Bible Treasury: Volume N1

IT was necessary that he should speak of his relations with the twelve. Had he received his instructions from them, or any sort of appointment from them? Hearken: “But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Thus does he assert the entire independence of his ministry, and its heavenly origin. His gospel could not have been derived from the Jerusalem laborers, because, while not contradicting theirs in anywise, it went far beyond them.

It will be observed by every careful reader of scripture that the gospel as preached by Peter and Paul, though in both the Spirit's testimony to Christ, had decidedly different characteristics. Peter spoke of One who had walked here well known by all the Jews, who had been crucified by wicked men, yet raised up by God and exalted to glory, in Whose name remission of sins is now preached to all. Paul, on the other hand, starts with His glory. His testimony was not of One who walked here (though he speaks of his wondrous pathway as a pattern for our souls, Phil. 2). On the contrary, he wrote, “Henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more” (2 Cor. 5:16).

His testimony was of One, Who, having accomplished redemption, is now in glory, the Second Man, head of a new race, in Whom believers are justified and accepted, and with Whom we are one body by the Holy Ghost. All this, and more, he had by revelation, not through a human medium. Not that Paul despised the fellowship of any of his brethren—his many appeals in his Epistles for their prayers prove the contrary; nor that he undervalued the counsel of those who had been longer engaged in the service of Christ than himself; but he would preserve intact his own direct responsibility to the Lord, as having been called and commissioned from above, altogether apart from man.

His early training in Judaism was in no sense a preparation for his apostolic ministry. He had been a persecutor, and a very extreme one. “For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God and wasted it: and profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly jealous of the traditions of my fathers.” The divine sovereignty in the choice of the vessel is strikingly seen. Who more suitable to write the Epistle to the Galatians? Who better fitted to enforce justification by faith alone, to the exclusion of works, thus pouring contempt on the first man, and all his efforts after righteousness? Who better fitted to show the believer's entire deliverance from law? Could a converted publican do it as well? I am not overlooking the Spirit's inspiration in writing thus, but merely drawing attention to the display of divine wisdom in the use of one who profited in Judaism above his contemporaries, blameless and zealous, to unfold Christianity in its highest aspect, setting the believer entirely free from law, and all that pertains to the first man.

Accordingly, when called of God, be conferred not with flesh and blood, nor sought human credentials, but went into Arabia, &c. “But when it pleased God who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia and returned again unto Damascus.” Observe the peculiarity of the expression— “to reveal His Son in me.” He is the only apostle who uses the phrase, and it is characteristic. To Peter the Father revealed His Son ( Matt. 16); but Paul's word goes farther. It involves union with Christ, and of this truth Paul was the honored exponent. He learned the elements of it in his conversion. The immense fact was brought to bear upon him that in persecuting the saints he was persecuting Christ, for the saints were in Him and He in them.

Having received such a call, the apostle acted upon his direct responsibility to the Lord, without any human medium. He went into Arabia (after a brief testimony, it would seem, in the synagogues of Damascus, Acts 9), and thence returned to the scene of his conversion. What a passing by of those who were somewhat in the church! He did not go up to Jerusalem for some time, and then merely on a visit to the apostle of the circumcision; not to be instructed or appointed in any way. This he shows plainly. “Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter and abode with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles saw I none save James the Lord's brother. Now the things which I write unto you, behold before God I lie not.” It is clear that he was most anxious to show that there was no sort of subordination to the twelve, nor commission from them. It was so ordered that only two of the apostles were at home at the same time. It might be a reproach in the eyes of the Galatians; but Jerusalem and the twelve were certainly not the source of his ministry.

He was also, at least at first, very little known by the Jewish saints in general. Though he loved them well, and at a later date found pleasure in carrying to them Gentile offerings, his work did not lie among them, but in the regions beyond. Hence we read, “Afterward I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and was unknown by face unto the churches of Judea which were in Christ: but they had heard only that he which persecuted us in times past, now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed. And they glorified God in me.” How transforming is divine grace, turning a thief into a giver (Eph. 4:28), and a persecutor into a preacher; but what a rebuke for the assemblies of Galatia! They were criticizing the devoted apostle, and slighting him because his ministry had not a Jewish source; while the assemblies of Judea (from whom he might naturally expect more or less prejudice) glorified God for His admirable work of sovereign favor. Those who had been called to the grace of Christ by his means were positively behind brethren of the circumcision in such an important respect!

Compromise.

IN divine truth compromise has no place. It would be the surrender of God's authority and manifest rebellion. We are sanctified by the Spirit to the obedience of Jesus Christ, not more surely than to the sprinkling of His blood. We are not left to our desires after good or our devices to give it effect. He that hath Christ's commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Him. Nor is this all. The new life is exercised; the love that is of God grows. And it is not only His “injunction” that governs the heart: His “word” forms it in obedience and is a deeper test of it. Therefore the Lord adds (John 14), “If anyone love me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him; and we will come unto him and make our abode with him He that loveth me not keepeth not my words; and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me.”

In matters of outward arrangement, or of moral indifference such as questions of time and place, there is ample room for grace in mutual consideration and in special care of the poor, the weak, and the suffering. Here the principle applies, though in another sense, that the strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please themselves: rather, that everyone of us please his neighbor for good to edification. The strong may well afford to seek unselfishness and make it sweeter for all. And here Christ is our blessed pattern, Who in glorifying His Father never sought His own will, though it was all untainted and holy, and pleased not Himself, but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached Thee fell on Me.

But where the will of God is expressed, there is no option for ought else. Our duty then is clear and unqualified: we have only to obey Him. Of His own purpose did He beget us by the word of truth that we might be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures (James 1). All else are under sin and ruin, under death and judgment. This new and divine nature, of which His grace has made us partakers (2 Peter 1:4), rejects all filthiness and superfluity of malice, receiving with meekness the implanted word which has the power of saving our souls, assuredly not in mere hearing but in practicing the word. Thus it becomes the perfect law of liberty; for as the new life craves the revealed word, so the word exactly suits the life one has in Christ; not the old I, each believer can say, but Christ living in me. Undoubtedly this life is not independent of its source, but lives in dependence on Him. For what I live now in flesh, I live in faith that is in the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me.

All is the grace of God, whether it be Christ's death or life thus given.

What shall we say then? should we continue in sin that grace may abound? Far be it from us! We who died in sin, how shall we live longer therein? Or know ye not that so many of us as were baptized unto Christ Jesus were baptized unto His death? Therefore were we buried with Him by baptism unto death, that even as Christ was raised out of the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we were identified with Him in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in [that] of resurrection; knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be annulled, that we should no longer serve sin. For he who died has been justified from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, being raised out of the dead, dies no more: death has no more dominion over Him. For in that He died, He died to sin once for all; and in that He lives, He lives to God. So do ye also reckon yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body unto obeying it in your lusts, nor render your members to sin instruments of iniquity; but render yourselves to God as alive out of the dead, and your members instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under law but under grace.

Such is the apostle Paul's handling of this great matter in Rom. 6; and he is as far as possible from compromise as to either the principle or the power. We are baptized to Christ's death as the principle; we are not under law but grace as the power. In both, sin is triumphed over and wholly disallowed. Delivered from sin but enslaved to righteousness, enslaved to God, we have our fruit unto holiness, and the end life eternal. Our condition is mixed no doubt, which indeed is to say but little of the sad reality; but this is not to enfeeble the absolute truth of our deliverance on the one hand, or of our responsibility on the other. Compromise is excluded; and no wonder, for Christ is dead and risen. Further, the Holy Spirit is given to us.

So in 1 Cor. 3 we are no longer to walk as men, but as sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints called.

Once we were all “the unrighteous,” some this horror, some that; but receiving Christ, we were washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. For know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit that is in you, which ye had from God, and ye are not your own? For ye were bought with a price. Glorify then God in your body (1 Cor. 6). There is no compromise here.

As it is in these two great Epistles, the one very markedly individual, while the other is also ecclesiastical or corporate, so it is in every other part of the Christian deposit we are bound to keep. There is no sanction of laxity; grace condemns sin more solemnly and profoundly than law. We are Christ's epistle, responsible to be so known and read of all men. Consistency with Christ, with the truth, with holiness, is obligatory on all saints even the weakest. Compromise here is altogether a sin and nothing but shame.

Is there, again, any latitude allowed in the ministry of the Spirit? Is there license of unfaithfulness in those that preach or teach Christ? May we in the Lord's work associate with known inconsistency, with deliberate playing fast and loose, with divine ways openly set at naught? So the Corinthians thought, and for a while rose up rebelliously against the apostle whom God had blessed to their souls. For a while they were haughty and alienated from the true, abjectly listening to the false teachers who brought them into bondage with their own objects. Was it not a grief and scandal that such things should be done by such as claimed to be the Lord's servants? For what can one think of any professing fidelity joining hands with unrepented evil ways? what of the deplorable and unholy scheme of fancying that such union is of God to get wrong-doers right? Can the simplest believer fail to see that it is doing evil that good may come? whose judgment is just.

But may not the object be good? So say all religious guides, and many of them sincerely, however differing or even opposed. It would be uncharitable to doubt of many that they are each in earnest with their methods, and more or less satisfied with the cause they plead. But this only makes evident that an apparently good object is not the least guarantee of either truth or holiness.

Were the aim ever so excellent, it is essential that it be prosecuted according to the Lord's mind; and this can only be in obedience to His word. To oppose it is courting destruction, to do without it is self-will. In His work compromise is evil. The Lord is jealous that the known walk be consistent with His testimony. His servant is bound to have clean hands, and not to partake of other men's sins.

How contrasted is God's way for His servants! “Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not, but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God “; and again, “Giving no offense in anything, that the ministry be not blamed, but in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Spirit, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left.” Indeed all of 2 Cor. 6 is worthy of the consideration of all God's servants and His saints. But this may suffice to point out what His word enjoins to the total uprooting of that compromise which is man's device in His work, as offensive to His Spirit as it is defiant of His word.

Λογια Ιηκου Sayings of Our Lord

from an early Greek Papyrus, discovered &c. by B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Bunt.

As some desire a brief and reliable account of this discovery, let it suffice to say that it consists of a single leaf from a book (not roll) containing a professing series of our Lord's sayings, found with a considerable number of others in the rubbish-heaps of Oxyrhynchus, the chief town of a nome similarly designated in lower Egypt. Strabo (xvii.), C. Ptol. (iv. 5, § 59), and others of less note speak of the place; which derived its Greek name from a fish of the sturgeon species worshipped in a temple there dedicated to it. The present village of Bekneseh is on part of its site.

The document no more approaches the inspired character than other treatises of the second, third, or later centuries. The interest that attaches to this leaf is that it bears sufficient evidence of being written, perhaps as early as A.D. 200, improbably later than A D. 300. Even this single page (Verso and Recto) is not without gaps which hinder its entire and unequivocal sense.

It does not pretend to be such “narrations” as Luke refers to in his chap. 1:1, though they were but human and therefore without divine authority, even if authentic in the main and ever so well meant. It gives no account concerning those matters which have been fully established, or believed, among Christians. It is simply a collection of sayings attributed to the Savior.

Of these the first (as far as here appears, for it lacks the introductory clause) is the least exceptionable. That which remains appears to be a citation from Luke 6:42, as Lachmann edits and Text. Rec. according to à A C D, a dozen more uncials, most cursives, and seemingly most ancient versions. But the Vatican with 13, 69, 124, 346 has ἐκβαλεῖν at the end; and so edit Alford, Tiscbendorf, Westcott and Hort. Here only we have no longer λέγει, these words being now gone. Yet the saying here given is the only one that is fairly correct according to scripture, if the introductory words once extant did not clog or alienate them.

The next is an absurdity, but it would seem in accord with the ascetic tendency then in vogue with some, as others leaned to lax ways; for the enemy avails himself of opposites to annul the truth of God. The “saying” is “Except ye fast to (or, probably, abstain from) the world, ye shall in no wise find the kingdom of God; and except ye keep the sabbath, ye shall not see the Father.” The construction of the first is not harsher grammatically than the doctrine is unsound and anti-evangelical. The second is if possible more outrageous, as it openly judaises. Neither a literal nor a metaphorical sense can redeem it.

The third does not contradict fundamental truth, but is wholly unworthy of our Lord and unlike His unique simplicity and depth, though suited to a rhetorical moralist. “Jesus saith, I stood in the midst of the world, and in the flesh was seen of them, and I found all drunken and none found I athirst among them; and my soul grieveth over the sons of men, because they are blind in their heart...”

Still stranger is the fourth.” Jesus saith, Wherever are... and one alone, I am with him. Raise the stone, and there thou shalt find me, split the wood and there am I.” Assuming this to be the sense, what mystical jargon! Eph. 4:6, which the learned editors cite, refers to the Father: if they had alleged ver. 10, it might be more plausible perhaps. It seems nonsense, and assuredly was never uttered by our Lord.

The fifth refers to Luke 4:24, eked out not by citing verse 23, but so varying it as to be no longer true, still less inspired. “Jesus saith, A prophet is not acceptable in his own country, nor doth a physician work cures on those that know him.”

Nor is the sixth more than true in part. “Jesus saith, A city built on a high hill's top, and established, can neither fall nor be hid.” It certainly can fall.

The seventh is only a beginning, so that we can say nothing definitely.

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream and Daniel's Vision — 2

Dan. 2; 7

WHEN the children of Israel not only fell into wickedness against God, but their wickedness became systematic and complete as apostates from His name—not merely the people and the priests, but also the prophets and the kings such as we see them at the end of Kings and Chronicles, God gave them up to one of the most idolatrous of the Gentile nations; and Nebuchadnezzar by His appointment became “the head of gold.” Undoubtedly Babylon was a great city from the earliest days, and “mad on her idols” as time went on. You may be aware that there was no idolatry in the antediluvian world. All flesh on the earth had corrupted its way, and the earth was filled with violence; but there was as yet no setting up of false gods. When, however, the heavens darkened against them and the waters of the great deep swept them away from before God, after this it was that Satan induced men to worship the hosts of heaven and deprecate the avenging powers of death. They thought nothing so reasonable as to propitiate the heavens that they might ever shine favorably, and the waters that they might no more overwhelm them in their resistless flood. Therefore religion took the form of paying honor to the higher powers of nature as well as of satisfying those lower. All immorality followed, and even contrary to fallen nature itself.

But God called His people Israel to bear witness to Himself as the One living God; and when departed into idolatry, He handed them over as captives to the vilest of men, setting up Babylon as the first of the great world-powers. It did not matter that they pretended to honor Jehovah along with their false gods; indeed such an alliance made things worse in His sight. However solemn might be their zeal for His feasts, their tampering also with idols only heightened their guilt and His indignation. But the fact was undoubtedly, that they often showed themselves more zealous for the false gods than for the true God; as Christians now, when they take up bad doctrine are absorbed with the error, and seem to lose the very truth they once professed.

God then chose Babylon to be the vessel of supreme earthly power for the punishment of His guilty people. Its ruler was not only a king but a king of kings, an emperor in the fullest sense of the word. Such was Nebuchadnezzar. His thoughts, we are told, came upon his bed what should come to pass hereafter; and God was pleased to reveal the secrets of futurity. But this He did, so as to impress on the Gentiles that true intelligence is only with those that fear Himself. In vain had the king applied to the ordinary means of his empire in order to recall or understand the vision. He asked, as his wise men told him, what no king had ever asked before. By their confession none but He whose dwelling is not with flesh could give the answer. In his imperious style he demanded it on pain of death, and when his minister was about to put the cruel decree into execution, where did God raise up a witness? Among the captives of Judah. If power was vested in the Gentile who scourged a people more guiltily offensive to God, the light of God was vouchsafed to Daniel the captive. God prepared for others too a deliverer from the king's wrath out of the king's palace. Daniel was morally prepared, as we see him in ch. 1. refusing the king's dainties, which were invariably offered to idols. He was willing to die rather than dishonor the true God, Who gave him favor with his guardians, so as to abide faithful. For “them that honor Me I will honor; and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.” The great principle here is that, if you are to have the secret of the Lord, you must look to Him and stand clear of the world, and especially of its religion which never is nor can be the truth. Do not expect to enjoy the holy light of God if for your ease or honor or safety you conform to what is of the world.

Accordingly Daniel was blessed remarkably. The king, though he had let slip the dream, was conscious of something altogether extraordinary in it, and in the furious haste of his rage apparently overlooked Daniel. Nor was it till the last moment that he went in and desired of the king that time be allowed him. This given, he betakes himself with his three pious friends to prayer. And God heard. “Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision.” How cheering and beautiful the dealings of God! As Daniel in faith took the initiative, though all four joined in, prayer, God singled out Daniel. What happens thereon? Does he at once rush off to the king? He turns to God in thanksgiving. “Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven” (ver. 19). As he had looked to Him alone, so the glory he renders to God only. “Art thou able,” said the king, “to make known the dream which I have seen, and the interpretation thereof?” “There is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days,” answered the lowly prophet. And he adds, “But as for me, this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living;” yet was he the wisest then on the earth. But God was in all his thoughts, to Whom be glory. It was a wonderful revelation for king Nebuchadnezzar; but think, my friends, what we have given of God in the whole Bible.

If you say that we have not Daniel, do not forget that we have a better than Daniel. A wiser and better than Daniel? Yes, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, that other Paraclete, the gift of Christ's redemption. The Holy Spirit had indeed wrought always, notably in Daniel and his companions; but there is now more, the personal presence of the Spirit of God to dwell with and in the Christian forever, and in the assembly or church of God. See John 14:16, 17, 26; 15:20; 16:7—14. He abides, among other privileges of the utmost value, enabling the believer to enjoy all the revelation of God in the measure of his faith by grace. Oh! what a wonderful boon for the Christian and for the church of God. See that you sink not below your privileges, but enter into them by faith; for it rests not on your own opinion or the authority of other men. There is much blessing in the communion of saints; but God's teaching must be individual. “They shall be all taught of God.”

Remember that the Lord lays down what has just been stated in His remarkable series of parables (Matt. 13). They represent the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, and we are in it now. With the kingdom as here made known we have to do now on earth, while the Lord is exalted and hidden in heaven. Yet, though embracing so large a sphere, the Lord says in ver. 9, “Who hath ears to hear let him hear.” In the Old Testament the call was to all Israel, to all the people; but now it is to each of us, to a Christian individually. Whatever comes, this responsibility in hearing and receiving the truth of God is inalienable; and woe to such as deny or weaken it. You will do well to lay it to heart.

Daniel then repeats and interprets the dream to Nebuchadnezzar: a gorgeous image with golden head, with breast and arms of silver, with body and thighs of brass, and with legs of iron, ending in feet of iron and clay, smitten by a little stone which reduced the whole to powder; after which the stone that smote the image became a great mountain which filled the whole earth.

There is also evident deterioration, as the power is distant from its source, and becomes characterized with more of man lower and lower. It has nothing to do with the extent of empire, which, on the contrary, became greater successively. But Nebuchadnezzar in his imperfection acts absolutely, as only One can perfectly to God's glory. In the Medo-Persian empire, wise men counsel much; as in the Greek soldiers of fortune. Rome goes down to the dregs, and is governed instead of governing, so that power from God is swamped by the people as its source.

Not a word of Christ's suffering for our sins, nor of the gospel going forth in consequence to every creature; not a word of Christ's sitting as the rejected but glorified Lamb on the Father's throne, and of our meanwhile suffering with Him while He there waits. It is Christ coming judicially in power and glory, dealing with the fourth empire in its last divided state, as well as with all that remains of its predecessors. Only after this destruction does God's kingdom fill and rule all the earth.

(To be continued D.V.)

Proofs of the Resurrection. 3

EVERY distinct “proof” of the resurrection in itself furnishes an equally striking proof of Christ's unchanged and unweakened affection for His own.

The “sword” had indeed smitten Jehovah's Fellow; the sheep had also been scattered; the way was now quite open for as wonderful an exhibition of marvelous grace in the turning of the Lord's hand upon the little ones. Very instructive it is to observe evidences of this latter, as token follows token in due order, each one (had it been at once discerned) being calculated to comfort their sorrowing spirits, and to sustain their wavering faith, as throughout all He was leading them by a way that they knew not.

“The same day at evening, being the first day of the week,” He brought His blood-bought sheep together, so that they were found “assembled,” with the foe shut out and themselves shut in, within those closed doors. The all engrossing and absorbing topic of their conversation at the moment consisted of those proofs of the resurrection already given, when lo,

JESUS HIMSELF STOOD IN THE MIDST OF THEM.

In the sight of all assembled He stands, the great Shepherd of the sheep brought again from the dead through the blood of the everlasting covenant. Listen! He speaks. By His first word spoken He announces the “peace” which He has made and is. He has endured wrath; peace is now theirs, made known to them; perfect, unalterable, unvoidable, unassailable, because its enduring and sure foundation is His own finished work. They behold Him; they have heard His voice. Alas of some we read, “they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit, and He said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts!”

They need a token to re-assure them, and to set them quite at ease in His immediate presence. The one instantly given is remarkably powerful and complete. Luke's version of it, perfectly consistent with His presentation of Jesus in his Gospel as the Son of man, relates to His showing His disciples “His hands and His feet.” What wonders those “hands” had wrought in their sight! How unweariedly those “feet” had trodden the pathway before themselves! Now each displays in the print of the nails man's cruel and murderous hatred of Him, and even more forcibly the Savior's love to sinners. On the other hand John, here as ever presenting Him as Son of God, appears to take correspondingly higher ground than his brother evangelist. He tells us, “He showed unto them His hands and His side.” How abundant the blessings bestowed by those uplifted “hands” now pierced From His “side,” bearing the mark of that sword-thrust, had flowed the blood and the water, witnessing indeed of His own self-sacrificing love, and surely now telling also of their blissful association with Himself the risen Son of God; for by His “side” His fellows shall sit with Himself in glory.

While their eyes earnestly gaze upon His hands, His feet, His side, His own voice re-assures them, and certifies that Jesus Himself now stands in their midst. And when we remember the despiteful and cruel treatment of His own blessed Person which He had so recently endured at the hands of heartless and unfeeling Men, what love, gentleness and meekness shine out in His spoken words— “Handle Me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have”! To these abundant tokens He adds yet one other, for He did even “eat before them,” and all rejoice as each discerns the risen Lord.

“Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.” Henceforth, while themselves enjoying the peace of God which passeth all understanding, they shall be His chosen messengers of peace in the world where He was crucified. Himself “the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God,” He next breathes on them, saying, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” But before they actually set upon their glorious mission, He took occasion by the absence and resultant unbelief of Thomas to display once more His tender concern for a loved disciple overtaken in a fault.

JESUS APPEARS A SECOND TIME IN THE MIDST

for the especial benefit of unbelieving Thomas. That all who were present eight days before are now rejoicing in the full assurance of the fact of His glorious resurrection lessens not His loving solicitude for the one then absent, who has since lamentably fallen into the grievous sin of unbelief, and thus allowed the adversary to gain over himself a temporary advantage. We grieve at this evidence of sin abounding; yet far more do we rejoice over that grace which did much more abound, as Thomas, gently yet firmly taken up on the very ground on which he had himself elected to stand, is lovingly invited to convince himself in the manner suggested by his own mind.

In this, our Lord's direct appeal to Thomas before all, becoming dignity of manner and of speech is seen allied with perfect condescension: how wise an administration of a well-timed rebuke! While the tender love expressed in the same made the brief yet earnest remonstrance which follows the rebuke all the more powerful.

His former unbelief all dispelled, the heart of Thomas is now so exclusively occupied with the Lord Who so completely restored his soul, that, as if unconscious that present with him at that moment are many other true worshippers, with ecstatic joy he exclaims, “My Lord and my God” “Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet believed.”

(To be continued D.V.)

Proofs of the Resurrection. 4

OUR LORD'S APPEARANCE AT THE SEA OF TIBERIAS.

In the Song of Solomon the Bride appealing to her Beloved says, “Tell me, O Thou Whom my soul loveth, where Thou feedest, where Thou makest Thy flock to rest at noon “; for she is desirous of knowing where He is to be found at that time. He answers her by saying, “If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds' tents"; thus very clearly indicating that where His own loved “little flock” is seen, there her Beloved may surely be found. Where His own were assembled in Jerusalem, their risen Lord stood in the midst; even so, when certain of them, having left Jerusalem, are actively engaged fishing in the Sea of Galilee, He is then in the same locality with them, bent on promoting their highest interests, and this while they are totally unconscious that the Lord is so near them.

They are engrossed in their unsuccessful efforts to catch fish, but their risen Lord is thinking much more of themselves. As in His dealings with ourselves oftentimes, He first allows their human energies to expend themselves in vain and fruitless toil. Then obedience to His command is rewarded with blessing so bountiful, that John quickly discerns in their Blesser the Person of the Lord.

Having made this discovery John as usual toils on, in strict harmony with the Lord's own expressed command. He honors his Lord by his patient continuance in the path of obedience. Peter, hitherto so much engrossed in his fishing, from the instant that John has informed him that it is the Lord Who stands upon the shore, becomes so exclusively occupied with Jesus, that the fishes, highly valued before, are now of such small account to himself that he suddenly ceases all his own toil to hasten into his Lord's presence.

