A Message From God: 1940

“FADUEL MOABGHAB,” said our guest, laughing as he leaned over the tea-table towards two little maids, vainly trying to beguile their willing and sweetly-pursed lips into pronouncing his name. “Faduel Moghabghab,” he repeated in syllables, pointing to the card he had passed to them. “Accent the u and drop the g’s, which your little throats cannot manage,” he went on kindly, while the merriment sparkled in his lustrous dark eyes, and his milk-white teeth, seen through his black moustache as he laughed, added beauty to his delicate and vivacious face.

He was a man of winsome mind, this Syrian guest of ours, and the spirituality of his culture was as marked as the refinement of his manners. We shall long remember him for the tales told that evening of his home in Ainzehalta, on the slope of the Syrian mountains, but longest of all for what he said out of the memories of his youth about a shepherd song.

“It was out of the shepherd life of my country,” he remarked, “that there came long ago that sweetest religious song ever written―the ‘Twenty-third Psalm.’”

After the ripple of his merriment with the children had passed, he turned to me with a face now serious and pensive, and said: ―

“Ah, so many things familiar to us are strange to you.”

“Yes,” I answered, “and no doubt because of this we often make mistakes which are more serious than mispronunciation of your modern names.”

He smiled pleasantly, then with earnestness said: “So many things in the life of my people, the same now as in the days of old, have been woven into the words of the Bible, and into the conceptions of religious ideas as expressed there. You of the western world, not knowing these things as they are, often misunderstand what is written, or at least fail to get a correct impression from it.”

“Tell us about some of these,” I ventured, with a parental glance at two listening faces.

After mentioning several instances, he went on: “And there is the shepherd psalm: I find that it is taken among you as having two parts, the first under the figure of shepherd life, the second turning to the figure of a banquet with the host and the guest.”

“Oh, we have talked about that,” said my lady of the tea-cups, “and we have even said that we wished the wonderful little psalm could have been finished in the one figure of shepherd life.”

“It seems to us,” I added, wishing to give suitable support to my lady’s rather brave declaration of our sense of a literary flaw in the matchless psalm, “it seems to us to lose the sweet, simple melody, and to close with strange heavy chords when it changes to a scene of banquet hospitality. Do you mean that it actually keeps the shepherd figure to the end?”

“Certainly, good friends.”

With keen personal interest I asked him to tell us how we might see it as a shepherd psalm throughout. So we listened and he talked, over the cooling tea-cups.

“It is all, all a simple shepherd psalm,” he began. “See how it runs through the round of shepherd life from first word to last.”

With softly modulated voice, that had the rhythm of music and the hush of veneration in it, he quoted:

“ ‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.’ There is the opening strain of music: in that chord is sounded the keynote which is never lost till the plaintive melody dies away at the song’s end. All that follows is that thought put in varying light.”

I wish it were possible to reproduce here the light in his face, and the interchange of tones in his mellow voice as he went on.

Finding Still Waters.

“ ‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures’; nourishment, rest. ‘He leadeth me beside the still waters’; refreshment. You think here of quietly flowing streams, and get only another picture of rest. But streams are few in that shepherd country, and the shepherds do not rely on them. To the shepherd the still waters are wells and cisterns, and he leads his sheep to these still waters, not for rest, but to bring up water to quench their thirst.”

Then he talked of how the varied needs of the sheep and the many-sided care of the shepherd are pictured with consummate skill in the short sentences of the psalm.

“Each is distinct, and adds something too precious to be merged and lost,” he said.

“ ‘He restoreth my soul’; you know,” he said, turning to me, “that ‘soul’ means the life of one’s self in the Hebrew writings.”

Then, addressing all, he went on:

“There are private fields and gardens and vineyards in the shepherd country, and if a sheep stray into them and is caught there, it is forfeited to the owner of the land. So, ‘He restoreth my soul,’ means ‘the shepherd brings me Back, and rescues my life from forbidden and fatal places.’”

‘‘‘Restores me when wandering,’ is the way it is put in one of our hymns,” I interposed.

“Ah, sir, that is it exactly,” he answered. “‘Restores me when wandering!’

“‘He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness, for His name’s sake’; often have I roamed through the shepherd country in my youth, and watched how hard it is to choose the right path for the sheep; one leads to a precipice, another to a place where the sheep cannot find the way back; and the shepherd was always going ahead, ‘leading’ them in the right paths, proud of his good name as a shepherd.

“Some paths that are right paths lead through places that have deadly perils; ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,’ is the way the psalm touches this fact in shepherd life. This way of naming the valley is very true to our country. I remember one near my home called the ‘valley of robbers,’ and another ‘the ravine of the raven.’ You see ‘the valley of the shadow of death’ is a name drawn from my country’s old custom. And so is the phrase, ‘Thy rod and Thy staff,’ for the shepherds carry a weapon for defense, and one for guidance. Ah, madam, you should see the sheep cuddle near the shepherd to understand the word, ‘They comfort me.’ The shepherd’s call, ‘Ta-a-a-a, He-o-o,’ and the answering patter of feet as the sheep hurry to him, are fit sounds to be chosen out of the noisy world to show what comfort God gives to souls that heed His voice; and those sounds have been heard in my country this day as they were the day this shepherd psalm was written!”

He sat in silence a moment, musing, as if the sound was in his ear.

With quiet animation he lifted his thin hand and continued: “Now, here is where you drop the shepherd figure and put in a banquet, and so lose.

The Climax of Completeness

in the shepherd’s care.”

It need not be said that we were eager listeners now, for our guest was all aglow with memories of his far-off home, and we felt that we were about to see new rays of light flash from this rarest gem in the song treasury of the world.

“ ‘Thou preparest a table before me—in the presence of mine enemies.’”

In the same hushed voice in which he quoted these words he added:

“Ah, to think that the shepherd’s highest skill and heroism should be lost from view as the psalm begins to sing of it, and only an indoor banquet thought of!”

Again he sat in silence a moment. Then he said: “There is no higher task of the shepherd in my country than to go from time to time to study places and examine the grass, and find a good and safe feeding-place for his sheep. All his skill, and often great heroism, are called for. There are many poisonous plants in the grass, and the shepherd must find and avoid them. A cousin of mine once lost three hundred sheep by a mistake in this hard task.

“Then there are vipers’ holes, and the reptiles bite the noses of the sheep if they be not driven away. The shepherd must burn the fat of hogs at the holes to do this. And round the feeding-ground which the shepherd thus prepares, in holes and caves in the hillsides, there are jackals, wolves, hyenas, and tigers, too, and the bravery and skill of the shepherd are at the highest point in closing up these dens with stones, or slaying the wild beasts with his long-bladed knife. Of nothing do you hear shepherds boasting more proudly than of their achievements in this part of their care of flocks. And now!” he exclaimed with a beaming countenance, and suppressed feeling, as if pleading for recognition of the lone shepherd’s bravest action of devotion to his sheep, “and now do you see the shepherd figure in that quaint line, ‘Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies?’”

“Yes,” I answered, “and I see that God’s care of a man out in the world is a grander thought than that of seating him at an indoor banquet table.

“But what about anointing the head with oil, and the cup running over? Go on, my friend.”

Oh, there begins the beautiful picture at the end of the day.

“The psalm has sung of the whole round of the day’s wanderings, all the needs of the sheep, all the care of the shepherd. Now the psalm closes with the last scene of the day. At the door of the sheepfold the shepherd stands, and the ‘rodding of the sheep’ takes place. The shepherd stands turning his body to let the sheep pass; he is the door, as Christ said of Himself. With his rod he holds back the sheep while he inspects them one by one as they pass into the fold. He has the horn filled with olive oil, and he has cedar-tar, and he anoints a knee bruised on the rocks, or a side scratched by thorns. And here comes one that is not bruised, but is simply worn and exhausted; he bathes its face and head with the refreshing olive oil, and he takes the large two-handled cup and dips it brimming full from the vessel of water prided for that purpose, and he lets the weary sheep drink. There is nothing finer in the psalm than this. God’s care is not for the wounded only, but for the worn and weary also.

‘He anointeth my head with oil, my cup runneth over.’

“And then, when the day is gone, and the sheep are snug within the fold, what contentment, what rest under the starry sky! Then comes the thought of deepest repose and comfort: ‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,’ as they have through all the wanderings of the day now ended.”

“The song dies away as the heart that God has watched and tended breathes this grateful vow before the roaming of the day is forgotten in sleep. ‘I will’ ―not shall, but will; for it is a decision, a settled purpose, a holy vow— ‘I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’ And the song ends, and the sheep are at rest, safe in the Good Shepherd’s fold.”

Do you wonder that ever since that night we have called this psalm, “The Song of our Syrian Guest”?

W. A. KNIGHT.

Published by the Drummond Tract Depot, Stirling.

Conflict of Opinion.

THIS note was written in 1860. What would the writer think if he were alive today!

“The present is a time of great diversity of judgment and conflict of opinion. Many simple souls do not know what to think or what to do. Various and discordant sounds fall upon the ear, and the sheep are scattered up and down in fear and uncertainty. Still, however, the opened ear may discern the Shepherd’s Voice, and this gives peace in the midst of the terrible confusion.”

The Lord’s Own declaration is the remedy and sure guide: “My sheep hear My voice, and they follow Me.”

“All is of God that is, and is to be;

And God is good. Let this suffice us still,

Resting in childlike trust upon His will,

Who moves to His great ends unthwarted by the ill.”

A Christian Dictator.

BY far the greatest personality in China today is Chiang Kai-Shek, that nation’s Prime Minister and virtual Dictator. Barely ten years ago he was a Communist General, relentless, vindictive, cruel. Swooping down suddenly upon a Chinese city, he seized it with surprising ease; and allowed his undisciplined hordes unbridled freedom as they looted the place.

Many Christians were hunted down and butchered. The terror-stricken inhabitants were subjected to rape and riot, violence and villainy.

The hospital, erected by missionary effort, was rifled, then burnt to the ground. The distressed doctor saw the work of thirty years reduced to charred ruins in twenty-four hours.

So Chang Kai-Shek, glorying in his successful coup, began to plan other “victories.”

“A foreign devil wishes to see you, General,” said an orderly.

“Foreign devil? And still alive? Bring him in!”

It was the missionary doctor who now stood before the tyrant. “I have come to ask a favor, sir.”

“And you will not get it, whatever you ask,” was the curt reply. “What do you want?”

“My hospital is in ruins and my work is taken from me. May I have the privilege of tending and healing your wounded men?”

Absolutely astonished at such a request, the General gave him permission. Chiang Kai-Shek told his wife of this truly amazing deed. She knew something of Christianity, and at once said, “Oh, there is nothing wonderful in that He is only putting into practice the doctrines of his religion.”

There was a brief silence. The Communist General was doing some rapid thinking. He was the first to break the silence. “If that is what the foreign devil’s religion really is, I, too, will become a Christian.”

So it came to pass that before the smoke had ceased rising from the smoldering ruins of the hospital, Chiang Kai-Shek was being taught how Christ is able to save, and to keep, even the chief of sinners. His wife became an earnest Christian worker, and Chiang Kai-Shek soon became the Generalissimo of the Chinese Army, and later on, Prime Minister in China.

One day Chiang Kai-Shek was motoring in the outskirts of a city, when an aeroplane swooped down. Men rushed upon him, bound him, and bundled him into the plane and flew off!

So Chiang Kai-Shek found himself a prisoner in the hands of one of his own Generals. Everything he possessed was taken from him. But he pleaded to be allowed to retain his Bible!

He wrote from there, “I had ample opportunity for Bible reading and meditation. The greatness of the love of Christ burst upon me with a new inspiration; increasing my strength; to struggle against evil; to overcome temptation; and to uphold righteousness.”

After some days in captivity, great excitement was caused by an aeroplane circling over the camp, evidently seeking a level landing-place, It carried no guns, but nevertheless, it was speedily surrounded by soldiers on alighting.

A lady stepped out from the plane and asked if Chiang Kai-Shek was there: “I am his wife, and have come to share his captivity.” Even those rough Chinese troops were amazed. The “Red” General could scarcely refuse this request from so heroic a woman. But after a day or two he began to be anxious. Why did Chiang Kai-Shek and his wife spend an hour every morning, talking quietly to each other? Were they plotting and planning to escape? With the courtesy so common to the Chinese he asked if he might join their daily secret conclave. They expressed evident joy at the suggestion! This surprised him.

The fact was, their “conclave” consisted of a “quiet time” over the Word of God.

The General became interested. He began to ask questions. He became convicted of sin; and soon asked to receive Christ as his personal Saviour. And then he immediately gave them permission to return home.

So at this hour of grave crisis, of untold suffering, and bitter anguish, poor China—the greatest heathen country in the world—has a Christian Dictator! What a story of the wonder working Saviour. “Christian Victory.”

Faith.

FAITH is above circumstances. No war, no fire, no water, no mercantile panic, no loss of friends, no death can touch it. It goes on its own steady course. It triumphs over all difficulties. Those who really confide in God because they know the power of His arm and the love of His heart, as shown most in the death and resurrection of His only begotten Son, are helped whatever their trials or difficulties may be.

GEORGE MULLER.

Warned and Invited.

“FOREKNOWN.” “Predestinated.” “Called.” Justified.” “Glorified.” There is a Jacob’s ladder to reach the sky! This is the reality of that poetic stair that “slopes through darkness up to God.” Will you climb the ladder? Will you ascend the stair?

I warn you by the black inevitable doom that comes upon the selfish and sinful life.

I summon you by the nobleness of your own nature, as God made it and means it to be.

I invite you, by all the tenderness of His mercy and by the great grace of His provided salvation.

I offer you all the promises, and Him in Whom they are all “yea and amen,” one whole undivided Christ and God, and God’s love in Him.

ALEX. RALEIGH.

God's Best.

REMEMBER always that Christ Himself is better than any of His blessings, better even than the peace and the power and the joy that He gives. He is God’s best, He is Emmanuel, God with us. With Him sharing our experiences, our hopes, our ambitions, our joys, it is possible for the child of God to experience victory, blessed, blood-bought victory all along the line.

A Communist's Confession.

By Thomas Hitman,

Late Communist Political Prisoner”

“THOMAS HITMAN, you are a danger to society, and the sentence of the Court is that you go to prison for fifteen months with hard labor.”

With these words ringing in my ears I left the dock of the Glasgow Sheriff Court, after being found guilty by a jury on seven charges of sedition. My thoughts at that moment would not have been hard to describe. I had an exultant feeling of martyrdom, and was proud to occupy a cell for my political opinions. I felt that my actions and sentence would stimulate the revolutionary movement, and that the revolution which I so much desired would be given an impetus which I could not otherwise give it.

Although amazed and a little staggered by the length of the sentence, I was enjoying the exuberant ecstasy which comes to every one of us with the fulfillment of a great desire. At last I was a martyr, and that counts for much in the revolutionary movement today. Prior to my trial, I had been kept in Duke Street Prison for nine weeks while the Criminal Investigation Department endeavored to unravel my career and my connection with the Republican Movement in Ireland and throughout Great Britain; with what success I do not know. There were several important things I did not wish known, and which, if discovered, would have made it extremely uncomfortable for me, and this continued to cause me no little concern while serving my sentence in Barlinnie Prison. I had always before me the picture of an escort of detectives waiting for me on the day of my release.

Upon the day of my arrival in prison I was asked the usual questions regarding age, birthplace, nationality, and religious denomination. My replies to these queries were: (1) age, thirty-one; (2) birthplace, London; (3) nationality, British. In religion I had been brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. Probably the receiving officer had something akin to a shock when I informed him I was an Atheist, and he again asked me my denomination. Yes, friends, I was an Atheist—blind to everything that was pure, good, and divine; alive only to the desires of my animal nature, thinking in terms of revolution with its attendant horrors of bloodshed and chaos—in short, an Atheist, at war with society and with God. From that day to the day of my liberation a card hung over my cell door with the word “Atheist” distinctly marked upon it. I will not dwell upon my prison sufferings, the awful loneliness and the mental torture, but will only here express my heartfelt thanks to the Governor, Deputy Governor, Doctor and officials of Barlinnie Prison for their great kindness and Christian courtesy. At last the day dawned when once more I breathed the glorious air of freedom, the day I had longed for but had also feared, for reasons already stated. With a hand-shake and a God-speed from the Governor, I stepped out of the gate to breathe the free air of liberty-loving Scotland, but God was not in all my thoughts at that moment, only thoughts of revenge and revolution. On 1St March, 1924, I was liberated, and on the following day I again stood upon the revolutionary platform, giving expression to the soul-destroying doctrines of Communism and Atheism, for the two go together. On I went for several weeks, influencing, instigating and also enrolling recruits for “The Day!” During the six weeks immediately following my release I addressed over thirty meetings, and my health suffered in consequence. I accepted the offer of a fortnight’s holiday at Dunoon to recuperate.

I was now on the threshold of the greatest event of my life, but I was unaware of the fact, except for a growing restlessness of spirit. I walked the old walks, and thought the old thoughts, and did not realize that my cold iceberg of a heart was gradually melting in the warm gulf stream of Divine love, and that the pierced hands of the Lord Jesus were plucking me ever so gently, though ever so surely, from the very brink of Hell, upon which I was standing. Little did I realize that the moment when I should have a vision of the Cross of Calvary was drawing near. I attended the funeral of a young woman, and at the graveside, the hymn that God was using to bring me into His Kingdom was sung. “Safe in the arms of Jesus” rang out as the coffin was lowered, and instantly an overmastering appeal for that security rang out from my soul and reached the ear of Him who sitteth at the right hand of God the Father. The stupendous sense of unseen realities at that supreme moment, and my burning desire to know more about the Lord Jesus, cannot here be described. I was conscious of my awful sinful state, and knew that the righteous indignation of a holy God constantly rested upon me; but that day, standing by that open grave, the whole story of God’s love for the sinner in the gift of His Son to the Cross of Calvary passed in review before my bewildered mind. I rested my soul for time and eternity on Jesus Christ and His atoning work, and I entered into peace (Rom. 5:1). I had surrendered to the claims of my Saviour, who thereupon became my new King and Leader.

The age of miracles is not past, as some would have us believe, for here is a twentieth century miracle. I had been immersed in dreary skepticism, an avowed Atheist, pouring down ridicule upon God and His blessed Son; yet here I was down on my knees giving myself body and soul to Him whom I had scorned and denied. Blessed be God, and blessed be Dunoon, for I arrived at that place an unbeliever, and I left “safe in the arms of Jesus.”

This is the plain, unvarnished story of my conversion, and I am perfectly satisfied, for I have discovered One who is not only able to save, but is also able to keep; and, friend, if you are lost in the gaieties and frivolities of this world, or in those doctrines that nearly destroyed my soul, you can hear, if you choose, the sweet strains of the Gospel announcing the Saviour’s victory over sin and Hell, and the everlasting joys of salvation may be yours. He can do for you what He has done for me, bidding you leave your sin and accept His pardoning grace.

In conclusion, my heartfelt wish is that the story of my wonderful conversion will lead many poor wandering sheep into the pasturage of the Good Shepherd, to accept His care, and to be found among His flock when He returns—His loved and His own.

“Oh, the peace my Saviour gives,

Peace I never knew before;

For my way has brighter grown

Since I learned to trust Him more.”

[Mr. Hitman is now working as a colporteur in Glasgow, amongst the many Communists of that city. He is carrying on that work which the Irish Mission was privileged to begin, when in 1936, at the request of the Reformation Society, two colporteurs were sent to Glasgow to circulate the Scriptures amongst the Roman Catholics, many of whom were communists. In that year, during the months of April and May, they sold to Roman Catholics nearly 4,000 copies of the New Testament in whole or part.]

(From “The Christian Irishman.”)

The Safe Channel.

A PILOT was once asked if he knew all the rocks along the coast. “No,” he said, “it is not necessary to know all the rocks, only to know the safe channel.” So it is not necessary for us to know all the dangers and pitfalls that may beset our steps through this world, or even to take account of the sins that, like dangerous rocks, lie between us and salvation. We need only know Him Who is “the Way.” As surely as we live in Him we shall reach the haven in safety.

How to Serve.

