epistles; and the first from Paul implies this in the highest degree. Compare also 2 Thess. 3:17.

THE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES: 2 THESSALONIANS

Here the address is in substance as in the First Epistle, but a little enlarged to meet the need. Hope was enfeebled by a Judaizing error intended to alarm (2:2). Hence after the salutation the apostle and his two fellow-laborers say, “We ought to thank God always for you, even as it is meet, because your faith groweth exceedingly, and the love of each one of you all toward one another aboundeth.” But there is nothing now to say of their endurance of hope as before, though it is added that “we ourselves boast in you in the churches of God for your endurance and faith in all your persecution and the tribulation which ye sustain.” They were still faithful, though their hope was darkened. Apprehension of the day of the Lord had displaced their longing joy in His anticipated coming.

Hence he thus early in this letter points out that those afflictions they were enduring had nothing to do with that day, but were an evident token of the righteous judgment of God, to the end of their being counted worthy of the kingdom of God for which they were suffering. That day is, on the contrary, to destroy the wicked and usher in the kingdom of God, when those that suffer now shall reign with Christ. So he appeals to its indisputable principle: “If at least it is righteous with God to requite, tribulation to those that trouble you, and to you that are troubled repose with us at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with angels of his power, in flaming fire rendering vengeance to those that know not God, and to those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus [Christ].” For that day is directed against not one class but two, not only the nations ignorant of God, but the Jews who rejected the glad tidings of our Lord Jesus.

Why then fear? It was for both so described, who were such as should pay penalty in “everlasting destruction from the Lord's presence, and from the glory of his might, when he shall have come to be glorified in his saints, and to be wondered at in all that believed ... in that day.” Can anything be plainer than that here we have the retributive character of that day in correction of unfounded alarm? “To which end we also pray always for you that our God may count you worthy of the calling, and fulfill every good pleasure of goodness and work of faith in power; so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and ye in Him, according to the grace of our God and [the] Lord Jesus Christ” (vers. 1-12). It will be apparent, the more the words are examined, that he does not speak thus far of our Lord's coming to meet the saints caught up, but of His judicial revelation or His day, when He and they shall be seen together in glory, as to which they had been misled.

In chap. 2 the apostle directly refutes the false teaching; for this it was, not ignorant and mistaken inference about the Lord's coming or its issues, as in 1 Thess. 4:13-15. Here it is a spurious notion for which the highest claim was made, bringing terror on the living saints; there it was a hasty deduction of their own as to the dead saints. “Now we entreat you, brethren, by [or, for the sake of] the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him, to the end that ye be not quickly shaken in [or, from your] mind, nor yet be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of the Lord is present” (vers. 1, 2). Thus the blessed hope of His coming to gather them to Himself is the motive for asking them not to be disquieted by the groundless notion, not without fraud, that His day had arrived with its terrors.

How could it be? The saints were still here, not gathered up to Him; and the frightful evils which His day is to avenge were not yet manifested. “Let not any one deceive you in any manner; because [it will not be] unless there have come the apostasy first, and there have been revealed the man of sin, the son of perdition, he that opposeth and exalteth himself above every one called God, or object of veneration, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Remember ye not that while yet with you I told you these things” (vers. 3-5)?

Before that day there must be, first the falling away, or the abandonment of the truth, next the revelation of the lawless one, in contrast with the mystery or secret of lawlessness at work in the church even when the apostle wrote. These three must not be confounded. The man of sin is the future adversary of the Lord, the Man of righteousness, the Antichrist of the First and Second Epistles of John, the willful king of Dan. 11:36-39, and the second Beast of Rev. 13, identical with the False Prophet of chap. 19, as he is the antithesis of the true Prophet of Deut. 18, if we heed the apostle Peter (Acts 3). The restraining power and person (for both are true) is the Holy Spirit in His governing action providentially, not limited to the Roman empire; for He still restrains, though the empire exist not; and when it reappears under the dragon's influence, it is exactly when the Spirit ceases to restrain. Till then the powers are ordained of God; after it, Satan will be allowed to set up the lawless man as God even in His temple, whom the Lord Jesus will slay (or, consume) with the breath of His mouth and annul by the manifestation of His coming, having already gathered His saints to Himself on high.

No solid ground appears for regarding either the apostasy or the man of sin as successional, like the mystery of lawlessness. They are both future at the consummation of the age, the former preparing the way for the latter. Nor is it well founded to view the “consuming,” if that word were read, as gradual through the word: compare Isa. 11:4; 30:33. The Lord's antagonist is unique and arrayed with portentous power and signs and wonders of falsehood, according to Satan's working retributively to deceive and destroy those who refused the love of the truth and had pleasure in unrighteousness (vers. 6-12).

In contrast with such, it drew out thanksgiving always that God chose the brethren from the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and faith of the truth. This was shown when He called them “through our gospel” to obtaining our Lord Jesus Christ's glory. So they are exhorted to hold fast what they were taught, whether by word or by “our epistle;” and as in closing chap. 1, so here in chap. 2 he prays that our Lord, and our God and Father Who had so loved and blessed, might encourage their hearts and establish them in every good work and word.

Chapter 3 opens with asking their prayers that the word of the Lord might run and be glorified, even as also with them, and for deliverance from unreasonable and evil men, for faith is not of all. But the Lord is faithful; what a strength to establish the saints and keep from evil! And hence it was that the apostle trusted that what he enjoined they both were doing and would do, and prays that the Lord would direct their hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ. He was waiting above; let them wait here below. But the act of withdrawing from disorderly idlers, serious as it is, should not be confounded with purging out the wicked person in 1 Cor. 5, which last only is excommunication. They were therefore not to esteem one that shirked work as an enemy, but rather to admonish as a brother. Leaven, on the contrary, has to be peremptorily purged out as unclean. Again, he prays the Lord of peace Himself to give them peace through everything in every manner, and Himself be with them; for such things are apt to disquiet and lead to errors if not judged. As he adjured them by the Lord to read the First Epistle to all the holy brethren, so here he salutes by his hand as the mark in every epistle, and wishes the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ to be with them all.

TITUS & PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth, 2/, THE REVELATION 2/-.

THE PREACHING TO THE SPIRITS IN PRISON... 116 and 2/-. " CHRISTIAN SCIENCE," id.; 13, 6d.; 50, 1/10; 100, 3/6. THE LORD'S PRAYER, a New Edition, 3d. THE FEASTS OF JEHOVAH, a New Edition, 6d.

Later THE DAY OF ATONEMENT, a New Edition in Preparation.

BRIEF SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND Labors OF JOHN NELSON DARBY, by G. W. Turner, 4d.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly

Jacob: 33. Jacob Deceiving Isaac

Gen. 27

This is a cup to the brim full of sin and shame for all concerned. Isaac in comparison seems an object of compassion, though here really profane and without the fear of God; so were inexcusable not only Isaac, but Rebecca and Jacob. In speaking of his father we have sufficiently looked at the mother. It remains to say a little more of the one immediately before us.

Oh, the witness to what a saint may be allowed to stoop! What a witness also to that in which God is in long-suffering and grace! If He were not the Eternal who changes not, assuredly Jacob must have been consumed with his sons, as the last of the O. T. prophets tells us. Nevertheless as His moral government dealt with them, so too we may read in Jacob's history as God gives it in His holy word. The beginning was as wretched as could be conceived in either case; but Genesis lets us see in large measure the brightness which divine mercy shed on Jacob's close. Far different was it with Isaac, who disappears from view long before his departure; nor was there anything to distinguish the later years of Abraham's life comparable with Jacob a-dying. Then those eyes which in youth were too keen for “his own things” were opened to see clearly the future of his sons to and at the end of days. Of a truth no prophecy comes of its own interpretation; for no prophecy was ever brought by man's will, but men spoke from God borne along by the Holy Spirit, who rests not short of His glorious purpose for Christ in the latter day.

But in this evil day what have we not to confess? What does not God recall in scripture for our admonition and warning? Humbling it is, but is it not truly good and profitable? Is it not then made evident, that He does not find in us what suits Him, but in love produces it where it was a blank and worse? God alone gives the victory through faith; whilst every fault on our part is noticed, and fully, under the chastening of His moral government. Is not this as it should and must be, God being what He is, and man also? “He that hasteth with his feet sinneth.” No flesh shall glory before him; he that glorieth, let him glory in Jehovah. Who but He could have said by Isaiah (41:13, 14), Fear not, I will help thee. Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel. I will help thee, saith Jehovah, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. We can find no solid ground of rest but in what He is to us, not in what we are for Him. All shall be beaten small who in their pride of heart refuse to believe, and trust in themselves that they are righteous. Only those who have Him for righteousness shall rejoice and glory in Him.

Hence it is that the Spirit refrains not from laying the scene before us in all its sad ignominy, where the righteous break down utterly, because not one of them was then walking by faith but by sight; and he who had no faith appeals to our natural feelings as the injured party. And verily he, Esau, had his reward; for of the fatness of the earth was his dwelling, and of the dew of heaven from above; and by his sword he lived, though he served his brother; and the time came when, breaking loose, he broke that yoke from off his neck. What did he care for “the promises?” What was the covenant to him who lived only to gratify himself and his lusts?

Badly as Jacob behaved under his mother's crooked advice, doing evil that good might come, he really valued what the Almighty did and pledged in words that could not lie; but so much the greater was the sin, which in son as in mother distrusted Him in the face of Isaac's unworthy effort to indulge his favorite against the purpose of the Lord. But so it was. “There are many devices in a man's heart; but the counsel of Jehovah shall stand.” Flesh wrought its dark way all round. God was forgotten. Deceit prevailed; but the word of our God abides forever. He who had no faith received none of the everlasting portion of grace; all who had done dishonor to God and their faith reaped sorrow from their fleshly measures. The mother parted soon after from her darling, never more to see him; and he who turned from the Lord to follow her devices became long an exile, cheated by his father-in-law as he had cheated his father, and put to many a shame by his own children.

But God was good as He is holy. Therefore because of sin Jacob had to learn all in suffering and self-judgment. Far better to have learned it in His presence, which would have preserved him from exile even when pressed urgently by a fond mother. For conscience speaks to one's own soul, and ever refers to God, whose relationship, being nearest and most authoritative, ought not to be gainsaid or thrust aside even for her that bore him. In this case indeed she, a pious woman, by her ardor in a cunning enterprise, betrayed her self-will in boldly offering to take on herself instead of a blessing Jacob's curse, if so it should be through his father's possible discovery of the fraud (vers. 12, 13). But her persistence overruled or at least silenced his fears; and encouraged him to dare a no less impiety, as we read in vers. 20, 21. So candid is scripture, unveiling the desperate wickedness of which the heart is capable in saints left to themselves, or at least leaving God's presence to achieve God's promise in their own strength and wisdom. We shall see in the sequel what conflict and humiliation befell Jacob, as the necessary discipline to which God subjected him in order that the flesh should be put down, and the saint restored to the ways of holiness from such shameless tampering with evil.

Priesthood: 26. Leper Pronounced Clean

The Leper Pronounced Clean.—Lev. 14:1-7

Now we come to the other side, the grace that can and does cleanse the leper. What a mercy in a world of misery and suffering through sin! There is no desert in man; there is love in God. Yea God is love. Here it appears in His dealings as Jehovah with Israel. They are without doubt as the leper. Their unbelief owns not the truth: else they would now cry, Unclean, unclean, as they surely will in a day that hastens. They are without their inheritance, though Jehovah gave it to them; but their sins and iniquities, their uncleanness in a word, made it a righteous necessity that they should be chased out of it, deprived quite of their land and national being, and out of that sanctuary in the place which Jehovah chose to cause His name to dwell there. No judgment of expulsion more certain and clear than that now lying on His ancient people. Their pride rebels; their distance from Him seeks to disguise it even from themselves; but it is written indelibly on their past and present history: thank God, not forever. Leprous Israel shall assuredly be cleansed, as prophecy declares in sure and abundant and glowing testimonies.

Here however the type is so abstract that we are entitled in no way to narrow the application, but to see how grace adapts it to the need of every and any ruined sinner.

“And Jehovah spoke to Moses saying, 'This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought to the priest, and the priest shall go out of the camp; and the priest shall look, and, behold, the sore of leprosy is healed in the leper; then shall the priest command to take for him that is to be cleansed two living clean birds, and cedar wood and scarlet and hyssop. And the priest shall command to kill one of the birds in an earthen vessel over living water. As for the living bird, he shall take it, and the cedar wood and the scarlet and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird killed over the living water; and he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let go the living bird into the open field’” (vers. 1-7).

Typically viewed, the priest is the Mediator, the Savior. As the leper could not come where He was, the priest must go out of the camp to the leper. Indeed “the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost.” It was not only that the sinner needed such love to reach a heart steeped in the selfishness and distrust which sin produces in man, along with known rebellion against God and guilty conscience, the sad monitor of coming judgment. Infinite mercy belongs to God; and who could possibly manifest it like His own Son emptying Himself to take a bondman's form, and humbling Himself in obedience even unto death, ay, death of the cross? Thus it was that in Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile..., having made peace by the blood of His cross.