Was not the ship of greater intrinsic value than ever so large a draft of fishes? Peter springs out of the ship without the slightest hesitancy, save only that he attires himself becomingly for the special occasion. Some might feel disposed to reflect with severity upon his leaving those attached brethren, who had at the first followed his lead, to toil henceforth by themselves. In this action of his we however see striking evidences of his own ardent affection for the Lord; for greatly as he loves them, his brethren have a secondary place in that heart now full of Christ to the exclusion of aught else. He has literally left all for Christ, and is privileged, not only as being the first disciple to reach the Lord, but also as being thereby enabled to help his brethren even more effectually than he could have done had he remained with them. For all the advantage of having a firm footing upon the shore is Peter's as he now draws the net to land, full of great fishes. Do not those who come straight from the Lord's presence to the succor of other loved ones ever prove to be the most effectual helpers of their toiling brethren?

While standing “in the midst” in Jerusalem, our Lord took and ate the fish His disciples gave Him. By the shore of the Sea of Galilee they saw a fire of coals that they had not themselves made, fish laid thereon that they had not caught, and bread not at all of their providing. These partakers of the repast are the guests of Him Who serves them during the never-to-be-forgotten meal; itself an earnest of the joys of the coming feast at which our Lord will make those servants, whom He finds “watching,” to sit down to meat, when He will gird Himself and come forth and serve them.

His own resources infinite, yet does He condescendingly acknowledge the result of His blessing of their own toil by saying, “Bring of the fish which ye have now caught.”

To those already established in the glorious truth of His resurrection was this “proof” given, by which our Lord Jesus also gave ample proof that His great love and tender concern for His own remained unaltered by changed circumstances.

The thrice repeated “Lovest thou Me?” wrought more effectually in the heart of Peter than a long discourse would have done. And the very nature of the threefold charge is yet another clear indication of constant solicitude for the promotion of the welfare of His own “lambs” and “sheep.”

John's last picture in his Gospel is his presentation of Peter following his risen Lord by express command; and of John following Jesus because it is Himself that is leading the way—no question raised and no definite command required. May we so follow Christ at all times.

THE APPEARANCE ON THE MOUNTAIN IN GALILEE.

What inclines us to the thought that this was probably the occasion to which Paul refers when he writes of our Lord being seen “of above five hundred brethren at once,” is the final wording of this “proof” as given by Matthew, viz., “and when they saw Him, they worshipped Him: but some doubted.” For the three last quoted words could scarcely apply to those who had already seen Him more than once before, and who, when they had previously seen Him, knew that it was the Lord. And the verse preceding that quoted is conclusive that this meeting was by previous appointment. From the knowledge, however imperfect, which we possess of our own hearts, we can easier account for “some doubting,” or being at “a loss what to think, if these words apply to “some” of that “five hundred,” many of whom had not before seen Him since He was risen from among the dead. The Lord now authoritatively commanded His disciples to go and teach all nations.

OUR LORD'S APPEARANCE TO THE APOSTLE JAMES

is one of distinct “proofs” enumerated by Paul (1 Cor. 15), of which no mention is made elsewhere.

THE APPEARANCE ON THE FORTIETH DAY

(possibly that “to all the apostles” of which Paul speaks) was evidently in Jerusalem. Earlier, by express command or appointment, had they gone to Galilee, there to see the Lord; now the exhortation given is, “tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued, with power from on high.” They are further instructed to begin preaching “at Jerusalem.”

“And He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy: and were continually in the temple, praising God.”

ON THE DAY OF PENTECOST

Peter adduces the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as demonstrating the glorious fact that the risen Jesus had “been exalted by the right hand of God,” and had “received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit “; Whose presence on earth was and is an incontestable proof, not only of the resurrection, but also that the risen Jesus has departed out of this world unto the Father.

We pass on to consider that which, viewed from one standpoint, may be said to be

THE FINAL PROOF GIVEN TO THE NATION OF ISRAEL.

One of the charges preferred against Stephen before the council was that he had been heard to say, “that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered unto us.” To the subject-matter of his unanswerable defense we now make no allusion, seeing that his powerful testimony through the Spirit before the enemies of the Lord was instantly confirmed by the heavens being opened in the sight of that fearless witness on earth. That same Jesus Whom they had crucified, and Whose sepulcher had been so carefully sealed, is now seen by Stephen standing on the right hand of God. Given thus unexpectedly, this infallible proof of the resurrection could not be gainsaid; the guilty disputants had only one resource; this they instantly adopted, and silenced the witness by stoning him to death.

THE LAST PROOF OF ALL

cited by the apostle Paul is that the risen Lord was seen of himself also, “as of one born out of due time.” To believers of Gentile birth, this appearance of the Lord has a special interest, because of its being inseparably connected with Paul's call to the apostleship of the uncircumcision.

JOHN AFTERWARD SAW THE RISEN LORD

in His judicial glory; and fell at His feet as dead. The Lord then said, “Fear not; I am the First and the Last, and the Living One; and I became dead, and, behold, I am alive for evermore.”

A. J.

Scripture Queries and Answers.

Q.-Do the recorded Passovers help us to gather the space of the Lord's ministry on earth?

DISCIPLE.

A.-In John 2:13 is the first, which preceded the public ministry of the Lord in Galilee. For even in John 3:24 John is seen not as yet in prison. In John 4 the Lord is going through Samaria on His way to Galilee which He only reaches at the end of this chapter. Next in Matt. 11, John, sends from prison to inquire, and in ch. 11 the Lord vindicates His disciples for eating of the corn on a sabbath, which was after a new Passover and even the wave-sheaf that followed it. From Luke 6:1 (which coalesces) it was second-first sabbath, that is, next after the great one (cf. John 19:31) of that week, the first sabbath when it became lawful after Jehovah had His first-fruits. Again we learn from John 6:4, which corresponds in time with Matt. 14, or the first miracle of the loaves, that Passover was at hand, that is, the third. The last Passover, or fourth, He came up to keep, and be Himself our Passover in His sacrifice. It is thus rendered certain and evident from scripture, that the public ministry of our Lord lasted less than four years, or at least three years and a half, as it is generally understood, though some men of learning have contended for less or more.

Q.-Isa. 53:11. What does this mean? Especially by His knowledge? C. P.

A.-One important question arises, when it is known that the object of the verb is not “many” as in all known versions but “the many.” If to “the many” belongs the technical sense in which Daniel employs it, the meaning would be the mass of Jews that believe not, contrasted with the remnant (chap. 9: 27, 11: 33, 39, 12:3). The article is not affixed in chap. 11:34, 44, 12:4, 10, where it has no such application. So Isa. 52:14, 15, and the latter clause of 53:12, while its first clause has the article. Without doubt this makes the interpretation difficult; which some have tried to meet by comparing the Pauline of οἱ πολλοὶ of Rom. 5:19. But as this is due to τοῦ ἑνὸς in the same clause, how can it be imported with any certainty into Isaiah where there is no such contrast? If then we attach a force in Isaiah similar to the phrase in Daniel, the meaning of the verb would seem necessarily modified. For the unbelieving mass could not really be justified, but “instructed in righteousness” they might be by the Righteous Servant. In this case also “by His knowledge” would have the unforced sense of what He made known by His teaching. And Dan. 12:3 confirms this sense; for teachers can only instruct “the many” or indeed any in righteousness. They surely can justify none. It is certain that God alone justifies. Confessedly, however, the passage in Isaiah calls for fuller investigation; as there seems to be a grave difficulty not here raised. Any real help would be welcome.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:1

This comprehensive, instructive, and interesting chapter, followed by Gen. 11:1-9 which has its own special importance, is devoted to a description of a new element among mankind, its various nations divided in their lands, every one after his tongue. Before the deluge no such distinctions subsisted. Immense as the population might be, they were not thus associated any more than marked off one from another. Jehovah took care that the line of Seth should be guarded for His ways then, and for His purposes in the future. There were moral differences between Cain and his descendants from early days; and an awful form of creature lawlessness arose before God executed judgment on all flesh in an earth corrupt before Him, and filled with violence. But there was no government on the one hand yet established by God, nor was there any division into nations, nor yet diversity of language.

After the flood God had introduced the principle of government, committing the charge into the hands of men. As the next fact of the widest moment for the earth, the origin of the nations which were about to play their part is made known to us; and this with a special view to His choice of a people for Himself, and separated to Himself. Even it is seen first tried and failing through sin, as Adam had been in the world before the flood. Of this the O. T. is the ample witness and the awful proof, before His grace intervenes in the Second man and the Messiah of Israel to deliver both man and Israel, as He will the church and the universe, on the ground of divine righteousness and ever enduring mercy to the praise of Himself and the Lamb.

The fact is before all eyes. Nothing exists more notorious in ordinary and universal knowledge (save perhaps for the most isolated of savages) than the many races and tongues and peoples of mankind, each having its own separate bond of union. Yet how this fact began, so pregnant in history, not one of these nations can tell; nor do the most ancient—one does not ask of formal records, but—of incidental monuments go far enough back to explain. Yet here it is written with simple and calm dignity by the instrument God chose for the purpose. It was easy for Him, Who knew all from before the beginning, to make known distinctly and accurately what it seemed good in His eyes to reveal to His people. This He has done in the short compass of a single chapter, Gen. 10, with His moral ground for so separating mankind in the first paragraph of the following chapter. We shall find there an adequate, not to say absolutely necessary, reason for His intervention at once for His own glory and on behalf of guilty man; unless we assume that He Who but recently instituted responsible government in man's hand was indifferent to a rebellion as slighting to Himself as ruinous to man. This drew out from Him a dealing equally simple and effectual, which issued in the scattering of man over the earth according to God's will, but in separate nationalities to the frustration of man's will against God.

As Israel then was to be His earthly people, God made known in a brief survey the sources of all the nations here below, having provided, laid down, and committed to man government in its root principle. None of these facts applies to the antediluvian earth, where all consisted of a vast indiscriminate population of one tongue and under no restraint of government, as it ended in all but universal lawlessness and a judgment that spared a family of only eight persons, including its head. He Who alone could reveal the primeval state when the first man and woman were made, and ushered then into an unstained earth, now deigned to tell the story of how nationalities began with their miraculously started distinct languages, spreading over different lands according to their families. His pleasure was both to bring to naught man's union for a name of pride and to set Israel in the most central spot, not more for righteous government than for shedding on all the earth the knowledge of Jehovah and His glory. So says Deut. 32:8: “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the children of Adam, He set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel.” The people were redeemed first, then the land: all in view of Messiah and His redemption and reign in manifest glory, when they shall bow in faith who are still unbelieving, and living water issuing from the house eastward shall heal the Dead sea and gird the globe with blessing. See Ezek. 47, and Joel 3:18; and Zech. 14:8, 9 adds that half goes westward: the sign doubtless of universal blessing from the divine center in that day.

The first chapter of Genesis presents the origin of the world, especially of the earth, sea and land, and its inhabitants, above all of man himself its head and God's representative; then in chap. 2. the special relations of man with God, with the lower creaturehood, and with woman his counterpart, which necessitates for completeness and accuracy the special divine name of “Jehovah” Elohim. The slighting of these revelations exposes to Atheism or a powerless Theism. Science cannot penetrate the secrets of the beginnings by the confession even of one so self-confident and skeptical as J. S. Mill (in his Logic). The domain of science is either purely abstract or applied to what is already created; but how it came to be is outside its ken. Here in chap. 10. we are given to survey a fact of immense importance to the government of the earth. The first rise of families into separate nations and tongues, history has utterly failed to indicate, as science fails, in the material realm.

Revelation, as it kept intact two chronological lines in chap. 5., here too supplies the manifest and invaluable light of God with a special view to His earthly people, followed by the moral cause laid before us in chap. 11. which brings in (as it ought) the name of Jehovah throughout its earlier paragraph; whereas it only appears exceptionally, though for good reason, in chap. 10:9. All the lessons and monumental records of all the earth combined are not to be compared for certainty or comprehensiveness with this sacred ethnography, grounded on genealogy, and linked with geography. God gave it by Moses as He alone could. Facts of great weight as to the antediluvians are related in Gen. 4, and, what to some may seem strange, in the family of Cain with religion but without faith. Therein arose city life, arts, and sciences, literary verse, among men who forgot the fall, ignored sin and the Savior, and strove to embellish the earth into a worldly paradise. As the unity of the race was absolute at the beginning, so it was virtually in Noah after the deluge. The outward progress of mankind must have been all the greater because of their longevity. Whatever it was, the sons of Noah possessed all on their new start. No theory is more fallacious than the pretended ages of stone, bronze, and iron. Men, in their wanderings into rude forest life or other forms of savagery, fell into the circumstances of such facts, which still exist under similar conditions: to generalize them, as successive periods through which all passed, is mere myth, not history.

“And these [are the] generations of Noah's sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; and sons were born to them after the flood” (Gen. 10:1). This is the true place for such a statement given after Noah's fall and its remarkable consequences; just as the genealogy of Adam's sons followed in Gen. 5 after his sin and that of Cain led to the revealed state of the world before the flood. Noah lived on for centuries after, but is mentioned no more in the history, as Adam disappears after his sin, with Cain's crime leading to Seth given instead of Abel. One Spirit forms the narrative beyond the wisdom of Moses, and in total disproof of incoherent fragments pieced together, least of all at an epoch when all was crumbling to ruin among the chosen people. It was well ordered that none of Noah's sons had children till they emerged from the ark. So Adam became a father only after the fall and expulsion from paradise.

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles

Esther.

In the book of Nehemiah we have the last look which scripture furnishes historically at the remnant in Jerusalem, justly subjected to the world-power for their apostasy from Jehovah, yet provisionally kept for Messiah's advent. Alas! as we know they rejected Him to their own rejection, the call of the Gentiles following, till mercy take the Jews up again at the end of the age, and they fall at the feet of Jesus Messiah in glory, after manifold judgments, when “all Israel shall be saved.”

Here we have another final view historically in the book of Esther; but it is in a quite different direction, for we have a picture of the secret providence which never fails to watch over them while they are scattered among the Gentiles. And this it is that accounts for no introduction of Jehovah or even Elohim in the book, which rationalistic ignorance alleges against its divine inspiration. Oh, the folly of heeding what these enemies of God (and therefore in divine things of man also) say about scripture! Were their learning and ability as great as they conceive for themselves and their school, nothing avails but faith for the true and spiritual intelligence of God's word. For their system excluding faith excludes God also, and is a constant crying up of man in any and every form; so that assuredly the issue is that the blind guides lead their blind followers into the ditch. Now to faith the absence of God's name is here in unexpected but exquisite harmony with the book, and its intrusion would not have been in perfect keeping with the secret working for the people (publicly Lo-ammi) preserved extraordinarily, while their enemies are completely foiled and overwhelmed. It stands alone from beginning to end the deeply interesting witness of One unseen and unnamed Who none the less surely works in the anomalous state of the Captivity, carrying out by seemingly nothing beyond human means the vindication of those who, faulty as the people had been, secretly feared Him, and the catastrophe of their adversary, though in possession of assured and boundless means to compass their destruction.

The readers of Baxter's “Saint's Rest” know that the author, on Sandys' authority, says the Jews used to fling the book of Esther to the ground, because God's name was not there. But J. C. Wolfii Biblio. Heb. 2:90 is opposed and imputes the act, where it may have been, to manifesting their abhorrence of Haman; for the book was notoriously venerated in the highest degree, however late in the Canon. Luther was as wrong about it as about the Epistle of James. The interpolations in the Greek V. gave it an unfavorable aspect to Athanasius and others who did not know Hebrew.

Short as the book is, it is full of the most surprising circumstances which crowd its scenes and entrance the least sensitive of readers from the first chapter to the close. Without a touch of romance, it is instinct with the life of the Persian empire at that day. Yet though it seem unique and exceptional on the surface, underneath we may discern the constant story of scripture, the war that never ceases, while man is tried in the ages and dispensations (allowed for the wisest purposes by Him Who could terminate it in a moment) between Him Who is good and righteous, and “the old serpent, the devil.” And in that it is in this world, though the springs be outside it and on high, we see in the book the godly Jew on the one hand who resists at all cost, and, not out of pride or personal feeling but uncompromising religious fidelity, refuses to honor the representative of a people with whom Jehovah swore from early days to have war from generation to generation. In Mordecai and Haman the question is here brought to issue, and the triumph of the chosen people is foreshown; not less is the shame and curse which will without a doubt fall on their enemies in the day that hastens. As Satan instigated the Amalekite to his exterminating hatred of God's fallen people, so He Who loved them notwithstanding all would punish condignly an enmity that began without cause against the object of His manifest favor.

It is remarkable, however, that while the book of Esther does not in its historical events transcend the provisional limits which characterize all the past captivity annals, it supposes that servitude to their Gentile masters to which apostate iniquity had reduced the people of God. But even in its most extreme form, outside the land, the temple, the sacrifices, and the priesthood, it demonstrates the surest action of divine providence on their behalf against their foes however deadly and powerful. We have also typical instruction which yields much more to the opened eye. He Who, though hidden and unmentioned, none the less does all things according to His sovereign will, does not fail to add very far beyond the living proof of watchful oversight, tender care, and overthrow of seemingly triumphant malice. For Vashti, in the typical point of view, by no means obscurely sets before faith the Gentile set aside because of insubjection to the supreme ruler, and this in that which He had so deeply at heart, the display of her beauty before the world; and the accomplishment of promise of old is in the call of Esther the Jewish bride to be the object of His love and the sharer of His earthly glory. This is the scheme that runs through the prophets as a whole, of which the things, here prefigured, are manifest characteristics: the everlasting overthrow of the dominion of the nations by divine judgment; the elevation of the earthly object of Jehovah's love, as set forth distinctly in the Psalms and Prophets, to say nothing of Canticles; and the administration for the Great King entrusted to Mordecai as the figure of the Lord Jesus.

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream and Daniel's Vision: 1

Dan. 2; 7

IT may be well here to notice that the book of Daniel is divisible from its nature into two nearly equal parts. The first six chapters may be regarded as the first volume, the last six as the second. This is not at all an arbitrary division. It is one founded on the contents of the book. For the early chapters consist of visions which the Gentile king saw, or facts of a moral kind that befell one or other of the monarchs of Babylon vindicating God's mind and sure judgment; whereas the last half of the book communicates visions which the prophet saw. Accordingly there is a marked difference between the two portions, even when they treat of the same subject matter. We see this clearly by comparing the seventh chapter with the second. They go over the same ground precisely, but in a different way. The earlier of the two gives the public history of the world as made known to the first man whom the God of heaven made monarch of all mankind, as well as of the lower creation (chap. 2: 37, 38); in the later (chap. 7.) we have a presentation of it to a saint, and details in relation to the Lord and the saints at the end of the age.

Nebuchadnezzar was not able to enforce his sway universally—man never is. But as far as the sovereign gift of God was concerned, it was wheresoever the sons of men dwelt. Cyrus, the Persian, extended his sway somewhat more; Alexander of Macedon, a great deal farther still (ver. 39). But it was the Romans who did more than any before them. This was the last empire of the tour, to which God gave to conquer and rule the then known world, leaving outside of it races that were then uncivilized, our own included, but afterward to become the most important peoples of modern times. The Britons up to the Christian era were rude and undisciplined. So were the Germans as wild and fierce as the Britons, and the Gauls little better, though successively more or less reduced by the Roman arms. You all perhaps know the famous Julius Caesar visited our country in the south; as others followed and tried to conquer the Caledonians; but the mountains protected those hardy warriors, and the Romans had no particular sway beyond the well-known limits that sever the Highlands from the Lowlands.

However that may have been, here we have God giving in the first part of the book a comprehensive view of the great imperial powers in the history of the world. There was first the vigorous and splendid empire of Babylon. Man had sought and contended for undisputed and supreme power; but it had never been seen before. Thus we see in scripture the haughty ambition of the Assyrian power: and, even after its fall in the destruction of Nineveh, the rising up of the Egyptian, till Nebuchadnezzar overthrew it at Carchemish. Babylon had been but a subject province of Assyria till the Chaldees gave new courage and strength against its suzerain. For they were among the active enemies that destroyed Nineveh, combining with their Median and Persian allies. Whatever the pretension, the Assyrians did not succeed in getting a universal empire. Egypt sought the same thing afterward, but Nebuchadnezzar crushed any such aspiration. God had decided to exalt a hitherto inferior kingdom. Who on earth then would have thought of Babylon? Yet was it chosen of God to hold this new place of imperial power. It had under Merodach Baladan become independent no doubt, but it was soon put down again and made tributary to Assyria. Hitherto they appear to have been chiefly of Hamitic race; but some time before the Chaldees gave them a new impetus, coming down from the northern mountains, being of Japheth, from which source were the races that overspread Europe.

But whatever the providential course that wrought, the empire of the world depended on another and all-important turning point. Israel, Judah even, had proved utterly unworthy to be the leader of the kingdoms of the earth. They ought to have been a central witness as a people to all the surrounding kingdoms, a pattern of righteous government under the law of God that all the nations might take heed and see the blessing of having the Lord Jehovah for their God. All this, however, had completely and shamefully broken down before God allowed Babylon to be anything but a power aspiring to independence, but not yet succeeding even in this. When it rose for a little, it was friendly toward Judah, as we may learn from Isa. 39

You remember how, after recovery from his sickness, Hezekiah the king displayed his treasures to the ambassadors from Babylon, and how the prophet was promptly sent to announce that all should be carried to Babylon without a remnant, and his own sons captives and eunuchs there. No such destiny had God allowed to the Assyrian, who on the contrary fell under an immense disaster, even the destruction of a mighty host of them, through the angel's intervention. A hundred and eighty-five thousand in their camp were left dead corpses in a single night. Do you ask how these facts were not acknowledged by the ancients? How could you expect a vainglorious and idolatrous king like Sennacherib to publish his own shame under the evident interposition of the living God?

These ancient despots were ready enough to blazon their successes on enduring pillars or other monuments of pride. Who ever heard of people disposed or ready to acknowledge their own defeats, especially when the defeat was of divine origin as in this instance? And if such be the might of Jehovah's angel, what of His hand? In fact, God then held things in the balance, until first Israel and then Judah proved altogether failing to present the picture of a righteous people here below. Had He continued to keep Judah after Manasseh and others, it would have been God supporting His own in the wickedness of the kings and the people. He cannot deny Himself. For those who know His nature and ways, it is impossible to conceive His doing otherwise than He did in their case; and so He warned them early. “Hear this word that Jehovah hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities” (Amos 3:1, 2). Who finds anything like this in the Vedas or the Sutras, in the Zend-avesta or the Yih-king, the Kuran or the like?

The spurious sacred books of men rather flatter and puff up their votaries, while they harden their hearts to destroy better men who refuse their impostures. God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men that hold the truth in unrighteousness. He will not sanction but punish those who couple His name with their own evil; and is it not most just? The Epistle to the Romans declares His grace to the ungodly, who, when they confess the name of the Lord, are brought into the richest spiritual blessing. But if they insult the God Who blesses them, what can be before them but righteous judgment? God is not mocked. So the gospel declares. But Israel is still kept as a people to be blessed of God. They are in a truly abnormal state, having been for many centuries without a king and without a prince, and without a sacrifice and without a pillar, and without an ephod and teraphim. What is there that remains to Judaism but dry and empty form? All they can do in Jerusalem is to wail. But this is not the spirit or language of those who have the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ. These may and ought to confess their sins; but if they be not happy, there is something wrong with their faith or their state. They who believe the gospel have the deepest, highest, surest, and simplest grounds for rejoicing in the Savior. “Rejoice in the Lord always,” said the apostolic prisoner from Rome; “again I will say, Rejoice “; as he said of himself, “Yea, and if I be poured forth upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all.”

Those that in faith of Christ read the New Testament, or the whole Bible (for one likes it as a whole and not merely its latest part), cannot but glean from it very considerable good. But if they practice what is contrary to the word, the Holy Spirit of God is grieved and therefore makes them miserable in the sense of their unfaithfulness; for He witnesses against their faults till they judge themselves before God. But their regular state is one of peace and joy in believing.

( To be continued D.V.)

The Last King of the North

Dan. 11

As is known, great uncertainty pervades even believers as to the closing verses of this chapter and their true application. It may be well to show enough proof to any mind open to conviction that he truth is here so plainly revealed that doubt is inexcusable. And this is the more desirable, because, as long as hesitation exists, there cannot be the simple strength of faith, not only in believing this scripture, but in apprehending many others with which it is connected.

Let it then be distinctly noted that, though the kings of the north and south occupy the chapter from ver. 5 (Seleucus Nicator and Ptolemaeus Lagi with their successors), this comes to a halt at verse 32, after which we hear no more of Antiochus Epiphanes; of whom far more had been said than of any other, because of his deliberate and desperate efforts to uproot the law of God in the land and to Hellenize the Jews, even to Greek idolatry in the temple itself. The Maccabean resistance is pursued after that, and the various fortunes of the Jews in verses 33-35, which evidently not only indicate a continuance of sifting and trial, but point “to the time of the end.” This needs no argument; it is indisputably asserted by the prophet. The great break is therefore here; and we are directed to look on from that Maccabean day of “exploits,” followed by a period of instruction and falling on one side, and purging of the others for many days, without a word about kings of the north and south; but beyond this is “a time appointed,” left quite indefinite, when “the time of the end” is to come.

Then suddenly we hear of one entirely distinct from either line of those kings. It is no longer the Lagidae nor the Seleucidae, but a monarch who becomes an object of attack to future kings of the south as well as of the north simultaneously or nearly so. He will be beyond doubt a king in “the land” of Israel between the kingdoms of the north (Syria and Asia Minor) and of the south (Egypt). Verses 36-40 are entirely devoted to this portentous ruler, only the last of which brings in the king of the south pushing at him, and the king of the north tempestuously assailing him (that is, the willful king in Palestine).