PERSEVERE in your Christian calling. Be careful to lay aside every weight, and the sin which most easily besets you. Keep your eye steadily fixed on Jesus. Abide in Him. Remember that without Him you can do nothing, and with Him you can do all things. Watch and pray daily. Be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. Settle it down in your heart that not a cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple shall lose its reward and that every year you are so much nearer home.

J. C. RYLE.

Covered With His Feathers.

MAKING my way down town on my bicycle I felt prompted to speak a few words with a dear aged saint of God who lived alone in a small room adjoining a large street chapel. After a short talk and a time of prayer I stepped out into the street. In the tea shop opposite the preaching chapel four men sat around a table gambling. The thought struck me, such a pronounced contrast! — a dear saint living in close communion with God and four men indulging in a false pleasure which invariably wrecks homes, depriving wives and children of the very necessities of life, and alas, dooms and damns souls through all eternity!

I had traveled only a couple of hundred yards when, quite unexpectedly, without the slightest warning, several squadrons of bombers, flying at a very low altitude, showered demolition bombs all over the main streets of the city.

I had no alternative but to stand exposed leaning against the front of a house. Small bombs fell uncomfortably close and shrapnel pierced the wall against which I leaned, but God’s protecting arm allowed me to escape uninjured. As the drone of the planes died away, I hurried back to my friend. The preaching chapel had suffered a direct hit and fear for my friend’s safety gripped my heart, but, glory be to God, on climbing over the debris, I found His precious one on her knees in her small room, safe and sound, and still in communion with her Heavenly Father.

But what of the four men whom I had witnessed serving the “god of this world”? A bomb had landed on their very table and all four had gone to await that great and terrible Day when the Book shall be opened―lost!! What a terrible word! What a challenging word! D. M.

“The Oriental Missionary Standard.”

HUSHED, at the dawning of the year I stand;

The gates are closed behind me, I must go.

I shade my eager eyes with trembling hand,

The way is dim before, I do not know

Just where the pathway lies. Pitfalls may wait

My unaccustomed feet; Lord, be Thou near,

For I must on―I cannot hesitate:

Hold Thou my hand, and I shall laugh at fear.

(SEL.)

"There!"

“God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall he no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”— Rev. 21:4.

NO SHADOWS THERE! They joyfully behold Him!

No cloud to dim their vision of His face!

No jarring note to mar the holy rapture,

The perfect bliss of that most blessed place.

NO BURDENS THERE! These all are gone forever

No weary nights, no long or dragging days;

No sighing’s there, or secret, silent longings,

For all is now unutterable praise.

NO CONFLICTS THERE! No evil hosts assailing!

Such warfare past—forever made to cease;

No tempter’s voice is heard within those portals;

No foe lurks there to break the perfect peace.

NO SORROWS THERE! No sadness and no weeping! Tears wiped away—all radiant now each face;

Music and song, in happy, holy blending,

Fill all the courts of that sweet resting place.

J.D.S.

The light of heaven is the face of Jesus.

The joy of heaven is the presence of Jesus.

The melody of heaven is the Name of Jesus.

The harmony of heaven is the praise of Jesus.

The theme of heaven is the work of Jesus.

The employment of heaven is the service of Jesus.

The way to heaven is the blood of Jesus.

The fullness of heaven is Jesus Himself.”

Our Glorious Hope.

“Christ must come again because His divine Book declares it with unmistakable clearness. The fact of His return is mentioned 318 times in the New Testament, apart from the Book of Revelation. It is said that one verse out of every twenty-five in the New Testament is devoted to this subject... The very last promise in the Bible, the last word from the Saviour to His Church, is this, ‘Surely I come quickly.’ (Rev. 22:20).”

B. C. MOWLL.

“Some of these days or nights—while men are busy with the common pursuits and cares of life, and everything is rolling on in its accustomed course—unheralded, unbelieved, and unknown to the gay world, here one, and there another, shall secretly disappear, ‘caught up’ like Enoch, who ‘was not found because God had translated him.’ Invisibly, noiselessly, miraculously, they shall vanish from the company and fellowship of those about them, and ascend to their returning Lord.”

J. A. Seiss.

Today.

THOUGH we are fearful about many things; though business is bad; though conditions in the world seem to grow worse, though health has been poor; though dear ones are still unsaved; though friends may prove faithless, uncertain and unstable; may we hear His voice, through His Word, saying, for our help and comfort, “I AM THE LORD, I CHANGE NOT.” Just to remember that He is with us TODAY, is the cure for every heartache and every trial of our lives. He is near. Call on Him TODAY.

George Rainey.

Perfect Safety.

TODAY, said the Psalmist, I am filled; “my cup runneth over.” Tomorrow and forever I shall be with the Lord, dwelling in His pavilion. If trouble overtakes me and sorrow wounds me, goodness is following me; if the archers of sin should shoot me and mistakes should confuse my steps, mercy will help goodness to relieve me, for she, too, is on my track, not far behind; and, beyond the days of this life, I shall continue to live—in the house of the Lord forever.

Preparation for Our Lord's Return.

BY John H. Wilkinson.

“Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel” (Amos 4:12).

“Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not” (Luke 12:40).

FOR months before the outbreak of war a little sentence full of significance was frequently brought before us. It ran: “We must be prepared.” However unrealistic this warning may have seemed at some times, and to some people, it has been entirely justified by the event. But there is another great event ahead, quite different from war, it is true; an event infinitely solemn and wonderful, namely, the Lord’s Return, concerning which we cannot too closely heed the words: “We must be prepared.”

There are two considerations which give spur to preparation in any field—firstly, the magnitude of the event, and secondly its imminence. By the mercy of God we were not left in the dark concerning the magnitude and imminence of the danger facing us. We were warned, and the warning was not in vain. When the test came we were not caught at a disadvantage in the hour of peril. And, by the grace of God, we are admonished over and over again in Holy Scripture to be prepared for our blessed Lord’s coming. And the two great factors that impel to immediate and purposeful preparation are not lacking—the magnitude and the imminence of this wondrous event.

As regards magnitude, can anything be of greater importance than the fact that our divine Saviour, “Who gave Himself for us,” is to return in person? Our blessed hope is nothing less than the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. What will it be to see Him! And as regards its imminence, the signs of the times and the setting of the stage for the end-events of prophecy leave us in no doubt. Would it not be a reproach if it were true of us, “ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth: but how is it that ye do not discern this time?” (Luke 12:56). We should rather be “knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed” (Rom. 13:11). We regard this passage of Scripture as being never more applicable than it is today, and its message is that “we must be prepared.”

Without staying here to examine the signs of the times—which have figured prominently in books and addresses and articles on prophecy for many years past―we will only draw attention to the fact that these signs are clearer and more numerous than ever they were.

And when it is remembered that “signs” are in Scripture more especially associated with God’s dealing with His ancient people, as distinguished from the Church of Christ, and with His coming in glory, as distinguished from His coming for His saints, we see—and our heart is thrilled at the thought—that the imminence of this grand event for which we look is very great. If signs tell us that soon our blessed Lord is coming to reign in fulfillment of Old Testament prediction, we can always add: “How much sooner, then, is He to come for His Own and meet them in the air in fulfillment of New Testament promise!” But the date of the day is, in the wise purposes of God, withheld from us, so that realizing that it may be any day, we may be prepared, and kept prepared for the moment of His appearing.

The call to preparation then being clear, there remains the preparation itself. It has two aspects—a negative and a positive, unworldliness and other-worldliness. The former is enjoined in such Scriptures as the following: ― “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world; looking for that blessed hope....” (Titus 2:11-13). And the latter is presented in the following and similar passages. “Whom having not seen, ye love; in Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory; receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8, 9). Here is detachment from the spirit of the world and attachment to Christ by His holy Spirit: and preparation for His return will mean reality in both these directions.

Let us deal here only with the second—attachment to our Saviour. Our heart’s affections centered on Him are to find in Him the object of our worship, love, obedience, faith, communion and confession before others. We are to serve because we love. Service must never take precedence of personal love to the Saviour. All service for Him must be love-service if it is to abide the test. “We love Him, because He first loved us.” How does our love stand today? To keep the warm fires of love for Christ burning is preparation for His return, and it is the work of the Holy Spirit. As in the type, when Eliezer communed with Rebecca concerning Isaac, the burdens of the journey are lightened, and in the glowing of love, there is unconscious preparation for the presence of the expected Bridegroom. There are many precious relationships that He has to our redeemed souls, and each calls forth our love.

Combined with the child-like familiarity of personal love of our blessed Lord, there is ever present a sacred fear, a sweet and solemn reverence that is part of our true love to Him, and prepares us for His presence. We cannot “love Christ’s appearing” without knowing what it is to love Him. The reproach to the Church at Ephesus mentioned in Revelation is that it had left its first love, and the words in the original indicate love first in degree rather than first in order of time. Unless we are loving our Saviour supremely, we are not well prepared for His coming.

And with our love of the Living Word, there will be a loving of the written Word (Psa. 1:2). We shall be cherishing Christ’s Own words (Luke 9:26) and proclaiming them to others—Jew and Gentile. We shall be obeying, too, His “new commandment” (John 13:34) that we should love one another, and if there is any restitution we should make, or any adjustment of love between brethren, we should seek to put this right before we come into His shining presence.

In preparation for the Lord’s Coming, alertness and diligence should be in exercise. God’s holy ordinances, and His means of grace for us should be more than ever cherished. Worship in the home and in public should be treasured exercises, seeing that He is ever in the midst on such occasions. We are to exhort one another, “and so much the more,” as we see “the day approaching.”

“Then oh my Lord, prepare

My soul for that great day,

Oh wash me in Thy precious Blood

And take my sins away.”

From “Living Waters,” by permission.

Able.

“GOD IS ABLE,” occurs at least twelve times in the New Testament. We have these passages, for instance: “God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham”; “What He had promised He was able to perform”; “God is able to make us stand”; “He is able to subdue all things unto Himself”; “He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him”; “He is able also to save to the uttermost”; “Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling.”

The Eye of God.

GOD is the all-seeing One, and the way is open to His eye. He never sleeps nor slumbers, we are assured, and “Thou God seest me” is a precious thought. He sees us and our path beset with danger, and He plans our ways and guides us accordingly. That is why He often permits reverses and failure to come to our ways. He changes our plans for He sees the danger in them. Knowing the end from the beginning, He cannot mistake.

The "Aerial" Warnings of the Almighty

By Dr. J. E. Shelley, of Famagusta, Cyprus.

WE have heard a great deal of the subject of air raid Precautions lately. Even in remote Cyprus it is regarded as a matter of urgency!

By means of the newspapers, the radio, and countless booklets, we are urged daily not to neglect the suggested means of safety.

There have been exhibitions and demonstrations of various shelters and refuges, the institution of new fire brigades and the formation of anti-gas squads.

Men, women and children are being informed concerning the peril from the air, and told how to escape from it.

Everywhere is appears to be regarded as inevitable that soon the heavens will be black with clouds of airplane’s raining down death and destruction. It is admittedly within the power of men to thus pour wrath upon their enemies.

They have done it, and are doing it!

Only those who have diligently prepared against this danger have a chance of escape; though even these are not assured of safety from destruction at the hands of their fellow men.

The Effect of Divine and Human Warnings

All over the world these warnings are taken seriously and acted upon carefully.

But the warnings of Almighty God concerning similar though vastly greater dangers are scoffed at, and the infallible precautions He recommends, utterly neglected!

In His Book He tells of a rapidly approaching day in which “The Lord Jesus will be revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the Glory of His Power” (2 Thess. 1:7-10).

God actually condescends to issue details concerning these coming aerial bombardments, and to describe in advance, their awful effects.

A State of Universal Terror!

We quote just one. “And I beheld, when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of Heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken with a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

“And the kings of the earth, and the great men and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every freeman, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of His wrath is come and who shall be able to stand?” (Rev. 6:12-17).

This is an “Air Raid warning” from the Governor of the Universe which it behooves all human beings to heed.

Yet how is this solemn and gracious prediction regarded?

It is called “Apocalyptic nonsense,” “Impossible rubbish,” “Exaggerated threats only fit to frighten women and children,” “Quite unheard of aberration of the fixed laws of nature,” etc. But God has not only issued the warning. He, as well as man, has accompanied it with demonstrations!

For example. It is not generally known that on June 30th 1908, there occurred

The Greatest Astronomical Catastrophe

ever recorded by eye witnesses—the fall of an immense meteorite in the wilds of Siberia.

Traveling at perhaps 45 miles a second, it struck a hilly plateau near the river Yenesi in broad daylight. It was described as brighter than the sun. The nearest town, Vanovara, fifty miles away was enveloped in flame, and the concussion which followed was terrific. The passengers on the trans-Siberian railway 400 miles distant were terror-stricken by a violent uproar, and the driver stopped the train, believing it to be derailed.

The sound was heard at numerous points within a circle of 2,000 miles diameter, and a column of fire twelve miles high was seen from a distance of 280 miles!

Strangely enough, the craters found were not very deep, but the devastation was immense. Pine trees were felled radially round the craters to a distance of thirty-seven miles in every direction, and there was a radius of burnt forest for seven or eight miles. Approximately a thousand square miles of forest were laid waste. But as there are practically no habitations in the area, few human beings seem to have perished. How merciful God is!

Had this demonstration bomb fallen on London, the metropolis would have been wiped out!

But God’s mercy has a limit, and when He rains His wrath on an impenitent world, who indeed shall be able to stand?

The rocks and the hills will not suffice to cover or protect man in that day. However deep men may dig their trenches, God’s projectiles will reach them. For in Arizona there is a crater 570 feet deep, and three-quarters of a mile wide caused by the fall of another giant meteorite!

There is but one shelter from the righteous wrath of God, that is under the precious Blood of Christ.

Take Cover in the Rook of Ages

cleft for the very purpose of hiding the sinner. No other rock for safety in that great day.

Have you neglected this, the only infallible precaution? “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?”

Make a careful study of the great A.R.P. Book provided by the Judge of all the earth wail yourself of the shelter provided by Him, at the cost of the death of his only Son. It is firmly founded on the Rock of truth and free to all.

(By courtesy of “Living Links.”)

The Greater Murderer?

A Russian Story. From a Letter:

BROTHER X and I had a remarkable time together in the city of X. Already from the first days of our visit great blessing rested on the gospel meetings. One evening, when the hall was crowded with people, there sat right in the front a head-master of the―school, who regarded those assembled with all disdain.

In that meeting there were a number of farmers, working men and communists present, as well as a number of educated people. When I had concluded my address, a dirty, dark-looking, unshaven man, who had sat just inside the door, and who had evidently listened with deep interest, called out to me: “Do you see my black face? But inside I am far blacker! Under the government of the Czar I was eighteen years in Siberia in chains. From my youth upwards I have been a criminal and a murderer. At the time of the revolution I was liberated and at once became a communist. I received unlimited rights. To murder others was now my delight and I had the power to do so. With or without authority I have killed more people than can be counted in this hall.”

Bursting into tears, he threw himself on the floor, and I asked him whether he knew the Gospel of Christ.

“No,” he answered, “I never heard, or read it; I entered here as by chance, and have now heard it for the very first time. I am sorry for my past. Can such a man as I yet find forgiveness?”

To us it certainly seemed impossible that such a one could obtain forgiveness of sins and commence a new life. On such occasions one can only witness to the great love of the Saviour. Therefore I repeated the words: “Though your sins be scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”

Thereupon even this man received peace with God. To us, however, it seemed as if we had witnessed the healing of one possessed; for he was so full of peace and his face beamed as he sat amongst the people. Then suddenly he seated himself on the floor and said: “I am not worthy to sit down beside other people.” I begged him, however, to keep his previous seat.

The head-master listened to all, but with impatience. At last he rose in a rage, stamped with his foot, and said: “Why should I listen to all this talk of uneducated people?” Then he left the place. His wife remained seated. To me it was a relief when he disappeared, because during the whole address he had stared at me as if weighing each word most critically. After a quarter of an hour he returned, and wiping the perspiration, caused by deep emotion, from his brow, he asked: “Dear Mr. Preacher, what must I do?”

I answered: “A man so well educated as you are ought to know the way into the kingdom of heaven.”

“That is just what I do not know, because I have been an atheist and have not bothered myself about the Gospel.”

I said: “The way is simple, humble yourself before God, repent from your sins and confess them as this murderer has done and the blood of Christ can also cleanse you from all your sins. There is no other way.”

“Ah,” he cried, “you point to this murderer and think perhaps that I, as an educated man, have not such a past! During twenty-five years I taught at the—in—, and had a position of honor. Only with great trouble could I escape with my life at the time of the revolution and come here. I must acknowledge that I was fifty-five years an atheist, and had to do with 1,000 scholars every year, and I taught them there is no Creator, no God, no heaven, no hell. This is now terrible to me; for since the revolution I have met some of my former scholars who have taken part in all this work of destruction and godlessness. It is my work. I have killed more human beings than this murderer. I have poisoned the souls of men and thus trained them to become murderers, and now they go on with this work. This man committed in his own person those crimes, but I through the many. With his conversion his past life ceases to continue, but I can never make good what I have done. Even if God would forgive me, my work would continue. For such as I there is no salvation.”

Quite broken, he hung his head and hid his tear-flooded face in his hands. Thereupon I read the wonderful words of the divine love and invitation to a lost humanity. Then he stood up, and turning to all those assembled, he said: “It is such as I who are responsible for the Russia of today. We atheists are at fault for this terrible misery. We have robbed men’s consciences and ruined Russia. Pray for me, I am deeply humbled and I believe that God will hear your prayers.”

All present wept, so moved were they. Thus a prayer meeting commenced which can never be forgotten. The old man himself cried out: “O God, if Thou art, then reveal Thyself to me. If Thou canst still grant me grace then let me know it today and pardon all my sins!”

His confession made a deep impression on all. Then followed thanksgiving on the part of the newly-converted, and whilst we sang a short hymn, the old schoolmaster and the old murderer embraced one another as if they had been long lost brothers.

On the following day I was invited to table in the house of the old schoolmaster. It was a joy to see how he and his wife held each other’s hands and rejoiced together in God’s salvation, which she, too, had obtained.

When we went to the evening meeting, he said: “Go ahead with my wife, I must still attend to something.” Whilst we were singing the first hymn, he entered with a whole class of his elder scholars, and that same evening some of those lads and lasses, who esteemed him very highly, found peace with God.

It was wonderful to see how the old schoolmaster witnessed of Jesus and led others to him as if he gladly would have made good his former damage.

We remained a fortnight in that place and many poor sinners found the way to the Friend of sinners.

With God nothing is impossible! But do not forget John 3:3, which reads: “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).

[This letter was also printed as a treatise in German by Ad F. Eoll, Vennes-Lausanne.]

Gone, but Where?

GEORGE and Tom were two brothers; young men growing: up into manhood. Their parents were God-fearing people, and many were the prayers that had been offered up to God on their behalf.

They both attended a Bible class for young men; but Tom, younger of the two, was the more lively, and it was with great difficulty that the teacher of the class could get any attention from him. Often had the boys been spoken to, and begged to make the decision for Christ. One particular Sunday afternoon, his last on this earth, Tom was very inattentive and annoying. At the end of the hour the teacher, a very gentle and godly man, put his arm around Tom and spoke gently to him about the seriousness of trifling with eternal things, but Tom was annoyed and dragged himself away and went off home.

He was very quiet and had tea and went off to bed early. On Monday morning as usual Tom and his brother yoked up the horse to the cart and went off to the railway station coal depot for a load of coal. George took the horse and cart to the coal shoot, whilst Tom went up on to elevated rails to wait for the arrival of some coal wagons.

Whilst waiting there above Tom was talking down through the hole to his brother, but silently some detached wagons loaded with coal were coming to the place where Tom was waiting. Tom was leaning on the buffers of an empty coal wagon, when those loaded wagons came along and crushed him between the buffers. It was all over in a moment. Tom was dead, gone into eternity!

What a word of warning to all to be ready, how many there are who think that there is plenty of time, that someday they will decide for Christ and think about their eternal future.