Here then the priest is said to look, “and, behold, the sore of leprosy is healed.” How this was does not enter into “the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing” beyond the fact here notified. In the application it is a new life given. But the day was not come to reveal such a boon. It awaited Christ, the True Light, in Whom was life, and the life was the light of men. Life and incorruption He brought to light through the gospel. The explanation was left in abeyance. But the arrest of the plague was manifestly effected before him who saw according to God; and thereon followed the means ordained for the leper's purification. It was an immensely serious work, and thus the shadows here seen are pregnant with deep interest and weighty truth.

On the face of it, the work first of all was done for the leper, not in the least degree by himself. The priest commanded to take for him that is to be cleansed two clean living birds, and cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop. Then he commanded further that one bird be killed in an earthen vessel over living water. The living bird he took with the cedar wood, the scarlet, and the hyssop, and dipped them all in blood of the bird killed over the living water; and lastly he sprinkled upon the man to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, pronouncing him clean, and letting the living bird free.

The two clean birds then set forth Christ dead and risen, the one killed, the other let loose into the open field. But there is far more here; for the bird to die was killed in an earthen vessel over living water. How plain the indication of Him who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself spotless to God, deigning to be crucified in weakness! Again, what can be more evident than the pains taken to identify the living bird with the slain one by dipping it in the blood of the one killed over the living water? So Christ was given up for our offenses and raised for our justification, as says the apostle (Rom. 4:25).

Nor was this all the truth presented in this pattern of things to come. The taking of the cedar wood and the scarlet and the hyssop, the dipping them also in the blood of the bird that was slain, has a worthy meaning and like the rest is written for our admonition. The death of Christ has pronounced death for him that is cleansed on all with which man is here conversant. The chosen emblems of the highest in nature and of the lowest, along with that which figures the conventional glory of the world, were dipped in the blood; just as in Num. 19:6 they were cast into the midst of the burning of the Red Heifer. In what had not man corrupted himself, perverting all that God gave and sanctioned to His dishonor? But every evil is counteracted for the believer in Christ's atoning death. The leper was himself sprinkled with the blood seven times in token of complete cleansing, and was formally pronounced clean by the priest, with the significant mark of the living blood-sprinkled bird let go into the open field.

Yet much more, as we are told, had to follow. How sedulous is scripture to impress the solemn ways of God, even when a soul is supposed to be converted, and the deadly evil of sin no longer active but at a stay, before it can enjoy the full place and privileges of salvation! How little is this understood by revivalism or even evangelicalism!

Proverbs 14:1-9

Here it is mainly a contrast between wisdom and folly in varied points of view, with no little instruction for such as fear the Lord and desire abiding fruit.

“The wisdom of woman buildeth the house; but folly plucketh it down with her hands.

He that walketh in his uprightness feareth Jehovah; but the perverted in his ways despiseth him.

In the fool's mouth [is] a rod of pride; but the lips of the wise shall preserve them.

Where no oxen [are], the crib [is] clean; but much increase [is] by the strength of the ox.

A faithful witness will not lie; but a false witness breatheth out lies.

A scorner seeketh wisdom; and [there is] none for him; but knowledge [is] easy to the intelligent.

Go away from a foolish man, in whom thou perceivest not the lips of knowledge.

The wisdom of the prudent [is] to understand his way; but the folly of fools [is] deceit.

Fools make a mock at trespass; but among the upright [is] favor” (vers. 1-9).

If man has his place in authority and external activity, not less real is that of woman, and especially in the “home” of which she is the chief bond. Yet there is even there the need of a better foundation than man can lay: else it will surely fail, and it cannot be the house that the wisdom of woman builds. Keeping at home is good; working at home, as in the critical reading of Titus 2:5, is still better. And how true that folly plucks down the house with her hands! Though wisdom be not expressly named in ver. 2, yet does it underlie all walking in uprightness. As the fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge, so he that walks in his uprightness, which is its fruit, does fear Him, out of whose mouth is knowledge and understanding, as He lays up sound wisdom for the upright. On the other hand, where perversity in ways is will be found despising Him. To lean to our own intelligence is the very reverse of knowing Him in all our ways, who alone can and will make our paths plain.

Then we have to remember how large a part the mouth has in the display of folly as well as of wisdom. “In the fool's mouth is a rod of pride.” Haughty as it may be in its self-indulgence, what retribution for the fool's back! The lips of the wise, as they help others, shall preserve themselves from strife, dangers, and difficulties.

No credit is due to the cleanness which attends idleness and shirking labor. “Where no oxen are the crib is clean “; but what of that? It is mercy, as well as a judgment, that a man is to eat bread in the sweat of one's face. Not only is labor, but sorrow, and suffering, better than sin. Pride, fullness of bread, and careless ease lead to ruin and judgment; as industry, using means, such as the strength of the ox, brings in much increase: so God ordains for man that wisely hears and obeys.

Next, how often a person seeks to be thought wise by his independent spirit and detraction, which constantly expose himself to exaggeration and falsehood! It is folly and mischief all the while. Our own business is to do God's will; and “a faithful witness will not lie” to exalt self or to disparage others. But a false one breathes out lies: a remarkable and frequent phrase in scripture. To breathe out lies is more effective and ensnaring than vehement denunciation, which would arrest attention and insure speedy refutation. But breathing them out spreads the malice effectively and widely too through imposed-on confidants; while the maligned are kept ignorant of the mischief. It is a picture of utter corruption.

A scorner is more boldly evil and presumptuous; he “seeketh wisdom,” but in his own way (which is as far as possible from the Lord), and hence, as is here said, there is none for him. “For Jehovah giveth wisdom” (chap. 2:6); and blessed is he that finds it (3:13). Even God Himself is no exception. “Jehovah by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding He established the heavens. By His knowledge the deeps were broken up, and the skies drop down the dew.” He indeed scorns the scorners and gives grace to the lowly: the wise shall inherit glory; but shame shall be the promotion of fools. Had not Verulam this sounding to his heart, when he wrote, “He that comes to seek after knowledge, with a mind to scorn and censure, shall be sure to find matter enough for his humor, but none for his instruction.” How true on the other hand, “that knowledge is easy to the intelligent!”

What is one to do when in presence of a foolish man “in whom thou perceivest not the lips of knowledge?” Get away. He can do you no good and may do you no little harm. He will receive no reproof, and you risk provocation and loss of temper.

“The wisdom of the prudent” is not in lofty claims or unproved theories, but “to discern his way “; the pretended wisdom but real “folly of fools is deceit.” For as there is no power, it lies in ever changing devices and tricks to evade.

The end, if not beginning, of such a path is that “fools make a mock of trespass,” the road to destruction; whereas “among the upright is favor.” It is the upright only who have true pity as well as horror of transgression. Grace alone made them upright, after being far from God; and they turn to Him, not only for the favor they need and have found, but to seek it for others too insensible to judge themselves.

Gospel Words: Narrow and Wide Ways

The Lord sets before those who heard Him the energy requisite for entering the kingdom.

When man was unfallen, he had only to abide where Jehovah Elohim set him. A single restriction was laid on him as a test of the obedience that was due. He might freely eat of every other tree in paradise, pleasant to the sight and good for food; but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was forbidden on pain of death. The divine Creator was also the moral Governor; and man, to abide blessed, must bow to His word in grateful subjection, assured that His will was good no less than wise. That He forbade was enough. To disobey Him was sin and death. And so man learned to his sorrow, shame, and ruin, when following the woman deceived by the serpent, he violated the plain commandment and fell.

Since then the race broke more and more into sin. Lawlessness prevailed; till at length Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The end of all flesh came before God; for it was not only that all flesh had corrupted its way here below, but that the earth was filled with violence. Nor was it only Noah finding grace in Jehovah's eyes through faith, but a deliverance from the deluge was granted to him and his house, and a preservation of enough of the creatures in the ark to renew the post-diluvian earth. There the dispensed ways of God were to be displayed, man fully convicted after the most patient trial, and Himself revealed in His Son, but first on the ground of responsibility, till sovereign grace displace all evil, and righteousness reign to His glory; finally, when the kingdom closes, dwelling in holy power and peace and goodness when God is all in all.

Meanwhile, as the course of the world has ever been and is now more than ever man doing his own will and pleasing himself, the path of faith is ever in separation to God and His word. Christ is the One revealed by God and revealing Him in order to make this knowledge good in all who believe. All saints since sin came into the world looked to Him, and were lightened, and their faces shall never be confounded.

Since the Word became flesh and wrought redemption, grace abounds more exceedingly. Nor is it grace only, but this reigning through righteousness unto life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord. Remission of sins, yea, peace made through the blood of His cross, is preached to every creature; that whosoever believes may know himself made nigh in virtue of Christ's blood, God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God before prepared that we should walk in them.

Still there are difficulties, dangers, and enemies which each soul that heeds the call of God must face. He who is quickened is sanctified unto the obedience of Jesus Christ (1 Peter). The mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can it be: and they that are in the flesh cannot please God. Such is man's moral bent in his very nature fallen as it is. Nor is this by any means all; for the friendship of the world (and what man has not sought it?) is enmity with God; and this so surely that whosoever would be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Then the power of Satan, the liar and murderer, is the most directly destructive of all. Who is sufficient for these things? It is, and must only be, of God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ.

But every natural influence here below is in Satan's hands, and as hostile to man as to God. Therefore the Lord says, “Come in through the narrow gate; because wide [is] the gate and broad the way that leadeth to destruction, and many are they that come in through it; because narrow [is] the gate and straitened the way, that leadeth to life, and few are they that find it” (Matt. 7:13, 14).

Follow the multitude, as it follows the wise according to the flesh, the mighty, and the noble, and you are lost. Public opinion may be well enough for things of this life; but it is never founded on God's word. This sets forth Christ and Him crucified, which to the perishing is foolishness, but to those that are saved the power of God, and His wisdom. So faith receives, and enjoys now, and is blessed forever. It hears Christ's word and believes God that sent Him. It distrusts and turns away from the world which cast Him out and crucified Him. It seeks not ease or pleasure for the flesh, but follows Him who was despised by the vain, and abhorred by the self-righteous, and loathed by such as sought their carnal desires. Hence it is and must be the narrow gate and the straitened way that leads unto life, and few there be that find it.

Those who trust self and the world naturally prefer the wide gate and the broad way. But beware, poor soul! Such is the way that leads to destruction. It may look fair now, yet what solace will it be then that many come in through that wide but fatal gate? The proud and the mean, the haughty and the servile, the highest and the lowest, the dissolute and the violent, the superstitious and the skeptical, the self-satisfied and the hypocritical enter through it into the broad road whose end is perdition. O my, fellow-sinners, hear Him who is Himself the way, ay the sole and sure way to the Father. Never did He refuse one that cast himself as a lost one on His grace and truth; never does He fail to guide aright each that calls on His name. He is the Savior of all that believe. His sheep hear His voice, and as He knows them, they follow Him; and He gives them life eternal, and they shall never perish, nor shall any one seize them out of His hand (John 10:27, 28).

1 Peter 2:11-12

The exhortation at the beginning of the chapter is founded on being born again of incorruptible seed through God's living and abiding word. Therefore were they, and all other Christians of course, to lay aside all malice and all guile and their accompaniments or effects, and to desire earnestly the pure milk of the word, that thereby they might grow to the salvation of glory ready to be revealed. Here it is another exhortation no less general and necessary, based on those high privileges of priesthood, holy and kingly, which distinguish the Christian already, though to be displayed in glory by-and-by, as declared in Rev. 1, 4, 5, & 20. What Israel lost in rejecting the Christ was theirs, only in a more eminent degree and with even a far higher sphere in God's sovereign grace. This leads the apostle to press corresponding probity.

“Beloved, I exhort [you] as strangers and sojourners to abstain from the fleshly lusts such as war against the soul, having your behavior comely among the Gentiles; that in what they speak against you as evil-doers, they, as observing, may from your comely works glorify God in [the] day of visitation” (vers. 11, 12).

For the first time the apostle addresses these saints as “beloved,” for there is no ground for adding “dearly” though it be common enough with the A.V. It should be here, as the word is rendered in chap. 4:12; and in the Second Epistle, 1:17, 3:1, 8, 14, 15, & 17. The endearing term is as appropriate to this entreaty against carnal desires, as farther on against quailing under fiery trial. On either side danger lay; and the respective exhortations came from his heart to theirs.

But he appeals to them also as “strangers (or, pilgrims) and sojourners,” not in the more literal sense of chap. 1:1, but in the deeper and more spiritual view of 1:17. If grace called them to heaven, what were they to do with the objects and pursuits and interests of the earth? They were waiting for the revelation of the Lord Jesus in glory, called to be holy in all manner of behavior, as is He who called them, and while free to invoke Him as Father who judges impartially according to the work of each, bound to pass their time of pilgrimage in fear, yet in a fear not of distrust but of confidence; for it is based on the conscious knowledge of divine grace in their redemption at infinite cost and worth. Here he had been telling them of their invaluable nearness and dignity before God when Israel for the present had manifestly lost all. It was their blessing as Christians, not their calamity as Jews, which called them to walk through the wilderness world as pilgrims and sojourners. These too give the greater force to their present estate of strangers, that they abstain from fleshly desires such as war against the soul. Even what is lawful must be used with measure in God's sight.