It is of the utmost moment to observe that from that ver. 40 it is no longer the king in the land that is described, but his northern adversary. Some of the fathers blundered here, as do many moderns, who take the closing verses 41-45 as said of the Jewish king in that future day; whereas they are demonstrably an account of the king of the north and his awful end.

First, it is on the face of the passage that this northern king is the person last spoken of through the greater part of ver. 40; and therefore grammatically “he” is the one continued throughout the following verses as the great actor who at length comes to an abrupt end. Next, he is said to “enter also into the beautiful land” (Judaea) as well as many others. This does not apply properly to the king who was at home and reigning there, but to an enemy from without. Thirdly, it cannot be “the king of the south,” seeing that ver. 42 informs us in plain terms that the land of Egypt shall not escape,” and again that “he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt,” and, quite as serious an effect of his overthrow, that “the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps.” Fourthly, what arrests and recalls him in his southern victories is “tidings out of the east and out of the north.” It is plainly bad rumors out of his own dominions which trouble him. “Therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy and utterly to make away many. And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the mountain of holy beauty” (vers. 44, 45). Here we have him back, incensed to the highest degree and bent on the destruction of the Jews. For the beautiful holy mountain is none other than that which distinguished Jerusalem and its temple, as the seas on either hand are the Mediterranean and the Salt or Dead Sea. “Yet he shall come to his end and none shall help him.” Compare Dan. 8:23-25.

From other scriptures, as Isa. 11:4, 2 Thess. 2:8, Rev. 19:20, we know that the false prophet, king in the land, the Antichrist, is to perish with his western ally the Beast (or revived and apostate Roman Emperor), when the Lord shines forth in the day of His appearing; whereas the last king of the north comes up afterward to a no less terrible catastrophe, when He takes His place with His people in Jerusalem and fights against this mighty ravager at the head of those nations whom he compels to follow his banner. Of them Zech. 14 speaks, of the first attack when he was partially successful, before he hurried to the south, and of utter destruction when he comes up again in his fury, not knowing that Jerusalem is then Jehovah-Shammah.

Treasure Hidden in the Field

HERE the importance of the Lord's speaking to the disciples in the house is manifest. He began with explaining the parable of the Darnel of the field. They are not exterior facts of the kingdom like those said without to the crowds, but spiritual views for His followers only. If those spoken openly have been misinterpreted through the natural mind, the later are yet more exposed to it.

“Again, the kingdom of the heavens is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid, and for the joy of it goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth the field” (Matt. 13:44).

The gospel or the soul's salvation is by no means what this parable or the next presents, though often so interpreted. In reality, one can hardly conceive anything more opposite. For the gospel is the revelation of God's grace in Christ; salvation is a free gift, like eternal life. It is in no way true that the man, who has it brought before him, sells all that he has to purchase that treasure; still less does he buy the field, which is certainly something else very different, to acquire the salvation of his soul.

Never since the world began has any soul been led by the Spirit to sell all that he had to buy life or pardon, salvation or glory. And if any have sought in this fashion to be delivered from evil or to gain God's favor, we may be sure that their suit was rejected; for it is an ignoring of guilt and ruin, a frustrating of God's grace, and a making void in effect Christ's death. On the other hand it is allowed fully that, in those that are Christ's and have Him as their portion, there may be and there ought to be a like devotedness to any extent in our measure. But this is a very different thing, and not what the parable teaches.

It is overlooked that the soul's need and blessing we have had already in the opening parable of the Sower, as it is indeed a personal question, antecedent to the mysteries of the kingdom, and carefully presented as distinct, before any likeness of the kingdom begins. Those likenesses bring out larger considerations, whether outside or within. And the Lord is the “man” here, as nobody can doubt in His field of wheat spoiled by the darnel (ver. 24).

Thus read, all flows without jar and in accordance with all truth. It is the Son of God incarnate Who is compared to one who found and hid the treasure in the field. And, in this aspect, “the field” retains its significance as “the world,” instead of being twisted into “the scriptures,” or “the letter” or “the Christian profession “; it is “the world” where Christ found His own, who constitute His “treasure.” The meaning is then not only enforced by but agreeable to the rest of God's word. And the Lord's consequent action is no less in harmony. For what can be more certain than that He emptied Himself to become man, and, when found in that fashion, humbled Himself and became obedient unto death—even death of the cross? Nay, we may press the analogy closer still from the known facts of the case. He was as Messiah heir of David's throne, but gave up all in His death, which purchased the world and redeemed His own who were in it. Even His enemies, who blaspheme and deny Him Who bought them (2 Peter 2:1), are His purchase. But His own have also in Him redemption through His blood. So plain is it that purchase and redemption are not the same, nor equally extensive. For clearly the purchase is not of the treasure only but of the field (or world) wherein the treasure was hid. Redemption is not thus universal but belongs only to those that believe, as all scripture teaches and this parable illustrates. Christ has paid (to say the least) the full price, to reconcile “all things, whether the things on earth or the things in the heavens” (Col. 1:20); and the day is near, when God will head up the universe in Him (Eph. 1:10), the Heir of all things, at His coming. Christ bought the world, but His joy is in the “treasure” which is to be with Him and like Him in that day.

How then do you stand as to Him? To be bought, as is the field of the world, is only the more terrible if you deny Him. And all that call not on Him, all that neglect so great salvation, do deny Him, though they may not break into heresies of perdition. You are summoned by God in His word to believe on Him. So believing you shall have mercy: for it is written that whosoever does believe on Him shall not be ashamed. All who reject Him, high or low, poor or rich, must bear their doom to endless shame and woe. Oh, why sin against God and His Christ and your own soul? Why regard lying vanities, whatever they may be, and forsake your own mercy?

Christ, the world-rejected Lamb, is worthy, and He has brought to your door redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. Is not this your deep need whoever and whatever you are? In none other is remission; in Him it is as perfect as Himself. Oh, delay not, nor turn away. It is yielding to His enemy and yours, to the liar and murderer from the beginning. Consider too how your unbelief insults God in all the ways of His grace. “As though God did beseech through us, we pray (says the apostle) on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20). Unbelief directly dishonors the Father Who sent, and the Son Who in love deigned to be sent. And the Holy Spirit is sent down since Christ's ascension to testify of His Person and work and glory. Oh! beware of doing despite to the Spirit of grace. For we know Him that said, Vengeance belongeth to Me: I will recompense.

Proofs of the Resurrection

IN a grand symphony of praise a multitude of angels, in the hearing of the shepherds of Bethlehem, celebrated the birth of our Lord. Assuredly not less interested in His glorious resurrection, certain angels rendered true and acceptable service in announcing before the women at the sepulcher its accomplishment. From that moment when from the vision of angels Mary Magdalene “turned herself back,” these heavenly messengers were lost to sight, to appear again no more until after our Lord's ascension (Acts 1:10, 11).

When first our Lord foretold to His disciples His own resurrection from the dead, these questioned one with another what the rising from the dead should mean (Matt. 9:9). And, when we consider it, how much was involved in that glorious bringing again from the dead our. Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep! For upon it depended our justification; also by it the Mighty Victor put all His enemies to open shame. The very glories attendant upon His victory make the riches of His grace all the more apparent as we perceive the manner in which our glorious Deliverer made Himself known to His weeping and sorrowing disciple (John 20).

“Jesus saith unto her, Mary.” That one word, uttered by Himself, instantly turned all her overwhelming grief into overflowing joy. It was Himself indeed, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever.” Many waters had not quenched that love which His calling her by name abundantly proved to be, as ever, perfect. She had sorrowed much for His sake; He had endured infinitely more in accomplishing her salvation and ours; and now He was found of her whom He called by name.

“She turned herself, and saith unto Him, Rabboni.” The writer on one occasion, having been hastily called to the bedside of a loved and dying sister, was quietly sitting near and watching the dear sick one, when she presently opened her eyes, gazed upwards very intently, and said, “Lord Jesus!” Those two words were uttered in a tone at once expressive of complete satisfaction of heart, of ecstatic spiritual joy, and of deepest reverence, as became a true worshipper. By that one word “Rabboni,” Mary Magdalene expressed what this dying sister also felt when she too recognized her Lord.

Her natural impulses are instantly checked and restrained by the Lord's authoritative injunction— “Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended to My Father.” The Son of God stood before her, soon to ascend up to where He was before; so that, if before her in infinite and condescending grace, Christ shall henceforth be known after the flesh no more. Yet is. Mary very highly privileged in being commissioned to bear His message to those whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren, to announce the glorious fact that His ascension is now imminent, in language no less clear in its expression of the full reality of our unalterable relationship now existing between the risen Son of God and those who believed: His Father and God is theirs also.

OUR LORD'S SECOND APPEARANCE.

The omission from the ninth verse of Matt. 28 in the R. V. of what forms the first clause of the verse in the A. V. is a decided improvement. We quote the Revised, “And behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and took hold of His feet, and worshipped Him.”

The manner of our Lord's salutation “All hail!” leaves no room for a doubt that quite a number of women, saw Him at His second appearance. Mary had gone and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and she had faithfully delivered His first message to them. Yet Mary's only companions on her again returning to the sepulcher appear to be believing women, whom our Lord meets on their way, and so salutes them all. These are now privileged to hold Him by the feet, which Mary at His first appearance was strictly forbidden to do. Why that restriction then? And this liberty of action now? Evidently the Lord would have His “brethren” to be instant partakers with Mary in the joy of the full assurance that He was actually risen from the dead. There must be no delay in the delivery of the all-important message He sent at the first by her to them. Had they at once accepted the truth from her lips, they had doubtless all returned with her at once to the sepulcher. We believe that those thus returning with her believed because of her word, and that the favor of holding their risen Lord by the feet was specially conferred on those who readily received Mary's testimony. The message they jointly receive to deliver to His “brethren” treats not of His ascension, but of His presently meeting them in Galilee.

THE LORD APPEARS TO TWO GOING TO EMMAUS.

It has become quite the habit with some, whose sole standpoint in viewing the whole matter appears to be Psa. 133:3, to reflect strongly upon those two disciples, who, on that eventful resurrection day, turned their backs upon and left Jerusalem to go to a comparatively obscure village. These Mentors seem to quite overlook the very significant fact that our Lord Himself does not in the least reflect upon, them for their action, which exactly reversed that of the Queen of Sheba. The city of solemnities had an all-absorbing attraction for her, because there reigned Solomon, and there the Lord God of Israel was glorified in Israel's accepted king. Therefore in her day it was a profitable employment to

“Walk about Zion, and go round about her:

Tell the towers thereof,

Mark well her bulwarks,

Consider her palaces.”

That they might have the privilege of worshipping a greater than Solomon the wise men came from the east to Jerusalem. Not finding Him there, Zion's “towers, bulwarks, palaces,” have no attractions for them compared with Bethlehem, where He then was. The culpable indifference displayed by the inhabitants of Jerusalem with reference to His birth, had since given place to the open manifestation of their murderous hatred of Him, Whom they cast out of that city which He had Himself chosen to put His name there, and crucified on Calvary.

The entire narrative shows that Cleopas and his companion were thinking more about the treatment the Lord had received at the hands of its inhabitants than about the city itself. For all this their turning of their backs upon it was a testimony against Jerusalem, in which they had no heart any longer to abide, since He has been so shamelessly maltreated therein, and led out only to be crucified.

His crucifixion, death, and burial is their all-absorbing theme of conversation as they walk and are sad. Their affections are strong, and as deep as they were real; but faith is lacking, so that they are very depressed and sorrowful: chafed in their minds and wounded in their spirits because of what He had suffered at the hands of sinful men. Jesus draws near and goes with them, His every footstep betokening unweakened affection.

In infinite wisdom their eyes are holden that they do not know Him. He encourages them to tell out all their sorrows. Hiding nothing from Him whose full sympathies are with them, they tell of all that has so deeply wounded them. He answers them by the instant application of that word which is sharper than any two-edged sword. His sharp rebuke went deeper than all that had wounded before, and fully exposed a slowness of heart in believers, of the existence of which they had hitherto not been aware. As they now were deeply wounded and thoroughly humbled, their risen Lord forsakes them not; but instantly brings forward the testimony of the written word concerning Christ's sufferings, and His glory that should certainly follow.

Jerusalem now is no longer in their thoughts; they fret no more over the wicked action of “the chief priests and our rulers;” they forget even their own sorrows. For their hearts are now burning within them, as He talks with them, and opens to them the scriptures.

They draw near unto Emmaus; He makes as though He would go farther. But they constrain Him to abide with them. Most gladly they do their best and utmost in their genuine desire to minister to the refreshment of their unknown Guest, Who has so fully refreshed their spirits by His ministration of the Christ to them through the written word.

He is known of them in breaking of bread, and vanishes. This is now indeed an overflowing cup; they must make others partakers with themselves of joys so full and deep and real. They rise up the same hour, and return to that very city upon which they have so recently turned their backs. Why is it become to them the city of desire, in which their feet now gladly tread? Christ's own are there assembled; they are mourning and weeping, while Cleopas and his companion are filled with comfort. They hasten forward in their eagerness to tell good news, to find that the Lord has been graciously pleased to give another proof of His own resurrection. Certain anticipate them, “saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.” “And they told what things were done in the way, and how He was known of them in breaking of bread.”

Position and the Grace That Gave It

THERE are two dangers to which believers are exposed: one is stopping short of the position grace gives; the other, of losing the abiding sense of it in the soul. Both involve what is important as to standing and state, or privilege and responsibility. The latter should ever be governed by the former, and both maintained in holy consistency and grateful thankfulness to the God of all grace, from Whom all blessing comes, and to Whom all the fruit of it should return.

Deut. 26 and Eph. 2 are two striking scriptures to illustrate the position given in God's grace with an appeal, to those blessed, ever to abide in the sense of it. In the one we have that of Israel as a redeemed nation, and in the other, that of the church in the marvelous grace bestowed alike upon Gentiles. True, the one is upon earth in the land of Canaan, and the other heavenly in the once dead but now living and exalted Savior. The principle nevertheless is one, though most important to distinguish; for from each given position there is a touching appeal, worthy of consideration in a moment like the present, when there is such need for believers to know and remind each other, that they belong to heaven, and no less to live and walk in the sense of the infinite grace of God, which not only saved but set them there in Christ. Israel, when in the land and enjoying their highest privilege in worship, were enjoined before the Lord their God to say, “A Syrian ready to perish was my father.” Gentile believers, when raised equally with the Jewish ones to the position of being set in Christ on high were enjoined to “Remember” what they were in the past. To forget the past through the present position may be the thought and way of man; but it is not so with God for those who are the recipients of His grace. Neither will a received position lead to

pride or indifference, when maintained in the presence of God, and enjoyed before and with Him Who gave it. Moreover, to stop short of the purpose of grace must be to lower what it is, and weaken or nullify that which gave rise to it. For example, Jehovah made known to Moses, the appointed deliverer of Israel, His purpose of grace toward them: they were not only to be delivered from the power of Pharaoh, and Egypt his sphere, but to be brought into the place of blessing, the land flowing with milk and honey.

This Ex. 3 clearly shows, when the Lord tells Moses His intention, and touchingly speaks of having seen His people's affliction, heard their cry, and known their sorrow. Hence the purpose of grace embraced not only deliverance from slavery, but the bringing into the blessings of Canaan. For Israel therefore to be content with the one, and fall short of the other, would be dishonoring if not presumptuous self-will as to the blessed purpose of divine grace. Yea, the precious truth of Deut. 26 whether as to the presentation of the first fruits, or the confession of what they were in Egypt with what they sprang from, would be lost, both as to their blessing in the land, and the kept up sense of the grace that gave it.

The offered first fruits could only be in and of the land of Canaan, so that Israel must be there, and possess it, before they could tender to Jehovah the precious fruit.

Then only, when in their enjoyed position, were they to say, “A Syrian ready to perish was my father” as well as to remember what they were in Egypt.

If position bore its holy fruit toward the Lord, so their past condition would have its wholesome effect, that all was of sovereign grace, flowing from Jehovah's choice—therefore to His own praise and glory, though equally to His people's happiness.

Having considered the position and grace of an earthly people, we follow only to look at the heavenly, which unfolds divine grace in all its fullness. If Jehovah and Moses were concerned and together respecting the former, God and His Son were blessedly so as to the latter: an important distinction, when we remember also that God has been glorified in and by His Son. By Him sin, death, and Satan's power have been annulled, so that the blessed purposes of grace may appear in all their fullness. Bearing this in mind, to stop short of the position grace gives is to slight not only divine purpose, but Christ Himself in and by Whom it is made good, seeing He is the grand center of all purpose and counsel, and His God-glorifying death its holy and righteous basis. It may be expected therefore, that the Epistle of divine counsels (as Ephesians clearly is) would unfold the fullness of divine grace.

Extremes of condition and position, infinitely beyond that of an earthly Israel are declared, laying bare the root and springs of an evil nature, wholly corrupt, and alienated from God: not only Jew and Gentile alike sinners, but dead in trespasses and sins, equally the children of wrath; a condition of ruin, helplessness, and death. Then and there it is, that God displays Himself by a power already manifested in Christ. He Who in grace went into death for the sin of others is now raised out from the dead by the power of God, and seated at His own right hand: a power in favor of all who believe, consistent with righteousness, and in character with what God is. Love and mercy in their greatness and richness combine with the exercise of divine power, suited to the condition of those dead in trespasses and sins; as it is written, “But God Who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.”

There is life with Christ risen from the dead, but further, “He hath raised us up together and made us sit together, in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Moreover that it may be fully understood to be His pure abounding grace that gives this position (as well as displays the exceeding riches of it by-and-by), it is added, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast.” Such is the given place of all believers now, not only the knowledge of being saved, but of life with and position in Christ in heavenly places. How distinct, and infinitely beyond that of an earthly people in the land of Canaan, who were taken from Egypt's bondage, with the humbling origin of “A Syrian ready to perish” ! Whereas present grace raises from moral death and sin, to life and seated position, and no less fully blesses in Christ in heaven. The supreme dignity and surpassing contrast of divine grace is not wondered at, since it is in and by Christ Jesus; and such wonder is eclipsed in the unfathomable fact that He by “the grace of God tasted death.”

When the latter expression of grace can be fathomed (which it never will), then will the extent of blessing flowing from it know its limit. But only God and His Son are in the knowledge and fullness of it. Alas! how little pure grace is known or understood with the love that gave rise to it, and the work of Christ by which the grace of salvation has freely come. The grace that saves from death and judgment, with present forgiveness of sins, is much clouded with uncertainty; so that the fullness of grace in seating us in Christ in heaven is rarely heard of, much less known and believed in as a present blessed reality. No wonder therefore, that the ground of an earthly people is accepted, and Jewish things imitated; as if what was should still be in experience and practice, rather than what is, since Christ has come and is gone into heaven. Eternal redemption, eternal life, present seated position in Christ, in the abiding rest and peace of a full salvation, are nevertheless for to-day, since the gospel of God has been preached by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Happy they who receive in their simplicity these holy and precious realities, as beyond all question!

It is well, for those who in any measure know what grace has freely and fully given in Christ, to be reminded of the responsibility such a position brings with it.

How wholesome therefore is the appeal to remember the past, not only as to those of whom it is written, that they were without hope and without God in the world. Alas! Gentiles when under the profession of Christ, have become proud and boastful, indifferent to the true grace of God, yea, have turned it to fleshly purposes and carnal ends. Those too who really know and have tasted the grace and blessedness of a present heavenly standing may well give heed, lest they fall into the snare of practical indifference to the abiding sense of what grace should produce. If heavenly life calls for heavenly ways and holy fruit, so also such a position claims the corresponding answer in separation from all that is a denial of it, bearing in mind that those set in Christ on high are created in Christ Jesus unto good works.

To avert the danger of falling short, either of the place grace gives, or of its abiding effects, no brighter sample can be given to imitate, than the apostle Paul, to whom its fullness was made known, and as it was received so was it also expressed to others. Grace abounded toward him to own himself the chief of sinners, the least of the apostles and of all saints. Nevertheless he labored more abundantly, adding, “Not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” In motive and object Christ Himself governed him: a man in Christ his grand theme, in contrast to man in the flesh; and Christ in glory the One for Whom he had suffered the loss of all things, to gain Whom as His eternal portion would be his incomparable blessedness. Such was grace to him for salvation and position, as Christ Jesus was his Savior, object, and boast. May that same grace so work in us by the blessed Spirit of God to beget in some little measure a like answer to the praise of Him, Who, though on high, yet went lower than all, in order to provide at all cost to Himself a place not only in Him in the heavenlies now, but to be with Him in His own likeness forever and ever. Amen.

G. G.

The Epistle of James: Introduction

THE Epistle by the title as well as by its contents proclaims its peculiarity. It addresses the twelve tribes that were in the dispersion, not the elect strangers of the dispersion, but the mass of the old people of Jehovah. Nor is this quite unexampled even in the apostle Paul's feeling and phrase; for on the occasion of his speech before king Agrippa and Festus the procurator of Judaea he speaks of “our twelve tribes, earnestly serving day and night,” hoping to attain to the promise made by God unto the fathers (Acts 26). There is thus, as has been remarked, a striking counterpart between the Old and N. T. in this, that one book in the New is devoted as a testimony to Israel, as one in the Old (Jonah) is devoted similarly to the great Gentile city of that day (Nineveh), both exceptional and proving the rule.

Hence only is accounted for in this Epistle appeal (chaps. 4: 1, 4, 9, v. 1-6) to unbelievers in Christ or unconverted Jews, interspersed with addresses to those Jews who did believe (chaps. 2: 1, 5, 14; 3: 1, 13, 17; 5: 7, 8). There is no ambiguity as to his own confession of the Messiah. From the very first verse of the Epistle he announces himself bondman not more of God than of the Lord Jesus Christ; and he begins with the blessedness of enduring trial or holy temptation in a way that applies clearly to Christian Jews, while he proceeds to warn against sins which go beyond the faithful to mere profession in chap. ii. and afterward farther still.

As a whole the Epistle consists of exhortation from beginning to end; even its doctrine bears closely on moral ways, as in chaps. 1: 13-15, 16-21, 3: 5-8, 15-18. James is pre-eminently a teacher of righteousness; and was used of God in Jerusalem to meet the transition state between the old state that was about to close and the Christianity that was known more simply and fully among Gentiles. Accordingly his teaching, though as truly inspired of God as that of Paul, does not develop redemption in itself, its source, its objects, or its effects, but connects itself with the new birth, and the life we have from God by the word of truth, as opposed to outbreaks of temper and tongue which are the workings of fallen nature.

For this reason no one brings out more clearly than James “the law of liberty” (chaps. 1: 25, 2: 12), which is indeed his own phrase, in evident contrast with letter and its bondage. This, we shall see, supposes the new life which God's grace gives the believer, and which finds its pleasure in the things which please Him as shown in His word.

Nor is there the smallest excuse for imagining discrepancy between the teaching of Rom. 3, 4., and James' chap. 2. on faith, however common the idea was of old as it is now. The object before each writer is wholly different. The apostle Paul unfolds to the Roman saints how an ungodly man is justified, and declares that it is by faith. The apostle James lays down to the twelve tribes that a dead faith, destitute of works, is vain, and that the only faith of real account is that which is displayed in ways which glorify God. Living faith produces living works. He is exposing the worthlessness of an intellectual reception of the gospel, which had even then grown up among the Jews. We see the same principle during our Lord's ministry, and His repudiation of such faith. See John 2:23-25, 6: 66, 15. Nor is the self-same truth lacking even in the Epistle to the Romans, as in chap. 1: 18 (latter half), and also. chap. 2: 5-11. He is destitute of living faith who does not walk in the ways, and by the word and Spirit, of God. “For if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the Spirit ye mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom. 8:13). So thoroughly is the great apostle of the Gentiles at one with this pillar of the circumcision, when the occasion of a godly walk calls for notice in the very Epistle which ignorant haste conceives to stand opposed. All the truth of God is in harmony, whether doctrinal, or ethical as this Epistle is eminently.

It may be well to add that, whatever the doubts of Alford, Neander and others, the writer was no, other than James “the little,” son-of-Alphæus or Clopas (really the same Aramaic name rendered into Greek somewhat differently): the same man who took the lead after the martyrdom of the son of Zebedee, as is plain in the Acts (chaps. 12: 17, 15: 13, 21: 18). Compare 1 Cor. 15:7, and Gal. 2:9, 12. His words and ways elsewhere are strikingly in agreement with his letter. Patience and purity, love and lowliness, characterize the apostle and his writing for the sphere he labored in. It is remarkable that his language, and style, consist of excellent Greek with great energy. But the work given him in the Lord was, not to unfold divine counsels or to insist on redemption, but the urgent assertion of the moral consistency day by day, in affection, speech, and ways, of those who are called to endure patiently the various temptations of this world. This becomes such men as look for the crown of life, being already begotten of God by the word of truth according to His sovereign will.

Letters on Singing: Making Melody in the Heart

4.-Making Melody In The Heart.

MY DEAR—

You will remember doubtless that in a former letter the exhortation of 1 Cor. 14 was referred to, wherein we are enjoined to sing with both the spirit and the understanding. Christians are expected to be intelligent in the ways of the Lord, and not to be “children in understanding.” There is however another element in singing which is of equal importance. Without the melody of the heart, it is impossible to render acceptable praise to the Lord.