Who knows what a day may bring forth? How often death takes away in a moment of time the very healthiest. We cannot take up a daily paper without reading of some cases of sudden death. The coroner’s verdict of accidental death, or whatever it may be, does not alter the solemn fact that such a one has gone into eternity. Gone to meet a holy God with his sins upon him, or to be with Christ, which is the assured portion of everyone who has accepted Christ as their own personal Saviour; those who can say, “He loved me and gave Himself for me.” Can you say, dear reader, “He bore my sins in His own body on the tree.” If not, why not? God gave His own beloved Son to die in your stead, that you might go free. If you do not accept God’s offer of salvation, then there is no escape for you. You will have to meet God with your sins upon you, and you will then hear the awful word “Depart”; God is saying “Come,”

Christ is saying “Come,” the Holy Spirit is saying “Come,” the Scriptures are saying “Come,” the preachers of the Gospel are saying “Come,” and this little paper says “Come.”

The door of mercy is open, waiting for you, but soon that door will be closed forever, and then you will hear the awful cry, “No Room! No Room.”

There is time this moment for you to make your decision, but you may never have another opportunity.

The Word of God says: “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation.” (2 Cor. 6:2.) May God in His infinite mercy, dear reader, open your ears to hear Him speaking to you.

“Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” (Rev. 22:17.)

“Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” (John 6:37.)

“GOOD TIDINGS.”

"Hast Thou Not Known?"

In His Name, and very humbly, I fling out that challenge upon you. “Hast thou not known?” Look back over your own history, of the favor, the patience, the long-suffering, the wonderful grace of God towards you. Look out upon His providence as experienced in the little sphere of your own life, and just lift up your eyes and see God at work in all history, which is His story, in Himself comes to man; and I challenge you, Hast thou no known that this is the God with whom you have to do? Hast thou no known that the Creator, the God of Genesis, of the glory of the coming days—hast thou not known that this is the God with whom we have to do?

J. Stuart Holden.

Now; Then!

How long? How long?

Only until Thy coming!

Will pass into the glory of Thy light—

Our weeping into everlasting song.

Only these days—

These days—so few and short—of pain and tears,

And then—O then, through never-ending years,

Our hearts shall be attuned to perfect praise.

How long? How long?

When shall the joy of Thine appearing be?

O risen Lord, we wait and watch for Thee:

Grant us Thy patience still, to make us strong.

Edith Hickman Divall.

By courtesy of Messrs. Pickering and Inglis.

The Lord Does Care.

“I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me: thou art my help and my deliverer.”— Psa. 40:17.

“Casting all your care upon Him, for He careth for you.”— 1 Peter 5:7.

WHAT can it mean? is it aught to Him

That the nights are long and the days are dim?

Can He be touched by the griefs I bear—

Which sadden the heart and whiten the hair?

Around His throne are eternal calms,

And strong glad music of happy psalms,

And bliss unruffled by any strife;

How can He care for my poor life?

And yet I want Him to care for me.

While I live in this world where sorrows be.

When the light dies down on the path I take,

When strength is feeble and friends forsake;

When love and music that once did bless

Have left me to silence and loneliness;

And life’s song changes to sobbing prayers—

Then my heart cries out for a God who cares.

When shadows hang o’er me the whole day long;

And my spirit is bowed with shame and wrong;

When I am not good, and the deeper shade

Of conscious sin makes my heart afraid;

And the busy world has too much to do

To stay its course to help me through,

And I long for a Saviour, can it be

That the God of the universe cares for me?

Let all who are sad take heart again;

We are not alone in our hours of pain,

Our Father stoops from His throne above

To soothe and quiet us with His love.

He leaves us not when the storm is high,

And we have safety for He is nigh;

Can it be trouble which He doth share?

Oh, rest in peace for the Lord does care.

Simply Trusting.

WHEN God made thee a believer, He meant to try thee; and when He gave thee promises, and bade thee trust them, He gave such promises as are suitable for times of tempest and tossing. O man, I beseech you do not treat God’s Promises as if they were curiosities for a museum; but use them as every day sources of comfort. Trust the Lord whenever your time of need comes on.

A Very Present Help.

THERE is never a moment, nor any experience in the life of a true Christian, from the heart of which a message may not instantly be sent up to God, and back to which help may not instantly come. God is not far off in some remote heaven merely. He is not away at the top of the long steep life-ladder, looking down upon us in serene calm, and watching us as we struggle upward in pain and tears. He is with each one of us on every part of the way. His promise of presence is an eternal present tense— “I am with thee.” So “Thou God seest me” becomes to the believer a most cheering and inspiring assurance. We are never out of God’s sight for a moment. His eye watches each one of us continually, and His heart is in His eye. He comes instantly to our help and deliverance when we are in any need or danger.

J. R. MILLER, D.D.

Meditation for the Month.

“After they were come to Mysia, they essayed to go into Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered them not.” (Acts 16:7.)

“WHAT a strange prohibition! These men were going into Bithynia just to do Christ’s work, and the door is shut against them by Christ’s own Spirit. I, too, have experienced this in certain moments. I have sometimes found myself interrupted in what seemed to me a career of usefulness. Opposition came and forced me to go back, or sickness came and compelled me to retire into a desert apart.”

“It was hard at such times to leave my work undone when I believed that work to be the service of the Spirit. But I came to remember that The Spirit has not only a service of work, but a service of waiting. I came to see that in the Kingdom of Christ there are not only times for action, but times in which to forbear acting. I came to learn that the desert place apart is often the most useful spot in the varied life of man—more rich in harvest than the seasons in which the corn and wine abounded. I have been taught to thank the Blessed Spirit that many a darling Bithynia had to be unvisited by me. And so, Thou Divine Spirit would I still be led by Thee. Still there come to me disappointed prospects of usefulness. Today the door seems to open into life and work for Thee: tomorrow it closes before me just as I am about to enter.

“Teach me to see another door in the very inaction of the hour. Help me to find in the very prohibition thus to serve Thee, a new opening into Thy service. Inspire me with the knowledge that a man may at times be called to do his duty by doing nothing, to work by keeping still, to serve by waiting. When I remember the power of the ‘still small Voice,’ I shall not murmur that sometimes the Spirit suffers me not to go.”

George Matheson.

From Dawn in Central Asia.

Notes on Prophecy

By Rev. W. Grist, M.A.,

Vicar of St. Philip and St. James, Ilfracombe.

“The Night is far Spent.”

PROPHECY is history written in advance by God, who knows the end from the beginning. Many Bible prophecies have long since become history, being fulfilled to the very letter, e.g., those concerning the Jews in their dispersion and suffering; those relating to Christ, which foretold His unique birth, His birthplace, His manner of life and death, with such intimacy of detail that the chief feature of His ministry could be constructed from these prophecies of the Old Testament, had we no records of His earthly life.

We may therefore deduce that prophecies concerning events yet future will be as accurately brought to pass. (2 Peter 1:19-21.)

The key to prophecy is in recognizing that God’s purpose for the world is the

Restoration of Ruin

caused by sin. The Bible views the world as fallen from God’s intention, and shows the activity of God moving towards the establishment of those conditions and purposes which man’s attitude to God has frustrated and postponed. The present time of man’s rebellion and exclusion of God, the effect of which is seen in increasing world strife and suffering, is viewed as the world’s night. That night will end in day—the coming time of restoration under the government of God in the personal administration of Christ. This is the day to which prophecy points.

Now is the World’s Night.

Night is the time when evil deeds are abroad. (John 3:19.) In spite of man’s vaunted knowledge, never has the world seen such awful deeds of evil in murder and inhumanity. Speaking of the time before earth’s night ends, the scripture says “evil men shall wax worse and worse.” (2 Tim. 3:13.)

Then delusions are accepted for realities. So the Bible speaks of men having strong delusion, believing a lie. (2 Thess. 2:11.) What a spate of lies now floods the world! In spiritual things too, people seem ready to believe anything, save the truth which is in Christ Jesus.

To the Church this is night in Christ’s absence, and because “the Lord is now rejected and by the world disowned.”

“The Day is at Hand.”

“The day” is the term the Bible uses to describe the time when by the activity of God these conditions which are fitly described as “night,” will be reversed. This is shown to be by new and direct movements of God in relation first to the Church; then to Israel and the nations; and finally in the establishment of a final order of righteousness and peace in a world prepared for the eternal order of God’s unchallenged rule. Each of these movements is separately described as “the day of Christ”; “the day of the Lord” and “the day of God.” Around these terms prophetic teaching gathers. Ensuing notes will seek to clarify the world events which are related to each of these processes.

The Darkest Hour precedes the Dawn.

So as we see the world situation worsening, know that “the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.” In the hearts of His people, the day star of the hope of His coming has already risen. Every wickedness of man of which we are hearing is part of the cumulative evidence that “the night is far spent, the day is at hand.” (Rom. 13:12.)

Know also that, as man is powerless to cause day to supersede night, so no work of man can end the world’s night and bring in the new order of “the day.” Only Christ can make the better world; and that, not by His influence through His people, but by His personal presence and rule.

(To be continued.)

The Prince of Peace.

HE is “the Prince of Peace,” and peace shall crown His work. Sin has brought discord, strife, unrest; and there is no “peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” It is true men by their schemes of political expediency, and their systems of moral reformations, are uttering the devil’s lullaby, “Peace, peace.” But the blurred and blotted page of history, and the universal unrest of the human heart gives the lie to the flattering word. There can be no peace to the soul till it find “joy and peace in believing”; and there can be no peace to the world till “a king shall reign in righteousness.”

V. J. CHARLESWORTH.

There is a day of universal peace and blessedness yet to dawn upon this oppressed and groaning earth. There is a millennium yet to come; a period of universal righteousness and joy, brighter than any that man’s hopes have pictured, brighter than any that even Christians themselves have anticipated; a period in which men shall indeed, “beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks”; in which “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more”; but when “the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together”; when “they shall not hurt nor destroy in all God’s holy mountain.”

W. TROTTER.

The White Rose.

A GENERATION or two ago there lived in our land a Duke who was known to be a sincere Christian, of whom the following helpful and touching tale is told.

It appears that the Duke’s head gardener was a man of like faith as his master, and it was noticed that in his walks through the park and gardens which surrounded his castle, the Duke would often pause for a chat with his gardener, when doubtless those spiritual subjects in which they were both interested would be touched upon.

Now it happened that the gardener had an only daughter who was the joy of his heart, and the light of his home. Great was his grief, therefore, when it pleased God to take her, leaving her father well-nigh broken-hearted. Apparently also he felt a grievance against God, for the Duke noticed that whenever he appeared on the scene his servant disappeared into the shrubbery, and their talks became a thing of the past.

So the Duke set a little trap in order to bring this stricken soul back to the One whose dealings with His Own are ever fraught with blessing.

It happened that an entertainment was to be given at the Castle, and as the gardens would be visited by the guests, the head gardener, in order to make his flower-beds look their very best, went round and marked those flowers which were on no account to be picked beforehand, especially singling out a large white rose, the pride of the garden, which grew close against the Castle itself.

However, on making his final inspection on the morning of the show he found to his vexation that someone had picked this special bloom. On looking round he saw a housemaid cleaning one of the windows, and angrily asked her who had plucked the white rose. “I don’t know,” she replied, “but I think that the master took it.”

Just then the Duke, who was evidently lying in wait, looked out of his study window. “What is the matter?” he inquired. “Someone has picked the white rose, sir, which I’d specially marked as not to be touched,” was the irate answer.

“Oh, is that all?” said the Duke. “Why, I picked the rose. I suppose I’d the right to pick it, seeing that, as I’m master here, it belonged to me. I’m enjoying the fragrance and beauty of that rose in my study now.” The gardener was silenced, he had nothing more to say, the reasoning was unanswerable.

Then the Duke utilized the opportunity he had thus made to bring this wounded one back to that Friend who ever waits to bless. “My friend,” said he very gently, “you had a white rose also, but it has pleased the Master to take your rose. He had the right to, hadn’t He? She was His, and He’s enjoying the fragrance of His rose in Heaven now. He’d the right to take her, hadn’t He?”

The poor gardener was silent, the sunshine of the Divine love was shining through the dark clouds of sorrow which had hitherto blotted it out, his wound was healed.

And today, it is said, you will find in a quiet corner of the Castle grounds a small tombstone on which are engraved these words: “To the Memory of the White Rose which the Master took.”

With acknowledgments to Living Links.

The Greatest of Miracles.

ON the right bank of the Gave de Pau, in the south-west part of France, stands a little town of about six thousand inhabitants. It lies at the foot of a mountain whose summit is crowned with the ruins of an ancient castle, from which is seen the whole valley through which the river winds and, in the background of the picture, the imposing mass of the Pyrenees.

But not to view the ruins of the castle do the multitudes come that are brought by numerous trains into the little town of Lourdes. It is towards a grotto formed by a fissure in the rock and situated on the edge of the river, that the pilgrims bend their steps soon after their arrival. At the side of this grotto, which is surrounded by an iron railing, there stands on a projecting rock, a statue of the Virgin. Below the rock there is growing a miraculous rose-bush. The statue is draped in a white gown with a blue sash. Within the grotto are seen, hanging against the rocky walls, hands, arms and feet, all formed in wax, and along with these a number of crutches.

On the left of this grotto there rises a spring, the water of which is drawn from taps fixed in a wall built in front of the spring. Beside the cave is a picture of the apparition. But what apparition? Why, that which explains the arrival, in the summer-time, of trains crowded with sick and infirm folk accompanied by their friends, as well as many sound tourists who, attracted by curiosity, are wishing to see the place of the apparition and the cures wrought by the Virgin by means of the sacred waters of Lourdes.

This vision occurred in 1858, and was witnessed by a little peasant girl of thirteen years of age, named Bernadette. The maiden declared that the Virgin had appeared to her as many as eighteen times at the mouth of the grotto. She had been clothed in white with a blue sash over her robe, and directed that a sanctuary should be built for her at this spot which might be used as a place of prayer by the faithful.

Accordingly, a church has been built over the grotto having the miraculous rose-bush. Moreover, a branch of the railway has been added in order to bring to the spot pilgrims wishing to come hither to pray and to seek for healing. A building has also been put up on purpose for bottling the waters of the spring, and sending them in all directions. For the clergy of the district have decided that little Bernadette was really privileged to receive visits from the Virgin Mary in person, and that, consequently, her orders were to be punctually carried out. The question was brought before the Bishop of Tarbes, who, having weighed it, so he said, “in the balances of the sanctuary,” pronounced in favor of the authenticity of the miracle.

We are not able now to ask little Bernadette to give us the reasons that led her to relate these prodigies, for she was induced to enter a convent, and there she died. Neither must we ask the bishops and priests of those parts why, when they want to cure their own maladies, they choose rather the waters of Vichy or of Bagneres than that of the sacred well of Lourdes. But, without asking anything of them, they will tell us that great and prodigious miracles are still worked almost daily upon the sick and infirm who come to drink of the holy spring and to bow down before the white-robed statue with its sash of blue.

It happened on a summer day, some years ago, that one of the great pilgrimages, on the eve of going away, had gathered before the grotto for a last act of worship. The priests who were in the crowd, were making an appeal to all who had been miraculously cured to give their testimony about it. They cried out: “Is there no cripple here who is leaving his crutches behind because he can now walk? Will no blind man be ready to tell us how the Holy Virgin has restored him his sight? Ah, listen friends, there is someone who is going to speak!”

And so, indeed, a young man with a beaming face had climbed up quickly on to the railing of the enclosure. “Friends,” he cried, “a miracle has indeed been worked upon me, and I rejoice to be able to tell you about it. This miracle is still more wonderful than those the reverend father here has been recounting. Friends, it is true that I was blind but that now I see: true too that I was deaf and now I hear; but it is no less true also that once I was dead and now live, and shall live forever. ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ I was dead, dead in my trespasses and sins; but I have looked to Jesus, believing that He died for my sins on the cross. And He has kept His holy promise, for when I came to Him, He gave me eternal life—life that I can never lose. He has saved me and healed me!”

Upon this, the priests lifted up their voices in noisy objection, calling out: “Pull him down; he’s a protestant, a heretic!”— and the man who had been brought out of death into life, was quickly dragged down from the railing and hooted by the furious crowd of pilgrims. They were quite willing that the Virgin Mary should give back to the cripples the use of their limbs but not that the God of love and of power should quicken the soul of the one whom His Son had saved by His death.

But dear friends, this great miracle of giving life to the soul by Christ exalted to the right hand of God, is being wrought on all sides around you. Every day the dead are being awakened, the blind are receiving sight, the lame walk; and the hand now writing for you this true story of the miracle of Lourdes, is moved by the power of the Spirit of God Who, in all that believe, works the willing and the doing of God’s good pleasure. Yes, there is working in each one of us, a spirit; either the Spirit of God which is guiding each one of His children, or else that other spirit which worketh in the children of disobedience.

“You talk about the Bible,” said one, jeering at our friend of Lourdes, “but you cannot yourself explain what it says. It is full of words without sense. Come, for instance— ‘the natural man’ and ‘the spiritual man.’ You can’t, I am sure, tell us what that means. What is a natural man and what is a spiritual man. Answer me!”

“The answer is easy,” said the young man. “You are the natural man and I am the spiritual man. You can only see with the eyes of nature, and can only understand with natural intelligence. Thus was it once with me until the Spirit, Who is God, gave me sight and understanding; but from that time I see and know that Jesus is my Saviour.”

May it please God, in His infinite love, to perform this miracle of miracles in some one of the dead ones who may happen to read these lines; and may he arise and give witness alike of the sovereign power, and faithfulness, and truth of God. Has not Christ said: “This is the will of Him that sent Me: that everyone that seeth the Son and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day”? Are these words true? Go then unto Him and you shall know, and a fresh miracle will prove that the river of everlasting life is still springing from· the once stricken Rock, from Him Who is the source of the waters of life.

“Let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” (Rev. 22:17.)

(From the French of F.B.)

A Warning and a Call.

By Rev. H. R. Gough, M.A.

These extracts are taken from a pamphlet entitled “Is it War or Peace?” which is gaining a wide reception. Its writer clearly points out where the danger lies for our country, and the way to avoid it—ED. Living Links.

DURING these months of Crisis there have been many calls to Prayer. There is, however, another call for which many have been waiting, but it has never come, and that is the Call to Repentance.

In my own mind the question which has been nagging at me during these last critical months is: “Do we as a nation really deserve peace?” History, both Biblical and secular, seems to teach that Peace is a blessing bestowed upon a nation as a reward for godliness and uprightness of character. For those who know anything about the moral and spiritual condition of our country today.

The outlook is indeed alarming.

The vast majority of our people never attend any place of worship. (Indeed, in a recent survey of the population of London it has been estimated that 90-95 per cent of the people of London are non-church-goers). It is not surprising that this lack of worship is accompanied by a very serious lowering of moral standards. Large numbers of our people have no sense of sin at all; they may not be actually immoral themselves, but they have no morals. Conscience has become so dulled by continual disobedience to its promptings that there is no longer a sense of right and wrong it may be argued that we are no more sinful than previous generations but, whilst that is a very debatable point, the real danger lies in the fact that we seem to be no longer ashamed of our sins. When a people come to that point disaster is close at hand.

Britain is rapidly degenerating,

not only into a pagan country but also into a wicked one. Conditions do not seem to be very much better than they were in the eighteenth century, when the people of every-class had sunk deep into the pit of licentiousness. It was the Revival associated with the name of John Wesley that saved that generation. The message of that Revival was one of Repentance. It is the message needed today. When will our leaders in Church and State face up to these things and arrange not merely a day of Prayer but a day of National Repentance? We are all crying for peace, but God cannot bless a people who deliberately flout His laws and ignore His love. The Prophet Isaiah on more than one occasion warns His people: “There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.”

The nineteenth century was a remarkable era of prosperity and advance in every direction. This fact was undoubtedly due to the Evangelical Revival. Men were putting into practice the teachings of Christ.

Men were putting God first

and seeking His Kingdom and His Righteousness, and so received the fulfillment of the promise, “all these things shall be added unto you.” But by the end of the century there were signs of spiritual and moral decline, and immediately God graciously began to send warnings. The new century opened while the South African War was being fought. Since then disaster after disaster has followed. There is no space to enumerate them here, but it is clear to any thinking person that through these events God has been seeking to call our people back to Himself. He has seen fit to withdraw His protecting Hand from over us on occasions and to allow the messenger of death to visit us. Such occasions have been

Warnings of greater disaster to follow

if we persist in our wicked ways. It is not so much a question of God forsaking us but of our forsaking God. If we refuse to allow the rule of God over us and prefer our own ways, thinking in the pride of our hearts that we know better than God, we must take the consequences. “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Prov. 14:12).