How striking is the different way in which grace uses spiritual privilege as here, and the sanctioned principle, as well as ambition, of the world-church! Babylon is now clothed in purple and scarlet, bedecked with gold and precious stones and pearls, with a gold cup in her hand full of abominations and the unclean things of her fornication, mystery written on her forehead, and withal drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. Present exaltation on earth, universal power and visible glory, the grossest idolatry, the most wanton and corrupt betrayal of holy separateness to Christ, and the murderous hatred of God's saints and of the witnesses of Jesus: such are her horrible, indelible, and unmistakable features to all taught of God.

What a contrast was even the first hankering after outward honor and authority with our Lord's warning to the twelve! “Ye know that the rulers of the nations lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Not thus shall it be among you; but whosoever would become great among you shall be your servant; and whosoever would become first among you shall be your bondman; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:25-28). From the beginning of His ministry our Lord had laid down for such as heard Him that they are to love their enemies, to do good to those that hate them, to bless those that curse them, to pray for those that despitefully use them. So teaches Peter in this very Epistle, and so he lived: blessed, if we suffer for righteousness' sake, and if we share in Christ's suffering, we rejoice now, that in the revelation of His glory also we may rejoice with exultation. The Catholic system, long before the world-dominion of Popery prevailed, was but the mystery of lawlessness developed; flesh rampant in and after the world to Satan's delight, as far from Christ known by the Holy Spirit as a theater or circus is from heaven. But greater abominations than these were to come, till the signal and final judgment which slumbers not, when strong is the Lord God who will then surely judge Babylon forever.

According to the mind of Christ the high privileges of faith were but to strengthen the believer's delight in God and vigilance as “strangers and sojourners” in holding aloof from the fleshly lusts such as war against the soul. It is not now the unamiable and bitter feelings of fallen man, as in ver. 1, but the self-indulgent and licentious. How often through lack of prayer and watchfulness fleshly lusts spring from sincere esteem and pure affection unawares gliding into carnality; as the Galatians' fall from grace was from going on to perfect in flesh what they had begun in Spirit! How readily little fond familiarities follow by degrees, in the intimacy of Christian love ripening into unhallowed freedom, if not the worst evil. So might lust take other direction and form, as covetousness or any other indulgence alien from Christ. These fleshly desires, many of which men praise as doing well to self, war against the soul and are an abomination in God's sight. How contrary to the new and eternal life we have in Christ, and inconsistent with God's wonderful light in which we walk! How mischievous and debasing to the Christian! They grieve the Holy Spirit, dishonor Christ, and fight against the soul.

Hence the call is to have their behavior comely (καλὴν) among the Gentiles. For there were these Christian Jews interspersed. Though the spring of conduct is the faith that looks to and calls on the Father, it is also an obligation to win the unbelieving and unfriendly by practical consistency with Christ, without affording occasion to those that seek it. For men of the world suspect the motives and the ways of the faithful, yet have a strong if not intelligent sense of their responsibilities, and are ever on the watch for their halting and failure. Therefore is the apostle earnest in urging “that in what they speak against you as evil-doers, they, as observing, may from your comely works glorify God in the day of visitation.”

It was an early and common reproach among the Gentiles that Christians must be atheists, because they turned from idols; and no image of gold, silver, stone, or wood, nor picture of man's device, met the eye of man in their assemblies. The Jews well knew that this was just because a living and true God had won them from such vanities to serve Him. But bitterly jealous were they themselves that Christians did not become proselytes of the law, instead of believing in His risen Son, Jesus the Deliverer, and waiting for His coming again from the heavens; and still more furious were they, that any of the stock of Abraham should have the same faith and hope as the uncircumcised.

Among Greeks and Romans again the service of the state was a cherished object: and he who did not take his share of its burdens or value its ambitions had no end of contempt. To have here no abiding city but to seek the coming one, to declare that the Christian commonwealth is in the heavens from which also we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, seemed to both Jew and Greek rank folly and odious in itself.

Love too, as the bond of perfectness, laid them open to the shameless suspicion of ill-wishers, who put an evil construction on the new brotherhood which astonished the world, embracing women emancipated by the faith of Christ from being the mere drudges and playthings of the other sex, and now in a near and common relationship where Jew or Greek cannot be, bond or free, male and female; “for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” It is easy to understand what men think and say of what is only known to and by faith, opening the door, as they in their ignorance of grace and truth judge it must, to indiscriminate license and uncleanness. But the apostle exhorts that, from observing the comely works of those addressed, even such as spoke against them as evil-doers might rise above their prejudices and glorify God in the day of visitation.

The apostle put no commendation of themselves before them. Christ bade them beware of such praises as dangerous. But He did more to the like effect as here in Matt. 10:16: Let your light (i.e. in confessing Christ) thus shine before men, so that they may see your comely works and glorify your Father that is in the heavens. Our apostle adds “in the day of visitation;” but hardly in the sense of being visited with the same light and grace which Christians knew, still less of a day when the Gentiles should have a clearer preaching of the gospel than then. It appears rather to look on to a day when God shall judge the secrets of men, when the Lord shall come who will also both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of hearts; and then shall each have the praise from God.

Eternal Life

This immense privilege given to the believer let us weigh as scripture presents it. Always of the deepest moment, the assertion of its truth is more than ever called for, as will appear to faithful men before this paper closes. The spirit of error boldly opposes the Spirit of truth. Christ Himself is not only imperiled but misrepresented and undermined by the error; and error against the Son is of all things hateful to the Father. How dear to the Christian should be the truth!

For Christ is revealed to be, not only the true God, but life eternal (1 John 5:20). The Father raises the dead and quickens (John 5:21); and so does the Holy Spirit, as Rom. 8 shows variously; but it is emphatically said of Him who is image of the invisible God and object of faith to man. He, the eternal Word, became flesh and tabernacled among us, full of grace and truth. For of His fullness we all received, and grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time; the Only-begotten Son that is in the bosom of the Father, He declared [Him] (John 1:14-18). Hence the apostle (2 Tim. 1:10) lays it down that Christ annulled death and brought to light life and incorruption through the gospel. Only then and thus were they revealed in Him personally, through His work and by words He spoke, spirit and life to His own.

In the O.T. the light as to this shone dimly, the expressions were comparatively vague, yet enough to convey a real sense of a blessed state of future being for those who truly received the testimony of God. This is certain from the Synoptists as well as John's Gospel: Matt. 19:16, Mark 10:30; also Luke 10:25, and John 5:39. Abel's faith testifies the death of another for the need of his soul. Was it lost on others? The translation of Enoch bore witness to a life in heaven, as he had walked in that life on earth before God took him. Was this too without help as to life for saints after him? When Abraham said to God, O, that Ishmael might live before thee! we can hardly imagine that he thought only of the earth and present things. Certainly “Thou wilt make known to me the path of life” conveyed far more (Psa. 16:11), and such words as “With thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light” (36:9).

The direct source of what even Jews owned in our Lord's day was presumably such scriptures as the last verse of Psa. 133 “life for evermore,” and the exact phrase in Dan. 12:2, as has often been remarked. Nor ought we to doubt that the revelation of grace which man heard at the fall itself gave assurance to repentant hearts, from the outset of his sad history, that the coming Seed of the woman would not only crush the mischievous power of evil but bless saints who looked to God through him with a new life victorious over death and capable of enjoying Himself in peace. Abraham exulted that he should see Christ's day; and he saw and rejoiced. The resurrection of the just was before Job (19:25-27), no less than of the unjust (14:10-12), the one connected with the Kinsman Redeemer's standing up on the last day on this earth of dust, as the other is with even the heavens being no more.

Thus from the O.T. we gather that life everlasting by psalm and prophet was bound up with Messianic days of power and glory. The Lord in Matt. 25:46 enlarged the Jewish expectation so as to embrace equally those saints of all the nations who receive the messengers of the gospel of the kingdom at the end of the age. Said generally of Israel, it is expressly applied to the believers of the ten tribes so long sleeping in the dust, and to those of the nations who believe at that time. It seemed needless to say it of the God-fearing Jewish remnant.

All this remains true; but it is not all the truth. Now comes that which is distinctive of Christianity. Here we find a rich part of the “better thing” God foresaw for us. It was reserved for Him Who was worthy, Whose personal dignity it suited, through Whom grace and truth assumed subsistence and shape, to make known present life, in the Gospel which starts with the Son unknown to the world and rejected by His own people. To Nicodemus, as far as revelation speaks, it was first divulged, and this when he was but an enquirer, stirred in conscience but not yet born anew. The Lord, correcting his ignorance in view of what the Jewish teacher ought to have known from the ancient oracles for the earthly things of the kingdom, presents Himself come in flesh as the sole way to the Father by faith. How adequate a Witness was He who says of Himself that no one has gone up to heaven save He who came down out of it, the Son of man that is (not that “was” merely) in heaven! “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that every one that believeth on him may have life eternal. For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that every one that believeth on him may not perish but have life eternal” (John 3:14-16). Thus the positive blessing is the gift of life eternal, followed up by the assurance of “not perishing” and being “saved” (ver. 17), as flowing from divine grace. The believer was brought in Christ to receive known life, a life eternal capable of knowing and enjoying God Himself.

If John 4:14 speaks of the Holy Spirit as given the believer to be “in him a fountain of water, springing up unto life eternal” (inward power rising up to its fullness), John 5 opens the source. It is not healing sin-sick man wants, but life. Angelic visitation is quite insufficient; He was present Who is Son of God and Son of man. Jesus gives life in communion with the Father. He received as Son of God quickens; if rejected, He solely judges by-and-by as Son of man. Thus is there also a twofold resurrection to come: one of life for those who practiced good (the issue of divine life); the other of judgment for those that did evil (as dead in trespasses and sins). If they believed not on the Son of God, they cannot escape Him when He executes judgment as Son of man. “Verily, verily, I say to you, He that heareth my word and believeth Him that sent me hath life eternal, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life” (ver. 24). Here revelation is explicit that the believer on Christ has life eternal. It is not future only, but his present possession. It is not surer that he does not come into judgment than that he has passed out of death into life eternal. Verse 25 is precise with the same solemn asseveration. “Verily, verily, I say to you, An hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.” Hearing Him and consequently “now” is pointedly distinguished from His voice afterward calling from the tombs specifically, first those who share the first resurrection, and next such as are raised for judgment or the second death. How solemn a word for such as searched the scriptures, thinking that in them they had life eternal! In fact the scriptures bore witness concerning Jesus; yet would the Jews not come to Him that they might have life. For in Him, not in them, was life; and the life is the light of men.

John 6 appropriately follows, setting aside, not only every other object, but even for the present His own Messianic glory according to promise and prophecy. Jesus is shown to be the true bread which the Father gives out of heaven. It is Himself incarnate, the bread of life; so that every one that beholds the Son and believes on Him should have life eternal, and as a distinct but sure consequence, be raised up by Him at the last day. This elicits the deepening unbelief of the Jews, and the Lord again solemnly affirms “Verily, verily, I say to you, He that believeth hath life eternal.” But He goes on to the gift of His flesh, not for Israel only, but for the life of the world. As the Jews contended yet more, He said, “Verily, verily, I say to you, Unless ye shall have eaten the flesh of the Son of man and drunk His blood, ye have no life in yourselves. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath life eternal, and I will raise him up at the last day.” The possession of life eternal is most real now, the result for the body no less sure and glorious, as the full victory of life in Christ over death.

It should be borne in mind however that John speaks also of life eternal in the final sense, as in 4:14, 5:39, 6:27, 12:25.

Knowing in Himself that not Jews only but His disciples were murmuring at a word so foreign to Jewish thought, Jesus said, “Does this offend you? If then ye should behold the Son of man ascending where he was before?” It is Himself again, not incarnate only, nor in death, but going up to heaven; a move traversing all Jewish expectation, once Messiah was here. But it is the characteristic of Christianity there to know Him, though given to another apostle to develop as connected with the mystery concerning Christ and the church. Here the great truth is the Son of man, not as Judge of quick and dead, but meanwhile the food of Christian faith, and the means of having eternal life now, while awaiting its crown at the last day, and without loss of either for a single soul that believed, in bright contrast with the present ruin of Messianic hopes so withering to Jewish hearts. To receive the incarnate Son rejected by the Jews was to have life eternal. Yet He must die to glorify God and deliver sinful man; and so faith eats His flesh and drinks His blood. Unbelief might seem to welcome Him incarnate, but betrays its opposition to God and its rest in humanitarianism by stumbling at the still deeper grace, humiliation, and judgment of sin in order to bring in a new state, of which the possession of life eternal now is the pledge, and that completed state the blessed and sure result. His words are indeed spirit and are life.

In John 7 as in chap. 4 we hear not of “life” exactly, but of “living water” which is more, being the Spirit in power: the one as a fountain within springing up, power for worship, the other as rivers flowing out, power for testimony to Him who, refused by the Jews, is already glorified at God's right hand.

In chaps. 8 and 9, the Lord is fully revealed and rejected, first in His word and so in His divine nature and His Person; secondly in His work when become flesh, and so operating that those confident and proud of their sight are blinded judicially, and that those who saw not, being born blind, see clearly according to God. Here we have in both chapters Christ the light of the world, with the blessed effect, for him that follows Him, of having “the light of life” (8:12). It is not only knowing Christ but having Him as his life, the light of men. Now is the great need of it, and here in this world of darkness, whatever may be soon for the fullness of bright enjoyment on high. But the subject called for no more than, “Verily, verily, I say to you, If any one shall keep my word he shall never behold (or, taste) death” (51, 52). Figurative terms he employs, but in the strongest way He claims to give a life superior to death through His word kept, as Satan murders through his lie. Christ is the light of life.