This might be gathered from the general tenor of both Old and New Testaments. But to mark its extreme importance, we find it repeatedly expressed in definite terms. The Psalmist desires more than once to praise Jehovah with his “whole heart” (Psa. 9: 1; 111:1; 138:1). And the Christian with his higher privileges and greater responsibilities is not to be behind the Jew. In two of Paul's Epistles there are special exhortations to this effect: “Singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord” (Eph. 5:19); “Singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (God, R.V.) Col. 3:16.

The heart therefore must be right before the Lord as well as the mind. Otherwise, though the expressions be as “clear as crystal,” they will be as “cold as ice.” To avoid this it is necessary that both should be in exercise, that the mind should contribute spiritual intelligence, and the heart sacred emotion.

Scripture shows that there is an intimate connection between the two, and that the heart exercises a considerable influence over the mind. When the declension of man from the knowledge of God to the darkness and corruption of heathendom is described, it is first stated that they “became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened.” It then follows that “even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind” (Rom. 1:21, 28). The heart foolish and darkened was the precursor of the reprobate mind. Again, the apostle prays for the Ephesians that God would give them “the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; the eyes of your heart (not, “understanding” as in the A. V.) being enlightened: that ye may know what is the hope of his calling,” &c. So that it is clear that while the knowledge of God was lost through the darkening of the heart, the full knowledge of Him is now communicated through the enlightening of the heart. Since the heart therefore is the highway to every true and proper apprehension of the things of God, it is of the highest importance that the heart should be strictly guarded; even as it is said, “Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life” (Prov. 4:23). So the apostle writes to the Philippians, “And the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:7), thus pointing out what alone can form an efficient garrison for the central citadel of man's nature.

For scripture uniformly teaches that the heart is the core of man's being. It is the seat of the affections and of the impulses that carry man forward in the path of life. The Lord Himself declared to those who were content to make clean the exterior of the platter that there is a fountain of uncleanness within, which they entirely ignored. It is from the heart that proceeds everything that defileth (Matt. 15:19). The evil heart of the natural man therefore gives a color to his every action; for it is thence the mischief springs (Matt. 5:28, 1 John 3:15). On the other hand, the heart of the renewed man is so to characterize every action that it may prove good and acceptable before God. As servants of Christ we are to do “the. will of God from the heart” (Eph. 6:6). To this end the love of God has been “shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (Rom. 5:5). Indeed the very Spirit of God Himself is in our hearts to originate and characterize every affection. This the apostle teaches, “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Gal. 4:6; 2 Cor. 1:22).

This fact is of great moment to such as have learned the deceitfulness of the natural heart (Jer. 17:9). We are not left to ourselves to produce proper feelings Godward. He Who gives us right thoughts of God and the Father gives us right feelings too. For He is the Spirit of love as well as of a sound mind (2 Tim. 1:7). It is He, Who fills the heart with such a sense of the incomparable love of God (Rom. 5:5) that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Matt. 12:34, 35; Luke 6:45).

This constitutes the melody of the heart. But while it cannot exist apart from the offices of the Holy Spirit, the responsibility to produce it abides upon the singer, as our text implies. The one who utters the praises of the Lord with the lip is expected to offer concurrent melody in the heart. For the Holy Ghost assuredly will not act unless the believer honors His presence here upon the earth and yields himself to His direction. It is therefore incumbent upon the worshipper to assume this attitude of faith and dependence in order to secure the operation of the Holy Ghost without which no sacrifice of praise can be acceptable on high.

Though running the risk of being considered tedious, one ventures to point out the further emphasis given to the point now being dwelt upon in Eph. 5:19. There the saints are exhorted, not to sing alone, nor to make melody in the heart alone, but to sing and make melody in the heart. No degree of melody with the voice can become an equivalent substitute for melody in the heart according to the words before us.

And yet it is painful to think that there are not a few who practically maintain that a correct mechanical rendering of hymns to God will be sufficient for Him Who desires truth in the inward parts. Let such seriously consider the solemn warning words of the Lord to the scribes and Pharisees. “Ye hypocrites! well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me” (Matt. 15:7-9). They were in fact but “things without life, giving sound.”

It is imperative therefore that along with the tuneful voice there should be the melodious accompaniment (ψάλλοντες) of the heart. This is to take the place of the musical instruments of the temple worship. The Christian is not invited to praise the Lord with the sound of a trumpet, with the psaltery and the harp and the high sounding cymbals; nevertheless his song should be instinct with the pathos and holy enthusiasm of the inner mart. And shall we for one moment compare the “sounding brass,” the “tinkling cymbal,” or even the “pealing organ,” with the rapturous glow of a fervent soul born of God, and led by the Spirit into the possession and apprehension of the high and lofty privileges which the New Testament reveals as the inalienable portion of the Christian? It will be to compare death with life.

In Colossians we are bidden to sing “with grace” in our hearts. Grace always expresses the superabundant manner in which God has met our sinful need. Hence grace is surely calculated to move the soul to its inmost depths. Those who contemplate the love of Christ, in that He has washed them from their sins in His own blood and made them kings and priests to God and His Father, cannot fail to ascribe to Him the glory and dominion forever and ever.

Grace, while it establishes the heart (Heb. 13:9) and enables us to serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear (Heb. 12:28), also provokes the heart into outbursts of praise and thanksgiving to God. For it is to God we sing in Colossians (R. V.) as the Author of grace, while in Ephesians the Lord is before the soul evoking the melodies of the heart— “making melody in the heart to the Lord.”

And it may surely be said that herein lies the secret of this heart-melody. If any ask, “How may I produce this inward harmony?” the answer is, Let Christ be before the soul. Why does the tongue so often sing while the heart is silent? Is it not because the blessed person of our Savior and Lord is forgotten? The voice joins listlessly with others, but the heart is apathetic and dull or even engaged with the most worthless thoughts. Oh! for faith so to realize His presence that in this as in other things we might exhibit a demeanor becoming to us and, if we may so speak, worthy of Him.

May we not say that it was the sense of the Lord's presence in the Philippian dungeon that caused Paul and Silas to sing “songs in the night?” For if the Lord was not in this case the object of their praise, He was, as He always must be, the subject of that praise. Therefore they sang aloud, making melody in their hearts. They were not as those who sing “songs to a heavy heart “; for the presence of the Lord makes even “the tongue of the dumb to sing,” and none of His redeemed can be sad before Him. For the light of the Master's face transfigures even circumstances of sorrow into occasions of joy.

Above all things therefore let the heart yield its melody to the Lord. One often sees public notices to the effect, “Voices wanted for the church choir,” when, the truth is, hearts are wanted. These, however, cannot be obtained by advertisement. “No heart but of the Spirit taught Makes melody to Thee.” It is not the cultivated voice but the renewed heart that the Father seeks. It should be a comfort therefore to those whose singing consists only in making “a joyful noise to the Lord,” that they can at any rate make melody in their hearts. At the same time they should moderate the loudness of their efforts lest they tax too severely the keener sensibilities of their more musical brethren; while the latter should endure any harsh grating sounds with cheerfulness and grace, remembering that their own praises are not heard on high for their fine or scientific singing.

The sentiments of quaint Thomas Fuller on this point are good in the main. “Lord,” says he, “my voice by nature is harsh and untunable, and it is vain to lavish any art to better it. Can my singing of psalms be pleasing to Thy ears which is unpleasant to my own? Yet though I cannot chant with the nightingale, or chirp with the blackbird, I had rather chatter with the swallow (Isa. 38:14), yea, rather croak with the raven, than be altogether silent. Hadst Thou given me a better voice, I would have praised Thee with a better voice. Now what my music wants in sweetness let it have in sense, singing praises with understanding. Yea, Lord, create in me a new heart (therein to make melody), and I will be contented with my old voice, until, in Thy due time, being admitted into the choir of heaven, I have another, more harmonious, bestowed upon me.”

I am, Yours faithfully in Christ,

YOD.

Answer to Query Last December: Head Coverings

IT is a question with some as to whether a Christian wife should cover her head when in prayer with her husband at home. If she audibly engages, I think so; for women must not act in the presence of men (whether few or many, husbands or servants) without the sign of authority on her head. God's order must be maintained, that angels may observe and learn. The woman is the glory of man, and must therefore be covered before God; the man, on the contrary, is the image and glory of God, which must not be covered up. The fact of nature having given her long hair, in contrast with the man, tells the woman that she needs a covering; though the hair itself does not suffice, for God would have her place something on her head, implying her action as acceptance and confession of the place He has assigned to her.

If in the home (at family prayers for instance) the wife is silent, the husband only expressing himself audibly to God, I do not see that the passage in 1 Cor. 11 applies; though if in any individual case there is the least feeling as to it, the woman should comply. It is important to preserve a good conscience at all cost; and we should remember that it is written, “Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth” (Rom. 14:22). It is better to be over-scrupulous than indifferent in the things of God; especially in an evil day of departure from the truth as the present, when on all hands God's order is despised and His word ignored.

W. W. F.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:2

IT will be noticed that the order of Noah's sons is now changed. Japheth has the first place, when we come to genealogic survey; and this is even explained when we arrive at the line of Shem (ver. 21), who for spiritual reasons had been uniformly set in that place of honor hitherto, even Ham being otherwise put before Japheth. That many Jews, followed by others, should overlook the spirit of scripture, in their zeal for the progenitor of the chosen people, is easily understood; but some weighed the word with more care and less prejudice. So Nachmanides remarks that the enumeration begins with Yapheth, because he is the firstborn. It proceeds with Ham, although the youngest, and reserves Shem to the last, because the narrator wishes to enlarge on the history of his descendants. Rashi also, though admitting the doubtfulness of the phrase, decides similarly from comparing other scriptures— “From the words of the text I do not clearly know whether the elder applies to Shem or Japheth. But as subsequently we are informed that Shem was one hundred years old and begat Arpachshad two years after the deluge (chap. 11: 10), it follows that Yapheth was the elder. For Noah was five hundred years old when he began to have children, and the deluge took place in the six hundredth year of his age. His eldest son must consequently have been one hundred years old at the time of the deluge; whereas we are expressly informed that Shem did not arrive at that age till two years after the deluge.”

We next come to the family of the firstborn. “Sons of Japheth: Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras” (ver. 2).

Here is presented the distinct statement of what scholars have regarded as the greatest triumph of modern research in comparative philology. The Asiatic Society instituted in 1784 at Calcutta gave the great impulse, Sir W. Jones declaring that “no philologer could examine the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and Celtic had the same origin with the Sanskrit. The old Persian may be added to the same family.” Long after this scholars were still incredulous, clinging to the heathen notion of aboriginal races with their respective tongues, modified by the thought of a Hebrew primaeval source. Hence, in his prejudice for the honor of Greek and Latin, so cultivated and able a person as the late Professor Dugald Stewart (Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 3: 100-137) denied the reality of Sanskrit as a tongue of the past! and imputed its forgery! to unprincipled Brahmans whom he supposed to have founded it on the model of the old classic languages to deceive the world. F. Schlegel however, though more a genius than a scholar, had scanned the secret early in the century when he gave the name Indo-Germanic to the Aryan tongues of ancient Persia (the Zend), Greece, Italy, and Germany. He might have included quite as surely Celtic, Scandinavian, and Sclavonian under the wider generalization of Indo-European. They were the tongues of the Japhetic or, as moderns speak, the Aryan families.

It was the task of Franz Bopp to set the matter on a sound basis of proof, not only in his essay of 1816 and others, but in his Comparative Grammar of 1833-1852. Others, as Eugene Burnouf in France and Max. Muller in this country, have contributed not a little since.

Now if the Mosaic account had been given its just place, the fact would have been known all through, which is far more simple and to the believer more authoritative than inferences ever so plain and sure drawn from the comparison of these many languages. For it became evident that Sanskrit, old as it may be, is no more the parent of these tongues than Greek, but that they were all sisters, derived from a language earlier than any of them. Thus the tongues were seen to have a family relationship no less than the races of mankind; and phonetic changes follow according to observed principle instead of the more obvious derivatory resemblance. That they had (as Sanskrit proved) in the east a common source was for the learned a recent discovery. But in our verse we are told authoritatively that Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras were sons of Japheth. Thus were they all linked together, dialectically distinct, but of common origin. Nor is it difficult to distinguish those races in general.

Thus Gomer embraces the Cimbri, or the more modern Kelts, who appear to have come first of the Aryan family to Europe from their early seat in the north of India. At one time they had a considerable hold on northern Italy, as well as Spain, Switzerland, the Tyrol, and south of the Danube; but Belgium, Britain, Gaul, were long their own; and even now the Welsh and the Breton dialects (and till recently the Cornish) attest the fact, as also the closely related Erse, Gaelic, and Manx. It was a body of marauders from Gaul, chiefly the three tribes of Tectosages, Tolistobogii, and Trocmi, who overran Asia Minor and gave their name to Galatia where they settled: a consideration not without considerable interest to those who weigh the Epistle addressed to them by the apostle Paul. They seem to have migrated to Asia Minor on their route to Europe, before this final return and settlement for some in that quarter.

Next, Magog (cf. Ezek. 38:2) quite as certainly is identified with the land we call Russia (a name derived from the river Volga, called in Greek 'Pa, as 'Pk is their Greek title). To these we must add Meshech and Tubal, races long known as Moschi and Tibareni: these are the Muskai and the Tuplai of the Assyrian inscriptions, who find their representatives in Moscow and Tobolsk. This is the Sclavonian branch.

Madai again is the unchanged name for the Medes and their country, with whom was the Persian race or Parsee, though Elam was Shemitic. Even to this day the Persian tongue, though debased by Arabic importations, is essentially Aryan, as the alder language, the Zend, was exclusively, and of course closely akin to Sanskrit.

Javan also is the proper Hebrew for Greece, as in Dan. 8 where we hear of the Medes and Persians. The less may be said as here no question can be. Details will follow in due course which confirm the general fact.

There remains but Tiras, which from the likeness of the name has been generally believed to mean the representative of the Thracians. Though they lacked cohesion and persevering purpose and so made little mark politically, it is well to remember that Herodotus set them next to the Indians as the most considerable nation in his day. The absence of the vowel “i” may be accounted for by its subscription in the Greek term. Still the question cannot be said to be settled, like all the others which precede.

The learning of the Greek was at fault at least as much as the tradition of the Jew. Scripture had not been weighed or trusted by either. And when the discovery of Sanskrit came, the issue was so startling that the erudite at first recoiled from that which not only brought in larger views, but shook to its foundations much they had been building up. The method of derivation alone had been trusted; whereas the newly ascertained facts pointed to parallel descents from a common parent in at least six great lines with their modern offspring. But this so revolutionized the entire groundwork as to show that erudition had been on a false scent, especially as to the inflexions and the conjugations of tongues ever so distant locally, which indicate affinity far more surely and thoroughly than isolated words. K. O. Müller was one of the first seriously to own the old position embarrassing; and G. Hermann before him had written sarcastically of those who sought light from “a sort of aurora borealis, reflecting the gleams of eastern illumination, and who, betaking themselves to the Brahmans and Ulphilas, endeavored to explain Greek and Latin by the help of languages which they only half understood.” K. A. Lobeck carried on the war in his celebrated works, Aglaophamus (1829), Paralipomena (1837) and Pathologic (1843), as Ellendt did in the Preface to his Lex. Sophocl. (1835). Yet the truth remains that God marks certain families of language in the great dispersion, and that with their specified differences they give sure evidence of a common kindred. The same grammatical framework belongs to them; and it differs totally too from that of the Shemitic tongues; as the varied Turanian group differs in this from them both.

The Jews, as is known, assign to Cush (translated Ethiopia ordinarily) not only his African seat but the opposite coast of Arabia and the southern shore of Asia generally into India. And this is well founded. But Arabia received also a large Shemitic population which gave character to their language; and this as we shall see not only from Joktan, Eber's son, but from Jokshan, Abraham's son by Keturah, and from Ishmael's twelve sons, with some of Esau's decendants. Even Homer (Od. 2: 23, 24) speaks of Ethiopians as divided into two parts, the most distant of men, some at the setting sun, and some at the rising. It was a Turanian race, which included the Turks, but not the Armenians who were rightly given to Japheth. But the Jews seem never to have realized the fact that the ancient Persian tongue (Zend) and that of northern and central India (Sanskrit) yield the fullest indication of Japhetic origin.

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 2

FOR a Jew the circumstances under the great king were most anomalous. The opening scene is as if Israel were, like the name of God Himself, not even whispered. The brightness of the silver empire, more apparent than real, alone shines. Outwardly it was still more extensive than when its first and greatest monarch reigned, the conqueror of Babylon, of whom, near two, centuries before the prediction was fulfilled, Jehovah by name said, “He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure; even saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built; and to the temple, Thy foundations shall be laid” (Isa. 44:28). When Darius the Mede received the kingdom there were a hundred and twenty satrapies; now seven more were added, though the day of vast conquest was over, and one sat on the throne disposed to lavish display of the riches of secret places, the treasures of darkness, and of luxurious enjoyment.

What indeed could one naturally have looked for in those who seemed content to linger among the Gentiles when leave, nay encouragement, had been proclaimed by the highest earthly authority to return to the land of promise? A remnant from the dispersion had gone back, with the heir to David's throne, and the high priest, to rebuild the temple and the city and, for such as had faith, to await the long expected Messiah after a term now for the first time defined. The multitudes that stayed behind could not plead the extreme old age of the prophet by the Hiddekel. But if they lacked zeal for the things that remained ready to die, He Who is unnamed did not fail when a greater danger threatened Israel than ever their fathers knew in the murderous tyranny of Egypt. How this was, by secret providence, without a miracle, not only averted but turned to the destruction of their enemies, is the story of this book. The details of it all are told with equal simplicity and graphic power, and the chief characters alike kept up skillfully according to the truth, and culminating with breathless interest in the downfall of evil and pride, and in the vindication of the righteous oppressed without cause. Hence the ground of a feast, added to the original ones of the law, which carried its own special record of merciful interposition in a day so evil that utter reticence was kept of all that was most excellent and cherished by faith. For who can justly say that, however confession might be unheard, faith was unreal that fasted and prayed and looked for deliverance, as we read in chap. 3.? Who but a rationalist could charge with revengeful spirit her who pleaded before the king (chap. 7. 3-5)? That the persecuted were saved, and those who sought the sword fell by the sword, is what was seen before, and will be yet more triumphantly at the end of the age. It is natural that the enemy should dislike and denounce all this; but He who has given this moral in the past will not fail to fulfill it yet more completely when He comes Whose right it is to judge all wrongs.

“And it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus, (this is Ahasuerus who reigned, from India even unto Ethiopia, over a hundred and seven and twenty provinces)—that in those days, when the king Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan the palace, in the third year of his reign, he made a feast unto all his princes and his servants, the power of Persia and Media, the nobles and princes of the provinces being before him: when he showed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honor of his excellent majesty many days, even a hundred and fourscore days. And when these days were fulfilled, the king made a feast unto all the people that were present in Shushan the palace, both great and small, seven days, in the court of the garden of the king's palace. There were white, green, and blue [hangings] fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble; the couches were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red, and white, and yellow, and black marble. And they gave them drink in vessels of gold (the vessels being diverse one from another), and royal wine in abundance, according to the bounty of the king. And the drinking was according to the law; none could compel: for so the king had appointed to all the officers of his house, that they should do according to every man's pleasure. Also Vashti the queen made a feast for the women in the royal house which belonged to king Ahasuerus” (vers. 1-9).

It is a vivid picture of earthly splendor, without a thought of God, true or false. Nebuchadnezzar brought in religion of a base sort, and sought to compel it on all. Xerxes, for he it seems to be who now possessed the general title here used, showed himself, as Daniel said long previously, “far richer than all before him,” thought of no one higher, and gave himself up to ostentatious indulgence, all the more after the utter failure of his invasion of Greece. Underneath worldly grandeur in efforts so unparalleled can be discerned shame and fear, with the desire to gratify the peoples of his vast dominions, and to efface the remembrance of foreign disgrace which might be ruinous.

But a check came and a gloom over all was cast when least expected at the close, after the princes and nobles had been feted, and the seven days followed for all the people small and great, present in Shushan.

“On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded Me-human, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha, and Abagtha, Zethar, and Carcas, the seven chamberlains that ministered in the presence of Ahasuerus the king, to bring Vashti the queen before the king with the crown royal, to show the peoples and the princes her beauty: for she was fair to look on. But the queen Vashti refused to come at the king's commandment by the chamberlains: therefore was the king very wroth, and his anger burned in him. Then the king said to the wise men, who knew the times (for so was the king's manner before all that knew law and judgment; and the next unto him was Carshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena, [and] Memucan, the seven princes of Persia and Media, who saw the king's face, and sat first in the kingdom), What shall we do unto the queen Vashti according to law, because she hath not done the bidding of the king Ahasuerus by the chamberlains? And Memucan answered before the king and the princes, Vashti the queen hath not done wrong to the king only, but also to all the princes, and to all the peoples that are in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus. For this deed of the queen shall come abroad unto all women, to make their husbands contemptible in their eyes, when it shall be reported. The king Ahasuerus commanded Vashti the queen to be brought in before him, but she came not. And this day shall the princesses of Persia and Media who have heard of the deed of the queen say the like unto all the king's princes. So shall there arise contempt and wrath enough. If it please the king, let there go forth a royal commandment from him, and let it be written among the laws of the Persians and the Medes, that it be not altered, that Vashti come no more before king Ahasuerus; and let the king give her royal estate unto another that is better than she. And when the king's decree which he shall make shall be published throughout all his kingdoms (for it is great), all the wives shall give to their husbands honor, both to great and small. And the saying pleased the king and the princes; and the king did according to the word of Memucan. And he sent letters into all the king's provinces, into every province according to the writing thereof, and to every people after their language, that every man should bear rule in his own house, and should publish it according to the language of his people” (vers. 10-22).

If the demand of the king was unusual, the refusal of the queen was an affront not to be passed over. The seven chamberlains were duly charged to attend her; but she was rebellious, where compliance would have done her no real harm, but cast whatever of blame might be due on her lord. In the antitype, how true it is that the Gentile has been faithless and refractory, seeking self will and wholly failing to show the world the beauty of one so favored! The consequence will be, as here it was, the call of Zion to be a crown of beauty in the hand of Jehovah and a royal diadem in the hand of her God; when she shall no more be termed Forsaken, nor her land any more Desolate, but she shall be called Hephzibah and her land Beulah.

It seems most natural not to put “the president” last among the seven princely counselors of state, but to infer that judgment was sought, beginning with the youngest, whose opinion so commended itself on the question proposed that all accepted it at once; and letters were sent accordingly that a better than Vashti should take her place, and that family order should stand in the honor of the head in his own house throughout all the kingdom.

One Pearl of Great Price

As the leaven followed suitably the mustard seed in the parables spoken without, so does the pearl duly come after the treasure in those within, the house. None of these conveys what was shown in the parable of the sower before the likeness of the kingdom. In that first parable did the Lord set out the word as the germ of life and spiritual understanding to the believer. The comparisons of the kingdom of the heavens, external and internal, present subsequent truths and larger considerations; whether of the outward course of the dispensation while the rejected Lord is on high; or of its spiritual aspects for the guidance and enjoyment of the faithful who have the mind of Christ.

After the Lord explained within the house the parable of the darnel to his disciples, the latter class opened, as we have seen, with the treasure. Now is given the far more precise instruction of the “one pearl.”

This, which is evidently true as a sketch, helps to save the reader from serious misconception of the particulars. From early times men, having lost the fresh fullness of grace in the gospel, began to bend scripture generally to meet the first need of the soul. Hence the mustard seed was diverted by many to teach the work of grace in the heart from its small beginning, as the leaven was supposed to mean the gradual work of sanctification to bring about a universal change. Even the parables within the house are turned to the same account, only employing great things, instead of small, to show in the treasure the value of what we should make our own, and in the pearl the dream doubled to make it certain.

No believer doubts that the Lord Jesus is the richest of treasures, and the jewel above all price. But as the general structure and the bearing of the discourse point to a different aim, so the special forms of these similitudes are inconsistent with the assumption that the work of divine grace in the heart is intended. How plainly untenable it would be to suppose a sinful or even an exercised soul selling all he has to buy the world in order to possess the treasure said to be hidden there. Nor can any deny the truth that Christ in His joy over the treasure did, as He alone could, buy the world, in order to have the treasure of a people out of the earth for heaven.

A late dignitary, who treated the parables in a very interesting way, thought this interpretation “strangely reverses the whole matter.” What matters overturning an error however old, if we can only receive and enter into the truth with simplicity? The fact is that spiritual men have long felt the inadequacy of popular views. The word of the Lord abides. Be this our criterion. “Again, the kingdom of the heavens is like a man of merchandise seeking goodly pearls; and having found one pearl of great value, he went and sold all whatever he had and bought it” (Matt. 13:45, 46). Now is it not harsh in the extreme to infer that lost sinners are compared to a man in quest of goodly pearls? It is untrue even of the uncommon case of the rich young ruler, irreproachable as his conduct was, who clung to his wealth, and forfeited treasure in heaven, and left Christ full of sorrow. He never knew his ruin and did not even seek to be saved. And never was a greater mistake than that Saul of Tarsus answers to the merchant, “determinate, discriminate, unremitting.” He was, as he said, “chief of sinners” and, like every other, saved in sovereign grace.