During the last war it cost four years and more of bloodshed and indescribable agony before we learned the lesson. For it was not until 1918 that a National Day of Prayer and Repentance was observed. As soon as that was held the tide began to turn, and in a few months the war was over.

Is it War or Peace? The answer depends upon man’s attitude, towards God. It depends, therefore, partly upon your attitude and mine.

With acknowledgements to Living Links.

The Secret of Christian Victory.

W. H. GRIFFITH THOMAS once told the story of a poor negro who was a helpless slave to drink. He tried to help him, but he could not get rid of his drunkenness until he was saved. When he was converted there was a wonderful change, and someone said, “So you have got the mastery of the Devil at last?” “No,” said he, “but I have got the Master of the Devil.”

Since Satan is a supernatural being, it takes a supernatural power to overwhelm him. Christ is that power. He is the hope of victory.

The Unknown Tinker.

THE weather forecast on that particular Friday night proved to be correct, for Saturday was a cold, dry November day with every indication of a keen frost at night. The hills in the distance, partially covered with snow, stood majestically out, as a row of battlements covering the three small villages in the valley. A great calm seemed to pervade the whole countryside that afternoon, impressing the mind with the fact that most of our little feathered friends had gone to warmer climes while our old friends of the meadow were in their warmer quarters.

“Our Friend,” as the Tinkers called him, was standing admiring the beautiful scene before him, reflecting how the countryside possessed a peculiar charm in the winter, entirely different from the other seasons. How beautiful was God’s handiwork, he thought; yes, everything that was beautiful was of God, and all ugliness, cruelty and perverseness seemed to pertain to man. His afternoon work was almost finished, for he had only one farm to visit before going home; so setting forward he made towards the Healthy Burn to cross to the farm. As he drew near the stepping stones he saw a man standing who proved to be a tinker. He was tall and very powerfully built (the typical Scotch tinker), while his black curly hair and brown tanned features gave him the appearance of a Highland chief. Our Friend was medium in height, and as he gazed at the powerful man before him and remembered that it was a quiet country road, he began to have a queer sensation (somewhere about the stomach). Gathering together all his courage he strode forward towards the tinker, and offering him a Gospel tract said, “Would you please accept a Gospel tract?” “Certainly,” answered the tinker. “Are you a Christian?” asked Our Friend. The big fellow looked up from the tract he was gazing at and placing his hand on Our Friend’s shoulder he said, “Twelve years ago, in the village of Anstruther, I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my Saviour.” Continuing, he said, “Traveling through the country it is very difficult to find ground to pitch my tent, but do you know, Sir, God has always provided me with that little bit of ground for my tent. He has never failed me.” Our Friend grasped his hand and rejoiced he had met a brother even though a tinker. His other hand went to his pocket to find a coin, but no! he could not give; he felt that it would be an insult to this man and to his faith to offer him such help. Just then two Christian friends came along the road, and introducing his brother the tinker, he left the three of them on the banks of the Healthy Burn. He crossed the stepping stones and for a moment looked at the tinker’s home. A few branches from some tree bent to form a half circle, with a piece of cotton stretched over making a covering, while a little gap in the top was left to let the smoke escape from the fire.

Making his way up the farm road he met the tinker’s wife coming home from the farm with a child on her back (the tinker fashion), another at her side, while a huge bundle of straw was under her arm. Giving her a tract, and slipping a coin into her hand, he made for the farm and then home.

Two truths were impressed on Our Friend’s heart that afternoon with a lasting impression. First, God is no respecter of persons, for was not His grace manifested in this tinker, who could say, “He is mine”? And secondly, contentment and peace do not lie in the possessing much of this world’s goods, but in knowing God as a Father Who cares for His children.

A little cotton tent for a home, straw for a bed, water from the burn and bread from the casual employment, yet this “Unknown Tinker” (for I never asked his name) could say from his heart, “He has never failed me.” Are not our hearts reminded of another who was acquainted with traveling, who took a stone and called the name of it Ebenezer, saving, “Hitherto has the Lord helped us”?

“We may live in a tent or a cottage,

Or die in seclusion unknown,

But the Saviour Who seeth in secret,

Remembers each one of His Own.”

Defenseless.

WHEN words and acts, untrue, unkind,

Against thy life like arrows fly,

Receive them with a patient mind,

Seek no redress, make no reply.

O holy silence! ‘tis a shield

More strong than warrior’s twisted mail:

A hidden strength, a might concealed,

Which worldly shafts in vain assail.

He who is silent in his cause

Has left that cause to heavenly arms;

And heaven’s eternal aid and laws

Are swift to shield from threatened harms.

HELEN HARRIS.

“In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.”— Psalms 56:11.

Resurrection Life.

NO legend of the far away

Whispered through ages dim;

Clear shines the sun of Easter day

Where’er we meet with Him.

Not by the silent grave alone,

But in the busy street,

We hear His tread upon the stone,

We trace those wounded feet.

Earth’s shadows pass like falling leaves:

Here is eternal Spring!

Or is it Harvest, where the sheaves

Stand golden for the King?

O Lord of Easter, on our work,

Our sorrow, or our pain;

But lay Thy hand, and through the murk,

Sunlight shall break again.

To know Thee present in our need

Is heaven here below;

Lord Jesus, by Thy life we plead,

On us Thy life bestow.

Let death, forgotten in the grave,

Die by the nails and spear;

And by Thy resurrection save

Thine own from death and fear.

Howard T. N. Ussher.

How to Face Death Fearlessly

Captain E. Carre, Ed. Living Links.

WE are all bound, at times, to be moved to serious reflection as to what death—the door through which our soul is ushered into the Great Beyond—means to us. But in times such as these the urge to consider its proximity and possibilities is imperative and inexcusable.

I make no excuse, therefore, for this brief discussion with men like yourselves who may suddenly be called to meet it face to face.

There is no need for me to dwell upon its proximity—for you will already have been closely pondering that point—what I would focus your attention upon is the possibilities it holds for each of us.

In doing so I say a word first of all to any unsaved among my readers who, like the many of the careless and thoughtless around him, says, and means it,

“I’m not afraid to die!”

Of you I would ask: “Have you ever considered the possibilities which lie before you when death calls you hence, or your solemn responsibility in regard to them? For I can picture exactly what that dark door conjures up before your mind if you will but contemplate it with me, having been in precisely the condition and position from which you view it as you read this message.

To me in those unconverted days “the gates of death” held only the darkness of ignorance, of despair, of doom, How cordially at that period did I hate the thought of dying, even as you must, seeing that you will be leaving and losing all that you hold dear, and will be thrust into another sphere wherein you have no expectations, no hopes, and no possessions, nothing but the dread of the unknown.

“The dread!” because “the sting of death is sin” your conscience forewarns you of your guilt in the sight of a just and holy God, and consequently of your eternal peril, when He touches your soul with such warnings as these: “It is given unto man once to die, but after this the judgment!” Therefore,

“Prepare to meet thy God!”

But death holds an altogether opposite aspect to me now, as it does to every one of my readers who, through a simple, personal, God-given faith in the Saviour’s death for their sins on the Cross, can say with Paul: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain!” I vividly recall the impression that the experience of a friend, whose ship had been suddenly cut down and sunk one night in a collision, made upon me when he said: “When I got out on deck, and saw her going down by the head, an overwhelming feeling of joy filled my soul as I thought that in a few moments I might see my Lord!” Need I add that his feelings did not impede, but rather energized him in doing his utmost for his ship and shipmates in that emergency.

In the late war, a picture was published depicting a bluejacket on duty at his station out on deck in a howling gale of wind, and by his side, mid the spume and spray,

there stood the figure of an angel,

unseen and unrecognized by the lonely watcher.

Surely this is a perfect illustration of the spiritual reality of which a Christian voyager of long ago tells us, as he told his despairing shipmates at the time: “There stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, saying, ‘Fear not!’” Why not take Him as your Saviour, Captain, and Friend, now, my reader? Then, and then only, can you look the King of Terrors with fearless confidence in the face.

And the only way into this new and spiritual life is open to you through Him Who still pleads with you and with all men: “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls!” (Matt. 11:28, 29).

Can You Say This?

THERE is a time hastening on, when all the years I have lived will seem to gather themselves up and die together; when sun, moon, and stars shall all set at once, to rise no more. When the pulse that has often beat languidly shall give its very last beat, the silver cord shall be loosed, and the golden bowl be broken; when the most familiar scenes shall recede, and the faces of friends shall be darkened, and the loudest sounds shall sink to a murmur, and then the soul will be away TO WHAT? TO WHOM?

Ah, to whom but to Him Who has said: “I will never leave you, I will never forsake you”? With Him if we live, with Him we shall die, and to Him in His fuller presence ascend; for “when flesh and heart fail, God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

ALEX. RALEIGH.

"The Harvest is Past."

A FEW years ago I went to close a meeting, and said, “Are there any here who would like to have me remember them in prayer? I would like to have them rise!” And there was a man who rose, and when I saw him stand up, my heart leaped in me for joy. I had been anxious for him for a long time. I went to him as soon as the meeting was over, and took him by the hand, and said, “You are coming out for God, are you not?” He said, “I want to, and have made up my mind to be a Christian; only there is one thing standing in my way.” “What is that?” I asked.

“Well,” he replied, “I lack moral courage.” Naming a friend of his, he added, “If he had been here tonight I should not have risen; I am afraid when he hears I have risen for prayer he will begin to laugh at me, and I won’t have moral courage to stand up for Christ.”

I said, “If Christ is what He is represented in the Bible, He is worth standing up for; and if Heaven is what we are told it is in the Bible, it is worth living for.”

The man was trembling from head to foot, I thought he was just at the very threshold of Heaven.

Night after night he came, and the Spirit strove with him; but just one thing kept him back―he lacked moral courage.

At last the Spirit of God, which had striven so mightily with him, seemed to leave him, and there were no more strivings. He left off coming to church, was off among his old companions, and would not meet me in the street; he was ashamed to do so. About six months afterward I got a message from him, and found him on what he thought was his dying bed. He wanted to know if there was hope for him at the eleventh hour. I tried to tell him that there was hope for any man who would accept Christ. I prayed for him, and day after day I visited him.

Contrary to all expectations, he began to recover; and when he was convalescent, finding him one day sitting in front of his house, I sat by his side, and said, “You will soon be well enough to come up to the church, and when you are, you will come up; and you are just going to confess Christ boldly, are you not?”

“Well,” said he, “I promised God when I was on what I thought to be my dying bed I would serve Him, and I made up my mind to be a Christian; but I am not going to be one just now. Next spring I am going over to Lake Michigan, and I am going to buy a farm and settle down, and then I am going to be a Christian.”

I said, “How dare you talk that way! How do you know that you are going to live till next spring? Have you a lease of your life?”

“I was never better than I am now; I am a little weak, but I will soon have my strength. I have a fresh lease of my life, and will be well for a good many years yet,” he answered.

I said, “It seems to me you are tempting God;” and I pleaded with him to come out boldly. “No,” he said; the fact is, I have not the courage to face my old companions, and I cannot serve God in Chicago.”

I said, “If God has not grace enough to keep you in Chicago, He has not in Michigan.” I urged him then and there to surrender his soul and body to the Lord Jesus; but the more I urged him the more irritated he got, till at last he said, “Well, you need not trouble yourself any more about my soul; I will attend to that. If I am lost, it will be my own fault. I will take the risk.”

I left him, and in about a week I got a message from his wife. Going to the house, I met her at the door weeping. I said, “What is the trouble?”

“Oh, sir! I have just had a council of physicians here, and they have all given my husband up to die,” she said. I said, “Does he want to see me?”

She replied, “No.”

“Why did you send?”

“Why,” she said, “I cannot bear to see him die in this terrible state of mind.”

“What is his state of mind?”

“Why, he says that his damnation is sealed, and he will be in Hell in a little while.”

I went into the room, but he turned his head away. I said, “How is it with you?” Not a word; he was as silent as death. I spoke the second time, but he made no response. I looked him in the face, and called him by name, and said, “Will you not tell me how it is with you?”

He turned, and fixed that awful deathly look upon me, and, pointing to the stove, he said, “My heart is as hard as the iron in that stove; it is too late, my damnation is sealed, and I shall be in Hell in a little while.”

I said, “Don’t talk so; you can be saved now if you will.” He replied, “Don’t mock me; I know better.”

I talked with him, and quoted promise after promise, but he said not one was for him. “Christ has come knocking at the door of my heart many a time, and now I have to perish without Him.”

I talked, but I saw I was doing no good, and so I threw myself down on my knees. He said, “You can pray for my wife and children, you need not pray for me; it is a waste of your time, it is too late.” I tried to pray, but it seemed as if what he said was true—it seemed as if the heavens were brass over me. I rose and took his hand, and it seemed to me as if I were bidding farewell to a friend that I was never to see again in time or eternity.

He lingered till the sun went down. His wife told me that his end was terrible. All that he was heard to say were these fearful words— “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and I am not saved.” There he lay, and every little while he would take up the awful lamentation— “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and I am not saved.”

And just as the sun was sinking behind those western prairies, he was going into the arms of death. As he was expiring, his wife noticed that his lips were quivering, he way trying to say something, and she reached over her ear, and all she could hear was: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and I am not saved,” and the angels bore him to the judgment.

He lived a Christless life, he died a Christless death, we wrapped him in a Christless shroud, nailed him in a Christless coffin and bore him to a Christless grave. Oh, how dark! oh, how sad! I may be speaking to someone today, and the harvest may be passing with you, the summer may be ending. Oh, be wise now, and accept the Lord Jesus Christ!

D. L. Moody.

The Approaching Crisis.

THE day of God’s long-suffering is rapidly drawing to a close, and the day of wrath is at hand. The wheels of divine government are moving onward with a rapidity truly soul-subduing; human affairs are working to a point. There is an awful crisis approaching; precious souls are rushing forward along the surface of the stream of Time into the boundless ocean of Eternity. In a word, “the end of all things is at hand” (1 Peter 4. 7). The days are at hand, and the effect of every vision.” Now, seeing these things are so, let us ask each other: How are we affected thereby? What are we doing in the midst of the scene which surrounds us? How are we discharging our fourfold responsibility to the Lord, to the Church, to perishing sinners, to our own souls?

C. H. MACKINTOSH.

Tried. Tested. Proved.

THE Bible has been tried, tested, and proved by both foes and friends. By foes its genuineness has been suspected, its historicity assailed, its veracity impugned, its right to exist challenged, and its liberty to speak curtailed. By friends, too, the Bible has been tried. For thirty centuries, counting from the days of Moses, men and women in all ranks of society have put it to the proof and never found it to fail; have followed its precepts, trusted its promises, accepted its consolations, lived upon its hopes, and have been strengthened for duty, fortified against temptation, upheld in adversity, comforted in sorrow, supported in death, and sent away into the unseen world with the assurance of a glorious resurrection and a blessed immortality.

Thomas Whitelaw.

Notes on Prophecy.

By Rev. W. Grist, M.A.

Vicar of St. Philip and St. James, Ilfracombe.

(Continued)

IN our last issue we noted that the Bible viewed the present age under the figure of “night” (Rom. 13:12)— the time when evil deeds are abroad—when illusions abound. Following the same metaphor this word declares, “the night is far spent, the day is at hand.” World conditions are to undergo as complete a reversal as is represented by the change from night to day. Only one thing will cause night to fold its dark wings, and gentle dawn to break, and that is the rising of the sun. So the Book tells us that Christ, “the Sun of Righteousness, will arise with healing in His wings”; and the personal return to this world of Christ is the one event which alone will terminate the era of man’s misrule, with its accompaniments of war, poverty and injustice; and usher in the reign of peace, righteousness and truth which is the declared purpose of God for this world. This is no new-fangled belief, born of the stress of the times. Every time we recite our creed, we assert our confidence that

“He shall come again.”

Whenever we gather at the Lord’s Table, it is to “show forth the Lord’s death till He come” (1 Cor. 11:26). In the Te Deum we sing “We believe that Thou shalt come.” Let us note also how the New Testament refers to a personal return of Christ no less than 318 times, its references to this great subject far outnumbering its statements on the sacraments. Our Lord, in parable and in direct promise, plainly declared He would come again; His last message to mankind, sent from heaven on Ascension morning being couched in such accurate, careful terms that none could explain away their meaning as referring to other than a personal, real, visible return— “this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11.)

The subject of our Lord’s Return is seen more clearly when we note that the Scriptures teach that there are

Two Aspects of that Coming.

There is first His coming “to receive you unto Myself” where our Lord is directly addressing His followers— (John 14:3). Then He will gather out of the world all those, who trusting in Him as a personal Saviour, are “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), and “children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:26).

This is Christ’s Coming FOR HIS CHURCH. It is described in 1 Thessalonians 4. This is the next event in God’s dealings with mankind. It may take place at any moment. It will involve both “those who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord” and also “them that sleep in Jesus,” who will then partake of the “first resurrection” (Rev. 20:6). By this event the whole Church of Christ will be completed and He will then see the fruits of Calvary in that Church which there “He purchased with His Own blood.” This glad time—when those who are Christ’s, will see Him and be like Him (1 John 3:2), when we shall meet those we love who have died trusting in Him and in Him alone—this is called “the Day of Christ.” Its events will form a future article in our magazine.

This coming of Christ to take His people out of the world will be followed by a time of awful trouble called by Christ, “the great tribulation” (Matt. 24:29). Some of the descriptions given in the Bible of this time can already be seen in the world today—in lying, hate and cruelty of Satanic origin; in Jewish persecution; in war on a vast scale; in dictatorship. Truly “coming events cast their shadows before them.” That time of unparalleled trouble will terminate only by the Coming of Christ WITH HIS PEOPLE to the Messiah of Israel, and King of all the World. Then and only then will the Kingdom be established under the administration of Christ, God’s appointed Ruler, and peace, truth and righteousness flourish in the earth. Doomed to a new disappointment are those today, who like their predecessors of the last war, expect a world fit for heroes. The Bible indicates that the conclusion of this age will be marked by accelerating world disorder till Christ comes to rule. No man, or political system can achieve a world order of peace and truth. The times in which we live are an enforcement of this Bible teaching. That time of Christ’s personal administration is called “the day of the Lord,” on which I hope to pen further Scripture teaching. The world’s only hope lies in the coming of that Day.

Why this is not believed.

Because it is humbling to man’s pride—that man with all his knowledge and power should be incapable of establishing right and peace, and have to witness the intervention of Christ to achieve this—that is too humbling to be accepted, and we are always slow to accept that which humbles us.

Because this doctrine is abhorrent to Satan “the god of this world,” involving as it does his overthrow by Christ (Rev. 20:1), and Satan has power to influence human thought using in his cleverness the guise of even noble things of vaunted knowledge so that “men believe a lie” (2 Thess. 2:11) such as that human progress of man in his fallen rebellious state can establish truth and right in the world.

(To be continued)

Christ's Atonement All the Way.

“IN the Cantilever bridge over Niagara River, as a train comes upon it every strength and power of the bridge is under the train according to the pressure, and just as the support alters with the movement of the train, so as we are going along through the journey of life, underneath us is the propitiation, it moves with us and goes with us, and we never get beyond it or beyond our need of it.”

J. GRIFFITH THOMAS.

Lay Down Thy Cares.

CARE comes from many sources. Our daily food, our dear ones, our worldly prospects, our Christian work, our pathway in life, our growth in the Divine Life—all these contribute their quota to the total sum. Let us take them all, and lay them down at Jesu’s feet, and leave them there; and then live looking to Him to do in us, with us, through us, for us, just as He will. And as we give Him our cares, He will give us His peace.

F. B. MEYER

Peace, Be Still!

IT was not so just now. I turned aside

With aching head, and heart most sorely bowed;

Around me cares and griefs in crushing crowd,

While icily on the sense, a swelling tide,

Of weakness, insufficiency, and sin,

And fear, and gloom, and doubt in mighty flood rolled in.

That rushing flood I had no strength to meet,

Nor power to flee; my present, future, past,

Myself, my sorrow, and my sin I cast

In utter helplessness at Jesu’s feet;

Then bent me to the storm, if such His will.