Chap. 10 is more simple and definite. “The thief cometh not but that he may steal and kill and destroy; I came that they might have life and might have [it] abundantly” (ver. 10). Incarnate, He was life, and gave it to the believer; but when He died and rose, it was His life in resurrection power, with all the offenses forgiven (Col. 2:13). Truly it was life abundantly, and marked on the resurrection day by His breathing on His own, as He is never shown to do before (John 20:22). As in all previous cases, the birth is said to be not only of the word (typified by water) but the Spirit, so now He said, Receive ye the Holy Spirit, for indeed such was its character, though the Paraclete was not yet given to dwell in them in personal power. And there the non-imputation of sin is impressively implied by His investing them with the administrative function of remitting or retaining the sins of others as the occasion might require in God's service. It is an important accession, and here distinctly announced, as well as significantly fulfilled, as we have seen. His Person and His work are the key.

In a further discourse of the same chapter our Lord explains to the Jews why they refused all evidence and witness. “But ye believe not, because ye are, not my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give to them life eternal; and they shall never perish, and no one shall seize them out of my hand; My Father who hath given them to me, is greater than all; and no one is able to seize out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one” (vers. 26-30). Here indefeasible security is assured: neither inner failure nor outer force could jeopardize their life; it is maintained by the Father and the Son, who were not more truly one in divine nature than in loving care for the sheep.

In chap. 11:25 Jesus declares, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Of this the resurrection of Lazarus, dead and buried, was a bright testimony. If it be said that this raising up was but to natural life, His words that follow look forward beyond doubt to its final perfection. “He that believeth on me, though he have died, shall live; and everyone that liveth and believeth on me shall never die.” So will it be at His coming. The dead believer shall be raised, and so live as to the body evermore; the living believer shall not die, but have mortality swallowed up of life. The phrase “eternal life” is not here used; but this it is, and in full conformity to Himself even bodily, for heavenly and everlasting glory. Again, in chap. 12:50 says the Lord, “I know that His (the Father's) commandment is life eternal.” This the Father gave Him, what He should say and speak. Eternal life, not providential care nor governmental dealings, was the blessed subject-matter of the Father's injunction and of the Son's gracious declaration. If He and His words in grace so rich were not received by any, that word which He spoke should judge him at the last day.

The Lord in chap. 14:6 says to Thomas words divinely suited to banish his gloom and readiness to stick at difficulties, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” In seeing the Son they had seen the Father whom He declared and made known. Thus then He Himself was the way to the Father, as He was the living word or the truth, and also the life, the divine nature which alone knows and enjoys Him as God and Father. And this is so true, as the Holy Spirit when given would enable the disciples fully to apprehend, that Christ does not hesitate to say in vers. 19, 20, “because I live, ye also shall live.” How truly is He our life In that day ye shall know (γν.) that I [am] in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” Their beholding Jesus in that day would be in no way a physical fact, such as the Jews will have of the Messiah, but in the Spirit; and so is their life, and such is their knowledge as Christians, that Christ is in the Father, they in Him (as is marked in the Epistle to the Ephesian saints), and He in them (equally so in that to the Colossians): the true and distinctive knowledge, and privilege of the Christian.

If John 15 opens with fruit bearing as due to the Father and flowing from our abiding in Christ, and is followed by preparing the disciples for the world's hatred, yet to be strengthened by the Spirit's witness whom Christ should send from the Father, in addition to what they heard and saw from the beginning, chap. 16 dwells on the action of the present Spirit toward the world and in the saints. But in chap. 17:2, 3 we have the Son, the Second man, with authority given Him by the Father, and the special object of giving life eternal to all those given to Him. “And this is the life eternal, that they should know (γιν.) thee, the only true. God and Jesus Christ whom thou didst send.” His work, like His glorifying His Father on the earth follows and is distinct; His giving eternal life precedes as attaching to faith in His Person, whatever the added power when He rose from the dead.

Here too it is objectively presented, though generally applied to our subjective state. For the Lord speaks of what forms and characterizes it to our faith in its full Christian import. Those have the eternal life now who receive the wondrous revelation, in manifest contrast with Jewish thoughts of Jehovah and His Anointed. As yet He had dwelt in the thick darkness. Not till the Father was revealed in the Son whom He sent as man was the true God known. And He is thus to be known as the Lord had already shown by the power of the Spirit to be sent forth. Higher, deeper, nearer than this (when the Lord adds His going on high after the work was completed) God Himself, be it said reverently, could not go; and this now constitutes to us life eternal as objective revelation. Heavenly counsels in their immense scope were left for the Spirit to reveal by the apostle chosen in sovereign grace, when redemption would fit the believers to receive what they could not then bear. But here the Lord concentrates His teaching into a few simple words of marvelous depth, as bringing His own into the communion of the Father and of the Son which transcends all other relations, about to be definitely made theirs on His resurrection day (John 20:17).

Here it is not only life eternal such as Christ gave when souls believed on Him in the days of His flesh, but in its full development for the Christian. In no case is it natural life but supernatural, not of man but of God, not a restoration of the life which Adam had unfallen, but life in the Son, the life of the Second man, not the first. Every saint that ever lived to God had this life, for none ever lived to God save of the life the Son gave, He object of the faith of all the faithful, though only when come revealed as the Son of the living God, the Only-begotten Son of the Father. The life that it was in Him which quickened those who believe could and did through Him in communion with the Father acquire its fullest character, when He was manifested in flesh, and, we may add looking to His glorification, not simply on the ground of His Person but on that of His work which avails for us as well as every other purpose of God. Hence the emphasis laid here on “the eternal life,” and its declared character as giving the knowledge of the Father, and His Son whom He sent, Jesus Christ.

The knowledge of the Father and of His Son Jesus already sent is in effect the possession of life eternal; they are inseparable. But it was not, throughout the O. T. so characterized nor could be, till the Son of God was come and had given us an understanding to know Him that is true, as is implied in the verse before us. Yet none the less were all saints born of God; only if now, Christ gave this title to those that believe on His name (John 1:12, 13). Yet Himself laid down (Luke 20:35, 36) that all saints “are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection” i.e. from out of dead men, the “first” and “better” resurrection of life. They were born of the Spirit and thus had life as truly as we, though they understood it not. But God was pleased to mark it as life eternal when Christ was received in His rejection, and yet more in His ascension glory. But it was life eternal all through, though suitably so designated according to the new revelation. And Christ gives it now in this present character and fullness. The gospel brought it to light and in power through resurrection; but it was ever in the Son, and believers had it in Him, in unbroken connection with its source.

A few words more may be cited from John (20:31), the apostle's comment on the selected signs, rather than many others not written, which the Lord did before His disciples. “But these are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye may have life in his name.” Scripture is all the more perfect, because God's design excludes what is not needed to render His mind clear, no matter how excellent might be any other deeds or words. An unneeded addition, however in itself excellent, would have been really a defect. Nor is the best of men capable of carrying out the design save as inspired of God to write. But here the aim as to the readers is plainly stated. The first of all divine claims is to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; the first of all blessed issues is to have life in His name. It is the eternal life, or life everlasting, as the Lord called it often not only in chap. 17:2, 3, but in 3, 5, 6, 10, & 12. It was always such substantially, though wise and fitting to reserve the known gift of it now for the rejected Christ. He imparts this new, everlasting and divine being; and the believer receives it, in virtue of which he is to be glorified with Christ. But even now He is a life-giving Spirit. The glorious result for the body awaits His coming again.

In the two short Epistles of John love and truth are applied in divine wisdom, and set forth richly in his First Epistle where life eternal is found afresh, the governing principle throughout. As wisdom in Prov. 8 points to Christ, so does the life eternal in the grand introduction here. “What was from [the] beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life (and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and report to you the eternal life, the which was with the Father and was manifested to us): what we have seen and heard we report to you also, that ye also may have fellowship with us; yea and our fellowship [is] with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we to you that your joy may be full.” The manifestation of the life to the fullest degree was to the apostles, though not restricted to them, that they might report to others, who taught in faith have fullness of joy in sharing their fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus on the basis of eternal life, the same life which, he declared, was with the Father before the manifestation, and then unrestricted in time; for He was eternal.

The statement is not abstract as in John 5:26 (“the Father hath life in himself”), but personal (“with the Father,” πρὸς τὸν IIατέρα); it cannot be truthfully denied. Walking in the light indispensably accomplishes such a fellowship as this. The rest of the chapter lays down to us the divine message, judging every false profession, while the true one enjoys the grace that cleanses from every sin through the blood of Jesus His Son. Provision for failure is in the advocacy of the Righteous One with the Father (in chap. 2:1, 2), as He too is propitiation in all its abiding value, and widest application.

Then from chap. 2:3 follows practical application to those that bear His name: obedience first in 3-6; love next in 7-11; the necessary traits and exercises of the life in Christians, contrasted with spurious professors. There succeeds a most instructive and interesting digression on the family of God, and its differences in 12-28, all being addressed in these extremes, each class (fathers, young men, and young children or babes) in the intervening verses. The only express reference to the eternal life is in 25, where its promise before the world is meant, not that it remains a promise unaccomplished now.

Then in renewing the theme of practical righteousness, as the proof of being born of Him Who is righteous, is a parenthesis of grace in 3:1-3 to strengthen the warning against lawlessness. Thereon he resumes the thread, but presents Christ as the clean opposite, Who not only took away our sins, and had no sin, but gives a nature like Himself, and this in love as well as righteousness. The world on the contrary hates; and as we know that we have passed out of death to life because we love the brethren, so to hate one's brother is to be a murderer; and no murderer, we know, has life eternal abiding in him, like the believer.

We may now however omit a glance at the rest and the precious chap. 4, for the next direct occurrence is in 5:1, &c. “Every one that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten (or, born) of God; and every one that loveth him that begot loveth him also that is begotten of him... For everything that is begotten of God overcometh the world.” Only a perverse will could question that one spiritually born of God has divine life in His Son, who in no way treats “life eternal” as a higher or a future life; for in John 6:40, 47 He in terms predicates it of the result of faith in Him incarnate no less than of faith in giving His flesh to eat and His blood to drink in ver. 54, that is, faith in His death. Again, who can avoid seeing in vers. 11, 12 of our context that “life eternal” and “life” are interchangeable in this sense, though the one may be more fully expressed than the other in divine wisdom? But they mean the self-same life of Christ. No less truly were the O.T. saints begotten of God, and instinct with that life, though it could not be said that they believed in our Lord Jesus, but had rather a living hope in Him that was to come. Such was necessarily the character of their faith, but faith it surely was, the faith of God's elect in their day. No intelligent saint doubts their good portion through divine grace, which we, for whom God provided some better thing, should be the last to doubt or disparage. Nor was it a small part of the greater blessing to believe on Jesus, revealed by the Father as the Son of God, the living God, on Him too that came by water and blood, with the Spirit bearing witness as well as the water and the blood. “And this is the witness that God gave us life eternal, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.” To us it is made known, as it could not be to an O.T. saint, and we therefore know it as they could not. This is fully warranted to us by the next verse (13): “These things I write [the epist. aor., or, I wrote] to you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know (εἰδ) that ye have life eternal.” This conscious knowledge of it, what a privilege and to us essentially characteristic of Christianity! Nor does the Epistle close without reminding us that, among other things consciously known by us, this is one, “that the Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding that we should know (γιν.) him that is true; and we are in the true One, in his Son Jesus Christ: he is the true God, and life eternal.” How establishing and endearing to us! What a safeguard against every idol!

It was not the apostle Paul's work to dwell on the present gift of life eternal to the believers. The righteousness, and the counsels, of God are fully treated in his Epistles with Christ's work the basis, His resurrection and ascension to give them heavenly character, and His coming to crown all. Hence He speaks of life eternal at the end (Rona. 2:7, 5:21, 6:22). He does however speak, not only of reigning in life but of justification of life (Rom. 5:17, 18): a remarkable phrase, and a blessed privilege which the Christian is meant to enjoy now. It is not “eternal” only but in risen form and power. Justified by His blood meets our sins, justified in His risen life goes farther and meets sin, sin in the flesh, not what we did evilly, but our evil self in Him dead and risen. Hence we are called 6:4 to “walk in newness of life.” This assuredly does not refer to walking with Christ in white when in glory, but to present walk here below. But this implies the life of Christ ours now as truly then, when all is complete. It is none other than life eternal. And as Christ, being raised, lives to God, so are we to count ourselves dead indeed to sin, but living to God in Christ Jesus. Such is the virtue of His death and resurrection, as vii. states that, had we been Hebrews of Hebrews, we were made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that we should belong to another that was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God: an impossible result without life, life eternal. So in 8:2 the law, not of Moses, but “of the Spirit of life in Christ” (compare John 20:22) made me free from the law of sin and death, the communication of Christ's risen life, the form in which He now gives life eternal to every Christian. The co-operation of the Holy Spirit in this life is clearly marked, and that which is now as clearly distinguished as the completion of His work when the body is raised (10, 11).