It is Christ then Who really seeks and buys. It is Christ Who alone has also the perfect discernment of the moral beauty He saw and prized above all. Indisputably He alone of men understood and sought goodly pearls; and this one pearl of great price He saw, in divine counsels, to be saints like Himself holy and blameless in love—yea, one with Him, the church glorious, which He will present to Himself, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. He alone was in Himself perfectly what the saints are in divine purpose to be; and shall be in fact at His coming again, as in principle they are even now.

He that is in Christ is exhorted, as he has life in Him, to have in himself the moral mind which was in Christ Jesus, to obey and serve in love as He did absolutely, to count all things loss and dung that he may win Christ, and be found in Him, not having his own righteousness but that which is through faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God on the condition of faith. But the parable sets forth what is the ground and pattern and spring of all such effects in the Christian, in the Lord's own love to saints seen as the reflection of His own beauty, the one inestimable pearl, for which He sold all else, glory on high, kingdom below, all whatever He had, to buy that pearl. It might be, it was, in the depths, submerged in what was lowest and vilest; but He saw the end from the beginning, He discerned what grace would effect, loved us and gave Himself for us, as He will have therein the object of His love and rest in His love on high.

O my friend that reads these words, flatter not human nature, nor your own character. In an ungodly family you may have been shocked with the horror of open evil, and have walked morally; in a godly one you may have been guarded from corruption and trained in religious habits. Yet it strangely reverses, not the point of this parable only, but the whole force of revealed truth, and of the gospel particularly, if you compare yourself in your natural state to a merchant in quest of goodly pearls, still more if you credit yourself with such devotion, in your unconverted days, as would give up all you have to win Christ. Since man was created on the earth, never was such an instance; and if it had been, how could it avail for a sinner without new birth or redemption?

The same apostle, who tells us this was his experience as a saint, condemns all he had been previously (though more moral and religious than you) as filth. He also proclaims from God of the entire race, that there is not a righteous person, not even one, that none understands, that not one seeks after God, that peace's way is unknown, and no fear of God is before their eyes. He further declares that it was not merely so among the Gentiles, but that the law expressly pronounces this sentence on those under the law, spite of all their privileges. Now the gospel is sent to all as equally lost. For, says he, there is no difference; for all sinned, and come short of the glory of God. Hence God justifies freely though the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, Whom God set forth a mercy-seat through faith in His blood. The very object is to cut off boasting of self in every form, that no flesh should boast before God. He that boasts, let him boast in the Lord.

Priesthood of Christ: 1

VAGUENESS is often found in the thoughts of many a child of God as to the priesthood of our Lord Jesus, its place and proper action, as well as what it is founded on—what its relation to other truths, more particularly to redemption—what the design is that God secures by it—what the portion that the saint enjoys in virtue of it, or consequently loses if he have it not. All these various ways in which priesthood may be examined will be found somewhat indefinite in the minds even of most real believers; and it is wise in general never to assume that a truth is known till we have proved it.

We often take for granted, finding the children of God happy together in fellowship, that they must know this or that truth; but it by no means follows. They may be using language beyond what they have actually learned from God. The mass are apt to be carried along (and this even where their words would give little suspicion) by the faith of others. This is easily understood. They do not doubt in their own minds that it is all quite true, having the general sense and savor, and surely not without some enjoyment, of it; but still they have not thoroughly sought out and realized the mind of God for their souls, receiving the truth distinctly and decidedly from God. If exposed to misleading influences they might soon and seriously be turned aside, at the least be perplexed and tried by questions easily raised, and often for the very purpose of confounding those whose general confession puts to shame such as are walking in the ways of the world. And these are days, when we need to have everything from God for our own souls.

Assuredly one need say no more to urge the importance for every child of God of simply and thoroughly searching into His word; if they do know, of having it so much the more happily confirmed to their souls, and if they have not yet ascertained it for their own souls, of searching and seeing what God has to show and give them. We have the truth in having Christ; but it is well to have it explicitly for our souls. His priesthood goes on for us whether we enter intelligently or not into what our portion is in it and by it. But is it not of great importance that we should know how suited, and rich, and constant is the grace of our Lord Jesus? Indeed it is this which makes it so blessed, because the truth we are about to look at now is bound up with Christ. He is all in it. There may be the reflection of His grace, there may be the working of it (no doubt poorly and imperfectly), in souls on earth who enter a little into their priestly character and blessing. But this is altogether of a different bearing after all from His relation to us; for it is not now simply priestly grace in activity of love for others, but that which our own souls indispensably want in order to be carried through the wilderness.

Let me call your attention to this point at the start of any observations I have to make (and you will see how true it is when you reflect upon it): the whole Epistle to the Hebrews supposes a redeemed people pilgrims and strangers on the earth. They are not in Egypt, nor are they in Canaan; they are passing through the wilderness. The very same people may be viewed if not in Egypt, certainly as being in heavenly places even now; but such is not the aspect in which the children of God are viewed in this Epistle. In no case here do we find them invested with that character of blessings which we have, for instance, in Ephesians and in a measure even in Colossians. We do not find anything at all of resurrection with Christ either; although this too, of course, it need hardly be said, has its immense importance, and several Epistles take it up.

But here we have distinctively the Spirit of God starting first of all with Christ at God's right hand in heaven; and this is an essential feature of His priesthood. “For if He were upon earth, He should not be a priest.” His is an exclusively heavenly priesthood; and those for whom He is acting are a heavenly people. The time was come for God to form and fashion them accordingly. There were saints of old waiting, with more or less light of heavenly hopes, looking for the city above—the saints of the high or heavenly places, as the Spirit of God in the New Testament explains the expression to us. But still they looked up only in hope, and this too necessarily with vagueness. Here it is still in hope; but the veil is rent, and heaven opened, and the Spirit sent down because of Christ's redemption and glorification. Here all is definite, without the least vagueness whatever. The ground and scene are clear and distinct from the very fact that Christ Who purged our sins is in heaven, yet in living relationship with those He is not ashamed to call His brethren on earth. Thus, even if we look at the Christian in this point of view, having such a Priest and passing through the wilderness, still there is a positive and present imprint of heaven upon all.

Hence therefore in chapter 3. those who are particularly contemplated in the Epistle are called “partakers of a heavenly calling.” It was not only that they were called to heaven by and by, but the One that called them was already in heaven, and in heaven on the ground of redemption already accomplished. This is another truth of the greatest possible, yea indeed primary, importance; for the heavenly place of our Lord Jesus is here, viewed as consequent on the accepted sacrifice of Himself for out sins, as in fact it was. It is no question at all of our Lord, Jesus coming by-and-by from heaven. This, we know, is most true; and it too has its revelation elsewhere in a suited manner. But the point here with which the Epistle opens is the great truth that the fiord by Himself purged the sins (or our sins, it may be): I merely say this because there is a question of reading, but the question raised has nothing to do with the indisputable truth (and that is all that affirm now, as it is perfectly certain), that the Lord Jesus went up to heaven, and took His place at the right hand of God, to enter on a new kind of action there; and this founded on the purgation of sins by the sacrifice of Himself.

But this at once clears the way for the application of Christ's priesthood to the believer. It supposes a people already redeemed, It supposes that the great and absolutely necessary work of grace on their behalf has been accomplished. It supposes that they are resting on it without a question, the main danger being that some may be tempted to give it and Him up, because of the difficulties, the trials, the snares, the persecutions, the dangers of the way. And this we see to be before the mind of the Spirit of God every now and then in the Epistle to the Hebrews. You will find it very early brought up in chapter 3., and you may trace it continuously to perhaps the last. It was what Satan was seeking to separate them from; but it was no question of whether the work was done. The whole doctrine of the Epistle supposes that the Lord single-handed had finished the work which He undertook on earth. All that God contemplated to be done as to sin—that God Himself could do in the way of blotting out sins—was already done before the Lord entered on His priesthood on high.

It is the want of seizing and holding fast that great truth which has thrown such confusion and darkness into the minds of most on the subject of Christ's priesthood. That it is which has made it vague to better instructed souls, and just in proportion to the weakness with which they hold the completeness of redemption. For naturally, if the believer be not resting” with his conscience purged and perfect now, the priesthood of Christ is thrown in to complete what is deficient. The true grace of the priesthood therefore is impaired, yea lost; it becomes a mere maker up of weight; for the preliminary question must naturally be to know Christ, and one's sins forgiven through His blood. With most nowadays there is but a hope (for it rarely amounts to more throughout Christendom) of favor with the Lord by-and-by. Thus the true place of the priesthood disappears, because redemption has never been received from God in its simplicity and its fullness; and Christ's walk and priesthood are thrown into the scale to make up what His death on the cross has done perfectly.

Certainly the Epistle to the Hebrews leaves no ground for any such hesitation. Before the Spirit of God enters on priesthood, we have, with the greatest precision and fullness, the person of the Lord Jesus brought out, and this in a twofold way. We hear of Him as the Son of God; we see Him as the Son of man. And both natures were necessary to His priesthood. If He had not been God's Son pre-eminent, unique, and eternal, there had been no such priesthood as that which this Epistle sets before us. On the other hand, if He had not been the Son of man, in a sense too that was as real as that of others, but in a character that was peculiar to Himself, there had been no such priesthood available for us. The Lord Jesus was both; and as the first chapter presents Him particularly as Son of God, so the second as Son of man. At the end of chap 2. we have the first allusion to His priesthood.

In both these chapters we have the fullness of redemption set forth. We have already seen this in the first chapter; the second supposes the same truth. There we read, “It became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified [i.e. set apart to God] are all of one.”

Here again, then, we have a very important relation to His priesthood. It is a question of the sanctified, and of the sanctified only. None but the sanctified, we must see, have to do with the priesthood of Christ. They are the persons contemplated. On the other hand, “by the grace of God he [Jesus] tasted death for every man (or thing).” But after this the apostle begins to narrow the sphere; for he is about to treat of the priesthood of Christ. He shows us certain that are sanctified, or set apart. They are therefore spoken of not merely as the seed of Adam, for this would take in the whole human family, but as the seed of Abraham. Thus it is a loss general class taken as the seed of Abraham, not merely in the letter after the flesh, but, as it really means, after the Spirit; for none but such are viewed here as sanctified.

Sanctification in the New Testament is not fleshly, as in the Old Testament. If of profession simply, it might be given up by those that take it, up of themselves, and are not born of God; but still it is separation to God in the name of Christ. We find persons afterward spoken of as treating the blood wherewith they were sanctified as an unholy thing. They became apostate, as we know; but as yet He does not contemplate such an issue. He speaks of certain as real. “Both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one; for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren.” They are His brethren and He owns them.

In short, then, the priesthood of Christ is in no way a work which looks out to the whole of mankind, as the propitiation of Christ does. That which was represented by the blood on the mercy-seat contemplated all. It was sprinkled on the mercy-seat, and before it. It was not merely a question of those that were in the immediate circle of God's dealings. That blood was too precious, being infinite in its value, to be thus limited. “By the grace of God he tasted death for every man.” Indeed, the word may go a little farther, and take in “everything;” but still it includes every man a fortiori. As we approach Christ in His action and sufferings and qualifications for priesthood, we find a special regard to those that had an actual relationship of grace. “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death (that is, the devil), and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”

( To be continued D.V.)

Are God's Objects Ours?

LET me offer a few remarks with reference to the work of the Lord. It is undeniable that we are living in a day of extraordinary activity. On every hand enormous efforts are being put forth by professing Christian men, perhaps to a larger extent than at any time since the days of the apostles. But the efforts vary much in kind and character. The enemy of souls is busy (never more so), so that error of every sort is assiduously propagated; indeed, the more serious the error, the more earnest the advocates seem. Souls are poisoned by Ritualism and by Rationalism; the person and work of Christ are despised; the scriptures are called in question, and attacked unblushingly at every point; and many are lulled into a false security with vain hopes of ultimate universal salvation (though through fire), to speak of no other vagaries. On the other hand, many true hearts are found earnestly carrying the gospel of Christ (or what they know of it) to those near and far who are in the darkness of nature, and away from God: may the number of such be increased a hundred-fold is our earnest prayer!

It is to the latter class of laborers I desire to say a few words; for one cannot but feel that a very large proportion of laborers, even of pious men in the present day, falls far short of the objects which God has in view, and which He has revealed in the scriptures for our guidance, One would think, to hear evangelicals in general speak, that God's sole aim and object is the deliverance of men from hell. This is to make man the object, not God; man's conversion the end in view, not the divine glory. It is not meant that the salvation of souls has a small place in the plans of God. Blessed be His name, it has a very large place. It is the delight of His heart to save and to bless; but is salvation from the wrath to come God's grand object? It is recorded of Jonathan that he “wrought with God” (1 Sam. 14:45). To do this calls for discernment of His mind, and an understanding of what He is doing at any particular time. This Jonathan had (his armor-bearer too, in measure); while Saul and his people were utterly in the dark as to it all.

It is important to see that God is carrying out at the present time a purpose and work of a peculiar character. He is not now dealing with an earthly people, laying down His righteous requirements from man in the flesh, and making a nation the center of His governmental ways with regard to the earth. He is doing something incomparably. higher. He has revealed Himself in the person of His Son come in flesh. That blessed One having been rejected and cast out (accomplishing while man was doing his worst, the wondrous work of redemption), God has exalted Him to His own right hand in the heavenly places. No longer is a Messiah on earth proclaimed (though this will yet be put forward in its day); but a Christ dead, risen, and exalted to glory. The Holy Ghost has come down consequent upon Christ's glorification, and is here on earth to give effect to the purposes of love and grace formed in the divine heart before the world was. He is here not merely for the salvation of souls, though this be true in its place, but to gather out a people for His name, and, as Caiaphas expressed it, to “gather together in one the children of God scattered abroad." This is a totally new thing, and could not be until the coming of the Comforter. In every age God has had His own saints here, men in whose hearts and consciences His Spirit has wrought; but never, till redemption was accomplished and the Holy Ghost descended, was there any gathering together of such. Indeed there was no Head in heaven—to whom they could be united. When manifested here, He abode alone, so that there was no union with Him; in fact, union with Him could never have been the portion of any, had He not gone into death and wrought redemption. But being risen and exalted, the true corn of wheat bringeth forth much fruit. He in glory is the Head of the body, the church, Who is the beginning, the First-born from among the dead. By the Spirit Who has come down, all who believe in His name are joined to Him in one body (1 Cor. 12:13).

This is the present work of God, while His Son is hidden in heaven, and His Spirit is here below. To the body, thus formed on earth, gifts are given for its edification and advancement. The Head has given some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers (Eph. 4). The two first connected gifts, of a foundation character, have necessarily ceased (though we have their inspired writings for our permanent profit); the others remain, and will continue to be given by the church's faithful Head, “till we all come” &c. The object, of giving such gifts is declared to be primarily “the perfecting of the saints.” “The work of the ministry” &c. comes in as subsidiary. Thus we find Paul aiming not only to preach Christ, and to warn men, but to, present every man perfect in Christ Jesus (Col. 1:28). We see him also in great conflict for the saints at Colossae and Laodicea, “that their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, even Christ” (Col. 2:1, 2). He endured all things for the elect's sakes, that they might obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory (2 Tim. 2:10). It might have been said of the apostle in a modified way what is written of Christ, that he loved the church and gave himself for it; not of course in the way of atonement (this glory must be Christ's alone), but of self-sacrificing love. He bore the church and all its members ever on his heart before God, and filled up that which was behind of the afflictions of Christ in his flesh for His body's sake, the church (Col. 1:24; 2 Cor. 11:28). Epaphras also, who was according to his measure a kindred spirit, labored fervently for the saints in prayers that they might stand perfect and complete in all the will of God (Col. 4:12).

Thus did these devoted laborers serve in accordance with God's objects. They sought not only the salvation of the soul (though this must be enjoyed before we can speak of “perfection”), but the gathering of the saints to a divine center, and their perfection and growth as members of one body on earth. The evangelist's work was no more independent of this than that of the pastor and teacher. Such went out from the bosom of the assembly, and into that circle they gathered souls, that they might find their divinely ordered place in the body on earth, and be led on in the ways of Christ.

It is not denied that, in a day like the present, the evangelists find a smoother and more popular path by becoming, what has been termed, a “free lance.” Such have apparently no responsibilities; they seek the salvation of men, then allow them to drift where they will, or be caught by the first watchful wolf, or perverse man. Thus are souls permanently injured; and who cares, so long as a fair show is maintained? What matters it, that Christ's members are stunted in growth and starved in soul, so long as men applaud? And on the other hand, how much of the effort put forth is merely for the extension and strengthening of party? Souls are viewed as useful, in so far as they fill the register and swell the funds. Is this saying too much, or are not these things sorrowfully true on every hand? Oh, for a Jonathan who “wrought with God!” Oh, for a Timothy, who will “naturally care” for the state of the saints! These are the laborers for the moment; and who can supply them but the church's Head? W. W. F.

James 1:1-4

THE title taken by the writer deserves our consideration: “James, bondman of God and of [the] Lord Jesus Christ.” It expressed his absolute devotedness to God as well as to the Lord Jesus Christ. He was bondman of both equally. He honored the Son even as he honored the Father. He avowed from the beginning his unqualified subjection to both. This was just what was most needed by the Israelites to whom he wrote. He sought the everlasting good of them all, as the style of his address attested: “to the twelve tribes that [are] in the dispersion, greeting.” The last word reminds us that it is in the letter which the apostles and elders with the whole assembly sent to the brethren from among the nations in defense of Christian liberty (Acts 15). But here the letter is directed only to the ancient people of God in their entirety, now a long while in a state of dispersion. For the return from Babylon had not hindered this, as only a small minority had returned from their exile. To all the twelve tribes he wrote, as being of the circumcision, even more widely than did Peter when he addressed his two epistles to the sojourners in Asia Minor. For he qualified it by terms expressive of vital Christianity, “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” No such restriction appears here, though James without reserve confesses his own self-abnegating service of the Lord Jesus Christ no less than of God, and specifies living faith in Him among those to whom he writes.

But the Epistle is characteristically moral and hortative, not basing its appeals as the apostles in general did on an unfolding of grace and truth, so much as revealing by the way now and then the sovereign goodness that comes down from above, from the Father of lights, Who alone is reliable in a world of incessant change, and has quickened us by the word of truth, and has promised the crown of life to them that love Him.

Hence it opens with a cheering call to such as were in danger of being faint-hearted and cast down by their trials. The Jews naturally looked for outward marks of divine favor; yet psalms and prophets revealed deeper things. James goes farther still.

“Count [it] all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into various temptations, knowing that the proving of your faith worketh out endurance; but let endurance have a perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing” (vers. 2-4).

It is the counterpart of our Lord's beatitudes in Matt. 5. For the blessed in His eyes and mouth are, not only of no account in the world, but sufferers from it for righteousness' sake, and for Christ's, poor in spirit, meek, mourners, hungerers after righteousness, merciful, and more. They are called to rejoice and exult, for great is their reward in heaven. So here, “count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into various temptations.” In this world of sin and ruin, God not only works in grace but carries on a discipline of souls, and turns trials of all sorts into an occasion of blessing for all that own Him and seek His guidance. Self-will hardens itself against each trial, or yields to discouragement and even despair. Faith recognizes the love that never changes, and judges the self that resists His will or despises His word; and, as faith bows submissively, it reaps profit, and grows by the knowledge of Him.

Hence is the believer entitled and emboldened to think it every sort of joy whensoever he falls into varied trials, as indeed they may be, of all kinds. It is not that Christians are exempt from sorrow—far from it, or that we should not feel the sorrow, any more than forget God's grace. Thus the trial throws us back on Him without Whom not a sparrow falls on the ground, and by Whom the very hairs of our head are all numbered. Affliction comes not forth of the dust, nor does trouble spring out of the ground. All is under His hand Who has made us His for glory, and meanwhile puts our faith to. the test in this present evil age, habituating us not only to patience but to endurance.

So it was that Christ walked here below, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps. His meat was to do the will of Him that sent Him and to accomplish His work; His joy was in His love and the glorious counsels which He knew, and which will soon be the manifest issue. He indeed endured the cross, as was only possible to Him; but He suffered all through in a way proper to Himself, and learned obedience through it (for before He had only commanded); yet what was not His joy, man of sorrows though He was and acquainted with grief beyond all others He could and did upbraid the cities wherein most of His mighty works were done, because they repented not; for their guilt was worse than the worst judged of old. But at that, season it was that He answered and said, “I praise Thee [I confess to Thee], Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from wise and prudent, and didst reveal them to babes: yea, Father; for thus it was well-pleasing in Thy sight... Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest for your souls.”

Here too the ground of joy in sorrow is explained, knowing that the proving of our faith worketh out endurance, as the apostle in Rom. 5:4 speaks of the saints “knowing that tribulation worketh out endurance.” Both are equally true; but it is plain that tribulation could produce no such effect unless there was the faith that stood the test. And such was his prayer for the Colossians that they might be “strengthened with all power according to the might of His glory unto all endurance and long-suffering with joy.” The character of the inspired writings may differ ever so much in suitability to God's design in each; but there is unity of spirit also beyond all doubt in His revealed mind. He cannot deny Himself.

There is an important caution added. “But let endurance have a perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing.” The contrast of this we see in Saul king of Israel, who did not wait out the full time and lost the kingdom (1 Sam. 14). Even in David we see failure of endurance when fleeing from Saul he sought Achish in Gath (1 Sam. 27-29). Christ alone was perfect in this as in all else. Endurance has a perfect work, when we judge our own will and await God's. Then and thus only are we perfect and entire, deficient in nothing. It cannot contradict chap. 3: 2 for all that.

Letters on Singing: Concluding Remarks

MY DEAR—,

There is a phase of our subject brought forward in Eph. 5: 19, Col. 3:16, which has hitherto been Unnoticed in these letters and which it is of some importance to consider.

It has been repeatedly pressed that the Christian is bound to sing “to the Lord,” and that according to the plainest teaching of scripture not only one but every psalm, hymn, or song should be consciously sung as before God. It is at the same time equally true, on the same authority, that sacred song has a reflex action upon the singer. Just as, when our requests are made known to God, the result is, whether we get what we ask for or not, that the incomprehensible peace of God keeps our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:6, 7). The very attitude of prayer produces a state of calm restfulness in the soul even though the direct answer be withheld. In like manner singing, while it is primarily addressed to God, has secondarily a beneficial effect upon the believer. The very verse that enjoins the Ephesian saints to make melody in the heart to the Lord, says, “Speaking to yourselves in psalms, &c.” And to those in Colossae the apostle writes, “Teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, &c.” (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16).

The action of singing enlarges the heart and the mind, and leads to a more practical acquaintance with truth. Just as man's mental and physical powers are developed and strengthened by exercise, so it is with the faculties and emotions of the believer's spiritual nature. The hymn affords a suitable channel for the outflow of the affections and aspirations of the soul, which react in blessing and profit to the singer. So that, if in the words of the Psalmist, “It is a good thing to give thanks unto Jehovah and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most High” (Psa. 92:1), it is not less so to sing praise unto the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Again, it is a notable fact that singing is a means of deeply embedding truth (or, alas! that it should be so, error) in a person's heart. There is an extravagant paradox that is often quoted, to the effect that if a man had the making of a nation's ballads, he need not care who had the making of its laws. Whatever the degree of truth this may contain, it is certain that sacred hymnology has an incalculable effect upon Christian thought and belief. Scriptural hymns exercise a sanctifying and instructive influence whenever sung; while on the contrary an unsound hymn, whatever its “beauty” as a composition, injures and does not help. How many hearts have thrilled with fervent adoration as they have joined in Watts' “When I survey the wondrous cross,” &c., or in Hart's “How good is the God we adore,” &c. And on the other hand how many hearts have been blinded as to the fact of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit by the many hymns, which pray for His present coming or His outpouring, such as, “Come, Holy Ghost, Creator blest, Vouchsafe within our souls to rest, &c.” Such sentiments entirely overlook the Lord's promise that the Comforter should come to abide forever (John 14:16), and expressly deny that Acts 2 was the fulfillment of that promise; and the mass, who are alas! not accustomed to “prove all things,” through singing such hymns receive this false and mischievous unbelief to the damage of their own souls.

It behooves us therefore to take heed what we sing. And the only infallible test of a hymn must be the word of truth. Of what use, for we are now taking that side of the question—of what possible use can an unscriptural hymn be to me or any one else? It certainly cannot contribute to spiritual advancement but rather to the propagation of its own erroneous notions.

Under this head of spiritual helpfulness comes the majority of that class of hymns known as gospel hymns. They consist of hymns sung by saints in presence of sinners in accompaniment of evangelistic ministry. They afford expression for the delight of God's children in the simple and elementary truths of the gospel. It is sad degeneracy however, when gospel services are made the occasions for the display of so-called musical talent, and sickly sentimentalism wedded to jigging tunes and jingling refrains, to suit the popular taste, is exchanged for the sober and solemn truths of the grace of God. This does not honor God nor help either saint or sinner.

Turning again to the subject of singing in the assembly, a scripture in 1 Cor. 14 gives guidance on a very practical point. At Corinth there was a great deal of unseemly haste and confusion when gathered together. Each of the brethren appears to have come up prepared with his contribution of gift for the assembly. The apostle says, “How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying” (1 Cor. 14:26). It is clear there was a keen competition, if not rivalry, among them for the display of their gifts. The result of this was that the meeting became disorderly and the saints were not edified. The counsel of Paul under these circumstances was “Let all things be done unto edifying.” He did not say, establish a president, or make one man responsible for the order of your meeting, and then it will be manifest who is to blame. Nay, this would be utterly to, deny the sovereignty of the Spirit of God in their midst, “dividing to every man severally as He will” (1 Cor. 12:11). Let them be governed by Him, and the edification of the saints must be the sure result.'