He saw the winds and waves, and whispered,

“Peace, be still!”

"Even Our Faith."

(1 John 5:4)

BECAUSE you cannot see His glorious face,

Bent over you in tenderness and grace,

Nor hear His voice, nor feel His presence near—

Because you seem alone, O do not fear!

It does not mean that He is far away.

Beyond the reach of human lives today:

It does not mean that He forgets your prayer.

Or will not answer, or has ceased to care.

Has He not promised? And He must be true!

It only means that He is teaching you—

With hands so helpless and with eyes so dim—

That faith is more than sight or touch to Him.

In silence, in the darkness come and kneel

Before the Lord! And do not seek to feel.

Rest on His changeless word: and calm your fear!

He is the same! Believe that He is here!

Edith Hickman Divall.

(By courtesy of Messrs. Pickering & Inglis.)

"But God."

By Jennie B. Logan.

WHEN my husband and I took over the Egypt General Mission Headquarters in London in the autumn of 1915, things were far from easy. Never shall I forget my first attempts at housekeeping in London—the difficulty of getting help; the large, rambling, partially furnished house; the feeling of insecurity on account of the raids. Truly we were cast upon God, and we proved His power in a wonderful way as days went by.

Some kind friend, guided no doubt by the Holy Spirit, sent us a beautiful picture at that time. It was a painting of dark, threatening, stormy clouds, and above them a lovely clear sunset sky, and on the clear sky the words “BUT GOD” stood out distinctly. Many a time the sight of that picture message brought cheer and steadiness to our hearts. The dark clouds were there, but God would not fail us, and He was above all and over all and our confidence was in Him. I have been thinking how the dark clouds of today may also have “But God” written over them. Take the great dark cloud of sin and the fierce storm cloud of wrath. “You were dead in sins,” God’s Word says, “and were by nature the children of wrath. But God” (Eph. 2:1-8). Then comes the clear shining of His love to us even when we were dead in sins, His glorious provision of resurrection life or eternal life for us in Christ; the new position He gives us in Christ Jesus, the riches of His grace and of His kindness towards us. “By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” Sin is dark and terrible, and the day of judgment is coming. But God has made provision. His dear Son has died for the sins of the whole world, and “there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).

Another cloud we may have to meet is the black cloud of bereavement. Have you noticed how Israel put “But God” over this cloud? He said to Joseph, “Behold I die: but God shall be with you.” What a comfort to the patriarch leaving his family, to know that God would in a special way be with this son Joseph, and that God’s purposes would not be frustrated in him. What a comfort, too, to Joseph to realize that his father’s God would be his God and would be with him all the days of his life, and that He would bring him unto the land of his fathers (Gen. 48:21).

We may have to meet the cloud of physical weakness, too—failing strength. “My flesh and my heart faileth,’’ cried the Psalmist, “but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” How blessed are those who, when earthly strength fails, learn to lay hold of divine strength. “Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall; but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength” (Isa. 40:30, 31). Our own strength decreasing but His life manifested in quickening power in our mortal bodies. “He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee; for My strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me ... . When I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Cor. 12:9,10).

Another cloud that may trouble us is the sense of our own insufficiency, our lack of wisdom, our lowliness, our nothingness. Over this cloud, too, the Bible writes “But God.” “Not many wise... not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are 1nighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are: that no flesh should glory in his presence” (1 Cor. 1:26-29).

Let us never hold back from any call of God because we feel that we are insufficient. “Our sufficiency is of GOD” (2 Cor. 3:5). It is through those who are weak, and nothing in themselves, that He can send “rivers of living water,” and that He can still the enemy and the avenger. So whatever clouds the future may have in store for us, let us in triumphant faith write “BUT GOD” above them all, and we shall prove His power and His faithfulness in every step of the untried way.

"Can't God Take Care of Us?"

A MAN enlisted in the U.S. Civil War, leaving his wife and two children, the wife not in good health. One cold November day, during the first year of the War, she heard that he had been killed in battle. As she looked at her two fatherless children she was in great sorrow. The landlord came for his rent and she told him her trouble, saying that she would not be able to pay her rent so regularly as before as she had only her needle. Sewing-machines were just coming in, and as she could not buy one she stood a very poor chance. The heartless wretch said he would turn her out if she did not pay the rent regularly.

After he went away, the mother began to weep. Her little girl, not quite three years old, came up to her and said, “Mamma, is not God very rich?” “Yes, my child,” she answered. “Can’t God take care of us?” “Yes!” “Then what makes you cry? Mayn’t I go and ask Him?” “Yes, if you like.”

The little one knelt at her cot, where she usually knelt, and said, “Oh Lord, You have taken away my dear papa, and the landlord says he will turn us out of doors, and mamma has no money. Won’t You please lend us a little house to live in?” Then she came back to her mother and said, “Jesus will take care of us, I know He will for I have asked Him!”

That was nearly forty years ago and that mother never paid any rent from that day. A little cottage was provided for her and her children where she lived rent free, and when the Chicago fire burnt it down another little house was put up for her where she remained as long as she lived.

This had a glorious sequel. A few weeks after the above occurrence, I was going to the army. The mother and her two children came to bring me a few pennies, all they had, the widow’s mites. At first I thought I would not take the money, but I saw that God had prompted them. They wanted me to take it down to the army, buy a Bible, and give it to a soldier, and tell the soldier who got it that the children who gave it were going to pray for him as they used to pray for their father. They wanted some soldier to pray for. God bless such children!

I bought two Bibles and one night I was preaching to the soldiers, and when I had finished I told them the story of these Bibles. Holding up one of them I said: “If there is a man here who is not a Christian, who has the moral courage to rise and take this Bible, and have the prayers of these two fatherless children to follow him through the war, let him step forward!”

To my surprise sixteen men sprang to their feet, and came forward, and knelt around me: it seemed as if heaven and earth had come together. The prayers of those little children had followed the Bibles.

D. L. MOODY.

The World's Bible.

IN one of the last conversations I had with D. L. Moody in his own home in that beautiful Connecticut valley, he and I had been talking at length about the place of the Bible in national life, and of its vital importance. And suddenly looking at me, he said, in that sharp, crisp manner, shooting out the words almost like pistol shots, “Oh, yes, the nation needs the Bible; but take it from me, the Christian man is the world’s Bible, and in many cases a revised version is necessary.”

The victories of the missionaries of the Cross in the world have not been won merely by the circulation of the Scriptures, but by the missionaries’ lives themselves. The truth has been incarnate in life.

DR. G. CAMPBELL MORGAN,

Notes on Prophecy.

BY THE REV. W. GRIST, M.A.,

Vicar of St. Philip and St. James, Ilfracombe. (Continued)

Whither the World?

THE present times are both sinister and significant—sinister in that we see an activity of Satan working through human instruments, expressing his unmasked qualities of lying, murder and hate. Significant are these times in that they bear closest parallel with the conditions described by Christ and the Bible, as marking the days of the end of the present age of man’s misrule and neglect of God, prior to God’s intervention in the new order, the world government by the Lord Jesus Christ in His personal administration.

To understand the present times, mark that the world as it now is, is not the world of God’s original creation, but a fallen world, ruined by man’s introduction of sin. As though a province of our Empire had rebelled against the Crown, so is this world a rebellious province of the Kingdom of Heaven. The King’s writ does not run, evidenced in that His Word is denied, and His day dishonored. His laws too are broken. The movement of God overruling this rebellion of man is to restore this world to His obedience, and hence to peace and blessing. This it is His revealed purpose to do in the Divine Man, Christ Jesus, the world’s rightful Prince, whose place has been usurped in the allegiance of men by the false prince Satan, “the god of the world.”

Before that rule of Christ is established, the world is to witness the logical consequences of its rebellious attitude to God, and this will be seen in an intensification of those marks which our Lord indicated would characterize the age of His absence— “wars and rumors of wars—nation rising against nation, famines, pestilences, earthquakes; all these are the beginning of sorrows” (Matt. 24:4-8). This time, so characterized, would lead to a period which Christ calls “the tribulation of those days,” and it is “immediately after” this that “they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 24:29-30). Then will be world peace, and truth and justice shall flourish in the earth.

The significance of the present times lies in that it would appear that the present war is shaping the conditions which the Bible indicates as marking the time of this “tribulation of those days,” which Christ’s return is to terminate. Like the making of a jig-saw puzzle, various world events are fitting in one by one and the picture seems amazingly to be growing to completion—on the obverse of the picture is a new European alliance of nations; a Northern Russo-German league, Jewish persecution; the growing influence of a quasi-religious political power; aerial armaments and militarization of the weakest nations. On the reverse side is the Head of the coming Crowned Prince of Peace. Keep Him before your mind, and peace and confidence shall be your portion.

(To be continued)

The Lost Purse.

THIRTY years have passed since the following incident occurred, but the impression it left on my mind has not faded, nor ever will fade, from my memory.

Located, during my college course, within five minutes’ walk of an old friend, I often dropped in for a short season of fellowship, after my lessons were ready for next day.

So it happened on a certain Saturday afternoon, having no Sunday engagement to carry me into the country, I thought to spend an hour with my friend.

I found him in just a fever of excitement, and elicited the following explanation: — He had paid his men in the city, closed his shop, and hurried to the train at Ludgate Hill, with his overcoat on his arm. As he jumped into the train, he thought he heard something drop on the carriage floor; he looked down, but seeing nothing, took no further notice.

On reaching Walworth Road (his destination), he alighted and came in to dinner; and wishing to hand his wife some coin, went to his great-coat, and then discovered he had lost his purse, containing £20 in gold. He had just made the discovery as I entered.

He was a good man and true; but Peter-like, very impulsive; hence, when I proposed a word of prayer over the matter, he at once protested. “No, not now! There is a time for everything; this is the time for action.”

“Very well; what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know; I cannot make up my mind what is the best to be done.”

“That, I venture to think, is a sufficient reason in itself for prayer.”

“Perhaps; but I don’t feel like praying just now. I think I’ll go to the Crystal Palace, the destination of the train in which I traveled, and see if honest hands have picked up the purse and handed it in at the terminus; and I’ll telegraph to Moorgate, from whence the train started, advising them of my loss.”

As soon as he had gone, his good wife suggested that now we might have a little prayer together. We knelt and pleaded that God would direct and overrule to the recovery of this purse; and then rose with a calm confidence that all would be well.

Turning to his wife, I said: “I think I’ll go into the City, and see the officials at Moorgate Street.”

“What for?” she inquired; “Charles has wired them, and no end can be served by going.”

“I cannot tell you why, but I feel it laid on my heart to go.”

“Then I will go with you; for I am far too excited to tarry alone just now.”

We hurried to Walworth Station, and taking return tickets for Moorgate, made for the first platform just as a G.N.R. train was signaled. Already the train was in sight; but in our impatience we would not wait, but hurried down the steps again, and up to the center platform, as we saw a train just stopping there. Rushing to a carriage, we were about to enter, when my friend said, “That is a smoking compartment, we won’t get in there”; and opening the next, there was the purse just under the seat. Of course we caught at it, much to the surprise of four gentlemen in the carriage, and walked home, gladly forfeiting our tickets, There are several points to be observed, rendering the finding of this purse remarkable. This train had gone on to the Crystal Palace, stopping at every station en route, on a busy Saturday afternoon, with the frequent interchange of passengers, and yet nobody appears to have noticed the purse. Again, had we waited for our train, already in sight, we should have missed the purse, and, had we aimed to catch this train on its return from the Palace, the probability is we should have failed; for, most remarkable of all, we found this train was not timed to stop at Walworth—should have run express from Loughboro Junction to Elephant and Castle; but the traffic being unusually heavy, the signal was against this train at Walworth, and stopped it at the platform just for the half-minute, whilst we took from the carriage the missing purse.

When Charles returned, I inquired, “Have you seen or heard anything of the purse?’’

“No,” said he, in a despondent tone, “and do not expect to. The traffic being heavier than usual, and the purse containing hard coin only, the officials hold out little hope of its recovery.”

“Is this anything like it?’’ holding up the purse.

“Where did you find it?” “Where you lost it.” And as we explained this remarkable recovery, Charles burst into tears, and exclaimed, “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes!’’

J. B.

Be Still.

HOW many have learned to hold still and wait upon Him? Some may be disappointed because their prayer was not answered immediately. They think the work should be done instantly. But this does not give occasion for us to become impatient, anxious or fretful. Only wait and see the salvation of the Lord. He is interested in His children, He is watching over us. His everlasting arms are beneath us. Neither can the enemy touch us unless He allows it. A refuge and a fortress is our God.

(A day or two ago, the following message was so much laid on my heart that I wrote it down at once, intending to send it out in my letter this month. The proof of this month’s MESSAGE was sent me to correct while I was away from home—and it was too short by over a page. I had nothing with me to fill the space, but the words I had written, so I am inserting them here, because it seems that God must intend them for a message to someone whom perhaps the letter might not reach. ―ED.)

"The Cup That My Father Hath Given Me."

ONE so often finds, even among God’s own children, the belief that their griefs and trials are sent as punishment for some sin, but a little thought will show how unjust this idea is.

When Christ gave sight to the blind man, he was asked, “Who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born, blind?” and back came the lovely, reassuring answer,” “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” (John 9:3.)

It is true that sin brings its own retribution, always, but that is a consequence, not a punishment—we bring it on ourselves, and it was to save us from the wages of our own wrongdoing that the Saviour suffered and died: but discipline is not punishment, it is pruning.

When the gardener takes a knife and cuts away part of a tree, he is not punishing the tree, but cultivating it. He does not take this trouble Over a useless tree; it is the ones which he hopes to see bearing good fruit that must feel the: knife. “Every branch that beareth fruit He purgeth it, that it may bring forth fruit.” (John 15:2.)

“It is only great souls whom God can trust with suffering,” someone told me years ago; and when we remember the Captain of our salvation who was made “perfect through suffering,” cannot we look beyond the seemingly incomprehensible trial to the love that allowed it, to work out His purpose in us?

“This bitter cup, I drank it first,

To thee it is no draft accursed,

The Hand that gives it thee is pierced―

‘Tis I, be not afraid.”

Trial and suffering are allowed by Him to teach us lessons we could not otherwise learn—and His healing touch always follows the pruning that is needed to bring forth in us the fruit He longs to see. One look back across the years will reveal the golden thread of His loving guidance running through the pattern of our lives, and it shines most brightly where the web is darkest.

God has given us, in, His Word, a most perfect example of such dealings in the case of Job—a man so righteous that even God was able to say of him “Who is like unto my servant Job?” Yet, in order to prove the falseness of Satan’s suggestion that affliction would change this man’s faith in His goodness, God allowed him to be afflicted in every possible way, until he was left poor, alone and diseased—yet “in all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly”; instead, he uttered those lovely words, “Shall we receive good at the hands of God, and shall we not receive evil? The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away—blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 2:10; 1:21.)

Job never knew what was the reason for his terrible trials—and we do not know what lies behind the seemingly incomprehensible happenings in our own lives—but if, like Job, we keep through all an unshaken trust in the unfailing wisdom and love of the One who permits all for His own high purposes for us, we shall look back at last, from the heights of faith, and see in light the road along which we had to walk in the dark, and alone—but with our hand in the pierced Hand of the One who knows all, and understands.

Chequered Paths.

JUST what life holds for us can no one tell;

Unknown to all the path our feet shall tread.

None walks forever on a flower-strewn way,

Earth must be ploughed ere hungry ones are fed.

It cannot be enough that life shall yield

Nothing but flowers—we must ask for more.

No grain waves golden in an untilled field,

‘Tis deep-cut furrows hold the harvest-store.

Then let us pray that from our lives may rise

Riches of love, trust, help, to meet the Master’s eyes.

"The Mastery" Or "The Master."

“THE mastery of the devil.” Does Thy Word

To Thy disciples promise this, O Lord?

How oft in these dark days of stress and strain

When compassed by our foes, we in our pain

And our perplexity, cry out to Thee,

“In Whom we live and move,” yet cannot see!

We long to glorify Thee, yet we fail,

While Satan and his hosts seem to prevail!

To Thy first chosen ones Thou didst extend

Thy power, o’er all the powers that should offend. (Luke 10:19.)

But are we, too, thus promised victory

O’er all the power of Thy great enemy?

Not “mastery of the devil” given to us,

But of our Master it is written thus: ―

“The Lord shall Satan bruise, under your feet.” (Rom. 16:20.)

Are words more needed, or more passing sweet?

He, Himself, keeps command, and will subdue

The devil’s power, and “shortly,” even for you.

Mastery of Satan comes but through the Master,

Who has all power to change each great disaster,

And make our very failures steps to glory,

If our faith fail not. O, the wondrous story!

He prayeth still for all who Him obey,

Who seek His guidance, and who own His sway.

A. McC.

"Above Only."

“Thou shalt be above only and thou shalt not be beneath” (Deut. 28:13).

By Jennie B. Logan (Egypt General Mission).

THIS verse came to me first as a very real message from God in a time of great pressure. We had fourteen guests in the Mission House and were almost without domestic help. I had perforce to lay aside correspondence and other duties, and give my time and attention to cooking and housework, and I was feeling the strain.

Then God’s word spoke to me with power: “Thou shalt be above only and thou shalt not be beneath,” and in a moment I saw there was no need to go under, no need to be overwhelmed by my circumstances. No need to trouble because it seemed as if I could not get through and my ordinary work was getting in arrears—somehow, I could be above it all. “Above only and not beneath.” How often I used to say as I went about my kitchen, “I refuse to go down,” and how the lesson I learned in those difficult days has been an inspiration ever since. Do you wonder that Deuteronomy 28:13 is one of my favorite verses in the Bible?

I see in it the possibility of a life of constant victory—not up today in heights of blessedness and down in the depths tomorrow. This is a steady life. It is the life that has been stabilized and settled by the God of all grace (1 Peter 5:10).

I do not for a moment see how this life is possible, but: “Thou shalt be above only and thou shalt not be beneath,” is the Father’s promise to His blood-bought child—and all the promises are yea and amen in Christ. Though heaven and earth pass away His word shall not pass away. When the billows roll and the stormy winds rage we can stand on the promise and refuse to be beneath.

“Above only” is a position of victory too. It is that position which is ours in Christ Jesus “crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20). “Quickened together with Christ... raised up together, made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:5, 6). “Your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). The lowliest, the weakest member of Christ’s body has in Him a position “far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion.” (Eph. 1:21.) If we could but realize our position what an asset it would be to us in the spiritual conflict portrayed in Eph. 6:10-20.

When we lived in Alexandria we used to see some fierce squalls of wind and rain, which lashed the sea into fury. The great buoys in the harbor would be covered with spray and foam, but when the wind died down again they were still there in their places unmoved and steady. “Above only,” for they had that within them which kept them on the top. And have we not power within us too, which should ensure our triumph? “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith” (Eph. 3:17). “That ye might be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19). “Strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man” (Eph. 3:16). “We will come unto Him and make our abode with him” (John 14:23). “Be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18).

Possibility, promise, position and power—God grant we may experience to the full the blessings that are ours for the taking in Deuteronomy 28:13, and where our Heavenly Father says to us “Above only,” let us absolutely refuse to come down and live and work on a lower level.

“He took me from a fearful pit,

And from the miry clay,

And on a rock He set my feet,

Establishing my way.”

"Keep the Star in Sight."

IN one of the wildest parts of the coast of Norway lived old Gas, a weather-beaten and experienced sailor, who in spite of his seventy years was yet ever ready to plunge into the waves if he saw a human life in danger, even if by doing so he risked his own life.

Old Clas had a strange custom, for when the sun had set and the night came on he would throw himself down on the deck of his boat or on the seashore, wherever he happened to be, and would gaze earnestly up into the clouds until he caught sight of the evening star.

When once asked by his friends the reason of his so doing he related to them the following incident related to them the following incident of his past life, which he could not do without deep emotion:— “A star, and the God Who made that star, I have to thank for the saving of my earthly life and of my soul too. If I ever forget the Star of Bethlehem then I shall indeed forget my own self. Forty years ago it was just such a night as this.

The wind howled drearily as it does now. The sea wrought and was tempestuous. My mates and I found ourselves in a frail ship on a treacherous coast. The boisterous waves carried us every moment nearer and nearer to the rock-bound shore, and before we were aware of it we were in the breakers.