In 1 Cor. 9 &10 we have the danger of power without life written for our admonition; indeed it runs throughout this Epistle. In the Second it is yet plainer, as in 2:16, and 3:6. Take again 4:10, 11, where we are exhorted always to bear about “in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body; for we that live are ever delivered unto death for Jesus' sake that the life also of Jesus may be manifest in our mortal flesh.” Can language express more explicitly that the believer now has His life, eternal life, mortal though our body still is, while waiting to be raised, not merely “through” but “with” Jesus by-and-by (14)? This triumph is attested as superior to death (“mortality swallowed up of life” in 5. 4). And what life is meant (ver. 15) “in those that live,” in contrast with “all dead”? Is it not life eternal and abundantly? and is it not now and here below? “So if any one [is] in Christ, [there is] a new creation.” What can be stronger, unless one were hardy enough to deny this a present application, because it is going to be complete at Christ's coming? or that “we have this treasure” (4:7) “because it is in earthen vessels”?

The Epistle to the Galatians speaks no otherwise. In what way was God's Son revealed in Saul of Tarsus when called (1:16) but as life, Christ our life? So in 2:20 the apostle says, “I have been and am crucified with Christ, and no longer live I, but Christ liveth in me, and what I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of (or, in) the Son of God, that loved me and gave himself up for me.” Can any Christian doubt that this living was of life eternal? In 5:25 the word is “if we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk.” Can any one be so rash as to separate this from Christ, or deny that it is life eternal now?

In the Epistle to the Ephesians we are seen blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. Have we now (1:4, 5) no new nature, holy and blameless in love according to God's purpose? is the predestined sonship, or adoption, only future? or can either exist without life eternal? Chap. 2 utterly refutes such thoughts, and declares that God rich in mercy and of His great love to us quickened us, once dead in our offenses and sins—quickened us together with Christ, and raised together, and made us sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus (2:6). What can transcend this life, a clearly present privilege, which could not be said of O.T. saints, any more than it is of the millennial saints? It is life eternal, but much more. It is the Pauline truth given him by the inspiring Spirit of Christ, not only as quickening which John treats so fully as a real thing now, but of Christ raised from the dead and the believer already quickened and raised together with Him, and seated in Him, waiting as we know from elsewhere to sit with Him when changed at His coming. “One new man” (2:15) supposes life now and a status most excellent.

So does Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith (chap. 3), and spiritual intelligence, and His love known, though surpassing knowledge; so does the exhortation to walk worthily of God's calling us after so marvelous a sort (4), not only together but individually, we having put on the new man as well as put off the old. Hence in 5. it is to imitate God as children beloved, and to walk in love as Christ loved us, and as children of light (life being supposed throughout), and not as unwise but as wise, understanding what is the will of the Lord.

To the Philippians the apostle dwelt on Christian practice. “For to me to live [is] Christ, and to die gain” (1:21). How possibly live Christ without having Christ as our life, and this beyond controversy life eternal? As believing on Him was the means, so their completeness as to the fruit of righteousness (ver. 11) and suffering for Him (ver. 29) could not be without the existing reality. Preaching Christ even of envy and strife might easily be without life, but not holding forth its word as lowly and blameless children of God, nor glorying in Christ in self-renunciation, nor learning, in whatsoever state, therein to be content.

In the Epistle to the Colossians, if not on the surface, life in Christ is everywhere the under stratum. He did not cease praying for our walking worthily of the Lord to all pleasing, bearing fruit and growing: surely not without life. Hence thanksgiving to the Father who qualified us for sharing the portion of the saints in light (chap. 1). But in ii. it is yet more precise. How walk in Christ (6), already received, without the life of Christ? When dead in the offenses and the uncircumcision of our flesh, God quickened us together with Christ, having forgiven us all our offenses, and raised us up together. It was not only life eternal but having His life in the highest form and the closest association with Him. Hence in chap. 3 if risen together with Christ, they were to seek the things above, and not have their mind on the things upon the earth. “For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ our life shall be manifested, then shall ye also be manifested with Him in glory.” But He is our life as truly now, though not so completely as then.

It is needless to gather similar evidence from the letters to the Thessalonians, and the Hebrews, to Timothy, Titus and Philemon; yet everywhere is it taken for granted as possessed by all save empty professors. Yet let us in no way strain the exhortation in 1 Tim. 6:12 “lay hold on the eternal life,” or in ver. 19, “that which is really life,” in contrast with present things desirable to the flesh. The glorious end is in view. But such as have not Christ as their life will become weary of well-doing, if they do not openly draw back, dead while they live. But 2 Tim. 1:1 does appear to touch John's presentation of life in Christ now brought to light through the gospel. We may compare Titus 1:2; 3:7 as distinguishing the Christian from the Jewish expectation.

As addressed to “the twelve tribes that are in the dispersion,” the letter of James resumes in general “the word of the beginning of Christ” (Heb. 6:1), and insists, not on redemption but on the life communicated from the Father of lights, who of His own will brought forth, or begot, us by word of truth. Nothing less than this new nature satisfies him; no one else can from his works show his faith as in chap. 2. The faith that has no suited works is barren and dead. “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.” The word quickens by revealing Christ to the soul, and fruit follows by abiding in Christ; for the new life lives by dependence on Him. This Epistle looks at the practical and righteous side, judging by a law of liberty in consistency in ways, word, and heart, and the friendship of the world is enmity with God, but patience is to be till the coming of the Lord.

The life abundantly is disclosed as the present portion of the Christian Jews whom Peter in his First Epistle addresses. “Blessed the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who according to his much mercy begot us again unto a living hope through resurrection of Jesus Christ out of the dead,” &c. At the close, as at the beginning, the new life of grace and truth is shown clearly, and as it is by the word of God that we are thus born, so are we nourished (chap. 2). Husbands and wives among them are exhorted as fellow-heirs of the grace of life. Without this now they could not rightly dwell together for an hour or a moment. The Second Epistle addressed to the same puts the same very strongly in 1:3, 4; and affirms the partaking of a divine nature, and not a merely moral change. If it were no more than that, he shows the utter ruin of turning back after having escaped. Only life eternal abides. Otherwise it is but a dog still, and a washed sow: they were never born of God.

Jude indicates the more awful case of apostasy, rather than of the unrighteousness Peter denounced, though both might be in the same person. But he writes to saints without restriction as “called, beloved in God the Father and kept by (or, for) Jesus Christ” in view of the perishing of Christendom and the Lord's judgment of all the ungodly at His coming amidst His holy myriads. The beloved, meanwhile, building themselves on their most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, were to keep themselves in God's love, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto life eternal. This is “the end” doubtless, but there had been no beginning of grace without believing on Him and receiving life in His name to walk after God's will in the last time of mockers walking after their own ungodly lusts.

Fragment: Jesus in the Days of His Flesh

There is no “loitering” in the path of the Blessed One through the world; no seeking, as we may seek, for ease. Life with Him is taken up with the untiring activities of love. He lives not for Himself. God and man have all His thoughts and His service. Does He seek for solitude? It is to be alone with His Father. Does He seek for society? It is to be about His Father's business. By night or day He is always the same—on the Mount of Olives praying, in the temple teaching, in the midst of sorrow comforting, where sickness is healing: every act declares Him to be the One who lives for others. He has a joy in God man cannot understand, a care for man that only God could show. Never do we find Him acting for Himself. If hungry in the wilderness, He works no miracle to supply His own need; if others are hungering around Him, the compassion of His heart flows forth, and He feeds them by thousands.

Fragment: Dead to Sin

How easy to make a false step, and how hard to retrace It is the old difficulty of repentance toward God and insuperable to nature, it is only overcome by the faith that takes Christ as all, and ourselves as nothing but sinful and lost, and now to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. For if Christ is in us the body is dead on account of sin, but the Spirit life on account of righteousness.

TITUS & PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth, 2/- THE REVELATION 2/-.

THE PREACHING TO THE SPIRITS IN PRISON... 1/6 and 2/-. " CHRISTIAN SCIENCE,' ; 13, 6d.; 50, 1/10; 100, 3/6. THE LORD'S PRAYER, a New Edition, 3d. THE FEASTS OF JEHOVAH, a New Edition, 6d. BRIEF SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND Labors OF JOHN NELSON DARBY, by G. W. Turner, 4d.

Immediately.

LIFE ETERNAL, 2d.

Later THE DAY OF ATONEMENT, a New Edition in Preparation. LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published monthly).

Jacob: 34. Jacob Blessed and Sent to Padan Aram

After the humbling scene in which Isaac and Rebekah with Jacob, to say nothing of Esau, played so unworthy parts, it is refreshing here to read of Isaac's pious care over Jacob; and all the more, that grace made use of Rebekah to recall the spirit of her husband to faithful and righteous ways about their son called to blessing (Gen. 27:46).

“And Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him, and said to him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Padan-Aram, to the house of Bethuel thy mother's father; and take thee a wife thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother's brother. And God Almighty [El Shaddai] bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a company of peoples. And may he give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee and to thy seed with thee; that thou mayest possess the land of thy sojournings, which God gave to Abraham. And Isaac sent away Jacob; and he went to Padan-Aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, mother of Jacob and Esau. Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Padan-Aram, to take him a wife thence; and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan; and [that] Jacob obeyed his father and his mother, and was gone to Padan-Aram. And Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father. And Esau went to Ishmael, and took, unto the wives which he had, Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, sister of Nebaioth, to be his wife” (vers. 1-9).

We may notice this peculiarity in the blessing here pronounced on Jacob by his father that a “charge” (ver. 1) accompanied it. Jacob must not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. For they were accursed in Jehovah's eyes, though the execution in any measure tarries till the cup of the Amorites was full. For the wanderer Jacob there was to be as distinct a refusal of alliance with the Canaanite as for Isaac. Only the latter was in the strictest way forbidden to go out of the land (Gen. 24:6, 8), and the bride must be fetched thither: whereas the former goes in quest of a wife to the house of his mother's father (2). Thus are Jacob's earthly place and relations made no less evident than Isaac's heavenly ones. As the prophet Hosea puts it, Jacob fled into the field of Aram, and Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he kept [sheep]. So God decided for him in righteous government. Isaac's history is the type of sovereign grace calling a bride to the Heir of all things in heavenly places.

But it is also to be remarked in verse 3 that Isaac says, “God Almighty bless thee,” and in verse 4, “And may he give thee the blessing of Abraham.” But it is distinctly limited to a “multitude of peoples,” and to his inheriting, he and his seed with him, “the land of his sojournings which God gave to Abraham.” Yet we never hear that God appeared to Isaac in that character of revelation, as He did to Abraham very expressly in Gen. 17:1; and it is even contrasted with the name of Jehovah made known to Moses in Ex. 6:3 as the covenant name thenceforth for the children of Israel. But Isaac had it not directly like Abraham and Jacob.

Another trait of distinction is of much interest, to which Gal. 3:16 directs attention. “Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed.” And the apostle reasons on the one Seed which is Christ, as contrasted with the numerous seed referring to Israel. So we read in Gen. 12:3 to Abraham, and confirmed to Isaac in 12:18, though the countless earthly seed had been just mentioned in 17. This however is absent from Isaac's blessing on Jacob.

Scripture tells us in vers. 6-9 of Esau's imitating his brother as nearly as he could in appearance, because his Canaanite wives displeased his father. But God was not in his thoughts; and his imitation fell miserably short. For in addition to the daughters of Heth he took a daughter of Ishmael to wife, the bondmaid's offspring cast out from Abraham's house. There was no faith, but a natural and ineffectual effort after better ways. Apart from faith it is impossible to please God; for he that approaches Him must believe that He is, and becomes a rewarder of those that seek Him out. This was true of Jacob, in no way of Esau.

Priesthood: 27. Leper Washes

The Leper Washes.—Lev. 14:8, 9

Thus we have seen that in the first place all was done for the leper, not by him. Another was active, not himself. He was to be brought to the priest; and the priest had to go forth out of the camp. The all-important thing was, not that the leper, but that the priest should look and ascertain that the sore of leprosy was at a stay, or rather healed in the leper. The priest had to direct the means then to be employed; and when one of the clean birds was killed in an earthen vessel over living water, it was he that took the other live bird with the various accompaniments he had prescribed, dipped them and the live bird in the blood of the killed bird, sprinkled the leper therewith, and pronounced him clean, letting the live bird go free. Now, and not before, we are told of the leper's activity.

“And he that is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, and shave all his hair, and bathe in water, and he shall be clean; and after that he shall come into the camp, but shall dwell outside his tent seven days. And it shall be on the seventh day that he shall shave all his hair off his head and his beard and his eyebrows, even all his hair shall he shave: and he shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh in water, and he shall be clean” (vers. 8, 9).

The blood shed and sprinkled, precious and efficacious as it is judicially for the unclean, is not all. There is and must be a moral cleansing also by the water of the word applied to the sinner. Out of the pierced side of Jesus flowed not blood only but water, of which the inspired witness bore record. To this John also refers in his First Epistle, chap. 5 “This is he that came through water and blood; not by water only, but by water and blood.” The sinner needs for blessing not only expiation, but purification.