Now singing is especially mentioned in this verse. If every one had a psalm, there would be an end to all fellowship at once. It is entirely a false principle for a brother to suppose that, because he has found great joy in a certain hymn, he must forthwith take it to the assembly and ask the whole of his brethren to sing it with him. It is no doubt very natural to assume that, what I find to be good, I should ask others to share. But it contravenes the truth of 1 Cor. 14. That chapter shows (as has already been stated) that what is, not what may be, suited for all, is the rule for guidance. In other words, the hymn should be the expression of the minds and hearts of the saints at that particular time, and this shuts us up to the Spirit of God. We are absolutely and continuously dependent on the Holy Ghost for direction as to what is to be presented as worship at any given time.

Nevertheless it ought to be remembered that the Spirit of God does not miraculously bring to any person's memory a hymn never seen or sung before. The more familiar saints are with the hymn-book through constant usage at home, the greater will be the variety of hymns sung in the assembly. For the Spirit selects from what we know. Hence the importance of becoming acquainted with hymns in private devotion, so that proper and suitable praise as opposed to anything formal or habitual may be rendered in the assembly.

On the other hand, license with the hymn-book is to be deplored. The constant habit of announcing hymns is self-delusive. It should never be forgotten that the Lord Himself is the Leader of our praises, as He said, “In the midst of the assembly, will I sing praise unto thee” (Heb. 2:12). It is therefore a solemn matter to give out a certain hymn which is to embody the praises of the saints at that moment, since the Lord Himself is the great Precentor. Indeed, none but the Spirit of God can rightfully guide in accordance with the mind of the Lord. It is however at the same time our own responsibility to place ourselves in alignment with His action, so that all things may be both of and to the Lord.

Careful consideration of what is being uttered in song will involuntarily lead to the choice of a suitable mode of expression. It ought not to be necessary, after all that has been written, to refer to this subject; but a few plain words may perhaps divest the guilty of their last excuse. Efforts after effect in singing cannot be too much deplored; on the other haul it would almost seem that saints, probably from lack of thought rather than lack of principle, are sometimes utterly oblivious of the meaning of the words they sing. Where can the believer's thoughts be who shouts out the following solemn words at the top of his voice and at the top of his speed?— “When we see Thee in the garden, In Thine agony of blood...When we see Thee as the victim, Nailed to the accursed tree, For our guilt and folly stricken, All our judgment borne by Thee.” On the other hand, who has not heard “What cheering words are these, &c.” delivered in a dirge-like wail, pathetic in the extreme; or that enlivening strain, “We joy in our God, and we sing of that love, &c.,” drawled through in funereal time, with most mouths half-closed? This arises from want of heart, from a lapse into a dull slothful formality, which is a discredit to the saint and a dishonor to the Lord, but which may be avoided by a little thought over the real import of the words of the hymn.

A difficulty arises in some minds as to how one is to decide when to refrain from singing a hymn proposed to be sung. It is certain that this is an exceptional case and calls for the exercise of much wisdom. But two principles founded on what has been brought forward in previous letters may be found helpful—

1.-Because I sing to the Lord, I must not sing what I know to be contrary to scripture;

2.-Because I sing in communion with the saints, I have no ground for refusal, unless I am asked to sing what is manifestly contrary to scripture and the mind of the Spirit.

I say, “manifestly,” because in dubious instances modesty and humility would join with prudence in abstaining from a too positive expression of opinion. We ought not to be surprised if others do not fall in very readily with our own little fads. And when we ourselves do not see very clearly points which others lay down with emphasis, it is possibly caused by our own defective vision. In short, we ought to be very slow to judge where we have not the full light of scripture; but where there is no room for doubt, the claims of the Lord and His word bind us to firmness and faithfulness.

Let me add as a final remark that in singing as in other matters there is no such thing as “rule of thumb” for the Christian. Not the bit nor the bridle, but the eye of the Lord must be the guide. The best rules will lead astray if they supplant Christ. The simplest and feeblest believer sings well who has the Lord before him; but the praises of the most intelligent and the most accomplished singer are altogether vanity, if the Lord is forgotten as being both the object and subject of those praises.

Yours faithfully in our Lord,

YOD.

Scripture Query and Answer: Three Words Translated "Net"

Q.-As there are three different Greek words in the N. T. translated “net,” would it not be well to have the distinction explained? Q.

A.-Ἀμφίβληστρον occurs only in Matt. 4:18 (implied also in Mark 1:16, where the most ancient MSS. omit the noun), and means a casting net. It was thrown round the object, whence the term was derived. The more usual word is δίκτυον, but in the plural form in Matt. 4:20, 21, Mark 1:18, in the sing. in John 21:6, 8, 11. It is derived from δικεῖν, to cast. Trawl net has been suggested as appropriate. But the σαγήνη (in Matt. 13:47 only), from σάττειν to pack or load, was a dragnet or seine, on a larger scale.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:3

OF Japheth's sons two only have their descendants specified, Gomer the head of the Kelts, and Javan, from whom came the Hellenic-Italian races.

“And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah” (ver. 3).

Jeremiah (chap. 51: 27) introduces Ashkenaz as one of three kingdoms set apart and called together with Ararat and Minni against Babylon, when the kings of the Medes also played their decisive part. There seems no sound reason to doubt that as Ararat and Minni were parts of Armenia, here as elsewhere falling under Togarmah, so Ashkenaz and Riphath occupied the peninsula of Asia Minor at that time and took their place with Cyrus the leader of these races during that notable struggle. But this in no way weakens the general fact that Gomer pushed westward and into Europe, allowing that at least Togarmah settled in Armenia. For this is as sure as any fact of history; and scripture is decisive as to it, not only in the past, but for the future.

For instance, Ezek. 38 beyond doubt unveils the judgment of Russia at the end of this age, and lets us see its supporters compelled to follow and share the general ruin. Among those of the north are Gomer and all his hordes, and the house of Togarmah from the uttermost north and all his, as well as the southern races of Persia, Cush, and Phut under the same influence.

It is quite unfounded to pretend that this vast confederacy of the nations (or its overwhelming destruction) applies to any action under the Seleucidae, any more than the then state of the Jews in the land agrees. For it is clear that Israel previously has been brought back from the sword, gathered out of many peoples, and that they are dwelling in safety, though in a land of unwalled villages, having neither bars nor gates. Again, the position is made all the plainer by taking into account the two preceding chapters, 36. and 37. The prophet in the first declares that Jehovah will call them from among the nations, and gather them out of all the countries, and bring them into their own land. This restoration is to have a national completeness and a holy character beyond all precedent. “And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your uncleannesses and from all your idols will I cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and keep mine ordinances, and ye shall do them. So ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.”

This new and mighty work of divine grace for Israel is clearly seen to be confirmed symbolically in the next chap. 32., where we see the valley of dry bones caused to live and stand up, an exceeding great army; then, under the two sticks made one in Jehovah's hand, the old rent of the divided tribes completely healed, and one nation made on the mountains of Israel with one king to them, as has never been since the days of Rehoboam. “And they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all. And they shall not any more defile themselves with their idols, or with their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions; and I will save them out of all their dwelling-places wherein they have sinned; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd; and they shall walk in my ordinances, and keep my statutes and do them.” It is a bright and blessed prediction awaiting its fulfillment. In these circumstances will Gog lead his vassal hordes to perish signally on the mountains of Israel, and a fire shall also be sent on Magog and those that dwell at ease in the isles; and they shall know Who it is that thus judges them in the day that all Israel shall be gathered out of the nations into their own land, none to be left any more there.

The Rabbins have it that Ashkenaz subsequently migrated into that part of Europe which was afterward called Germany. And a learned German who has devoted much research to the details of this chapter comes to the same conclusion. But the evidence is far from being clear, though all agree that the Teutons are Japhetic and of Gomer. Herodotus indeed (i: 125) tells us of the Germanioi as with other tribes an agricultural class, not pastoral like several, and distinct from the princely and noble, into which the ancient Persians were divided. It is probable that they were at any rate connected with Carmania, the modern Kirman, as Mr. W. S. Vaux suggests; so Agatharcides (Mar. Erythr. 27, Hudson) and Strabo (xiv. 723) use the name of Germania, for what Diodorus (xviii. 6) calls Carmania. But it seems only a curious coincidence. Besides, of old, “Germans” was not the name the Teutonic family gave themselves, but from without. Far less is the ground for applying Riphath to Great Britain as some have done, or to the Rhipaean mountains (in all probability a geographical dream of the ancient Greeks), though here again the rationalist coalesces with the Jewish doctors and labors to find in the Carpathian range a temporary seat for the Kelts or Gaels. But there is no good reason for doubting that those we call Germans were of Gomer, no less than the Kelts.

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 3

Chapter 2

THE design of providence to shield from impending destruction the Jews, unworthy as they were, and to punish their unrelenting enemies, here manifestly advances. Nothing could have seemed less connected with it than the Persian story of the preceding chapter which ended in the repudiation of Vashti. A further step was now taken. A lofty one was put down, a lowly one is exalted. But God alone wrought in this secretly. The king's servants had neither issue before them, any more than the king himself. Afraid that Ahasuerus might violate the policy of the empire, and that the restoration of the queen might be to their own imminent danger, they propose that the king should choose as consort the fairest maiden in his dominions that might please him best.

“After these things, when the wrath of king Ahasuerus was pacified, he remembered Vashti, and what she had done, and what was decreed against her. Then said the king's servants that ministered unto him, Let there be fair young virgins sought for the king: and let the king appoint officers in all the provinces of his kingdom, that they may gather together all the fair young virgins unto Shushan the palace, to the house of the women, unto the custody of Hegai the king's chamberlain, keeper of the women; and let their things for purification be given [them]: and let the maiden which pleaseth the king be queen instead of Vashti. And the thing pleased the king; and he did so” (vers. 1-4).

How did this affect the poor people of God? It soon appears in the germ. For was it chance that gave an orphan of Israel a beauty beyond all in those wide provinces?

“There was in Shushan the palace [or, fortress] a certain Jew, whose name [was] Mordecai, the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, a Benjamite; who had been carried away from Jerusalem with the captives which had been carried away with Jeconiah king of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away. And he brought up Hadassah, that [is], Esther, his uncle's daughter: for she had neither father nor mother, and the maiden [was] fair and beautiful; and when her father and mother were dead, Mordecai took her for his own daughter. So it came to pass, when the king's commandment and his decree was heard, and when many maidens were gathered together unto Shushan the palace, to the custody of Hegai, that Esther was taken into the king's house, to the custody of Hegai, keeper of the women. And the maiden pleased him, and she obtained kindness of him; and he speedily gave her her things for purification, with her portions, and the seven maidens, which [were] meet to be given her, out of the king's house: and he removed her and her maidens to the best [place] of the house of the women. Esther had not showed her people nor her kindred: for Mordecai had charged her that she should not show [it]. And Mordecai walked every day before the court of the women's house, to know how Esther did, and what should become of her. Now when the turn of every maiden was come to go in to king Ahasuerus, after that it had been done to her according to the law for the women, twelve months, (for so were the days of their purifications accomplished, to wit, six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with sweet odors, and with the things for the purifying of the women,) then in this wise came a maiden unto the king, whatsoever she desired was given her to go with her out of the house of the women unto the king's house. In the evening she went, and on the morrow she returned into the second house of the women, to the custody of Shaashgaz, the king's chamberlain, who kept the concubines: she came in unto the king no more, except the king delighted in her, and that she were called by name. Now when the turn of Esther, the daughter of Abihail the uncle of Mordecai, who had taken her for his daughter, was come to go in unto the king, she required nothing but what Hegai the king's chamberlain, the keeper of the women, appointed. And Esther obtained favor in the sight of all them that looked upon her. So Esther was taken unto king Ahasuerus into his house royal in the tenth month, which is the month Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign. And the king loved Esther above all the women, and she obtained grace and favor in his sight more than all the virgins; so that he set the royal crown upon her head, and made her queen instead of Vashti. Then the king made a great feast unto all his princes and his servants, even Esther's feast; and lie made a release to the provinces, and gave gifts, according to the bounty of the king” (vers. 5-18).

Whatever may be thought of Mordecai or of Esther in the matter (and Scripture is here silent, neither accusing nor excusing), we have not long to wait before the vital question was raised, and the Jews must perish or be delivered beyond all outward hope, yet without sign, wonder, or miracle.

Accordingly a new fact is ordered of the utmost moment in providence. Mordecai is the instrument of making known a plot aimed at the king's life by two of his chamberlains.

“And when the virgins were gathered together the second time, then Mordecai sat in the king's gate. Esther had not [yet] showed her kindred nor people, as Mordecai had charged her; for Esther did the commandment of Mordecai, like as when she was brought up with him. In those days, while Mordecai sat in the king's gate, two of the king's chamberlains, Bigthan and Teresh, of those who kept the door, were wroth, and sought to lay hands on the king Ahasuerus. And the thing was known to Mordecai, who showed [it] unto Esther the queen; and Esther told the king [thereof] in Mordecai's name. And when inquisition was made of the matter, and it was found to be so, they were both hanged on a tree: and it was written in the book of the chronicles before the king” (vers. 19-23).

The traitors were thus found guilty; but the benefactor was strangely forgotten till the time of direct need arose, all the more surely to be rewarded to the confusion of the enemy at last. Secret providence ordered all aright, however trying appearances might be. This again, as to the conspirators and Mordecai, the means of warning the king was no more fortuitous than the downfall of Vashti or the elevation of Esther. All was in His hand Who ruled unseen.

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream and Daniel's Vision: 3

Dan. 2, 7

WHEN Daniel had the vision of these four powers as it is given in chapter 7, they are presented to his eye as four ravenous beasts. The vision as dreamed by Nebuchadnezzar was comparatively external, as man's eye might see; but the same objects seen by the prophet were according to what a spiritual understanding could enter into. The reader may find an analogy in the parables referred to, first some before all in public, then others to the disciples within the house (Matt. 13).

There is also evident deterioration, as the power is distant from its source, and becomes characterized with more of man lower and lower. It has nothing to do with the extent of empire, which on the contrary became greater successively. But Nebuchadnezzar did his imperfect acts absolutely, as only One can perfectly to God's glory. In the Medo-Persian empire, wise men counsel much; as in the Greek, soldiers of fortune. Rome goes down to the dregs, and is governed instead of governing, so that power from God is swamped in the people as its source.

In chap. 7. the prophet sees the four powers emerge from the sea or ungoverned mass of peoples: first, a lion with eagle's wings, which ere long is humbled; secondly, a bear which raised up itself on one side and had a measured voracity; thirdly, a leopard with four wings, and eventually four heads, which none of the preceding had; lastly, a beast to which none in the realm of nature answered, beyond all dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly, with great iron teeth, devouring and destroying with contempt, diverse from all before, and at length with the peculiarity of ten horns, &c. And here, answering to the little stone of chap. 2., we have the Son of man before the Ancient of days, receiving dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him: an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. Here we have the internal view according to God's mind, with yet more added in the interpretation.

But it may be remarked in passing, that the intervening chapters are as valuable for the world-powers, as chap. 1. we have seen to be for the moral state of Daniel. Chap. 3. shows that the first recorded act of Nebuchadnezzar was to enforce the most senseless idolatry, on the king's authority, as a means of binding together the peoples, nations, and languages; which only brought out fidelity at all cost on the part of the three Hebrew youths, the remnant, and the Gentile king's recognition of God their deliverer. Chap. 4. points to the Gentile power, after the seven times of a beast's heart, restored to praise the King of heaven. Chap. 5. is plainly the profaning Gentile judged in the destruction of Babylon; as chap. 6. attests the Gentile that took the place of God (according to the law that passeth not) confessing the living God Who alone rescues from the power of the enemy, and His kingdom what shall not be destroyed and His dominion unto the end. It is in the then facts the prefiguration of Gentile power abased and of Jew saved at the end to God's glory and the triumph of His kingdom. For no prophecy of scripture is of private (of its own, its isolated) interpretation. Every one bears, all converge, on the grand object of God in the exaltation of the Anointed, at the close of man's busy restless day. The Holy Spirit in what is written never stops short of that conclusion, so worthy of God and His Son, so blessed for the universe and every creature in it, save those that have rebelled persistently against His will. No accomplishment in the past, even if true and important, exhausts the meaning or satisfies the divine end.

If ever man tried to govern the world of his day by his own will absolutely, it was “the head of gold;” and as he sinned in giving the glory not to the Most High but to himself, he was abased personally as no monarch or man was before or since. But mercy intervened in due time, and presented a hope “at the end of the days,” which shall not make ashamed; when the nations shall be gladdened with His people and hope in Him Whom they together slew on the tree.

When the monarch took counsel with others, nobles or military chiefs, it was not really better. And when it was avowedly the people with or without an emperor, no tyranny so selfish, none so oppressive, nor so presumptuous against the true God. Never will the divine ideal be realized till He come again to reign, Whose right it is in the fullest way, divine and human, the Father of the age to come, the Prince of peace. All governments meanwhile are imperfect and provisional in His providence, though every soul in Christianity is bound to be subject, as unto higher authorities of this world. The existing authorities, whatever the form, are ordained of God; and he that ranges himself against the authority is a resister of the appointment of God. Yet consisting of sinful men, not one of any sort but has failed and sinned. How blessed to know that He, Who is coming to be King over all the earth, here lived and died and rose and ascended, not only the Lord but the Servant of all, and the Servant of God in serving all others not in love only but as the propitiation fox our sins.

For indeed there is one Man, and one Man only, Who never thought of any other object but doing or suffering the will of God. It was therefore and necessarily one course of ever deepening humiliation, though moral glory, till He reached a depth unfathomable save to Him. He it is Who, when He returns in power and glory, will take the whole world, as scripture fully shows. Meanwhile the Lord Jesus is very far from now governing the world. If He were, would He suffer Satan to be god and prince, as God's word declares he is, even since Christ took His seat on the Father's throne?

God's providential care does not fail of course, but what occupies Christ now is His loving ways with the church, and saving sinners to serve God and wait for Him from heaven. They are not of the world as He is not, and He is coming to receive them to Himself in the Father's house. This is far better. No matter how effectual and glorious the government of the world by-and-by when Christ reigns, it is not at all comparable to union with Him even now, and suffering with Him here below, and enjoying His love as Bridegroom forever in heaven. This is what Christ is now carrying on in God's children, that, when He shall be manifested, we may be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.

But returning to the first vision, we note that it was a great image, whose brightness was excellent, and the form thereof terrible. So it was seen by Nebuchadnezzar; whereas Daniel was given to behold the self-same first empire as a lion with eagle's wings. This power was not to endure long, because its continuance was measured, as Jeremiah (chap. 15: 11, 12) had already predicted, by the captivity of Judah—in round numbers about seventy years. It was a power of peculiar majesty and splendor, Nebuchadnezzar being called “the head of gold,” as it appears to be in part, if not mainly, from receiving his power as king of kings direct from God in a way that none else of these empires did afterward, and allowing no human element to enfeeble his acting as so constituted. It was not won by conquest merely; it was God's immediate gift in his case, instead of being derived successively from others put down. Thus Cyrus was in many respects a greater man, and employed to do God's will on behalf of the Jewish remnant typically. Even Nebuchadnezzar was not a ruler to be despised, being (I suppose) the greatest city-builder the world ever saw. There are to be seen countless bricks with his name on them still, although thousands of years have passed since they were made. There they remain, strong and recognizable as ever almost, circumstances being no doubt peculiarly favorable for their preservation. Nebuchadnezzar also had much energy and practical wisdom in many other respects, as in seeing to the water-ways of the great rivers, and the irrigation of his fruitful plains, in order that the country might flourish and the people be prosperous as it never was before.

Under his reign Babylon became by far the most powerful and celebrated city of that age on the globe. The country was watered by two great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, rivers having their rise in Eden, where was the original Paradise of man; a remarkable proof that the deluge which left neither man nor beast on the earth did not blot out so much as some think. And as this great king actively provided work for the people, so also did he promote immense foreign trade. We read of “the cry of the Chaldees in their ships,” and their ports then became a source of enormous wealth and led to enterprise without end. Yet when the allotted hour struck, the golden city was razed, and, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, became in due time as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. Nor was there in all history so tragic a scene, if so righteous a fate, as that which is portrayed in Daniel's account of her last night as an imperial power.

( To be continued D.V.)

The Dragnet

Matt. 13:47-50.

THE last similitude of the chapter is the counterpart of the first; for as this is the sowing of the good seed in the world, where the harvest is spoiled by the enemy's darnel, so that is the judicial dealing with the bad fish after the good had been gathered into vessels before the consummation of the age.

“Again, the kingdom of the heavens is like a dragnet cast into the sea and having brought together of every sort; which, when it was filled, they drew up on the beach, and, sitting down, gathered the good into the vessels and cast the worthless out. Thus shall it be in the consummation of the age: the angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from amidst the righteous, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be the weeping, and the gnashing of teeth (ver. 47-50).

Here again we have what was meant, not for the multitude, but for those who had ears to hear. The Lord speaks to the disciples only in the house. It is for the spiritual mind.

We may notice here as elsewhere how carefully the truth was communicated, so as not to impair the Christian hope. The Jew has had times and seasons set out and discriminated to guard him from being deceived by the cry, The time is at hand. Now that the Christ was rejected of Jew and Gentile, the unequaled tribulation must be before the times of refreshing from the presence of Jehovah and His Christ. But for the Christian it is of all moment not to confound the proper hope with prophecy, but to wait for the Lord to receive us to Himself precisely as the early saints did. Whatever events are revealed, and they are many, varied, and momentous before the day of the Lord, His coming remains immediately before the heart without any predicted events to intervene.

In fact, we now know that many centuries have transpired; but from the parables here and elsewhere we should never have gathered such an interval as might hinder constant looking for Christ. We could not from the letter have gleaned, but that the fishermen, who first cast into the sea the dragnet, at length filled out of every sort, were the same that drew it up on the beach, and sitting down gathered the good into vessels and cast the worthless outside. He Who knew the end from the beginning had all before Him but disclosed with a wisdom self-evidently divine. Mistake there was none: only the rashness or of unbelief can say so. If taught of God, we wait for the Lord Jesus now, as the apostles did. Our hope, as our faith, is the same. All hangs on His word, which can fail no more than His love. And those who have fallen asleep have in no way missed their hope; for it remains true as ever, that the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we, the living that remain to the coming of the Lord shall in no wise precede those that are fallen asleep, but shall together with them be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord (1 Thess. 4).

The parable does mark in the first place the fishermen completing their work of filling the dragnet from every kind, and drawing it ashore; next, sitting down and sorting the good fish into vessels, while they cast away those unfit for food. This was the fishermen's work of delicate discrimination; and the more striking as the servants were forbidden in the first similitude to gather the darnel. To deal with the wicked is in both parables assigned to the angels. They are, as the interpretation goes on to say (not only explaining, but adding), to come forth and sever the wicked from amidst the righteous. This is another truth, which must not be confounded with the fishermen's work of gathering the good into vessels. Both are true, but they differ in their nature and objects. We, the servants or fishermen, have to do with the good; the angels will execute judgment on the wicked. The Christian is called to the work of grace. So it was even among the Jews of old. “If thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth,” said Jehovah to Jeremiah: not the vile from the precious, but the precious from the vile.

How is it with you, dear reader? To be within the dragnet is no security. Are you Christ's? He Himself welcomes the anxious and the restless and the wretched and the despairing. “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Yea, He declares, “Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out.” And He deigns to give the most lowly and gracious reason: “For I came down from heaven not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.” And His will that sent Jesus is, “that every one that seeth the Son and believeth on Him shall have life eternal; and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:37-40).

What more do you want to win your hearts than these words, if you believe the Lord? To honor Him is to honor the Father, Who refuses to be honored otherwise. And no wonder; for to Him it is that His God and Father is indebted for His glorification morally in a world which had departed from Him, and done Him foul wrong, not only among Gentiles, vain and dark and proud, but in His own people guiltier and prouder still. Then and there it was that the Lord Jesus vindicated Him, not only in emptying Himself and becoming man, but in humbling Himself when man and being obedient unto death—yea, death of the cross. There it was also God made Him Who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become God's righteousness in Him. Then it was He Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree that we being dead to sins should live to righteousness.

Fear not therefore to receive the Lord Jesus at God's word, as your quittance from all that you have done and are, and as your new start; for He Who died is risen, the giver of a life in Him, which speaks to you of victory, and is the pledge of holiness. Fear not: only believe.

Seeking and Receiving: Part 1

THERE are two things given us in this chapter: first, the origin and source of our salvation, God seeking us; and, secondly, the reception of the person when he comes back to God, and, at the same time, what passed in the heart of the prodigal when coming back to his Father. When come back, we hear no more of him, but of what passed in the heart of the Father.

It is a wonderful thing (if we did not know what we are naturally) to think that God should have to excuse Himself for loving us (vers. 31, 32 compared with 1, 2). It shows the selfishness and hardness of the human heart, that, if it cannot accredit itself before God, it will not have God's righteousness. That is what the elder brother was in his selfish self-righteousness (the Pharisee saying, “I never transgressed thy commandments;” and “Thou never gavest me a kid, to make merry with my friends”). Thus there was not one movement of the heart that fell in with the Father or even the servants. The whole household was moved by the Father's joy; but in him there was no response at all. The self-righteousness of man sets up to be something and accredits itself; but it is only of himself he is thinking. His Father's grace and goodness leads selfishness but to complain against God. This characterized the Jews in principle. These Pharisees were complaining against Christ for having eaten with publicans and sinners; then comes the blessed truth that God will not give up His character of love, but goes on in spite of all the false pretentious righteousness of man.