“Our captain, an experienced seaman, took his place at the helm as soon as he saw the dangers that threatened us and strove in every way that he could to keep up our courage.

“He was weak in health, but his brave spirit overcame the weakness of his body, and he thundered out his orders through the speaking trumpet with a power and decision that made a man of every one of us.

“ ‘Clas!’ he called, as the wind whistled through the rigging, and our poor masts groaned and shivered in the tempest, stand near me; my strength is failing. Do you see that star over us?’

“ ‘Yes, captain!’

“ ‘If my strength fails me suddenly, steer straight for it, for, should it be hidden, and you lose sight of it, the ship will be wrecked and go to pieces; and Clas, do not forget that there is another Star that you must keep in sight if you are ever to land safely in the Haven where you would be.’

I knew what he meant: he was pointing me to the Lord Jesus Christ.

He was the most conscientious and the truest Christian captain that I had ever known, and he let no opportunity slip of saying a word to us for the good of our souls.

When he could no longer bear the violence of the storm, he called to me once more in a voice that could be heard above the tempest:

‘Keep the star in sight, youngster! keep it in sight!’ Then strength failed him, and he was carried down to the cabin, and I never saw him again alive.

When I heard of our great loss, I besought them to lash me to the wheel, so that until death came I might carry out the instructions of my superior.

“Although the storm continued to rage, and my tears nearly blinded me, I still managed to keep the star in sight.”

The old man was silent for a while, meditating upon the past, sunk in deep thought; then he continued: After we had been steering for two hours through a narrow and dangerous channel, we found ourselves at last, still in a stormy sea, indeed, but beyond the breakers, and no longer in such imminent peril. The star had guided us rightly, and we could once more tack.

As soon as the ship was out of danger, I went down into the captain’s cabin. There he lay, shrouded by a flag, but his manly, resolute face was uncovered, which death itself had not much changed. Rough sailor as I was, I kissed and bedewed his face with my tears. Kneeling down by the hard bunk, on which his body lay, I prayed earnestly that God would guide me through the storms of life, as He had so mercifully guided me that night through the dangers that had surrounded us. My prayer was heard. Since then, by God’s grace, I have kept the Star in sight.

“You will now understand why I am such a star-gazer.” The old man here paused for a moment, then, in kindly tones, added: “You are still young—life lies before you; but keep the Star in sight.”— The Star of Bethlehem.

The Call of This Solemn Hour.

IN the great disaster sweeping Europe, some people find it very easy to place responsibility. How often we hear it said that “one or two well-placed funerals” would have saved the world this hour of anguish. But is that true? While one or two may be the embodiment of wrong, and the focal point of man’s rebellion against God, isn’t there a collective responsibility? I do not now refer to the responsibility of nationalists in supporting a leader, but I am thinking of the tragic failure of the great mass of professed Christians in this and other lands.

Is it not a milk-and-water Christianity which makes possible the present defeat? Men have robbed the Bible of influence in the lives of the people. When they lose the Bible they Inge prayer and faith

They Have Lost God!

Remember these are not the heathen nations of the world. They are called Christian, and some of them are among the earliest of Christian nations. But in all of them there has been a generation of tragic unbelief. A generation has thrown the Bible to the winds and bowed in worship before the shrine of the human intellect. And now we see the fruit of it.

But it is not too late to pray! Pray that even today’s sad event will fall out to the furtherance of the Gospel. This solemn hour should call the sincere out of the mists and fogs of modernistic unbelief to stand with Christ. This solemn hour should call believers to a life of surrender and sacrifice. However you have felt at other times, this is the hour for straight thinking and consecrated living. And this is the hour of prayer.— Moody Monthly.

A Message for These Times from the Book of Joel.

By the Rev. W. Grist, M.A.,

Vicar of St. Philip and St. Tames, Ilfracombe

THE values of this book for today are: —

1. Disasters and calamities in the world are not mere unrelated happenings. They constitute a call from God to adjust our relationships to Him.

2. Accompanying these occasions of suffering is a revelation of God’s love and goodness. This is the ground of the appeal to get right with God.

3. There is an age long purpose of God which will have a glorious consummation in holiness and peace. The love and mercy of God which are found amidst the judgments abroad in the world will there have their consummation in that final “day of the Lord.”

All this is presented by Joel in three scenes.

1. The immediate—a devastating plague of locusts from which his country had suffered.

2. The near—this plague is a shadow picture of a coming invasion of a great army.

3. The far—this invasion again foreshadows the final day of the Lord when nations assembled in armed might will reap the results of their past attitudes to God and to man, particularly the Jew. There is then set the glad scene of God’s Kingdom established on earth in its purity, plenty and permanence.

The Immediate—The Locust Plague (1:1-20).

This is unprecedented (1:2, 3); it is described (4-12). This is not just a misfortune to be endured. It demands repentance. Joel himself takes the lead (19). Can we thus read our own times? — the dearth of spiritual food (9) as well as war effects in every realm of life (6:7), “joy is withered from the sons of men” (12). This constitutes a call to repentance—let the people of God first repent (13). Let each surveying his own life and attitude to God say: “To Thee will I cry” (19).

The Near (ch. 2).

There is sounded an alarm of an approaching invasion of an army likened to that plague of locusts. These are depicted darkening the morning; the land before them is like Eden, behind is a desolate wilderness, nothing escapes them (3). The whole description is right up to date, and might well be of Poland, Norway and other devastated lands today. Accompanying this harrowing description of these invaders is a call to turn to God, based on the mercy and grace of God (12, 13). Upon such attitude there is complete reversal of these dark scenes (18-27), rejoicing replaces repining; there is fruitfulness instead of barrenness. “I will restore the years that the locust hath eaten” (25). “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom. 5:20).

The Promise of the Holy Spirit (2:28, 30).

“It shall come to pass afterward I will pour out My Spirit.” Joel could not say when, only “afterward.” Acts 2:16 shows there was a partial fulfillment of this at Pentecost. For since then each individual believer can be filled with the Spirit, but when Joel’s prophecy has its full fulfillment the Spirit will be upon “all flesh.” This will characterize the time of earth’s blessedness when Christ is here as King, and is the explanation of human co-operation to the rule of Christ which will mark that time of blessedness.

The Far—The Final Day of the Lord (ch. 3).

There are to be signs in the skies before “this great and terrible day of the Lord” (2:30, 31, and Matt. 24:29, which associates this scene with our Lord’s return to this world). This is the goal to which God’s love for man and His overruling providences are directed. In “that day” there will be a vast armed assemblage of nations, gathered all unknowingly for judgment (13). The slogans of that day are already those of today, “Prepare war,” “Wake up,” “Ploughshares into swords” (9). The issue will be determined by the intervention of God, Himself (3:16) in the Person of Christ to be the world’s resident Ruler (cf. Rev. 19:14; Matt. 24:27. Zech. 14:3)

A Closing Picture of World Blessing (3:17, 21).

Because God, in the person of Christ, dwells in Zion, the Kingdom of God for the first time is now established on earth, centered in Jerusalem, the very place where once mankind combined to reject His rule.

The issue will be holiness first (17), then prosperity, nature becoming endued with new life by the permeating presence of the Lord. Never again shall the Jews be snatched from their land (20). Then “shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

The present hour evidences the activity of God marshalling world forces to the coming consummation. Its immediate call is that adjustment of heart and life towards God which is repentance. The basis of that call, as also the assurance of the coming reign of Christ and world blessing, lies solely in the revealing of the character of God here given: “He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil” (2:13).

"The Jumble King."

By B. Harvey-Jellie.

HOW tragic and how frequent is the cry, “I can’t do it!” when we are called to take a stand against a great temptation or undertake a difficult task. It is the cry of despair; and it was the cry of one who was known as “The Jumble King.” He was a dealer in all kinds of unwanted goods, ranging from household articles to motor cars, and he knew well how to turn the town’s rubbish into gold. “The Jumble King” was a familiar character, with his gaily-painted van and jingling bells; and, when he passed along the streets, people would turn and say, “Here comes the Jumble King!”

But Jeremy Barnes was a victim to drink. It had mastered him, and was dragging him fast along the road to ruin. What his end would have been one dare not think; but an accident, which might have proved fatal, checked him in his mad career. Driving in the dark one night, he ran his van off the road and into the river. He was badly hurt, and recovery was slow; but the enforced idleness gave him time to think and realize his folly.

Soon after he was about again he was persuaded to enter a hall where a mission was being held; and the genial welcome he received and the earnest address impressed him.

The subject that evening had been, “Turn ye, for why will ye die?”

He came to the meetings again and again; and, at his invitation, I went to see him at his storeroom.

It was a large building piled up with goods of every description, and as we stood together he swept his arm round in a wide circle, saying:

“All rubbish, throw-outs, like me, no use!”

“But there’s gold in it?” I said inquiringly.

“Yes,” he answered. “Maybe.”

“Like you!” I added.

He looked at me with interrogation in his eyes.

“The gold of a noble life, but crushed down and in danger of being destroyed.”

He laughed deprecatingly.

“Ah, no!” he said. “Not me. Not me.”

Then, facing me with great seriousness, he said: “Sir, I have been to your meetings, and I know I’m on the wrong road. I’d change over if I could, but I can’t do it. I can’t do it. It would mean giving up the drink, and I can’t do it. It’s no use!”

There was something pathetic in this confession of a strong man. I was sorry for him. There are so many in exactly the same condition.

“I know you can’t,” I said to him quietly. “If you could you would, but has it ever occurred to you that what you can’t do alone God can do for you and with you? Do you think if God and you faced this together you could do it?” “I never thought of that,” he answered.

“With God all things are possible,” I reminded him.

He was thoughtful, and I pressed home the message that had influenced him at the mission and the call to “turn.” I told him how our life could be completely changed, if we surrender ourselves to Christ as sinners needing His saving grace.

For a while he did not speak. He was fighting a hard battle in his heart. He was afraid to take the stand lest he should be unable to resist the temptation.

Then he turned to me, and I was almost startled by the deep sincerity in his voice when he said: “Will you pray for me?”

We knelt in his office, and I pleaded for divine help that this man, broken by sin, might be restored, redeemed, reborn, and helped to live a Christlike life.

When we rose, he grasped me by the hand.

“It’s settled,” he said. “Keep praying for me, will you? Keep praying!”

He signed the pledge, and nailed it over the desk in his office; and with it a card bearing the words: “I can do all things through Christ.”

The news that “The Jumble King” had been converted was the talk of the town. Some doubted the reality of the change; others helped him by their prayers and their friendship.

The change was genuine, a miracle of the grace of God; and in the new life Jeremy Barnes found opportunity to develop gifts which had been crushed by the reckless intemperance of previous days.

Within a year he held a responsible position in a firm of national importance, where he is highly respected and trusted; and he never fails to let it be known that he owes everything to the love and power of Christ in transforming his life, and adds humbly and gratefully, “I am what I am by the grace of God.”

The British Messenger.

"The Power of Prayer."

In “Fifty Years of Ocean Hazard,” Sir Charles G. Matheson, D.S.O., R.D., R.N.R., Commodore of the Orient Line, tells the story of his selection, a few years ago, to read the lesson at the National Seafarers’ Service in St. Paul’s Cathedral. As this was the first time the task had been allotted to a seaman, he says, he was a “little nervous.” When he actually reached the Cathedral and the time drew near for him to stand up and face the congregation he began to tremble violently. He tried to pull himself together and failed; then he knelt down and “prayed and prayed.”

“May I say this very simply,” the Commodore continued: “I have always believed in prayer—as the majority of my profession do at heart—and ever since that moment in St. Paul’s Cathedral I am more convinced than ever of the efficacy of prayer. As the last echo of the psalm died away and the time came for me to step forward and face that mighty congregation to read God’s Holy Word, my nervousness completely left me. It seemed as if unseen hands had stripped me of a mantle of fear, and when I stood up I felt as cool as ice, and as calm as I always am, I hope, on the bridge of my ship at sea.”

The Same Yesterday, Today; Forever.

ALL things change around us! Day by day,

Dear familiar voices die away;

Gentle lives, that used to touch our own,

Pass beyond us to the land unown;

And the winding pathway of the years

Leads us often through a vale of tears.

Only One, of all our hearts love best,

Stands unchanged beside us—bears the test

Of our deepest helplessness and need—

Bends to take our empty hands, and lead

From our loss, and loneliness and pain,

To the wealth of His eternal gain.

Only One is true! And as we turn

To His perfect love, at last we learn

How the things of earth, that used to seem

All our highest good, were but a dream;

And, although our cherished idols fall,

How, in finding God, we find our all.

E. HICKMAN DIVALL (by permission).

This Moment.

“A very present help.”— Psalms 46:1.

HE’S helping me now—this moment,

Though I may not see it or hear,

Perhaps by a friend far distant,

Perhaps by a stranger near,

Perhaps by a spoken message,

Perhaps by the printed word;

In ways that I know and know not

I have the help of the Lord.

He’s keeping me now—this moment,

However I need it most,

Perhaps by a single angel,

Perhaps by a mighty host,

Perhaps by the chain that frets me,

Or the walls that shut me in;

In ways that I know and know not,

He keeps me from harm and sin.

He’s guiding me now—this moment,

In pathways easy or hard,

Perhaps by a door wide open,

Perhaps by a door fast barred,

Perhaps by a joy withholden,

Perhaps by a gladness given;

In ways that I know and know not

He’s leading me up to heaven.

He’s using me now—this moment,

And whether I go or stand,

Perhaps by a plan accomplished,

Perhaps when He stays my hand,

Perhaps by a word in season,

Perhaps by a silent prayer;

In ways that I know or know not,

His labor of love I share.

ANNIE JOHNSON FLINT.

(By courtesy of Evangelical Publishers, Ltd., Toronto.)

[Owing to a printer’s error the text on the cover of our June number was given as from “Isaiah” instead of “Psalm.” There was not time to see a proof of the cover, so correction was impossible. — ED.]

Prayer Changes Things.

“Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.”— Psalms 1:15.

“Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near: let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”— Isa. 55:6, 7. “In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.”— Isaiah 30:15.

“The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them.”— Psalms 34:7.

“Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.”— Psalms 20:7.

“When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.”— Isaiah 59:19.

“Trust in Him at all times; ye people, pour out yam heart before Him; God is a refuge for us.”— Psalms 62:8.

“Trust ye in the Lord forever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength.”— Isaiah 26:4.

“Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.”— Psalms 31:24.

“The people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits.”— Daniel 11:32.

“Without Me ye can do nothing.”— John 15:5.

“With God all things are possible.”— Matthew 19:26.

“Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them.”— Matthew 18:20.

“The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of them that fear Him: He also will hear their cry, and will save them.”— Psalms 145:18,19.

“Happy is that people that is in such a case; yea, happy is that people whose God is the Lord.”— Psalms 144:15.

“Them that honor Me, I will honor.”―1 Samuel 2:30.

Present Deliverance.

Story of Two Wonders—Violent Storm and Channel Calm.

BY C. B. MORTLOCK

PIECE by piece the epic story of the great deliverance of the B.E.F. from the hands of the enemy is being unfolded.

As in a great mosaic, the tesseræ seem often unrelated till they are assembled. But, as the story is told, two great wonders stand forth; and on them turned the fortune of the troops.

I have talked to officers and men who have got safely back to England, and all of them tell of these two phenomena. The first was the great storm which broke over Flanders on Tuesday, May 28th and the other was the great calm which settled on the English Channel during the days following.

Officers of high rank do not hesitate to put down the deliverance of the B.E.F. to the fact of the nation being at prayer on Sunday, May 26th. I am told that after careful survey of the position had been made the maximum number whom it was thought could possibly escape death or capture was 30,000. Instead of that, more than ten times the number were safely embarked.

Thanksgiving at E.N.S.A. Concerts.

The consciousness of miraculous deliverance pervades the camps in which the troops are now housed in England. An instance of that occurred soon after a large camp had been more or less improvised, and many willing helpers were rivalling each other in giving comfort, refreshment and entertainment to the men in their first hours of relaxation for many days.

Among other arrangements was an E.N.S.A. concert, and, in the midst of it at the request of the men, the chaplain conducted an act of thanksgiving consisting of a hymn and prayers and a few simple words. Since that night every E.N.S.A. concert in that camp has had a short service of prayer and thanksgiving.

One chaplain told me that he was in a party who were taken aboard a mine-sweeper. They were all drenched to the skin, having been up to the shoulders in water. On deck it was impossible for anybody to stand. Presently there was a call for the padre to say a prayer. With the help of men on either side of him and behind him, the chaplain got up and the whole of the bedraggled ship’s company joined with him in offering thanksgiving to God for their wonderful deliverance.

So the Impossible was Made Possible.

Chaplains have added their testimony to the wonderful order and calm with which the men awaited their turn in lines drawn up on the beach to go aboard the craft that came to their rescue. Although they were bombed from the air and also shelled, there were surprisingly few casualties. Men moved forward as they were directed and stood their ground until the order to embark was given.

The story of the strange armada which took the men from the beaches of Dunkirk is already familiar in outline. In its complete fullness it will probably never be known, but it is undoubted that there was such a calmness over the whole of the waters of the English Channel for that vital period of days as has rarely been experienced. Those who are accustomed to the Channel testify to the strangeness of this calm; they are deeply impressed by the phenomenon of nature by which it became possible for tiny craft to go back and forth in safety.

The secretary of one of the many small yacht clubs on the South Coast, who had been asked by the Admiralty to mobilize his members, told me that though most of them had but the frailest of fair-weather craft, not one of them had reported serious casualty beyond damage to their woodwork.

So the two miracles made possible what seemed impossible. In the darkness of the storm and the violence of the rain, formations which were eight to twelve miles from Dunkirk were able to move up on foot to the coast with scarcely any interruption from aircraft, for aircraft were unable to operate in such turbulent conditions.

The orderliness of that withdrawal is shown by the fact that all returned chaplains to whom I have spoken were able to remain with their formations or units throughout the retreat. From the men and from the officers comes the highest praise of the chaplains. Again and again men relate, “Our padre came off last with the C.O.” Others tell how, on the beaches, when they were being bombed, the chaplain would be walking up and down the line trying to keep the men in good heart and not finding it at all a difficult task. A sergeant-major of the Guards who saw twelve of his own sergeants killed, said, “Our chaplain was magnificent.”

Foot-Slogged Twice as Far as Anybody Else.

It is early yet to glean the stories of individual heroism, but there is no question of the fine example which the chaplains set, not only in carrying out their duty but often in going beyond what might reasonably be expected of them. I heard, for instance, of one padre who was at the farthest point of all from the coast when the withdrawal began. All the way back he was ministering to the wounded and the dying, encouraging the others and again and again, after traversing with great difficulty and under fire a section of the road which brought safety nearer, he would go back along the line to minister sacraments and consolations of religion to all who needed them.

“He must,” said one officer of his division, “have footslogged on that awful road at least twice as far as anybody else.”

A chaplain who celebrated Holy Communion on the sand dunes of Dunkirk had his congregation scattered five times by fierce low-bombing attacks, but after each assault they reassembled and he took up the service where it was broken off, except that all joined in thanksgiving for their safety and prayer for the wounded.

Other services had been held on the road as opportunity served, and always at the desire of the men. One chaplain held eight services on one day, and celebrated Holy Communion four times—once in a barn during enemy air bombardment.

Immunity Under Fire on the Beaches.

Chaplains have remarked on another circumstance that seems almost miraculous—the strange immunity by which the troops at times were favored. One of them told me, for instance, how he lay down with 400 men who were machine-gunned systematically, up and down, and bombed by about 60 enemy aircraft; and in the end there was not a single casualty. Another chaplain was likewise machine-gunned and bombed as he lay on the beach, and when, after what seemed an eternity, he realized he had not been hit he rose to find that the sand all around where he had lain was pitted with bullet holes and that his figure was thus outlined on the ground.

One thing can be certain about tomorrow’s thanksgiving in our churches. From none will the thanks ascend with greater sincerity or deeper fervor than from the officers and men who have seen the Hand of God, powerful to save, delivering them from the hands of a mighty foe, who, humanly speaking, had them utterly at his mercy.

Reprinted by permission from the Daily Telegraph, Saturday, June 8th, 1940.