Here it is typically presented. We know that all is vain unless our hearts are purified by faith; but these shadows as usual do not rise above external actions. “And he that is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, and shave off all his hair, and bathe himself in water, and he shall be clean.” However strange it may appear for the priest to have pronounced the leper clean in ver. 7, this is the sure and cheering ground for beginning the practical work of cleansing himself as in vers. 8, 9. To be pronounced clean by divine authority affords the highest assurance; but it does not supersede the moral cleansing which Jehovah enjoins in all respects. On the contrary it gives invaluable encouragement to enter on and go through every detail as here. “His garments,” what is displayed to the eye, are at once to be dealt with, and the Spirit applies the word to cleanse them. Former things must be judged by the expressed will of God. But there is much more to be heeded. “All his hair” he had to shave. This belongs to his person; the natural comeliness attaching to man's head must be shorn, and himself must bathe in water. There is no sparing of aught wherein impurity might lurk. The efficacy of Christ's death and resurrection, by which alone one could be pronounced clean before God, only makes it the more incumbent to cleanse oneself from every pollution of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in fear of God. Then is it added, “and he shall be clean.”

“And afterward shall he come into the camp, and shall abide out of his tent seven days.” Even so, though made free of his public position, he cannot enjoy his individual place till the purifying is complete. With such nice care as to every minute source of defilement is the full cleansing of the leper guarded. Now there is in the gospel what meets each and all more thoroughly than any of these requirements of the law; and this, by a redemption which is “eternal” and thus superior to legal demands of time. Of this the robber saved on the cross is a clear proof and witness; for his case is really an example, though unbelief of God's grace and Christ's work treats it as an exception to the deprivation of a vast deal of the blessing. So naturally do saints swerve, from the light which already shines, to the shadows of the law.

Verse 9 makes plain that the purifying goes on to the last. “And it shall come to pass on the seventh day that he shall shave all his hair, his head and his beard, and his eyebrows, even all his hair shall he shave, and he shall wash his clothes, and shall bathe his flesh in water, and shall be clean.” It is open to our notice that on the last day of the set term the washing is ordered still more minutely than ever, the beard and the eyebrows, no less than the head, and “his flesh” to make the bathing explicit. How blessed for us that we have One to apply the word to our souls and ways in the power of God's Spirit! If the fathers of our flesh chastened us for a few days as seemed good to them, the Father of our spirits so does for profit, in order to the partaking of His holiness.

Proverbs 14:10-12

Here we begin with moral truth as to the heart, and thence come to manifested words and ways.

“The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its joy.

The house of the wicked shall be overthrown, but the tent of the upright shall flourish.

There is a way that seemeth right to a man, but the end thereof [is] the ways of death” (vers. 10-12).

It is an evil age, the world far from God and knowing Him not; and man, its chief, chief in guilt and pride yet liable to wrongs and vexations without end. How exposed then is the heart? whatever the position, to bitterness, unknown to others! So too it refuses a share in its joys to a stranger. Yet if grief before God isolates to God, “every family' apart and the wives apart,” joy overflows willingly to congenial souls, as the man and the woman in the parables of Luke 15 call friends and neighbors to rejoice on regaining what was lost.

In verse 11 it is not “the heart” but “the house” which may rise aloft from deep foundations. But the wicked dwell there, and no security can be for them or theirs in the moral government of God. It shall be overthrown, though the fear of God would not hasten the moment. On the other hand, how exposed to wind and rain is “the tent of the upright”! Yet the unseen hand protects, and it shall flourish.

Next we come to man's “ways,” and the danger of trusting his own estimate of it. If it seems right to him, men say why blame him? He is sincere; and none is entitled to judge him wrong. Is there then no divine standard by which we may try our thoughts, no means of forming a sound and sure judgment? Why did God then reveal His word, and early enough in an experimental shape? And why did His Son as man tabernacle long enough among men to reveal His nature and relationship in living perfection to such as have eyes to see and ears to hear? No: man is accountable for his thoughts and his feelings no less than his words and his ways; “and the end thereof is the ways of death.” Man departed far from God and disliked Him, as Christ fully proved. Though He never was far from each one of us, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself; for which the world gave Christ the cross. Man is accountable, whatever he thinks.

Gospel Words: the Salt and the Light

In the preceding verses the Lord lays down the character of such as belong to the kingdom of the heavens. Now He states their position here below. Is it truly applicable to you? Do you in unbelief treat it as impracticable or indifferent?

If I own myself a lost sinner, and in me, that is in my flesh, no good thing dwells, neither salt nor light is mine, but sin dwells in me. It would be sheer presumption to claim that I am born either the one or the other. Naturally I am corrupt, and as to God and His things dark as night. Important as baptism is, it in no case according to scripture produces so mighty a change; but life in Christ does, which the believer receives through the Spirit and the word of God. As its fullness and perfection were in the Son, so of His fullness did all we receive, and grace for grace. It is no presumption to believe God, nor what He declares He gives to those who receive Christ.

Let me beseech you, fellow-believer, not to slur over nor shirk the position in which the Lord sets you here below. These are His words— “Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing save to be cast out and to be trodden down by men. Ye are the light of the world: a city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do they light a lamp, and put it under the bushel but upon the stand, and it shineth for all that are in the house. Thus let your light shine before men, that they may see your comely works, and glorify your Father that is in the heavens.” Let us earnestly seek to make this good, instead of slipping it through or shoving it on to a Jewish remnant.

As there were two broad characteristics among the foregoing “blessed,” righteousness and grace, both displayed in Christ and in Christianity, so is it with the position of the disciples. In vers. 3 to 6 are the righteous characters: in 7 to 9 the gracious: followed by the blessing of the persecuted for righteousness' sake in 10, and by those persecuted yet worse for Christ (i.e. grace) in 11, and their joy, exultation, and reward above in 12. The position too is presented accordingly. In ver. 13 we have the righteous side; in 14 and the rest the side of grace, but both to be verified in our practice.

Salt is the righteously preservative principle. It is sharp rather than sweet, but guards from impurity and decomposition. It gives fixity to what is good and wholesome. It proves all things, and holds fast the right. It keeps aloof from every form of wickedness. When then the disciples are called the salt of the earth, the Lord designates them as set apart to God the Father, and in patient continuance of good work seeking for glory and honor and incorruptibility at Christ's coming. They obey the truth, and are to hold fast what they have till then. If they lose the good savor, it is fatal. Saltless salt (and such a change was familiar in those lands) cannot be restored. It is not fit for anything but to be trodden down on the streets, as it often was.

How has it fared with the holy deposit in Christendom? Has the salt there retained its virtue? Did the favored Gentile abide in goodness, any more than the Jew under law? If not, cutting off is the sentence of God (Rom. 11:21, 22). All the more should every faithful soul humble himself, repent, and look to the Lord who is as willing as He is able to make Him stand.

But are we not responsible as “the light of the world”? If it is not the property or power of salt to cure corruption, it is for light to illuminate the dark. It goes out and around. And we may notice it is to “the world” at large here in this appropriate diffusion by grace, as the salt is “of the earth,” the ordered scene of privileges. As being the light, it is compared to a city set on a hill and not to be hid; and not this only, but as penetrating the home, it is as a lamp (not absurdly under the bushel as its extinguisher, but) upon its stand, that all in the house may enjoy its brightness.

Only let us not forget the Lord's momentous caution as to this. “Thus let your light (your living profession of Him, Who is the true Light and made you light in Him) shine before men, that they may see (not your inconsistencies, but) your comely works, and glorify your Father that is in the heavens.” He means the very reverse of men displaying their benevolent works before their fellows, so as to bring glory to themselves. He would have His own let their confession of Him, the one source of their light, shine, so that men may see the goodly fruits, and therefore glorify not the disciples but our Father in the heavens, the Father of lights, of whom is every good giving, and whence comes down every perfect gift from above.

1 Peter 2:13-17

Having begun with self-judgment as to the inner springs in order to a comely behavior before others, ready as they are to think and speak ill of Christian men, he now turns to various external relations and exhorts us to the conduct that becomes us in them.

“Be subject to every human institution for the Lord's sake; whether to a king as supreme, or to rulers as being sent through him, for vengeance on evil-doers and for praise to those that do well. Because so is the will of God, that by well-doing ye put to silence the ignorance of senseless men; as free, and not having liberty as a cloak of malice, but as God's bondmen. Honor all, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king” (vers. 13-17).

The Jews found it a hard task morally, and in particular when entrusted with the then only revelation from God, to live in submission to the powers that be; idolatrous as these were and given up to a reprobate mind. The mass never accepted the Gentile yoke as the divine chastening of their own wickedness and departure from the God Who deigned to make them His people. And as their pride was irritated by the gospel which, on their rejection of the Messiah, God was now sending out to the nations no less than to themselves in His free and indiscriminate grace, their rebellious spirit also was growing till it drew down on them the days of vengeance in war, and desolation, as Dan. 9:26 predicted, as well as the Lord Himself (Matt. 21:38-41; 22:7, and Luke 21:20-24), in the last clearly distinguishing the Roman siege under Titus from the far more solemn events about to be in the consummation of the age (Luke 21:25-27, as still more fully given in Matt. 24:15-31, and Mark 13:14-27).

It was therefore of moment to exhort the Christian confessors from among the dispersed Jews to whom the apostle writes, that they should in their humble loyalty please God and be gracious, instead of contrary, to all men. Notwithstanding that Israel was a wreck, and Judah so more than ever in God's sight because of adding the Lord's ignominious rejection to their old iniquity, the remnant that believed in Him not only received spiritually what the nation sought after the flesh, but enjoyed new blessings in Christ beyond all that saints possessed of old. Prophets had it even revealed to them, that not to themselves, but to the remnant that believed after Christ's sufferings and glorification, they were ministering those things which were announced to them through those that evangelized them in virtue of the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven.

In such a case therefore consciousness of such rich and unmerited blessing softens the heart before God, and opens and swells its new affections toward man. For as another apostle wrote, “the arms of our warfare are not fleshly, but powerful according to God to overthrow of strongholds, overthrowing reasonings and every high thing that lifteth up itself against the knowledge of God, and leading captive every thought into the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4, 5). Thus, on the one side as God's children, and knowing their redemption by Christ's precious blood, while on the other strangers and sojourners instead of being at home on the earth, it was all the more beseeming, simple, and easy that they should be subject to every human institution for the Lord's sake.

The church is a divine institution, not a human one, and every Christian is a living part or member, whatever his place. And God set some in the church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers. After that we are told of another and inferior class, powers, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, kinds of tongues. Sign-gifts passed away, and such of the great gifts for edification as laid the foundation. But God is faithful, whatever the changes through man's unfaithfulness; nor can Christ's love to His body cease in active and effectual care, till we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at a full grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

But here the call is external even to submit to every human institution; for they might assume different shapes, all involving trial to the Christian. But as the apostle Paul wrote to the saints in Rome (13:1), where these were chiefly Gentiles, and a cruel and unscrupulous and depraved emperor reigned, “Let every soul be subject to the authorities that are above [him]. For there is no authority except from God, and those that be are set up by God.” Here it is not the secret providence that comes before us, but the manifest fact. In both the duty is to subject oneself; and here “for the Lord's sake” as there for conscience. A republic had its claim no less than royalty. The only relation revealed as to the believer is subjection without one word here or anywhere else in the N. T. for exercising authority in the present evil age. The grace of Christ is the pattern for every Christian; and “for the Lord's sake” does not import His relation to the human creation, though He is indeed Lord of all, but His appeal to the saints themselves, that they obey Him in submission to the powers of the world.

But the Spirit distinguishes, while He enjoins subjection to all: “whether to king as supreme, or to rulers as being sent through him, for vengeance on evil-doers and praise to those that do well.” “Sent through him” refers to royal authority as superior. Had the reference intended been to God, the phrase would have been ὐπὸ), “by,” and not the intermediate word διὰ, “through.” All may see the incongruity which the mistake would involve of predicating divine mission, not of the king but only of delegated governors.

The aim of government expressed in the latter part of ver. 14 is quite clear. It is to punish evildoers, and to encourage those that do well. The broad obligation was enjoined on Noah after the deluge. We hear of neither king nor magistrate in the antediluvian world. People imagine and reason in an abstract way about Adam; but the case of Cain left unpunished in Jehovah's hands indicates how matters then lay. “At the hand of man, at the hand of each one's brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God he hath made man” (Gen. 9:5, 6) first laid the general basis of human government as it is. Life belonged to God, who thus communicated the principle to Noah. Henceforward man was responsible as God's servant to execute wrath, and even to blood if blood were shed; for he must not bear the sword in vain. It was the beginning of dispensations, neither the Adamic state being one, nor the new heavens and earth in the absolute sense during the ever-running space. Nor was it long before Nimrod, the rebel of the Cushite line, availed himself of the dispersion to usurp despotic power of his own will; and the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

With the government of the world those who are Christ's have nothing directly to do. They are expressly not of the world as He was not (John 17:14, 16), who refused even to arbitrate when one sought His informal intervention; He would be no judge or divider of inheritance (Luke 12:13, 14). “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my officials fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence.” He was come into the world to bear witness to the truth; and such is the mission of the Christian. The age to come will behold Him and them reigning over the earth when evil shall be infallibly judged and iniquity hide its head. It is now the time to suffer with Him, looking then to be glorified. Therefore should we meanwhile be the more zealous to submit ourselves to every human creation (as it is literally), and not only to a king as supereminent but to governors as sent from time to time through him for righteous dealing with evil-doers and for praise of such as do well. Our proper interests are on high; hut that is our duty for the Lord's sake.