There are two things in these parables: the seeking; and the receiving. The first two refer to the seeking, the last to the reception of the sinner through redemption. The first two are God seeking (I do not doubt you get Father, Son, and Holy Ghost): the Shepherd seeks the sheep; the woman lights the candle to search for the piece of silver, as the Spirit by the gospel. Then you find the reception by the Father. In the first is the simple blessed principle that man kicks against—that it all comes from God to you in love. How self-righteousness gets mixed up in many hearts with the full free grace of God! The great thing seen of Christ is, God the originator of all the mercy. God has gone through the question of man's responsibility, and “there is none righteous, no not one” (Rom. 3:10). This is the summing up of the state of man before God, as being thoroughly tried. God in His mercy has given it, because the tendency of the human heart is to go on the ground of its righteousness, conscience telling him he should have it for God (as the law is its perfect measure: He has taken that ground with man). But our hearts do not submit to God's righteousness till we have gone through the testing: we have to learn it in a real way.

Further, God never left man without testimony: I do not say without promise, because this was to the Second Man. First (though not without testimony, as Enoch, Noah, and so on) man was left to himself. And what was the end of it? All was so bad that God had to bring in the flood. This was judgment on man in a certain sense left to himself. Then we have the second great principle: the promise came first—promise to Abraham, who was called out of a world which had gone into idolatry (Josh. 24:2). Then things went on till the law was given, when man took up the promises, but upon the footing of his own obedience; for they said, “All that Jehovah hath spoken we will do.” But they went on with wickedness afterward; they made the golden calf. There had been then sinners and law-breakers. But this was not all: God sent the prophets, dealing with their consciences, “rising up early, and sending them.” After all, God says, “I have still one Son, they will reverence Him;” but they cast Him out.

That is, you have man (in a certain sense) left to himself, but not without testimony; then man under law, and breaking it; then the Son of God came, God manifesting Himself. God was revealing Himself to win back the heart of man to confidence in Himself, in perfect and patient goodness, passing through this world as man, perfect and spotless; that good in power might meet every sorrow—power which removed all the present effects of sin. But they would not have God on any terms. Grace has wrought from Adam, but the heart of man is still the same. They break the law now, as far as they have their share in it. They cannot put Christ to death now; but talk of Christ to the world, and see how they will like it I We have had the law, and the prophets; after that Christ came. “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.” And when the Holy Ghost came into this world, it was but a world that had rejected the Son of God. God says to the world, What have you done with My Son? Men forget that the Son has been here: He is not here now. Everything that God could do He did, if anything could win the heart of man; but it was all of no use. Is it not a very solemn thing?

But to come to the point where God and man really meet, it is only at the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. There was man's enmity rejecting the Son of God come in grace, and there was God giving His Son in love. We find a most blessed picture of it when the soldiers were sent to break the legs of those who were crucified with Him. “A bone of Him shall not be broken;” but they must make sure they have got rid of Him: “They pierced His side,” and there came out blood and water. What a sign of salvation as Gods answer to man's insultingly making sure that he had got rid of God come in mercy! There is where a soul can meet God, and there only. It is God's truth as to its state, that “the carnal mind is enmity against God” (Rom. 8:7). But His love has met it where it is. In truth we must come as mere sinners to the cross. The only part that we had in that which saved us was our sins; and there we must come. All must come before the Lord Jesus and bow to Him, either as Savior, or as Judge if we neglect salvation. Such is man's history.

Thus comes in the fullness of grace. God had proved man's state. He had now to act from Himself. They had had the law “by the disposition of angels;” they had had the prophets; they had had the Son, the Just One, and the testimony of the Holy Ghost. “Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost” (Acts 7:51-53). He had come with the testimony of Christ glorified. Stephen's speech was a kind of summing up as to man. They had broken the law, slain those which showed before the coming of the Just One,” were His betrayers and murderers, and resisted the Holy Ghost. Now, consequently, what we find on the other side is, that the spring and source of the whole blessing is God's own heart. What made the Shepherd look after the sheep? It was what was in the heart of the Shepherd toward it. Who put it into God's heart to send His Son? We did not; we would not have Him when He came. “If one died for all, then were all dead” (2 Cor. 4:15). Thus we see what was the first spring and movement of all: it was infinite grace! All were lost. But “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). There is the wonderful truth, that the spring of it all is in God's own heart. Jesus “came to seek and to save that which was lost.” In this way we know “God is love:” “He laid down His life for us.”

We find in the first two parables the expression of His pure sovereign goodness interested in us. It was what Christ did. The Shepherd goes after the sheep, and “laid it on His shoulders rejoicing.” Here it set no foot to ground: not a word of what the sheep did, nor even of its happiness. It is just the same with the piece of silver. The woman cared for it, and could not give it up till she found it, and then was happy about it. The thing that runs through these parables is, that it is God's happiness to bring us back.

The truth that we have in the third parable is, that God's own happiness is to have us. There is nothing said about the prodigal's happiness, but about the father's: “God is love.” In the third are details in connection with his failure and his reception. The reception when he comes back is from the same love, the same grace, that sought the lost in the two first. He took his own way, and left his father's house, and tried to please himself. That is what men are trying to do—what he did, giving up God and His authority. Men do not believe that God is looking to their happiness, and they look to it themselves. So it was with Eve in Eden, when confidence in God was lost; she must try to make herself happy. The beginning of our ruin was losing confidence in God. Christ displays God in a way to win confidence in Him, manifesting such love and goodness that the heart should say, I can trust Him. This is not peace, it does not purge the conscience but awakens it. It is such a revelation of God to the heart as produces confidence. “I will arise and go to my Father:” such is the effect of God's light and God's love. You cannot be blessed with God (and you cannot be at all blessed without Him) but according to what He is.

If you come to God, you must come in the light that manifests everything. When God reveals Himself, He is light. It makes us see all we are. But He is love; and this is what brought the light, and where that is revealed to the heart, one is willing to receive the light. God cannot reveal Himself without being both. I trust the love that has brought the light into my conscience.

(To be continued D.V.).

The Ways of God in the Acts: 1. The Calling of the Jews

The Calling of the Jews.

Chap. 2.

IT is important, to a due understanding of the ways of God in Christianity, to have a clear perception of the teaching contained in the Acts of the Apostles. In that book we have the three great facts particularly brought before us: (1) the descent of the Holy Spirit, according to the promise of the Lord Jesus; (2) the formation of the church of God—the body of Christ, and the house of God; and (3) the propagation of the gospel of Christ far and wide.

But there are differences in the divine action which we do well to note. It is a true remark that in studying the scriptures we learn more by looking for differences than for similarities. Many generally occupy themselves with looking for parallel passages in the word, supposing it to be the best way of acquiring a knowledge of the truth; but, while not slighting this method, our souls learn greatly by carefully noting the many differences that are there, and looking to the Spirit of God about them. In the Acts we have the Spirit dealing respectively with Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles, varying somewhat His method in each connection. It is these important variations we now propose to consider.

Acts 2 shows us the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus, before leaving His own, promised the precious gift to His disciples (John 14-16). In Acts 1 we get the Lord, after His resurrection, tarrying awhile with His own before going to the Father; putting before them in some sort their new position (not yet of course telling them of union with Him as one body), and speaking to them generally of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. They were to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father; He declares to them, “ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” In chap. 2 the promise is seen fulfilled: the baptism of the Spirit takes place.

Now this was a wholly new thing: the saints of God had never experienced the like before. From the very beginning there have been those who through grace have been born of the Spirit; but the gift of the Spirit, sealing individual believers and baptizing all into one body, is an entirely new order of blessing, founded on redemption. That mighty work being now accomplished by which God has been vindicated and glorified, and the divine sin-purger having taken His seat on high, God is able in a righteous way to lavish every gift upon all who believe in His beloved Son. And, as one may say, Jesus received the Holy Spirit twice; first at Jordan for Himself, then on His return to glory for His saints. At Jordan the Father expressed the delight of His heart in Him as the perfect man on earth, “and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon Him” (Luke 3:22); so that He could afterward say of Himself, “Him hath God the Father sealed” (John 6:27). But when risen and ascended, Peter could declare, “therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear” (Acts 2:33).

But the manner of the Spirit's coming was quite different in the two cases. Upon the Lord He came like a dove; the form in connection with the disciples was “cloven tongues like as of fire.” Why the difference? He came upon the Lord Jesus in a form suited to the character of the blessed One Whom He was sealing. Christ was the meek and lowly One, not quenching the smoking flax, nor breaking the bruised reed. What more apt emblem of meekness than a dove? As for the disciples, they were to be witnesses as the Lord told them; hence tongues. They were cloven, for the testimony was not to be confined to the Jews, as in the day of Matt. 10—though it was to them first, as we shall soon see—but it was to branch out to Gentiles also, “to all that are afar off, as many as the Lord our God shall call.” The tongues were of fire, the usual symbol of divine holiness in judgment; for the testimony of God, while bringing blessing, nevertheless judges all before it, giving no quarter to all that is of fallen man.

But let none suppose from the fiery form that this is the baptism of fire spoken of by John the Baptist in Matt. 3 John said of Christ, “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” To these words doubtless our Lord alludes in Acts 1:5, “John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence “; but with marked omission of “and fire.” If Matt. 3 be examined, it will be seen that the baptism of fire is judgment— “He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” This is not yet; through God's longsuffering grace the baptism of the Spirit is an accomplished fact: the baptism of fire awaits another day.

The first great result of the coming of the Spirit was a striking testimony to the Jews: “To the Jew first;” “Beginning at Jerusalem.” It was the feast of Pentecost, and many were in Jerusalem from far and near. To their utter surprise unlearned and ignorant men began to speak in other tongues, and to declare the wonderful works of God. This was plainly the hand of God. The men had not learned the languages; yet Parthians, Medes, Elamites, &c., heard them speaking in the tongues wherein they were born. Tongues are for a sign to unbelievers (1 Cor. 14:22). Thus did God surmount the confusion brought in at Babel. The day had not come for its removal; but God would have men of every tongue hear the glad tidings of His grace. The opinions as to the marvel were various. Some seemed thoughtful and said, “What meaneth this?” Others mocking said, “These men are full of new wine.”

Then Peter stood up with the eleven. What grace, that Peter of all the apostles should be so used I am aware that the Lord had said to him, “I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven “; and that here he is opening the door to the Jews, as in chap. 10. to the Gentiles. Still what abounding grace that he should be first to preach in the name of the risen Jesus! It was the preaching of a restored backslider. Grace had so wrought that he could calmly charge the Jewish nation with denying and crucifying Messiah. They might have retorted that he also had denied Him. But Peter had confessed his sin and been forgiven; and his conscience was clear and happy before God.

Let us notice his preaching. He explains the remarkable event of the day. He repudiates the insinuation of drunkenness, reminding them of the early hour, and brings forward Joel's prophecy. Had not the prophet spoken of an effusion of the Spirit in the last days? Why then need they be surprised at what had occurred? Not that Joel's prediction received then its complete fulfillment; for the Spirit was not yet poured out upon all flesh, nor had there been signs in heaven above and in the earth beneath; but it then had an incipient accomplishment—an outpouring of the Spirit had taken place.

Peter's style in preaching Christ is noticeably different from Paul's. The apostle of the church starts with Christ as glorified, showing the wondrous results of His death and resurrection in the light of the glory with the counsels of God now accomplishing on the ground of it. Peter, on the contrary, speaks of Jesus as One Whom the Jews had known among them, marked out by God by miracles and wonders and signs; but Whom they had crucified and slain, showing also that God had raised Him and put. Him at His own right hand. He had been delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. The Jews and their rulers, not knowing Him nor the voices of the prophets read every day, had fulfilled them in condemning Him (Acts 13:27). But God raised Him up, and David had spoken of it in the Psalms, as Peter proceeds to show. The time was when Peter and his companions needed to be shown Christ in the Psalms (Luke 24:27). Now he quotes several and presses them upon the consciences of his hearers. Psa. 16 is the first witness (with perhaps a clause from Psa. 21 in ver. 28). Of Whom had David spoken? “Thou wilt not leave My soul in Hades, neither wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption.”

Did the Psalmist speak of himself? Nay, he was both dead and buried, and his sepulcher was known to all the Jews; he has not yet known resurrection, and certainly not exaltation by the right hand of God. But, “being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins according to the flesh he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; he, seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, neither His flesh did see corruption.” This includes an allusion to Psa. 132 to which is added the crowning word from Psa. 110:1. The solemn conclusion of all was that God had made the crucified Jesus Lord and Christ.

What a position for the Jewish nation! convicted of the deepest enmity against God, of utter blindness as to the scriptures, of the betrayal and murder of their Messiah. The awful truth pressed itself home upon many— “they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Now notice carefully the answer, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” Why this order? Why is repentance pressed rather than faith? And why must baptism precede remission of sins and the gift of the Spirit? especially as a very different order is to be observed in the case of the Gentiles in Acts 10. The answer is to be found in the peculiarity of the circumstances. These proud Jews stood convicted of the rejection and murder of Messiah. God would have this deeply felt (therefore repentance is pressed), and would have them submit to baptism in the name of the One they had despised ere blessing could be theirs. Will any say this is the usual order? It is exceptional and extraordinary; and in it we see the perfect wisdom of God's ways.

Peter assured them that the promise was to them and their children, and to all that are afar off, as many as the Lord shall call (including Gentiles); and exhorted them to save themselves from the untoward generation which was about to be visited with judgment (see also ver. 47).

Those who received His word (“gladly” is a doubtful word. See Matt. 13:20) were baptized: and the same day were added 3,000 souls. Thus did God commence His new thing in the earth, the church of God. The waiting company received the, baptism of the Spirit, and thus became the body of Christ, though as yet they knew nothing of the doctrine of it. The 3,000 were introduced by the gift of the Spirit into the same blessed place. No such portion had been enjoyed by saints, however favored before that day. The church had no existence in O. T. times, save in the counsels of God. Christ must take His seat on high as the glorified head, and the Spirit must descend, ere such a thing could exist on earth.

But it does now exist, and the souls before us were brought into it on that memorable day. “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Steadfast continuance is good. To some Paul had to say, “Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?” (Gal. 5:7). Not so in Jerusalem on the Pentecostal day. There are four things to be noticed here. (1) “The apostles' doctrine.” What else did they, or do we, want? Apostolic doctrine is the standard and test of truth as John declares, “We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error” (1 John 4:6). Are we prepared to bring all our ways and the teaching we accept to this test? Tradition is of but little worth, however ancient and widely received; what was “from the beginning” alone has a claim upon our souls. (2) “Fellowship:” What a mercy that we are not called to walk alone! In a hostile world, what a relief to the heart that God has given us the fellowship of saints! Do we value it sufficiently?

No saint is self-sufficient; we all need what God has for us by means of our brethren. But our fellowship must be holy. Better far to walk alone than compromise the Lord's name. In such a case His grace will be made sufficient for the soul, as many can testify; but such is not the ordinary Christian path, but fellowship. (3) “The breaking of bread.” This had clearly a larger place in the Christianity of those days than now. While continuing daily in the temple, they broke bread “at home” on (at least) the first day of the week (Acts 20). Love was too fresh to be satisfied with a monthly or quarterly remembrance of Christ. In our day the very name is well-nigh lost, to say nothing of the reality. What are the sounds around us? One tells us of the mass, another of the sacrament; but how often do we hear God's titles, “the breaking of bread,” and “the Lord's supper?” (4) “The prayers.” They felt the solemnity of their position in the midst of enemies, and valued united prayer. When the apostles were “let go” in chap. iv., they at once sought out “their own company,” and together they gave themselves to prayer. Do we feel our need? It is sorrowful to see saints, who are regular in their attendance at the Lord's table, indifferent to the prayer-meeting. What can be said of their condition of soul?

It is truly a lovely picture the Spirit brings before us here; first love, ardent faith, and earnest zeal for the glory of the absent Lord. But as yet all in the church were Jews; others were to be called, as succeeding chapters will show.

Priesthood of Christ: 2

PLAINLY therefore it is for a delivered people that Christ is viewed as a merciful and faithful high priest—for the sanctified, for the children. “For verily he took not on him the nature of angels.” The real force is, “he doth not take up the cause of angels.” It has nothing to do with “nature” here, which was put in very inconsiderately. You may observe some words printed in italics, but others too are ill-rendered. The margin here gives the sense much better— “He taketh not hold of angels;” that is, He does not espouse their cause, which is the true meaning. “But of the seed of Abraham he taketh hold. Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest.”

It will be seen, then, how this clears the ground distinctly; for we learn that priesthood follows accomplished redemption, that it supposes the Lord Jesus Himself as He is now, not merely as He was before He came into the world (for He was not priest then), nor yet, when actually in the world, was He priest then either. When He suffered on the cross, and left the world and went to heaven, He is saluted of God as priest then and there, and this for those who see Him while He is there. We see Jesus, as it is said, crowned with glory and honor. It is for such as see Him by faith. It is, then, an office and function He discharges in heaven for those that are separate from the world, severed unto God, that is, for the sanctified.

And here by the way let me express the hope that there is nobody here who mistakes the meaning of the word “sanctified.” The point in Heb. 2 is not at all the thought of a process going on, though I do not the least deny this to be true practically, as it is taught elsewhere. In the practical sense holiness is of course a gradual product of grace—a growth into Christ which always should be going on in the saint. But this passage, and others in Hebrews, look at the class so viewed in the abstract; and what made it also the more striking was, that it was no longer true, as such, of Israel. The Jews alas! had profanely refused as far as they could the Holy One of God. They had treated Him as a reprobate and an impostor. They had lost, therefore, their sanctification, and God treats them as profane. And the sanctified here are those who were separated out of Israel; here, I repeat emphatically, out of the Jews; for, as far as the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks, we could scarce prove by it that any Gentiles were being called now. From elsewhere we all know that there are, and the principles in the Epistle to the Hebrews apply to the Gentile believer just as truly as to the Jewish; but the Holy Ghost was tenderly dealing with these men of prejudice, whom He is now instructing in the way more perfectly, and thus leading out from old attachments to the best of blessings. There was solemn warning, but also the desire of love, in gracious consideration of such thoughts and feelings as might appear weak, and, no doubt, to a Gentile supremely so. A Gentile would have torn their prejudices to atoms, with rudeness perhaps, certainly without much scruple. But the Spirit of God dealt with the utmost care and gentleness, yet throughout with increasing plainness of speech, until at last the truth has been taught so fully that they are summoned to quit the camp for Christ outside, bearing His reproach. There is much to learn in this; and I am sure, my brethren, every one of us needs the lesson.

But still what I would recall your attention to is this, that the Lord now stands related as priest above to those who are separated to God in the confession of Christ, and separated from the people just as much as out of any other race, yea, pre-eminently here out of that people. For the apostle thus implies that those for whom He is acting were not according to the old sanctification of Israel, but sanctified out of that sanctification which no longer had any validity before God. All now turns on Jesus, the rejected Messiah. He was the sanctifier, as indeed He is God no less than man. “He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one.” “He that sanctifieth” here means Jesus. “He is not ashamed to call them brethren.” It is not God as such, of course; Who does not, could not, call any one “brother.” It is our Lord Who is the sanctifier; and the sanctified are those set apart in His name and by His blood.

Then comes the first allusion to Jesus as priest; we find it at the end of chap. 2. He is “a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God,” but not exactly “to make reconciliation.” I regret, on such an occasion, to be thus commenting on our common version; but the truth must be spoken where touched, and specially on such momentous and fundamental topics as these. It really means propitiation, not “reconciliation.” The great day of atonement is alluded to here, and the expiation of sins on it. Reconciliation is a much larger thought than atonement; and means the making good the whole state of the object of it with God. Therefore, although it is founded on propitiation, it goes farther; and so it takes in creation universally, as we see in Ephesians and Colossians— “all things,” not all men, though the blood was shed in view of all, to be testified in due time. Everybody can see for himself that there is no very just sense in saying “making reconciliation for sins.” People are reconciled; but can we say reconcile sins? or make reconciliation for them? Expiation or propitiation for sins is the exact force. This the word means.

And it is the more important and striking, as showing the confusion into which people have fallen, that in Rom. 5:11, where “atonement” occurs in the English Bible, it ought to be “reconciliation “; while in Heb. 2, where “reconciliation” occurs, it ought to be “atonement.” That is, our translators were unfortunately astray in the very points that the Spirit of God was teaching in both. I do not mention the fact as taking pleasure in detecting flaws of the kind, but simply to vindicate the truth of God, holding that it is of much more consequence for His word to be seen as it is, and for souls to be set right, than merely to keep up an unreal appearance in the version we have in our hands, though heartily admitting that providentially we have abundant reason to bless God for so good a translation. It has its faults, however; and these are two, which it is not well to explain away.

It is plain that up to chapter iii. we have the introduction; and, the atonement being brought in, we have hence not merely a priest but the high priest introduced. So in the day of atonement the high priest of Israel appears, and none other. There was a very peculiar action on the day of atonement; and it was the only one of the kind. Atonement was done once for the whole year. It thus set forth completeness (as we can now say, forever), not a continuous process. The action of the priest or high priest otherwise might be going on all the year round; but not the atonement, which was distinct, unique, and absolutely settled for that circle of time. The high priest on this occasion represented the people, and offered that on which Jehovah's lot fell for the sins of the people, bringing its blood within the veil, and doing with that blood as he did with the bullock's, and thus making atonement, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins. After he came out from the most holy place, he laid his hands upon the live goat, and confessed over it all their iniquities, and all their transgressions in all their sins. The whole was wound up by sending the goat (Azazel) into the wilderness, as the figure of sins thus borne away.

( To be continued D.V.)

A Heavenly Christ, Therefore a Heavenly Church: Part 1

IT is the uniform tendency of man's mind to practically dissociate Christ and the church, particularly with regard to those relations of intimate unity which scripture reveals and emphasizes as the peculiar marks of the Christian calling. Which of the great sections of Christendom really holds that the church is so united to Christ in heaven that its constitution derives an essential character from this very fact? The Roman, Anglican, and Dissenting, not to speak of the Greek, communities, all fall short of discerning that the living connection between the church and its risen Head on high is not a mere abstract notion, purely theoretical and altogether inoperative, but a vital principle meant to be embodied in its every action.

Now it is impossible to understand the heavenly nature of the calling of the church apart from Christ; for the raison d'etre of the church is Christ. And it is not meant by this to refer now to the atoning and redemptive work of the Savior. Undoubtedly that incomparable work supplied the immutable foundation on which God's dealings with man are based. Anticipatively or retrospectively, the death of Christ formed the sole ground for blessing to the children of faith for all time. It does not follow however that the blessing offered and given has been of an identical character from the beginning. On the contrary that blessing has varied in character and measure according to the then purpose of God, as it has been successively revealed in connection with the varied glories of the Son.

The Old Testament, speaking broadly, is occupied with the promise and prophecy of the advent of the Messiah Who would come to the chosen people of Israel as their Prophet, Priest, and King, and exalt the seed of Abraham above all the nations of the earth. The blessings which the saints of old were taught to expect were of an earthly nature. The daughter of Zion was to look for the coming of her King Who would reign in righteousness. The oppressor should be broken in pieces, and their enemies made to lick the dust. Peace should flow like a river, and the earth be full of the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea. Long life and prosperous days should be the happy portion of every subject of the glorious kingdom of David's Lord. In short, Christ in the Old Testament is brought forward as the earthly ruler and the executor of divine justice in the earth, especially in connection with the nation of Israel. Accordingly the blessings of the people assume an earthly and national character in perfect accord with these promises.

Now just as the hopes of Israel derived their points of distinction from Messiah the prince coming to reign here below, so the hopes and calling of the church receive their distinctive marks from the position now assumed by Christ on high. This establishes the widest possible difference between Israel and the church. The difference is that betwixt earthly and heavenly, carnal and spiritual blessing. Wherever we look in the Old Testament, we find the same kind of anticipations. In Egypt and the wilderness, they look for the land of promise with a bountiful basket and store. In Canaan when groaning under the idolatrous rule of apostate kings, or when weeping by the rivers of Babylon, the faithful long for the Redeemer to come to Zion, Who shall bless every man under his own vine and his own pomegranate tree.

But the New Testament sanctions no such expectations for the Christian. The Jew was entitled to hope for blessing here of a worldly nature; but the believer's blessings are heavenly and spiritual, enjoyed alone by faith. They take their character, as has been said already, from Christ; and from Christ, not as the king of Israel and the order of the nations, but as the glorified Head of the church.

Now the epistle to the Ephesians unfolds the mystery of the heavenly blessing of the church in a very full manner, but always in connection with Christ. The close of the first chapter establishes the truth of the present exaltation of Christ on high and binds up with that momentous fact the position of the church in the heavenlies along with Him. Let us look at the way in which this doctrine is brought forward.