The Time to Pray.

MANY of us only pray when trouble comes. Perplexity is the great provocative of prayer. Adversity bends the knee that never stoops at any other time, yet our prayer is not unwelcome because necessity provokes it. God invites the emergency cry: “Call upon Me in the day of trouble and I will answer thee.” When trouble comes, that is the time to pray.

The time to pray is when sorrow visits us, when loss, trial, deprivation overtakes us. But the time to pray is not only when winter rolls the snowdrift to our door; it is also when summer makes the flowers to grow in the garden, for the time to pray is every time; there is no time when God is not necessary. Pray without ceasing.

Dr. John Macbeath.

When Will Peace Come?

NOT till Christ reigns. There may be a peace of exhaustion, a sullen peace, but real, actual peace will not come to stay till the King of kings reigns.

The utter failure of the peace propaganda under the Hague Convention shows that peace will never come permanently till the basis of it is God’s.

This peace propaganda has an endowment of £2,000,000; a palace costing several millions; a library on international peace of 75,000 volumes; stained glass windows from England; gates from Germany; marble interior from Italy; silk tapestries from Japan; porcelain from China; marble statuary from the United States of America; carpets from Turkey; minor gifts from small States. Yet what is it all worth?

Five of the monarchs and presidents, whose pictures hang on the walls, have been assassinated since the palace was built. Some years ago it was reported that three visitors were being shown over the deserted building by the caretaker, and they fell to blows in the very place dedicated to peace. They were German, French, and one other nationality. They quarreled so violently that actual fighting took place between them.

The Great War of 1914-1918 with its terrible tale of woe and incubus of staggering debt is over. The League of Nations was established. The nations were to live in peace, or would be made to, if any were recalcitrant. The war to end war was over. Henceforth it was to be peace.

A few years roll by however and deadly war again is raging. Austria has been raped. Czecho-Slovakia has been overrun. Poland has been wiped out. Albania has lost her independence. Abyssinia has been conquered. Small nations are alarmed and full of fear. Men without fear of God before their eyes are acting the part of the common burglar and thief on an immense scale.

The youth of nations is called up to meet this terrible state of affairs. The question is on every lip, Why does God allow this war? Is Christianity a failure?

The answer is obvious. There are 75,000 volumes on international peace in the Palace of Peace library. They can all be done without. Let them be gathered into a mighty pile and burned.

And what then? Put in their place a Bible. Let the individuals, who make up the nations govern their lives by it, and what would be the result? Peace, blessed peace, would come like a gentle dove to the anguished heart of the world, and still its passions and its fears. There would be no need for navies and armies; no need of frontiers to be fortressed; no need of Siegfried and Maginot lines; no need of mighty cannon, of giant tanks, of aero plane’s and bombers, no need of strikes, there would be no poverty, no injustice. The men would beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation would not lift up sword against nation, neither would they learn war any more (see Isa. 2:4).

The present war is not the result of Bible teaching, but diametrically opposed to it.

Christianity has not failed, but the lack of Christianity has brought about the present state of things, and men are slow to perceive it.

Why does God allow this war?

Why does God allow a child to burn its finger when it thrusts it into the fire? To teach it to avoid fire in the future. To avoid a recurrence of the pain. To avoid a greater catastrophe. The child knows no better, but yet it has to learn its lesson.

Why does God allow this war?

Why does God allow a man who drinks prussic acid to be poisoned? The man is aware of what he is doing. No one thinks of blaming God in this matter. The nature of prussic acid is well known. The man is blamed for his folly and he rightly deserves the consequences of his act.

Why does God allow this war?

Why does God allow tares to grow instead of wheat, when the farmer deliberately sows tares? No one is so foolish as to ask such a puerile question.

Why does God allow this war?

We answer, the nations have been sowing the wind, and they are reaping the whirlwind. The lesson is a stiff one. But it is needed, and by it God is chastening and warning the nations, lest a more dread thing happen to them.

Germany has thrown off the fear of God. Hitler breaks his plighted word again and again, till no respecting nation trusts him. Shameless is his conduct as witness the tragedy of Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, and Poland. Hitler has substituted Thor, the German god of war, for Christ. A thousand godly pastors are languishing in prison because they refuse to give up the Bible and the Saviour for this shameless neo-paganism that is being thrust upon the nation. Who could have believed that this would have happened in the land of the glorious Reformation, the land of Martin Luther? The Jews have been thrust out of the land, many murdered with diabolical cruelty.

Russia has cruelly persecuted the Jews for long. Language fails to express the horrors God’s ancient people have gone through at the hand of “holy Russia!” Does the Jew groan and sigh in vain? Surely the God of Sabaoth has heard.

Godless Russia is the name of shame the Soviet Union has earned. She has destroyed churches by the hundreds. She has installed pure shameless atheism in the teaching in the schools. Immorality is rife. Russia has sown the wind, behold the whirlwind.

France has sown the wind of infidelity, and she, too, is reaping the whirlwind. Nominally Roman Catholic, true religion has little hold on the French nation. All this has its rebound for evil that can clearly be traced.

Britain, alas! cannot be truthfully described as a Christian country when less than five per cent, of the population attend a place of worship, and of the handful who attend church, many are merely nominal professors, whose lives cannot be described as Christian. Is the land not in reality pagan? Thank God, there is the unconscious influence of former generations of God-fearing ancestors, but it is rapidly a vanishing force. Churches are empty; cinemas and divorce courts are full. Is God not noticing these things?

A more terrible awakening than what is happening in the present is before us. Are the nations hearing? Alas! no. Is Britain humbled? No!

Why does God allow this war?

The vast majority of those who ask this question are men and women, who emphatically don’t want God in peace time. When the sun shines, when business prospers, when health is theirs, God would be an intrusion. How unutterably mean to whine out, Why does God allow the war? when their past conduct has been such. They have done without God hitherto, and now they are learning how terrible it is to do without Him in times of stress. Above all, how terrible it will be to do without Him in—ETERNITY.

Let the individual take heed to what is happening, and learn therefrom its lesson.

How solemn to see enacted on the Continent of Europe, on this colossal scale, the truth of Holy Writ: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting” (Gal. 6:7, 8).

Whether it be the nations, the unconverted individual, or the Christian, this principle holds good. Without this restraining principle at work, things would be so awful as to beggar description. Man would destroy himself.

God is speaking. He has spoken quietly, then louder and still louder, and men are still deaf. He will speak yet louder, and make them hear.

But one thing is certain: There can be no true lasting peace, either in an individual’s life, or a nation’s, or the world’s unless Christ comes to rule.

Does He rule in your life? Is He your Saviour and Lord?

Isaiah 9:6, tells us our Lord is the Prince of peace, blessed title. The Apostle Peter tells us, “God... is preaching peace by Jesus Christ” (Acts 10:36). The Apostle Paul tells us that Christ “made peace through the blood of His cross” (Col. 1:20).

Your only hope for peace with God lies in your acceptance of Christ as your personal Saviour.

Warring nations may make peace, but that is for time only, and is a man-made peace that may break down before the ink of the treaty is dry, but what you need is peace in your soul and for eternity.

Scripture puts the matter before us very plainly. If you come as a repentant confessed sinner and accept the Lord as your personal Saviour, you can take up the language of Scripture and say of Christ, “Who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification. Therefore being justified by faith [not by tears or striving or work], we have peace with God [present possession] through our Lord Jesus Christ”. (Rom. 4:25, vs. 1)

The boy was asked what faith was. He replied, “It is laying hold of Christ with the hand of your heart.” How true this is!

Readers, do you dire real true settled peace with God and for eternity, your sins forgiven, your soul saved, your hope of heaven assured? There is only one way—Trust the Saviour just as you are. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31). God grant that you may do so here and now. The Saviour says, “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37).

A. J. Pollock, by permission.

A Little While.

“A LITTLE while!” A little while, O Master,

What is it Thou hast said?

The vast train of expectant years grows vaster,

The deep, dark tide of sin flows wider, faster;

We listen for Thy tread.

Hope watching stands, our storm-tossed vessel steering,

But the dark skies vouchsafe no sign of Thine appearing.

A little while! Faith reads the promise over

While louder roars the storm;

Then gazes, keener eyed than any lover,

O’er the night-blackened surges, to discover

Some vestige of Thy form;

And oft the dreary night-watch to beguile

Repeats “ ‘A little while’—He said ‘A little while.’”

But love, with instinct truer, deeper, keener,

No sign or vision craving—

Garnering Thy precious words up as a gleaner

The golden ears; with heart and brow serener

For all the tempest’s raving;

Feeling Thee near and conscious of Thy smile,

Counts the slow-rolling ages but “A little while.”

E. CONDER.

The Untroubled Heart.

“Let not your heart be troubled.”— John 14:1.

THIS is one of the surprising sayings of our Lord, spoken when trouble rolled in billows around Him and the little band who were presently to forsake Him and be scattered. But the words were spoken in the serenity of His own soul, and from a heart which had found peace that flowed like a river in the center of the will of God. The words fall like a benediction on the troubled heart of the world today.

One meets few untroubled hearts in the daily contacts of life these days. Every man and woman bears a burden, some greater, some less—though each thinks his the most onerous and the most severe. The war has accentuated tremendously the troubles of mankind, and for this very reason the injunction of the Lord should fall like the very balm of Gilead on our souls today.

Who would wish to live today without faith? What a ghastly travesty all life would be did our faith not light a candle for us in the blackness. To the man or woman without faith in God the world must present a dreary aspect, just a horror of great darkness unrelieved by a single ray of light. It is little wonder that men’s hearts are restless and filled with fears and forebodings. And yet it is in just such conditions as these that we hear the words of the Lord falling again upon our ears— “Let not your heart be troubled.”

The untroubled heart is the result of a deep, abiding faith in God. Nothing else, it seems to us, can preserve our sanity and our spiritual balance in times like these. If we are to face the future with assurance and calm, if we are to do the work God has given us to do, it is essential that the untroubled heart must be ours. The shadow of the Cross lay over the Saviour when He uttered these words. It might be said, of course, that it lay over all His life, but in the darkest of its menacing aspects it appears here. It is always at the darkest hour in our history when we are hemmed in by trouble, when the human outlook is utterly hopeless, when the waves of the sea roar and we feel we must be submerged in the billows—His word comes to us again— “Let not your heart be troubled.” The very blackness may presage the dawn.

Were I a preacher I would take this text often. There is not the slightest danger of ever exhausting its comforting message. This is an exhortation from our Lord, a command, and His commands are always enabling’s. If we believe in God, we are to believe in Him. According to the depth of faith, or belief in Him, we shall maintain the untroubled heart in our breast. There are some things that wars and rumors of wars cannot touch. They may destroy the material things around us; they may rob us of our possessions, take away our lives and destroy our bodies; fill our eyes with tears and wring our hearts with anguish, but they cannot touch the soul. And still our Lord is telling us that we are not to let our hearts be troubled. He can cause us to rise in triumph above these things, and to ride on the high places of the earth by faith.

The Evangelical Christian.

History Tells Us; "The Shadow Turns Back."

IN 2 Kings 20 we are given a striking example of how God delights to honor the faith of His children. King Hezekiah was sick, and, having heard from Jehovah’s prophet that the sickness was unto death, the dying man turned his eyes to God and besought, with strong crying and tears that his life might be spared.

It has been well said: “Prayer moves the arm that moves the world to bring salvation down.” Hezekiah’s prayer was heard. The prophet announced that God would spare the king’s life. Then Hezekiah said; “What shall be the sign that the Lord will heal me?... Let the shadow return backwards ten degrees.”

And God, Who is plenteous in mercy, gave His child the desired sign, for, in answer to prayer, THE SHADOW TURNED BACK. And in due time Hezekiah was raised up from the very gates of death.

Literally, the shadow turned back—the sunlight was extended to warm and comfort the sick man’s heart. Figuratively, the shadow turned back, for

the soul-deadening blight of hopelessness

and dread was lifted from the king, and he knew himself a saved man.

How often in the history of men God has intervened in a similar way—turning the shadow back! Let us consider a few examples for the strengthening of our faith.

When the enslaved nation of Israelites was trekking out of Egypt, pursued by Pharaoh and his hosts, the shadow of destruction loomed over them. Before them the road was blocked by the Red Sea, on either side rose impassable mountains, behind them thundered the Egyptian cavalry. It was left to Moses to intercede with God for His distressed people, and, in answer to prayer THE SHADOW TURNED BACK. The powerful Egyptian army was overthrown, and as for the Israelites—

God raised the waters like a wall and opened up their way, — And the God Who lived in Moses’ time is just the same today.

The same experience was granted to the people of Jerusalem when the heathen King of Assyria laid siege to their city and sent out his blasphemous challenge: “Hearken not unto Hezekiah when he persuadeth you, saying, ‘The Lord will deliver us.’ Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered at all his land out of the hand of the King of Assyria?” What happened? The people of Jerusalem saw their king go in solemn assembly to the house of prayer in order to spread the matter before God. And again, in answer to prayer, the enemy was confounded-THE SHADOW TURNED BACK.

Looking into

the history of our own land

we remember the proud Armada sent by Philip of Spain to wipe the Protestantism of England off the face of Europe. The Roman Catholic world had pinned faith to that “invincible Armada,” but God blew with His wind, and, in the darkness of the night those great Spanish galleons were dashed to pieces off the shores of England. THE SHADOW TURNED BACK.

It was the same when Napoleon was hacking his way across the world, in defiance of God and man. He brushed the falling snowflakes from his tunic as he marched his army across the Russian wastes, little dreaming that it was actually by that same soft, silent, pitiless, endless snow that God was about to destroy his army and stage one of the most awful debacles of history. Again, THE SHADOW TURNED BACK.

The years have passed. Today our people are engaged in war again. Let us remember that Britain was once a land of Bibles, a land where the Lord’s Day was Honored, where missionary enterprise held its premier position. For many years past we have marked a saddening declension. Let us pray that God may not deal with us after our sins. Let us beseech His Throne that once more THE SHADOW BE TURNED BACK.

Remember the conditions which prepare the way for renewal and revival are laid down in 2 Chronicles 7:14. “If my people, which are called by My Name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from Heaven, and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

In Britain’s Camps.

"Call Upon Me."

THE following story is told by an old sailor, one of the few who were saved when the “Hampshire,” with Lord Kitchener on board, was sunk during the last war.

He was, later, sent out on a mine-laying expedition; and when his vessel had got well out to sea, with 40 mines on board, a message was received saying that she was being pursued by a submarine. They were told that no help could be sent, and they must do the best they could.

The Captain called all hands on deck, and explained the position to them, he then said: “There is nothing left for us but prayer.” He accordingly held a short prayer-meeting on deck, and commended his crew and himself to God.

The submarine overtook them, and blew the bottom out of their ship; but not one man was killed, and not one of the forty mines exploded.

“Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.”

J.B.

The Unchanging Word of God.

THE world is full of change. Storms and tempests, earthquakes and convulsions, work their changes. Mighty elements and tremendous forces struggle for the mastery, and rage in their fury, working desolation on every hand. But amid all these changes there is one unchangeable Rock; there is One in Whose Hand is no variableness nor shadow of turning. Everything that man trusts in fails him; everything that man rests on totters and shakes, but they that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abideth forever. Earthly glory fades; earthly power perishes. Everything earthly decays. In the words of Dr. John Cumming:—

“The empire of Caesar is gone; the legions of Rome are mouldering in the dust; the avalanches that Napoleon hurled upon Europe have melted away; the pride of the Pharaohs has fallen; the pyramids they raised to be their tombs are sinking every day in the desert sands; Tyre is the rock for bleaching fishermen’s nets; Sidon has scarcely left a wreck behind; but the Word of God still survives. All things that threatened to extinguish it have only aided it; and it only proves every day, how transient is the noblest monument that man can build, how enduring is the least word God has spoken. Tradition has dug for it a grave; intolerance has lighted for it many a faggot; many a Judas has betrayed it with a kiss; many a Demas has forsaken it, but the Word of God still endures.”

And that Word which has endured will still endure. “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away” (Matt. 24:35). “The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away, but the Word of the Lord endureth forever” (1 Peter 1:24, 25).

Living Waters.

A New Heart.

THERE is an originality of natural genius, but there is also an originality of a very plain understanding which has gained insight into God’s Word through the teaching of His Spirit. And frequently the plainer the understanding the more original is the product, as the teaching of God’s Spirit is uncoloured and undiluted—achromatic, as opticians term it. We meet it in the humblest natures. It is the originality of the heart as distinguished from the mind. “A new heart also will I give you.”— J.K.

Pastor Niemoller's Bible.

THOSE who honor Pastor Niemoller for his faithful and patient witness, will not be surprised to hear that he is a man of the Bible. “The Bible is a part of him,” says the book, Pastor Niemoller and His Creed, which has been written by one of his closest friends. “His attitude towards the Bible is absolutely uncomplicated, just as his whole way of thinking. He hardly troubles his head about the questions of literary and philosophical criticism, and he also needs no theory about verbal inspiration in order to preach the Bible.”

A saying of Luther’s has become Niemoller’s own experience: “That he had never passed through the orchard of the Bible without, here and there, shaking the trees to bring down a few apples or pears.”

He has a gift for finding the Biblical aspect and the Biblical analogy for any given situation. He likes to have the Bible “handy.” and he uses it continually in his preaching and his teaching. Now, in his imprisonment, he has read the Old and New Testament through three times, and has learned 300 hymns by heart.

As a pastor, he taught others to study the Book. He holds with Luther: “God speaks to us through His Holy Word.”

The Free Pardon Field.

IT was in 1798. A band of insurgents were hiding in the Wicklow mountains, and were robbing and murdering the peaceful farmers of the counties of Carlow, Kildare, Kilkenny and Wexford, and from time to time some of them were captured and put to death.

But the Viceroy, Lord Cornwallis, did not desire the death of these outlaws. He pitied them, and determined to try to save them and make them good and useful citizens.

So he bought a field at the foot of the Glen of Imale and promised that any rebel, no matter how blood-stained, who stepped into the field and laid down his weapons should receive a full pardon.

At first those men did not believe the good news. They thought it was a trap to catch them. But one of the worst of them resolved he would venture his fife upon the Viceroy’s promise. He came down the glen, he entered the field, he threw down his musket and pike, and, with beating heart, awaited the result. In a few moments a military officer appeared, asked the man his name, wrote it upon a paper, and handed the document to him. The man gave two eager looks at it—one to see if it bore at the top Lord Cornwallis’ signature, and the other to make sure that it had his own name in the body of it, and finding both names, he gave a leap for joy, and shouting, “I am pardoned!” he hastened up the glen to show his companions the pardon and to urge them to go down and trust themselves to the free-pardon field. They believed, they went down, they entered the field, they surrendered, and they were pardoned everyone.

The moral effect of the Vice-regal clemency was immediate and lasting. These men of cruelty, robbery and blood became industrious farmers, and from that time the countryside enjoyed peace and safety.

This incident in Irish history illustrates the Gospel. All men are rebels, and therefore guilty before God (Rom. 3:19). Righteousness must judge evil. The judgment is death. God pities sinners. He is not willing that even one should perish. He therefore purchased “a pardon field” at the cost of the priceless life of His only-begotten Son, whose atoning death satisfied and vindicated all the claims of righteousness against the sinner, and in Him—but only in Him (Acts 4:12)— the vilest find an assured forgiveness (Acts 13:38, 39).

To obtain life and pardon the Irish rebel had nothing to do but accept the salvation promised. Not in a field of his own choosing, but of the Government’s choice. To choose another field would have been rebellion and not repentance, and would have ended in death. The sinner who truly repents accepts God’s way of life, and does not choose a way of his own, nor of man’s provision.

The outlaw was saved by faith. He believed the good news, he trusted himself to the royal field, and received the promised pardon. He had nothing to do, either to plan the pardon, or to add to it, or to purchase or merit it. Its power to save him from his evil life showed its moral value. If the clemency of an earthly prince had such ethical energy, what limit can be set to that of the Prince of princes?

The man was saved in a moment. Outside the field he was doomed to death; inside, he was saved. With one step he passed out of death into life. So was it in Genesis 7, and Exodus 12.