A weighty reason follows. “Because so is the will of God (and are we not sanctified unto obedience—obedience of Jesus?), that by well-doing ye put to silence (lit. muzzle) the ignorance of senseless men; as free and not having liberty as a cloak of malice, but as God's bondmen.” How sound, wholesome, unselfish, and godly! The true and comely answer to the spiteful hatred of the world is a godly course of living. For men as such, not some only but all, are senseless if they know not God, and therefore find their malignant pleasure in imputing their own evils to His children. This habitual well-doing is not to give up the liberty wherewith Christ set us free, but as we live by the Spirit, also to walk by it, instead of wearing the liberty as a cloak of malice, which enemies pretended. It is our happiness and cherished duty to carry ourselves as God's bondmen: such we really are; and we find it the perfect law of liberty, as it flows from our new nature.

The paragraph ends with a pointed and pregnant conclusion— “Honor all, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.” The form of the first honoring is not the same as the last expression of the act done when called for, not the habitual doing it. The Christian should not fail to remember that man was made as none other in the image of God. He alas! when fallen is prone to forget what rebukes his manifold inconsistencies.

Loving the brotherhood is a constant duty; but the love takes a shape according to their state. No Christian is called to love carnality or worldliness; nor yet a schismatic way, nor the heretical or sectarian, but to turn away from the one, and to have no more to do with the other after a first and second admonition, however once perhaps honored in God's service. Love would take pains with those guilty of lesser faults, admonishing the unruly, comforting the faint-hearted, sustaining the weak, and patient toward all. It is the very reverse of either self-seeking or indifference, or independency.

Then how necessary to cultivate habitually the fear of God! There is nothing right where this fails. The holy fear of God shuts out every dishonoring fear of man, and all tormenting fear of God. We know His majesty, His holiness, and His righteous character; and we know also that He loves us beyond a father's love, with the perfection of the Son's Father. May we all deepen in our fear of Him!

There remain the words, “honor the king.” This too is continuous. Whatever may be his personal character, he represents God in the things of earth. The Christian, if true to his calling on high, has nothing to blind his eyes; for he seeks no personal interests, favor, or honor, nor consequently has he to feel the disappointments of such as live for present things. He can therefore in simplicity and godly sincerity honor the king for his office as of God in His providence (for it is ignorance to speak here of His grace), and this as his habit with supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings, not only for all, but in particular for kings and all that are in high place, that we may live a tranquil and quiet life. Our sufferings, sorrows, and conflicts come because we have Christ our life in the world which led of Satan crucified Him; and because we have to do with men bearing the Lord's name who seek their own things, not the things of Jesus Christ. The world's false glory, the flesh's selfishness and self-will, and Satan's antagonism to Christ and the truth must make it a question habitually of overcoming by faith in subjection of heart to God.

Life Eternal Denied as a Present Possession

Of this fundamental truth in its Christian form and present reality the deliberate denial is most clearly avowed by “Notes of Readings and Addresses” in the United States and Canada. The responsibility of the production is acknowledged; for the work appears as “revised by F. E. R.”

If we pass by a cloud of other errors, and some of moment, in page 54 is a plain statement of direct opposition to divine truth. “It used to be commonly said, I know that I have got eternal life. Why? Because the scripture says, ' He that believeth hath everlasting life.' I say you have thus the faith of eternal life; but that does not prove that you have the thing itself (!). Many a person has had a promise, but not the thing promised, that [sic] was the case largely with the Old Testament saints. They embraced the promises; but they had not the things promised. Christianity is not only that you have the faith of the things proposed, but that you have the consciousness of the things that you believe.” “Scripture says” this; “I say” that! But even what he says of Christianity virtually contradicts his aim.

Can any sober Christian question that the truly blessed confession of Brethren from the greatest to the least for seventy years is here abandoned? yea, that the word of the Lord Himself is undermined? How awful to hear one frittering away the plain meaning of “He that believeth hath everlasting life!” This is not a promise, but a revealed fact. The Lord did not say, he that has the faith of eternal life shall have this life by-and-by. To confound His present assurance with O.T. prophecy is to abjure the gospel for the law. The truth in question is distinct from promise, and contrasted with not having the thing promised. Nor does the Lord here speak of having “the consciousness of the things that you believe” (whatever this may or can mean on the speaker's hypothesis), but simply if not solely of now possessing life eternal.

Equally evident in page 56 is the perversion of scripture, even if we omit the misleading talk in the preceding page. “Eternal life is there, and it is God's mind for you to be in it, but there is a gulf between you and it, and you have to pass over that gulf.” This is what “I say.” Let us hear what the Lord says. “Verily, verily, I say to you, He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath life eternal, and cometh not into judgment, but is (hath) passed out of death into life” (John 5:24). F. E. R. contradicts the gospel. The believer's privilege now, this gift of grace, he denies. A gulf may be between the unbeliever, and eternal life. Yet Christ is, not even a bridge over the gulf, but eternal life immediately to him that believes. His word has so explicitly declared the present gift of that life, that it can only be a lie of Satan to teach, as F. E. R. does, a future gulf for the believer to pass. The Lord declares that he has passed” out of death unto life. F. E. R's. voice is not the Shepherd's but a mere stranger's, an “idea” in open contempt of the Savior's final decision by grace which flesh never trusts.

What follows is hardly less evil. For in reply to one who says, “It has been stated that eternal life was communicated to us this side of the bridge,” F. E. R. dares to answer, “There is no truth in it; what is communicated to you on this side of the bridge is the gift of the Holy Ghost, and He is the well of water in us springing up to eternal life. Unless you have the Holy Spirit you will never get divine teaching, but it is by divine teaching that you get over the bridge.” This is no passing mistake or blunder. Is it not utter effrontery? That we have life eternal now he excludes. Yet the gift of the Holy Spirit supposes eternal life given, and redemption rested on by faith previously (Acts 5:32, Gal. 4:4-6, Eph. 1:13). If there were any propriety in the figure of the gulf and the bridge, Christ crossed it to meet the sinner; and the believer has already the life eternal, comes not into judgment, and has passed out of death into life. The gift of the Spirit is to know and enjoy the grace and truth thus come in the power of the new relationships, to live Christ in accordant ways, and to worship in spirit and truth.

The “teaching” here is flatly opposed to our Lord's, and as it is a departure from what even its propagandist long and uniformly professed, who but those in the evil or bent on compromise can hesitate to pronounce it “devilish,” not “divine”? Think of a believer without eternal life receiving the Holy Ghost! It is a quasi-incarnation of God's Spirit. This unscriptural and profane dream “divine teaching” forsooth! Nay, it is the sheerest impossibility if judged on scriptural principles, and the wanton guesswork of impiety. No wonder not a word of scripture is cited for it.

Again, we read in the next page 57, “In the third chapter of the epistle [1 John] you come to children of God, but not yet to eternal life (!!). Children brings in the thought of Father—God is Father to us as children in the world.” In page 58 “Sons of God brings in the thought of eternal counsel and of heavenly places. The close of the epistle lands you in what Paul speaks of, and that is, ' God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.'“ Does such incoherent trash, such shallow confusion, need exposure? The truth revealed in the Epistle as in the Gospel is that every believer has life eternal and is a child of God; to which the apostle Paul adds that he is a “son” as well as a child, and the end everlasting life, but of either “the epistle” says not one word.

Again, Rom. 8 in the central part of that instructive chapter disproves the rash assertion that “sons of God brings in the thought of eternal counsel and of heavenly places"; for therein the apostle speaks of us, alike as “sons” and as “children,” but is silent about “eternal counsel and of heavenly places.” Children is opposed to strangers; sons, to slaves; and thus sons may be adopted for a position of dignity. But we are of God's family also, and hence children in respect of true and intimate relationship. Both terms are well suited and actually employed in view of the glory to be revealed (19 and 21). Gal. 3:26 again refers to present Christian standing, “God's sons,” not children, by faith in Christ Jesus; but in no way does it in itself bring in the thought of eternal counsel and heavenlies. This is not Spirit-led exposition, but random and reckless misinterpretation to the pain and shame of all who honor God's word.

In p. 59 we read, “I think the mistake has been made of confounding the idea of children with eternal life. I have fallen into that too much myself; the thoughts are, I judge, quite distinct. Sonship is connected with eternal life; that puts you outside the death-scene.” Did one ever read such empty and self-complacent driveling? The connection of “children” is really nearer, than that of “sons,” to life eternal. For the scriptures which most fully treat of children treat also of eternal life, predicate both of the same persons, and that, not outside, but now and here, where all else is under the power of death. They are in truth intimately and inseparably associated privileges. “And the witness is this that God gave us eternal life and this life is in his Son.” So says the apostle of all addressed. Ver. 13 goes farther still: “These things have I written to you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have [not at all, that ye shall have] eternal life.” It was now and here where death reigns, yet according to F. E. R.'s wild reckoning “the highest platform,” after having greeted them (chap. 3:1-3) in the most glowing terms as “children of God” from “now” till manifested in glory like Christ. Could scripture more pointedly write folly on this elaborate and persistent effort to say something new, which is after all wholly untrue?

In the pages that follow are strange conceits as to life eternal. Take 66 for example. “If you fail to enter into the reality of eternal life [who ever failed more egregiously than himself?], it proves that you don't understand what it is to be identified with the minister of the sanctuary.” Can the most friendly eye discern a grain of sense, to say nothing of truth, in this jumble? Heb. 8 has its own divine force; but why drag in here failure “to enter into the reality of eternal life"? Even if one have eternal life, one may fail to appreciate, exercise, or manifest it; but how do any such failures prove that you do not understand what it is to be identified with the Minister of the Sanctuary? The language, the logic, and the exegesis are alike perverse. One comprehends failure in faith, or fidelity, or intelligence. But nothing can “prove,” and nobody can understand (it seems to me), what it is to be identified with the Minister of the Sanctuary, because it is neither intelligible in itself nor true of any one. To be “all of one” is not identification with Him, which is not taught in this Epistle. Such teaching, far from being “divine,” is not decently human, but a farrago of presumptuous impertinence and falsehood transparent to all that are not blinded.

On the allusions to eternal life in pp. 74, 75, one need not speak, as they refer to “the end “; and this all admit. Such too may be that in p. 94, though vaguely expressed. But we come to egregious trifling, as well as abandonment of the truth, in pp. 107, 108, to omit the page before.

“G. F. Would you say a believer then had eternal life in a certain sense?

F. E. R. I answer it in a very simple (!) way, he has eternal life if he has it.

R. S. S. It is not a very bad way to ask those people who say they have eternal life, what they have got.

E. R. If I came across any one who asserted it at the present time, I would be disposed to say, ‘If you have got it, let us have some account of it.' Our difficulty in England was that nobody could give any account of eternal life. If there had been anybody who could have given an account of it, the difficulty would have been much less. One person said it was one thing, and another said it was another. One old brother who affected a good many people, said that eternal life was obedience. He took up a verse in John 12 (sic), ‘And I know that His commandment is life everlasting,' and argued from that that it was obedience. It shows you in what a muddle the whole thing was. Everybody claimed to have it, but nobody could give an account of it. Another brother asked me, ‘Have you got eternal life? ' I did not know how to answer it exactly because he simply meant resting on a statement of scripture. [Yes, this is what F.E.R.'s followers must avoid.]

F. Would you not define eternal life?

F. E. R. I do not think that we have any definition of it. You can speak of what is characteristic of it, and scripture gives you that, but surely if you claim to have eternal life you can give some account of it. If a man has a possession he can give me some account of what he possesses. Otherwise I doubt if he has it. I don't say he has not title to it.

R. S. S. Or the enjoyment of it.

F. E. R. I think thousands have title to it who are not in the good of it. Eternal life is God's purpose for you; God gave His Son to that end. I have the light of this, and hence it is mine in title, but to say that I have it is another matter.”

Could the unbelief of a professing Christian go farther? Over and over again is the present possession of life eternal denied. According to F. E. R. it is “God's purpose “; and the believer has a “title to it,” but in no way has he that life himself. “To say that I have it is another matter.” Yet he knows as well as anyone, that the Lord with most marked solemnity ruled that He gives, not will give, life eternal, and that the believer “has” it, not merely is to have it. Simple title or God's purpose is excluded. Christ's meaning is made the more definite and indubitable (except to will under Satan's power), because He also says that the believer has passed from death into life. F. E. R. stands here in open antagonism to the word of the Lord on this vital matter. To quibble away His plain authority for it is to sap divine truth.

Again, how sad is the levity of the oracular platitude in answer to “G. F.! Would you say a believer then had eternal life in a certain sense?

F. E. R. I answer it in a very simple way, he has eternal life if he has it.”

Any upright mind must feel that such a come-off is Jesuitical evasion. It is anything but “simple,” being just incredulous banter and a cheat.

All but the most ignorant know that life in itself, and of every form in nature, is difficult to explain, especially to a caviler. Yet who questions its reality but a materialist? With such F. E. R. here “lands himself” as to life eternal, however clearly revealed. On the highest authority the simplest Christian is divinely assured that he has this life eternal, not its mere title or promise. He expects indeed its certain completion in his body when Christ comes again; but he has no less certainty of possessing it now in his inner man. This F. E. R. denies emphatically, unequivocally, and constantly. Yet the scheme defrauds every Christian of his primary blessedness, dishonors the Lord in His grace and truth, and perverts His words of spirit and life into a willy-nilly of dark unbelief.