If in subsequent years he were asked did he not fear arrest and death, he would say “No,” for he was saved. And if asked how he knew he was saved, he would not point to his changed conduct nor to inward feelings of assurance, but he would produce the pardon and say: “This is the King’s pardon. It says I am pardoned and that satisfies me.”

The Word of God assures the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ that he is pardoned; and the believer needs no other, and asks for no other assurance.

George Williams, in Tales of the Mystic Way.

The Perfect Sacrifice.

A CHRISTIAN lady visited a soldier terribly wounded, lying in the ward of a large military hospital. A nurse, entering, said to him: “You have no need to worry over your sins; anyone who gives his life for his country, as you have, is all right.” The man smiled faintly, but he shook his head and said: “Ah, that is mistake! When I lay out there in the open, I knew I had done my bit. I hadn’t failed King and Country but that didn’t help me to face God. I wasn’t fit to die, and I knew it, and it has been an awful trouble to me every day ever since. But just now, as I heard that lady’s prayer, I saw that the Lord Jesus had been punished for all my sins, and I might go free, and such a peace has come into my heart. How WONDERFUL FOR HIM TO DIE FOR THE LIKES OF ME! I’ll not be afraid to die now, because He has forgiven me.”

The Dawn.

"I'm Going West!"

This touching incident was told the writer some years ago as being authentic.

IT was during the last war that a dying soldier was brought into a military hospital, and laid in one of the beds. He realized his condition, for when he had recovered from the exhaustion of being carried in, he turned to the man in the next bed, and said: “Matey, I’m going West, can you help a fellow with a bit of religion?”

“I’m afraid I can’t.” replied his neighbor, “but there’s a lady comes here Thursdays to talk to us chaps about religion, p’r’aps she could help you.”

“That’s all right,” said the sinking man, “but I’m not sure that I’ll be here on Thursday.”

Back came the reply, removing the last gleam of hope from this soul on the verge of eternity, “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

But God has His own means of reaching hearts, and possibly

Someone was Praying

for this lone warrior in his dire need, for it was evident when he again spoke that the Holy Spirit had been taking his thoughts back over the long years in which he’d left God out of his life, to his mother’s knee, or perhaps to the Sunday School.

These were his words: “There’s a bit of a verse comes back to my mind, friend, p’r’aps you could tell me if its part of a hymn, or in the Bible: it goes like this,” then, very softly, he repeated that heart-softening text learned in childhood’s days, but recalled now in his dying hour: “ ‘Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not; for of such is the Kingdom of God!’”

“Oh, that’s in the Bible all right,” was the confident reply, and again a silence fell upon them.

When at length it was broken, it was a very subdued voice which asked the last question that it would ever ask down here, for life’s flame was beginning to flicker, and would soon be going out altogether. “It’s like this, matey, He wanted the little ones to come, I wonder would He have me? Anyway I’m going to ask Him.”

Then he quietly pulled the sheet up over his head, and—the sheet did not come down again. Surely that petition was not in vain.

For thanks be unto God that the One Whom He gave to be the Saviour of the world has said: “Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out!”

What an incentive to the Christian reader this narrative should be in the realm of expectant prayer. There may, at this very moment, be numbers of our dear lads, who, like this man, are lying nigh to the gates of death, it may be in hospital or away in some lone corner of the battlefield, and such we can serve in the highest possible way, by asking God to recall some word of His learnt long since, but by no means lost if His Holy Spirit recalls it to them with the like result as the above.

E. G. CARRE.

Be Still.

Hold us in Quiet.

THOU art the Lord who slept upon the pillow,

Thou art Lord Who soothed the furious sea,

What matter beating wind and tossing billow

If only we are in the boat with Thee?

Hold us in quiet through the age-long minute

While Thou art silent, and the wind is shrill;

Can the boat sink while Thou, dear Lord, art in it?

Can the heart faint that waiteth on Thy will?

AMY CARMICHAEL.

"Morning … in the Top of the Mount."

“And be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning... and present thyself there to Me in the top of the mount. And no man shall come up with thee.”— Exodus 34:2, 3.

ALL day, perchance, thy feet must tread the valley;

All day, the multitude around may throng—

With claims unceasing, pressing close upon thee.

And voices loud in sorrow, strife, or song.

Before the multitude, before the valley.

Before the toil that binds thee heart and hand,

Be ready in the first fresh hour of morning,

High in the mount alone with God to stand.

What then? Oh, He is waiting there to meet thee—

Himself in strange sweet beauty to reveal—

Himself with thee alone to hold communion—

To lift thee past earth’s shadows to the Real.

Go! Wait before Him where His voice may reach thee.

Wait where His touch may thrill thee through and through—

Until His glorious face shall shine upon thee,

With grace and love undreamed of hitherto.

Forget the busy hours that lie before thee;

Forget awhile the world of toil and care;

Forget that other hearts await thy coming;

Let God Himself alone possess thee there.

What will the day’s work be, down in the valley?

What will the eyes of other toilers see?

The lingering light of God’s own gracious presence—

His voice—His touch—still giving strength to thee.

Edith Hickeman Divall.

Saints.

NONE but God can change a single human from evil to good, and one such change is conclusive proof of the Christian Faith. A relative of

America’s Outstanding Infidel, Robert Ingersoll,

known in the family as Aunt Sarah, living on the Pacific Coast, was a devout Bible student and a beautiful Christian. One day she received by mail, a package, which, on opening, proved to be a copy of one of R. G. Ingersoll’s books, an attack on the Bible. On the flyleaf were written these words over Ingersoll’s signature: “If all Christians had lived like Aunt Sarah, perhaps this book would never have been written.” Aunt Sarah alone was proof enough. A friend of mine (says a writer quoted in the American Sunday School Times) who had been a gangster and kidnapper for twelve years, met Jesus Christ in prison. Christ said: “I will come and live in you and we will serve this sentence together”; and they did. Several years later he was discharged, and just before he went out he was handed a two-page letter written by another prisoner. After the salutation, it said in effect: “You know perfectly well that when I came into this jail I despised preachers, the Bible, and everything. I went to the Bible class and the preaching service because there wasn’t anything else interesting to do. Then they told me you were saved, and I said, ‘There’s another fellow taking the Gospel road to get a parole’; but

Roy, I’ve been watching you

for two and a half years. You did not know it, but I watched you when you were in the yard exercising, when you were working in the shop, when you played, while we were altogether at meals, on the way to our cells, and all over, and now I’m a Christian, too, because I watched you. The Saviour who saved you has saved me. You never made a slip, Roy said to me: “When I got that letter and read it through I came out in a cold sweat. Think what it would have meant if I had slipped, even once.” “Ye are an epistle of Christ, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God” (2 Cor. 3:3). — “The Dawn.”

I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day,

I’d rather one should walk with me than merely show the way;

I can soon learn how to do it if you’ll let me see it done,

I can watch your hands in action, but your tongue too fast may run,

And the lectures you deliver may be very wise and true;

But I’d rather get my lesson by observing what you do.

For I may not understand you and the high advice. you give,

But there’s no misunderstanding how you act and how you live.

Thinking It Over.

By Rev. W. H. Rowdon, Vicar of St. John’s, Parkstone.

SOMETIMES things are conspicuous by their absence; that is, you notice them because they are not there! Here are a few things which make one think. Sign posts, but no directions! Street lamps, but no light! Church bells, but no sound!

There was a time when we thought we could not do without these things, or at least to be deprived of them would mean a serious hampering of our national life. However, we are still carrying on without them and it is astonishing how quickly we can adjust ourselves to these entirely new conditions. But have we thought things through?

Under normal circumstances the vast majority of people do not think deeply. Shallow thinking might compass what we call daily life (our home life, our work, our recreation); occasionally our imaginations expand as we hear or see something unusual or sensational, but generally we revert to the well-worn groove of pleasant and easy thinking. This for some is completely changed when the whole of the civilized world, in spite of all its scientific discoveries, its accumulation of knowledge and its standards of life, is convulsed with a moral earthquake which brings everything tumbling about our ears.

We have to clamber out of our groove of thinking when things we regarded as most stable come crashing down, and if we do not move out quickly there is the danger lest that groove become our grave.

The logical grave results of not thinking may be summed up in what the Bible calls “the second death,” that is, eternal separation from God.

Getting Behind It.

Let us look away, therefore, from second causes of this present phenomenal war and see what lies behind. Here is a new slant for some. There is no question about war being Satanic in origin, neither have we any doubts as to the source of “inspiration” behind Hitler and the Nazi regime with his campaign of lying, falsehood and broken pledges.

We all know, too, that the present chaos is the inevitable result of man’s misrule and misgovernment in a world far adrift from its Creator and Redeemer; also “The Battle of Britain” is but one phase in world events; but as it passes over our island do we as individuals realize the significance of things?

God is intensely interested and concerned with the individual man and woman while He is using war as an instrument of judgment or chastisement for nations. It has been said: “It is not our nation’s enemies but our nation’s sins that alone can bring our mighty Empire down.”

The remedy is obvious— “get rid of our nation’s sins”! The nation consists of individuals, so the individual needs to check up with God’s standard and see what adjustments are necessary in his or her own interests as well as in those of the nation. Hence the slogan, ‘‘It all depends on me, and I depend on God.”

We Depend on God.

If you, who read this, do not agree perhaps it is because you have not yet arrived there in your thinking? It is significant that the leaders of· our great nation give such prominence to our dependence upon God (vide H.M. the King’s broadcast, the Prime Minister’s reference to God and the Foreign Secretary’s recent speech).

Think this over! We have no fear as to the final results of the present conflict for Great Britain, provided that every individual citizen plays his or her part to the full. This does not merely mean by physical efforts in H.M. Forces, or A.R.P., or industry, absolutely necessary as such things obviously are; neither can it be fulfilled only by the mobilizing of our cheerfulness, courage and resolution, or lending to defend.

Beside the physical and moral realm there is the spiritual, which gives point and power to the other two. God is seeking to reach the minds of men through world happenings today while Satan is endeavoring to keep them static lest they should think themselves out of the sleep of spiritual death, and out of his clutches and into God’s eternal salvation.

This means a conflict of the spiritual sphere which predisposes man to let things drift rather than think things over. If only men will think with their minds there is hope that they will believe, trust and love with their hearts. A nation of such men could never be anything but victorious.

God means to teach us spiritual lessons through simple things around us which He uses as-parables.

Sign Posts.

We had them long enough (though perhaps we never fully appreciated them) to indicate where we were, and how to get to our destination without difficulty. These directions are now removed as a wise precaution. God has given man “sign posts” to show him where he stands, where his road will take him, and how to get on the right road that he might finally reach Heaven.

There are still faithful witnesses like signs pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ as the only, but perfect, Saviour from sin. They may have told you that you are in the “City of Destruction” at the moment, and that you need to set out at once by way of the Cross and get into the Way of Salvation, so that you will find yourself in the “Celestial City.”

If having checked up with the Bible you find this to be true you may resent it, and reject it, and fall back into your mental and spiritual grave; or you may face up to sin, confess to God, and accept Christ as your Saviour. Think it over!

Lamp Posts.

Lamp posts are a poor substitute for the sun, but however much we complained of them before, we miss their light now! Black-out accidents and deaths are quite a feature of this new condition of total darkness. “If a man walk in the night he stumbleth because there is no light in him”— Jesus Christ is the Light of the World and He came to give “light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

He commands His followers “let your light so shine before men that they may see.” Christians as lamps may be poor substitutes for the Sun of Righteousness, and may be much complained of by those groping their way through nature’s darkness, but the time is coming when true Christians who are ready will be translated from this earth to be forever with their Lord. How great will be the world’s “black-out” then, with no restraining influence to the powers of darkness! No doubt Jesus Christ was referring to such a time when He said “Yet a little while the Light is with you; walk while ye have the Light, lest darkness come upon you... while ye have the Light believe in the Light that ye may be children of the Light.”

Church Bells.

About two months ago the bells of our parish churches in England ceased to peal for the first time in living memory. For generations they invited families to lay aside everyday things and come to worship God and pray.

No longer is this invitation sounded out. Consciences will no longer be disturbed by church bells on Sundays! There are some who never heeded the church bells but who, when they next hear them, might take a livelier interest than they ever imagined possible in this life!

God’s invitation still holds good. He still says “Come!” to those who labor and are heavy laden, and what’s more He says “Come now!” Nothing remains for man to do but to acknowledge his own need and inability to raise himself from the dead, and to accept God’s offer of mercy in Christ. It simply means flinging away everything and coming with empty hands.

“Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to Thy Cross I cling.”

What if we accept this invitation? There is God’s promise “him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” One day “the day of grace” will end. The time will come when the invitation, which for years left us cold, will be given no more. We shall then be left undisturbed to sleep the sleep of the second death in our spiritual graves. Think it over!

Next time you lose your way because there is no direction on the sign post give a thought to your soul and eternity, where you stand now, whither your present path without Christ leads. Think it over!

Next time you collide with a lamp post in the black-out, whether it makes an impression on your physical body or raises a bump, let it make an impression on your soul. “Awake thou that sleepest, arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light.” Think it over!

Next time you hear the church bells ring.... It might be wise to get busy before then. Think it over!

When Our Country Honored God.

THE wonderful place the Most High has held in the Britain of earlier years, an address of the Speaker of the House of Commons to Queen Elizabeth in the sixteenth century beautifully reveals. The Speaker said: “We now assembled, as diligent in our calling, have thought good to move your Majesty, to build a fort to the surety of the realm, to the repulsing of your enemies abroad: which must be set upon firm ground and steadfast, having two gates, with two watchmen at either of them. The same to be named the Fear of God: the governor thereof to be God, Your Majesty the lieutenant; the stones, the hearts of your faithful people; the two watchmen at the open gate to be called Knowledge and Virtue, the two at the postern gate to be called Mercy and Truth.”

The Man with the Secret Sorrow.

CENTURIES ago the ancient city of Samaria was once being besieged, and its inhabitants were in dire straits. Outside the walls there was the danger of death from the foe; inside, of death from starvation. One evening the king, Jehoram, was going the round of the ramparts when he was hailed by a woman who demanded justice. She had an appalling tale to tell. She and another mother—their ordinary instincts utterly changed by hunger—had made a mutual compact to kill their own little ones in turn in order to sustain their own life, and she herself had kept to the agreement. Her companion, however, now refused to do so. The king heard the story with mingled sorrow and anger—sorrow because of the sufferings of his people, and anger because of his mistaken idea that it was God who was primarily the cause of such suffering. Impulsively, after the fashion of some Orientals, he tore his robes asunder to show the stress of his feelings, and, in so doing, disclosed what he had hitherto kept hidden. He was wearing a garment of rough hair next to his skin and enduring this discomfort apparently in the hope of appeasing the Divine wrath, or of attracting the Divine mercy This act of self-inflicted suffering on his part is a bright spot in a life not specially noteworthy. It was a revelation to his people. They had not thought of him as sharing all their privation, and they saw that they had misjudged him. Though he might not be enduring the pangs of hunger as they were, yet he was suffering in another way and in the hope that it might benefit them. His suffering was the more sincere because it was not paraded in public.

1. This incident is a warning against a superficial judgment.

We need to be very careful in our estimate of others. This fact was once brought home to the writer by a personal experience. He was Principal of a Mission Boys’ School in India, and one of the lessons inculcated was that of cleanliness. One day, he publicly reproved a lad for the dirtiness of his clothing. and contrasted his garments with the clean clothes of his brother. Later, he learned that it was not the boy’s own fault. He was a stepson, and while his stepmother looked after her own children, she neglected him. Adelaide Proctor has devoted a short poem to the subject. The brusqueness or timidness which we criticize in others may be due to causes which should elicit sympathy and not sarcasm. It may be even so in regard to a moral lapse.

“The fall thou darest to despise—

May be the angel’s slackened hand

Has suffered it, that he may rise

And take a firmer, surer stand;

Or, trusting less to earthly things,

May henceforth learn to use his wings.”

2. That monarch has his counterpart today. There are men and women, who are figuratively wearing sackcloth next their skin, concealed from the knowledge of their fellows.

Sometimes the sackcloth is involuntary. There is a skeleton in the cupboard of a life which in many cases the owner did not place there. It may be something physical― a malignant disease which will cause premature and painful death, or a chronic weakness that is a perpetual handicap. During all the years of Lord Curzon’s Viceroyalty of India, he was more or less suffering pain. He had a weak spine and needed artificial support. Yet he often worked sixteen hours a day and the general public did not know of his debility. As old age creeps on, bodily powers and faculties begin to wane and the personal realization of this causes apprehension. Or it may be due to financial reasons, unremitting poverty, heavy liabilities. lessening income, the loss of a situation or the fear of bankruptcy. Or it may be a domestic trouble. Some years ago there were three prominent preachers in the Metropolis, vet the wife of one was not in full sympathy with her husband; the second had a prodigal son, and the wife of the third had the task of concealing from the outside world her husband’s propensity to drink.

Sometimes, however, as in this monarch’s case, it is voluntary. It is due to self-abnegation for another’s sake, the shouldering of a burden of heavy responsibility, because others are too indifferent or self-centered to undertake it, or it may consist in the sharing of the shame or the sorrow of others.

3. How can we best deal with such secret sorrows?

WE CAN CONCEAL THEM FROM MEN

Some folk are always harping on their troubles. There was an Indian Christian woman once in Agra who was known as “Weeping Mary.” If ever you met her she began to shed tears. She never seemed happy unless she was complaining. Such folk do not wear their sackcloth next the flesh but outside. Yet, as has been remarked, if there are to be no tears in heaven, why not practice trying to do without them here? Many a minor grievance, if kept in the background, would eventually cease to harass. The outward expression of it simply deepens its realization. Be like the man of whom W. J. Mathams wrote: ―

“He kept up his pluck as he passed along:

That was all.

He smothered a sigh and sang an old song:

That was all.

Though stricken himself in the terrible fight

He kept his wounds covered up out of sight,

But bandaged his brother’s with swift delight.

That was all.”

We need to be specially careful to conceal our self-denials. Jesus was the enemy of sham and the denouncer of hypocrisy, yet there was one kind of hypocrisy, if I may so call it, which He approved. “When thou fastest, anoint thy head that thou appear not unto men to fast.” Any act of piety, if paraded, loses its bloom.

WE CAN CONFIDE THEM TO GOD.

“Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee.” That was how St. Paul acted with regard to his “thorn in the flesh.” If he had been wont to talk about it to men, we might have known what it was. Indeed, if it had not been that he wanted to tell of God’s sustaining grace in connection with it we should not have known that he had this secret sorrow. His experience was akin to that of the psalmist who wrote: “Thou hast loosed my sackcloth and girded me with gladness.” The apostle came to regard his sackcloth as a festal robe. The thorn blossomed into a flower, for it brought him a fresh experience of Christ.

4. What about the secret sorrows which are due to sin?

There are skeletons in some men’s cupboards which they themselves have placed there, though they did not realize it at the time; skeletons due to some act of folly in the bygone years, or to some unhappy entanglement resulting from an unguarded hour of passion. Just as in Jehoram’s case, his secret which had been concealed from men’s eyes was suddenly revealed through an unexpected circumstance, so too may their experience be. “The Lord will bring to light the hidden things of darkness.”

Hawthorne’s book, “The Scarlet Letter,” is the story of a minister who had committed sin, but who, through cowardice, concealed it. Outwardly, he wore the garments of sanctity while his victim had to wear on her clothes a letter of the alphabet which was the brand of shame. But the guilty secret weighed so heavily upon him that at last he came before his people and showed them imprinted upon his flesh that same letter in scarlet which for years he had succeeded in hiding. The sin was revealed but the soul was saved. It may not be always necessary to reveal to men a secret sin of the past, but it never pays to attempt to hide it from God. “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Thus alone can we attain that pardon and purifying which will bring us peace.

J. I. H.

GOD of the shadows, lead me through the gloaming, Arch the long road with fretted vaults of green;

Send but a gleam to tell me I am homing.

Let not Thy face be seen.

Fold well Thy cloak of gentlest pity round me,

Keep Thy bright secrets till the morning break;

Why should I seek Thee, Lord, when Thou, hast found me;

And know’st the way I take?

"Kept Safely."

(Psa. 17:8)

THY God shall keep thee safely,

‘Neath the shadow of His wings;

Thy God shall guard thee ever

From the power of hurtful things.