Is it true that in England “nobody” among the companions of this misguided man “could give any account of eternal life”? How deplorable if it were really as he says! I dare not allow that all have accepted the lie for the truth they once seemed to hold firmly and universally. Every intelligent saint, on the contrary, is able to explain that, just as he has by nature the sin-tainted life of the first man, so has he by grace, on believing, the holy life of the Second man. Who could expect our spiritual life to be outwardly cognizable more than our natural life? Yet even skeptics do not go so far as to deny it absolutely as a present thing, though they do its everlasting permanence.

It is almost needless to say that life eternal attests its presence by a newly given faith in Christ, by prayerful dependence on God, by delight in His word, by holy ways and walk, by a broken and self-distrusting spirit, by sympathies and antipathies upward and around and within, never displayed before. Besides these subjective qualities, the objective side is at least as marvelous and real: Christ sent from above, and the only true God, the Father, made known as only then in the gracious working of the Spirit by the word. Surely this, and it might be largely increased, is “some account of it,” and familiar to the family of God. What does this incredulous talker want or mean? He is blinded by self-will and vanity against the truth. But what of the many who know better, yet hold their peace? Are they swamping truth for a unity worthless without it? Is this what they owe Christ the Lord? Do they keep His word, or do they deny His name?

The passage is really a tissue of extreme unbelief, a gross exaggeration of the condition of his companions, and withal vulgar mockery, to support a lie of the enemy. The “muddle” is in F. E. R. and his dupes, through defection from the truth which no doubt he long preached and taught, if he never in heart believed it. It is of comparatively recent years that a doubt was breathed, only to be sternly reproved and scouted as wholly unsound. Even mere Jews, as is allowed, had “the idea of it.” But whatever may be judged of those in O.T. times, the error before us is the formal repudiation of life eternal as actually attaching to the Christian, though the Lord explicitly assigns it as a present inward reality. Even if a believer were so strangely ignorant through bad teaching as to be unable to explain the matter to an adversary, he might have the fullest conviction that he has life eternal and enjoy its effects in obedience, love, righteousness, patience and hope, as he never did before his setting to his seal that God is true. Does anyone but an idiot or a philosopher doubt he is alive, because he cannot give “some account” of life—cannot even explain why his motions answer his volition? Who questions “time,” or “space", because he finds it hard if not impossible to give a ready interpretation of either?

“The idea of eternal life” which Jews had is quite different from the believer's present and known possession of it. This did await Christ's coming. It is a crude and confusing statement that “It was the same thing referred to all along” (page 108). Could any say or accept this save an unbeliever in the Christian's privilege? This depended on the Son of God. Before He came, the saints had life in Him, but they were ignorant as to it; when He came, He gave them understanding of this and much more. It was greatly increased when He rose and the Spirit was given. But it is untrue that “all depended on that.” And the error affects still higher truth.

Think of a person presuming to teach yet so dense as to say that in the opening of John's Gospel “the apostle is, I judge, speaking from his standpoint, not from God's!” Such a judgment might fall from a natural man: Luke 1:2 gives not the slightest warrant for it. It is the kind of slip-shod comment by which Unitarians and other adversaries of the faith seek to undermine Christ. John 5:26 is not the expression of Christ's divine right, but of the subject place He took when He became man, and received everything from God. Otherwise His deity is taken from the Lord.

Take another example. The alleged difference between “the Son” and “the Son of God” is rash and wrong, being even refuted by the text itself. That “Son of God” is in Psa. 2 and elsewhere as John 1:49, as well as Luke 1:35, said of Christ as the King of Israel is true; yet the generalization made in page 109 is a dangerous falsehood, as is made certain by such texts as 1 John 3:8; 4:15, 10, 13, 20. But if one desire a single distinct disproof of its folly, one could not have a more decisive one than 1 John 5:12: “He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” In this case the emphasis is rather the opposite way, as every spiritual mind must feel.

Similar lack of insight and subjection to scripture is at the bottom of page 113. God's calling is not “sonship” as such, nor is it synonymous with “eternal life.” Take Eph. 1 where His calling stands richly; but not a word is said of “eternal life,” as indeed page 119 admits. Take the Gospel and the First Epistle of John where “life eternal” is most fully treated; yet we have absolute silence about sonship. And what means the desire in page 116 to exclude “eternal life” from heaven, making it refer to earth? One might have expected a tyro to have profited better by the Lord's words to Nicodemus. A “teacher of Israel” ought to have known that to be born anew was needed for earthly things of God's kingdom; whereas the cross and eternal life suit the higher things of heaven, as made known by Him Who came down from heaven and would return thither, the Son of man who is in heaven.

The conversation on “the sphere” (116, 117) is a characteristic specimen of unintelligent pretension. Of old the term “sphere” had been rightly used to designate the heavenly source whence He came Who was the eternal life and went back into the glory He had left, where we behold Him now and look to be, conformed to Him in body at His coming. We while on earth are given life eternal; but we have it in Him Who is above, and hence for that sphere where we are not yet, however assured by His grace. This morally becomes of the highest importance to act on our faith and love as well as hope according to Paul no less than John. What bewilderment, not to say darkness, of mind to refer to Rom. 5:21, Dan. 12:2, and John 17:3, the last being said to “describe the sphere!” Was ever more pitiable hallucination, if it were not spiritual guilt of a black dye?

Contrast to death is the lowest and shallowest possible “idea” of life eternal. If we simply and truly believed Christ to be our life, could we fail to apprehend that this eternal life is our newly but truly given spiritual being, capable of communion even now with the Father and with the Son Whom He sent? Why this incessant and fruitless beating about the bush, ending in absolute denial of its present possession, the very thing on which the Lord most sedulously insists?

Remark too how far the reduction of life eternal to the contrast with death carries away this sciolist. “I think eternal life refers to earth. I don't think we should talk about eternal life in heaven... I don't think the term will have much force there... I don't see much sense in connecting the idea of eternal life with heaven.” To one who pleaded his understanding “that it is connected with heaven also,” F.E.R., answers, “I don't know the connection. The point of eternal life is that it comes in where death was. I think it stands in scripture in contrast to death.” The expressions that follow might imply getting life here and now. But this he elsewhere so pointedly repudiates that we are obliged to believe that it is only “in anticipation now,” not as actually possessed. But this novel jargon is as unmeaning as the strange dictum, “If you don't apprehend a sphere, you have no idea of eternal life”! It is self-evident that he does not apprehend a sphere, simple as it is, but mystifies it.

On the “proportion” of deliverance here taught (page 106), it is enough to say that it is not so that scripture teaches. There is also no sense of correlation in saying, “I think the Father orders the world” (page 110) (for scripture testifies the contrast between these two), and in thinking that worship addresses itself to the Father, because the thought of God is presented to us in the Father (111). Now John 4 is express in distinguishing the worship of “God” as such from that of “the Father,” as any one may see in comparing vers. 23 with 24. Spiritual perception is wholly lacking; and most sects have a peculiar style, or lingua franca, of their own. Could any one match the strange absurdity that John 17:3 describes the “sphere”? His friend J. S. A. (who writes the introduction) indulges in the dream that where his leader is deeply astray, he is “correcting defective or erroneous use of terms!” Nowhere could be shown infatuation more complete. And the worst is that not only are the terms defective and erroneous to an extraordinary degree, but the vital truth of scripture is misrepresented and lost, whilst empty falsehood takes its place.

The true sphere of eternal life was for the Word, the Son, with the Father (John 1:4, 1 John 1:2) till the Incarnation. Then on earth in due time He said, “I came that they (the sheep) might have life, and that they might have it abundantly” (John 10:10). They believed and had life eternal in the days of His flesh, and in yet greater power when He died and rose (John 5:25; 6:33-50, 51-58; 20:22). Finally He returns to heaven and is glorified above with the Father's own self, with the glory which He had along with the Father before the world was. This is the “sphere” proper to the eternal life in its fullest character as we know it. But it is of the essence of the truth when revealed that we, Christians, have it now, and were to live because He lives, Christ living in each Christian, not merely in a future and risen state, but as to the life which each now lives in the flesh.

There will be, as no instructed saint doubts, life eternal for Israel and the nations in the world to come; but it will be in a way quite inferior to our privilege. For as it is our characteristic portion to know Christ with the Father in heavenly glory, we now have it in Him there but have also Him in us here. Were it otherwise, what incalculable loss! But it is not so; we cannot have the one without the other. The N. T. which alone reveals the full character of the life eternal in no way points us to “the world to come,” which is its earthly display, but to the Son on high. Then shall we, and not we only, reign in life by the One, Jesus Christ (Rom. 5.17); and this is not limited by “the world” and “age” to come, but will be true forever, a far higher and an everlasting enjoyment of life eternal than Israel or the nations enjoy in “the world to come.” Nor can there be a more senseless view of life eternal than to look for the earth at that period as our sphere of its display. It is systematic error from ignorance of scripture, and a falsification of what life eternal is. Too plainly judaizing here ousts Christianity and its better hope. What a blind leader of the blind is he who would exclude “heaven” from the completion of life eternal, or from the Christian's enjoyment of His association with Christ there even now! See the trumpery too of treating “sonship” as greater than eternal life in page 119.

As to “the world to come,” most astounding is the departure from the truth. “What thoughtful person could say that grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life now? I do not think it does yet. I do not think that grace is manifestly set in the ascendant” (p. 136). Not yet in the ascendant manifestly when Christ sits on God's throne when grace triumphs in the power of the Spirit sent forth It is the most deplorable ignorance of the world to come; for “righteousness” shall reign then, not “grace” as now. Christianity is ignored for the Jewish hope. This profound error is repeated and applies throughout; yet he says, “I do not doubt at all that what I have indicated to you is the line of divine teaching!” Did ever fancy's fondness for its offspring more deceive itself? But where is God's word and Spirit in all this assumption? It is apostasy from what was once loved as the truth, now alas! trodden down under unclean feet. Rom. 5:21 applies now, as distinctly as Isa. 32:1 will to the world to come.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Bible Treasury: Volume N3

Table of Contents

Let Him Take All: Part 1

Let Him Take All: Part 2

Scripture Queries and Answers: Zion vs. Jerusalem, Daughter vs. Daughters

Isaac: 13. The Bride Called for Isaac

Priesthood: 6. The Priests

Proverbs 8:1-11

Gospel Words: Jesus Walking on the Sea

1 Peter: Introduction

Kingdom of God: 4

Bethany and Heaven: Blessed by Christ and in Christ

The Mystery and the Covenants: 1

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Isaiah

Scripture Queries and Answers: Taken and Left; Thanks for Bread and Cup; Commendatory Letters; Crafty; 1PE 3:21

The Christian's Place in Ephesians and Colossians

Advertisement

Isaac: 14. The Bride Called for Isaac

Priesthood: 7. The Eighth Day

Proverbs 8:12-21

Gospel Words: the Canaanite Woman

1 Peter 1:1

Kingdom of God: 5

The Mystery and the Covenants: 2

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Jeremiah

Truth Absolute and Relative

Scripture Queries and Answers: Atonement and Propitiation; Prophetic vs. By Prophets; Angels

Advertisement by J. N. Darby

Isaac: 15. The Bride Called for Isaac

Priesthood: 8. The Eighth Day

Proverbs 8:22-31

Gospel Words: Feeding the Four Thousand

1 Peter 1:2

Kingdom of God: 6

The Mystery and the Covenants: 3

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Ezekiel

Scripture Queries and Answers: Cleansing in the 12th and 18th Year; Heaven; Strangled and Blood; Deliverance

Advertisement

Isaac: 16. The Meeting and the Marriage

Priesthood: 9. Failing and Judged

Proverbs 8:32-36

Gospel Words: the Transfiguration

Lord Jesus as Revealed to Faith

1 Peter 1:3

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Daniel

Scripture Queries and Answers: Priest's Work Typical of Our Lord's?; MAT 13:30, 1CO 5:13, 2TI 2:21 Hang Together?

Advertisement

Isaac: 17. The Heir

Priesthood: 10. Priest Above Grief

Proverbs 9:1-6

Gospel Words: the Lunatic Son Healed

1 Peter 1:4-5

Kingdom of God: 7

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Hosea to Micah

Work for the Lord

Fallen Angels: Review

Intermediate State

Advertisement

Isaac: 18. Abraham Dead and Isaac Blessed

Priesthood: 11. Priest to Be Above Excitement

Proverbs 9:7-12

Matthew 11:28

Gospel Words: Fish and the Temple Tax

1 Peter 1:6-7

Kingdom of God: 8

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Nahum to Malachi

Advertisement

Isaac: 19. The Generations of Ishmael

Priesthood: 12. The Priest's Due

Proverbs 9:13-18

Gospel Words: the Deaf and Stammering Man

1 Peter 1:8-9

Kingdom of God: 9

The Principles Displayed in the Ways of God Compared With His Ultimate Dealings: Part 1

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Matthew

Surrounding Us

Advertisement

Isaac: 20. The Generations of Isaac

Priesthood: 13. Not Eating the Sin Offering

Proverbs 10:1-10