The first fourteen verses of chapter i. contain a summary of truths relating to the saints, bringing out their place in the mind and purpose of God. This calls for a remark worthy of note. It is a principle of the word of God that personal blessings and responsibilities are invariably set forth before corporate blessings and relationship. And it is nowhere more strikingly illustrated than in this epistle which exceeds all others in the fullness of its divine unfoldings concerning the church in its most comprehensive aspect. For we have it presented in its totality, from eternity “hid in God,” “now made known,” and by-and-by to be presented to Christ perfect and entire. Nevertheless there is even in this epistle no exception to the general rule observed throughout the whole scheme of revelation to state first of all what relates to the individual. We are told not only of election and inheritance in Christ, but of what might seem very elementary, of forgiveness of sins and of hearing the gospel. This is significant enough. The individuality of the believer ought not to be swamped by the generalities of the church. It is also well, nay imperative, for the soul to be assured of its personal relationship before God in order that it may be able to enter more truly into its place in the church. Neither should an acquaintance with the privileges of Christ's body cause any to forget or under-value their individual standing through grace.

Having therefore unfolded to the saints at Ephesus their blessed place individually before God in Christ, he tells them of his prayers on their account that they may be made to know yet more. He seeks that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give them the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of the heart being enlightened. His petition on their behalf is threefold, viz., that they may know—

1.-What is the hope of His calling, and

2.-What the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and

3.-What is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ, when He

a. raised Him from the dead, and

b. set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come, and

c. hath put all things under His feet, and

d. gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all (Eph. 1:16-23).

Here then we have the inspired desires of the apostle for these Ephesian saints. He sought that they might grow in divine knowledge (“full knowledge” is the word employed).

In the first place (1) as to their calling; it had already been brought before them in the early verses, but did they grasp the hope of that calling? The hope is the consummation, the crown, the climax of what we now enjoy by faith. We are in point of fact even now blessed in the heavenlies, even now accepted in the Beloved. But the hope is yet to be realized when the Lord takes us to the Father's house on high and the purpose of God with regard to us is fully accomplished. The calling is individual, the hope takes in all; for it contemplates that unity in which Christ will present the church to Himself in glory. Into this view the apostle prays that the saints may now enter fully.

He further prays (2) that they may know the riches of the glory of God's inheritance in the saints. It is not so much, as has been pointed out by others, that the saints themselves form this inheritance, but that in the saints God in Christ will take the inheritance. Christ is “heir of all things” (Heb. 1:2), and when He enters into His right, the church will share the glory of that inheritance as joint-heirs (Rom. 8:17; 2 Tim. 2:12). Christ will not enter into His glory apart from His bride. He says Himself, “The glory which thou hast given me, I have given them” (John 17:22). And it is the desire of the apostle that the saints may now by faith apprehend their high destiny in the coming day of glory.

The next clause (3) of the petition is that they may know the exceeding greatness of God's power already exercised upon believers in raising them up to share the exaltation of Christ. This is so important as to call for special attention in a subsequent paper (D.V.).

James 1:5-8

WHEN a soul has fairly entered on the path of trials, which faith never fails to experience in a world departed from God, he soon finds his lack of wisdom. But his comfort is that He with Whom he has to do is alone wise, and ready to guide those that wait on Him. How much better it is that wisdom should be in Him that we may be dependent on His guidance, than if it were a possession vested in us, exposed to the danger of our setting up to do without Him! Therefore comes the exhortation to pray (cf. Luke 18:1); for our need is all the greater because we are God's children in a world where all is opposed to God. “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that giveth to all freely and reproacheth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing doubting. For he that doubteth is like a wave of the sea wind-driven and tossed (for let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord): a double, minded man, unstable in all his ways” (vers. 5-8).

It is of the essence of the new nature that the believer has to live in dependence on God, and to find its present exercise in the midst of trials by cultivating that confidence in Him which finds its proper expression in prayer. Hence it is that, if any one becomes sensible of deficient wisdom in presence of the many difficulties of this life, he is directed to ask of God that gives to all freely and upbraids not. How full of cheer and re-assurance! Even Christ, Himself God's wisdom, habitually waited on God, prayed at all times where men least look for it, and spent the night in prayer when the occasion called for it. If He then Who never lacked wisdom so lived, how much should we be ashamed of our failure in so drawing near to God and drawing from Him what He so readily gives!

The expression employed to encourage us is striking. He “giveth to all freely and reproacheth not.” Wisdom no doubt is primarily what is sought, as it is in our trials peculiarly requisite; but the Holy Spirit is pleased to enlarge our expectation, that we may know better “the giving God,” “the unreproaching God.” And a word is used here to characterize Him, to which the apostle Paul exhorts the Christian in his giving (Rom. 12:8): “He that giveth, in simplicity.” For how often do mixed motives seek entrance into the heart in giving! Liking rather than love here, dislike hindering there, self-importance, regard for character, sympathy with others on the one hand, and on the other prudential or unbelieving fear under questionable pleas. Hence the call on the giver among us to give with simplicity. Singleness of eye here as elsewhere promotes love, as it ensures light; and the issue is liberality. And so the various English versions agree from Wiclif to the Authorized. For both Wiclif and Purvey give the primary meaning “by simpleness,” Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Geneva, “with singleness “; Rheims “in simplicity,” and the Auth. “with simplicity.” Again, Wiclif, and the Wiclifite nave in our text “largeli,” Tyndale and Crammer “indifferently,” Geneva “freely,” Rheims “abundantly,” and the Auth. “liberally “: all of them a secondary meaning. Of these “freely” seems to suit God best, as flowing readily from the primary force which hardly befits Him, while it well becomes us. And it may be added that these respective meanings are in excellent keeping with the writers; of whom Paul looks at the inner source, James rather at the result.

That God in giving freely, does not reproach the receiver is no small favor. How often in man's case the fact is, that the grace is accompanied with such a drawback express or implied! God acts worthily of Himself Who is good.

But if a petition is thus freely and graciously given of God to him that asks, there is the requisite condition, “let him ask in faith, nothing doubting.” God will be inquired of suitably; and least of all does it become man, so favored, to fail or to doubt in anything. “He that spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?” Even in the very trials which are most painful— “in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.”

“For he that doubteth is like a wave of the sea wind-driven and tossed (for let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord): a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” Here is the contrast, alas! not uncommon even of old. Collectively “surge” is a known sense of the word rendered “wave,” which is not the ordinary term (κῦμα) though this occurs repeatedly in the N.T. It is rather a billow singly, but here the sport of winds to and fro. How could it be otherwise in him who in his weakness does not lean on the Lord? Whatever may be given, there is no real receiving from the Lord on his part who does not trust Him. If in one way he speaks, in another he feels and acts, being of double soul. Instability marks all his course. Is not God ashamed to own such a one? (Heb. 11:16.)

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:4

WE have now to offer such explanation as we can on another branch of the Japhetic race. It may be premised that they come next after Madai. Of this last we have no details; only indeed of Gomer's sons, as now of Javan's, the Keltic and the Italo-Hellenic, families respectively.

It has been already shown briefly on ver. 2 that Javan represents Greece. Ionia however, or Ionia, answers most nearly to the Hebrew name, a narrow district in Asia Minor, of which Greek colonies are said to have possessed themselves more than a thousand years B.C., some time after the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus, and even after their advance toward Attica (Muller's Dorians, ii. 511, Tufnell and Lewis' Tr. 1830). Not only was Ionia remarkable for its commercial prosperity, but for excellence in art and poetry, in history and philosophy, before the mother-country attained any eminence in these pursuits (Smith's Diet. of Gr. and R. Geography, 61, col. 1). Ezek. 27:13 speaks of Javan among the traffickers with Tire: only we must distinguish from it Javan of Uzal in ver. 19, which seems to mean the capital town of Yemen or Arabia Felix. But those who migrated here and elsewhere were the race who long before were in Attica and in part of the Peloponnesus. Of course none can wonder at varied forms of mythical genealogy; but the fact is certain of the early predominance of the Ionian name, as Moses here gives it, for a general description of Greece (Thirlwall's Hist. i. 134). In fact Greece is so designated from Gen. 10 to Zech. 9 Homer in xiii. 685, Aeschylus, in Pers. 176, 568, 948 and Suppl. 72, employ a word that approximates to the Hebrew term.

“And the sons of Javan, Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim” (ver. 4)

As Javan unquestionably answers to the Greeks in general and is represented in the Ionian race particularly, it is acknowledged that Elishah also belongs to that people. Ezek. 27:7 helps us to the conclusion that the isles or maritime parts pertained to his lot. Josephus applied the name to the Aeolians, as others to Hellas (which was adopted by J. D. Michaelis, Spicil. i. 79). But Bochart preferred the Peloponnesus as an extension of Elis. The commerce with Tire points to the islands as well as to the Morea.

Tarshish follows; and here it appears that we need not doubt an original settlement on the south shore of Spain, where also the Phoenicians later had factories, and whence by their ships they brought to Tire silver, iron, tin, and lead, as Ezek. 27:12 informs us. The ships of Tarshish were the most famous for merchandise in ancient times. Psa. 72:10 is of itself sufficient to indicate a considerable stretch of country, not merely the well-known city of Tartessus at the mouth of the Baetis (or Guadalquiver). There is no valid ground to doubt that this was the region to which Javan's second son gave the name. There may have been another place so called in the south east or Indian ocean, to which Solomon's ships sailed from Ezion-Geber (cf. 1 Kings 9:26, 2 Chron. 9:21). For we have no ground to suppose the route round Africa by the Cape of Good Hope was then known; nor, if it were, could the south of Spain supply ivory, and asses, and peacocks, which point rather to India or Ceylon. Tarsus in Cilicia, which Josephus conjectured, in no way meets what is said in the references of scripture.

There is no difficulty as to Kittim, which is a term beyond controversy applied to two of the peninsulas of Europe, first Greece [or Macedon], then Rome or Italy. So the writer of Maccabees speaks of Greece (chaps. 1: 1, 8: 5); as Dan. 11:30 is decisive as to Rome. So in the prophecy of Balaam (Num. 24:24) we learn of a fleet from the west afflicting Asshur, when all man's power comes to destruction. In Jer. 3:10 and Ezek. 28:6 we hear of the “isles” or sea-coasts of Kittim; which can hardly mean Cyprus, as understood Josephus and many since his day, though Gesenius approved. He allows however that a wider signification is called for as in not a few Scriptures here cited.

Dodanim remains, which some, from the similarity of sound it seems, would connect with the famous Dodona in Epirus; but the celebrity of an ancient oracle would scarcely give warrant for a place in this chapter. There is another reading which appears in 1 Chron. 1:7, and Rhodians have been thought to correspond with it. The Sept. has the same people for Dedan in Ezek. 27:15, which is assuredly an error. The learned Bochart suggests the Rhone, at whose mouth was an ancient Greek colony and emporium. More than one Targum understood the common reading of the Dardans; and Gesenius inclines to this view in his Monumenta Phoen. 432 and Thes. LL. Hebrews and Ch. 1266. It was a branch of the widely spread Pelasgic stock. Curiously enough Strabo (vii.) preserves a fragment of Hesiod, of Dodona as a seat of the Pelasgians. See also Hes, Goettl, ed, alt. 295.

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 4

Chapter 3

It was after divine providence had wrought in ways so remarkable as to elevate one of the chosen people to be imperial consort, to use another in discovering and defeating a deadly plot against the monarch, that we hear of the sudden rise of a new personage, the Jews' enemy. This was no casual fact; it was a move in the great conflict ever enacting in this fallen world. So it had been in Egypt; when Pharaoh arose to oppress and destroy God's nascent people. So we see in the beginning of the wilderness journey, when Amalek appeared to oppose Israel; as at its end Balak and Balaam sought curse for them and their ruin in every way. So again from within Absalom and Adonijah rebelled shamelessly against Jehovah's purpose when the kingdom was set up. And here, in the days of captivity and dispersion, the same traits re-appear; the elevation of the Jew in any measure during the eclipse of the people is met by the counterpart of the old and deadly hostility in an equally unexpected way.

“After these things king Ahasuerus promoted Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him, and set his seat above all the princes that [were] with him. And all the king's servants that were in the king's gate bowed down and did reverence to Haman: for the king had so commanded concerning him. But Mordecai bowed not down, nor did [him] reverence. Then the king's servants that [were] in the king's gate said unto Mordecai, Why transgressest thou the king's commandment? Now it came to pass, when they spake daily unto him, and he hearkened not unto them, that they told Haman, to see whether Mordecai's matters would stand: for he had told them that he [was] a Jew. And when Haman saw that Mordecai bowed not down, nor did him reverence, then was Haman full of wrath. But he thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone; for they had shown him the people of Mordecai: wherefore Haman sought to destroy all the Jews that [were] throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, the people of Mordecai” (vers. 1-6).

What makes the rise of Haman into the highest place next the throne so surprising is that we have not had the least trace of him before. Privy counselors and chamberlains—many have been personally named. But now at this juncture comes forward no Mede or Persian, but a stranger to the ruling races, into a seat above all the princes that were with the monarch. He, like his father, is described as “the Agagite,” which seems to have been the royal seed among the Amalekites. No doubt Saul had crushed them, and David yet more. But here in the highest and most influential position is, not an Amalekite only, but “the Agagite,” to whom Mordecai refused reverence. The king had commanded it on his behalf; but Mordecai bowed not. Had not Jehovah caused it to be written down that He would utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under the heavens? He persists and takes the consequence, whatever the fury of Haman, and his resolve to destroy all the Jews throughout the empire.

“In the first month, which [is] the month of Nisan, in the twelfth year of king Ahasuerus, they cast Pur, that [is], the lot, before Haman from day to day, and from month to month, [to] the twelfth [month], which [is] the month of Adar. And Haman said unto king Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of thy kingdom; and their laws [are] diverse from those of every people; neither keep they the king's laws: therefore it [is] not for the king's profit to suffer them. If it please the king, let it be written that they be destroyed: and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those that have the charge of the king's business, to bring [it] into the king's treasuries. And the king took his ring from his hand, and gave it unto Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the Jews' enemy. And the king said unto Haman, The silver [is] given to thee, the people also, to do with them as it seemeth good to thee. Then were the king's scribes called in the first month, on the thirteenth day thereof, and there was written according to all that Haman commanded unto the king's satraps and to the governors that [were] over every province, and to the princes of every people; to every province according to the writing thereof, and to every people after their language; in the name of king Ahasuerus was it written, and it was sealed with the king's ring. And letters were sent by posts into all the king's provinces, to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even upon the thirteenth [day] of the twelfth month, which [is] the month Adar, and [to take] the spoil of them for a prey. A copy of the writing, that the decree should be given out in every province, was published unto all the peoples, that they should be ready against that day. The posts went forth in haste by the king's commandment, and the decree was given out in Shushan the palace. And the king and Haman sat down to drink; but the city of Shushan was in consternation” (vers. 7-15).

Thus the enemy had recourse to the casting of lots for a day favorable to his murderous project. This, divine providence took care in result to defer so long as to admit of a fresh decree (change or revocation being inadmissible) for the Jews to stand in self-defense and destruction of their enemies. But at first no issue was more contrary to all appearances; in the end Satan as ever defeated himself. Haman's plea to the king was plausible. God's people, just because they are His, are always an offense to the rest of mankind, especially the proud and vain-glorious; and this remains, even when through their unfaithfulness they forfeit His open favor, as was the actual fact. “There is a people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of thy kingdom, and their laws diverse from [those of] every people, and they keep not the king's laws; and it is not for the king's profit to suffer them.” So Haman proposes their destruction, offering a round sum for the exchequer in return. That such a one, wild and capricious to the last degree, as then ruled Persia should decree accordingly, and remit the favorite's payment, is in no way strange, even if we had not inspired testimony to the transaction. Worse has been repeatedly, and in modern times. Armed with the fullest authority Haman dictates, and the royal secretaries write to the governors over every province and to the princes of every people. And posts or couriers were sent throughout the empire hastened by the king's command, besides the publication in Shushan the fortress. How graphic and life-like the close of the chapter thereon! “The king and Haman sat down to drink; but the city of Shushan was in consternation.” It was not the Jews only who Were so deeply moved. Nor did heartless banqueting at such a crisis relieve men's hearts about the great actors or the victims.

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream and Daniel's Vision: 4

Dan. 2: 7

THEN followed the second empire of the Medes and Persians, the captors of Babylon, set out by the image's breast and arms of silver, and by the bear that raised itself on one side: a kingdom of larger extent, but inferior in vigor and splendor, which lasted some 200 years before it fell before Alexander the Great, the founder of “another third kingdom of brass, which should bear rule over all the earth.” Who could have conceived of an empire so much wider than its predecessors, from the vain and contentious Greeks, led by the despised race of Macedonia, and their boy king? Up to that time what did they present but a cluster of jealous, factious states, if one except Sparta, struggling for leadership, whatever their skill in arts or letters? The attacks of Darius and Xerxes at length united them for a while in patriotism with a humanly brilliant result. Only God could have led the king to dream, and the prophet to interpret, the Greek or Macedonian kingdom. Yet there is the living picture, the details of which cover the beginning of chap. 8.

There is more particularity as we descend the stream of time; so false is the maxim of the rationalists who leave out God, or count Him such a one as themselves. How plainly does He put contempt on their assumption that a prophet anticipated no more than the imminent future! They are given as God pleased, Babylonians, Medo-Persians, Greeks, and Romans. The first or Babylonian no doubt was there before men; but which of the rest could have been foreseen even plausibly by a single soul on earth? Least of all would Nebuchadnezzar have conceived changes so beyond calculation.

We have seen the extreme improbability of a world-wide empire from Greece or its rude neighbor Macedon. What is the fact as to the Rome of Nebuchadnezzar's day? The philosophers count its annals as for the most part uncertain if not fabulous. Yet we need not doubt the city was then ruled by such petty kings as Italian towns could boast of old, kinglings indeed. Long before, we see a sort of analogy in the numerous kings whom the sons of Israel smote under Joshua (chap. 12.), more than thirty. The kings were succeeded by consuls; dictators too ruled occasionally; decemvirs; and consular tribunes; till the chaotic condition morally and politically gave opportunity for an emperor, though still employing republican forms. Rome yet for hundreds of years had been engaged in constant struggling with its rival neighbors. Sabines, Volscians, Veientes, and the like. Finally they had their city taken and burnt by the Gauls; they further had to fight for their very existence with another competitor. And what think you, was the power that rose up to dispute in a life and death conflict with Rome? It was Carthage, an active mercantile city, exceedingly ambitious and aspiring, planted and colonized by the accursed race of Canaan.

From early days God had pronounced against that son of guilty Ham, who had indeed many sons; so that we may admire the mercy that all were not involved in similar ruin. It was righteous that God should mark His displeasure. Is there not a moral necessity to deal with men guilty of signal wickedness? Even an infidel husband would not condone his wife's dishonor, or his son's stealing the family's money. If God must not punish iniquity, to let man off, what is it but desiring God to be less holy and righteous than the most worthless of mankind? If justice is not only free but bound to render according to the due desert of human deeds, is God alone to be debarred from that prerogative'? In the three Carthaginian or (as they are called) Punic wars, the two cities fought for supremacy, and so for life. Rome fought in Sicily, in Spain, and at length, after desperate defeats on her own soil, in Africa. In the last of the three Rome's stern determination was to destroy Carthage. The senate felt that thence emanated an enemy that would entirely frustrate all their hope of progress and conquest; and so the cry that Carthage must be blotted out arose accordingly. These wars stretched from long before Christ; but they were still longer from the time of Daniel who died an aged man more than five centuries before our Lord's birth. Yet even then all that so deeply concerned the last of the empires was made known and written down by God's inspiration. Here we have, from two separate aspects, a complete sketch-map of the world-powers that were to govern from first to last until the Lord appears in power and glory. Even so it is given clearly in the brief space of a few paragraphs.

Does any one object that there are few particulars? If time permitted and such were my present object, it would be easy to prove that they are many more than hasty men imagine. And it is observable that, just when we are brought down to the fourth empire, then these details are supplied in most abundance. What a rebuke to rationalism! And why was it so? Because the Roman was the empire in which Christ was to be born and be cut off; as that empire is to rise up again by Satan's power when He will shine forth in judgment from heaven. The Roman empire was to be expressly different from all its predecessors. The Babylonian lost its imperial power; so did the Medo-Persian; as well as the Macedonian or Grecian, never to rise again. Yet they were all to exist, and so they do still; but their dominion was to be taken away, as it is laid down in Dan 7: 12. There was to be no revival of their imperial character, though a prolonging in life was given them, when their dominion was lost. Rome and Rome alone is the empire which must rise again, as we learn in Rev. 13 and more awfully than of old, quite falling in with what Daniel predicts of its end in chaps. 2. and 7.

A great many Protestants think all this refers to the papacy. But the Pope essentially differs from a Roman emperor. The Popes have played a shameless imposture in Rome under the abased name of the Lord. Babylon is much more like their evil in pride and corruption and persecution than a Roman emperor. It was the Roman power that was responsible for the crucifixion of Christ under the apostasy of the Jew long before the first budding of the papacy. Pontius Pilate who condemned the Lord was the local expression of Rome in Judea. God as well as man always holds the governing power to be responsible for its public, deliberate, unrepudiated acts; as we see sometimes in international affairs. In the face of his conscience, of his conviction of Jewish unrighteousness, and of solemn warning, the governor condemned the Just; the Roman empire far from repudiating it accumulated its acts of enmity. This is the power whose head was wounded to death but healed to universal astonishment on earth; and it emerges not only from the sea but from the abyss, the historical fact being given of the little horn in Dan. 7 as the character is in Rev. 13; 17 It “was, is not, and shall be present.”

Nothing so wonderful in all past history as that which is predicted in the Book of Revelation, as for instance this three-fold condition and its moral source at the end, as well as God's judgment of it: “the beast... was, and is not (which we can now say still applies), and shall come forth out of the bottomless pit” (as Christ Who died and rose will be present from heaven). The first points to a condition of past existence, then to its non-existence (we know it was destroyed by the Goths and other wild races, chiefly the Teutonic tribes of that day), and lastly to its future re-existence. The moment of its revival surely hastens. Already a great step is taken toward the re-appearance of that empire. Italy has become a kingdom; and not only so but a great power is Italy now considered. I cannot doubt that it is destined to become still greater before the sure execution of God's judgment on the peculiar iniquity of the empire. Scripture cannot be broken; and we find that which has been said fully proved in Daniel and the Apocalypse. The outline was manifested clearly enough in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and yet more in the vision of Daniel. Then above all in the Revelation our attention is drawn to a principle of the greatest moment. Most is said throughout on the fourth or Roman empire. Thereon the Spirit of God dwells most, because of its collision with the Lord Jesus. That would have seemed most difficult, humanly speaking: to deal most fully with the most distant is not the manner of man, who would have naturally said as much as possible about Babylon; then, if at all, more hazily about Persia, and not a word could have been said of the two western empires.

Again, how could man prognosticate that only four world-powers were to rise? There was ample ambition of founding more. Even in the middle ages Charlemagne tried to set up such an empire and failed, with the strongest desire to succeed. Then a military genius arose in this century no less ambitious, and never scrupling at violence or corruption to effectuate his schemes; Napoleon Bonaparte essayed it. He sought, if ever man did, a universal empire, but notwithstanding all means, skill, and opportunity, he broke down utterly in the attempt. God employed great Britain to smash all Napoleon's hopes. Nelson with his fleet completely crushed his navy, and on the field of Waterloo Napoleon saw his star set forever. There was to be no new world-power, though all know of course there are those who style themselves emperors in a quite subordinate sense.

(To be continued D.V.).

The Merciless Bondman

THE grace which forgives to the uttermost is characteristic of Christianity. Christ Himself bore witness of it habitually, and expressly to the sinful woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee. It is the prime message of the gospel; and the church assumes it to be settled for the least member of Christ's body.

But grace believed and received creates practical responsibility; for where that is real, there is also life in Christ to follow Him, and the gift of the Spirit ensues, a spirit, not of fear any more than of severity, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. But where there is only the profession of the natural man, without a vital work of God, the soul (not being purified by faith) betrays its unrenewal by heartless cruelty to one's fellow. And here it is set out in the strongest light, not only in its total antagonism to God, but by the aggravation of an immense debt forgiven him a servant, followed at once by the most extreme punishment of his fellow for a small debt due to himself.

In a previous section of the chapter the Lord had laid down the grace that saves the lost, illustrated by the owner's earnestness to seek one stray sheep out of a hundred. No trouble is begrudged. He leaves the safe ninety and nine, he traverses the mountains in quest of the wanderer, and, if he find it, he rejoices more over it than over the ninety and nine that had not gone astray. This grace, as it filled His own heart and gave meaning to His death, the Lord proceeds to press on the church or assembly, which was soon to supersede Israel for the present, as He announced in Matt. 16. Founded in God's righteousness on His own death and resurrection, so that the gates of Hades should not prevail against it, the Christian, no less than the church, is called to walk in grace. The injured one is to seek, not vengeance, nor yet retribution, but to gain his brother that sinned against him. If the latter should not hear, one or two are to be taken with the injured, in painstaking love; but if he heed not the assembly also, “let him be to thee as the heathen and the tax-gatherer.” How worthless the state that rejects all overtures of love! Grace refused condemns more than violated law. Indifference would deny righteousness as well as grace. The Lord is in the midst of even two or three gathered to His name.

Peter suggested what he regarded as a perfect limit of forgiveness, and inquired whether seven times satisfied; the Lord answered, Until seventy times seven. Grace declines a stipulated term and demands the widest margin; but the parable indicates solemnly the doom of him who has no heart fox it. Whatever the man pretended to, the only true God, the Father, was unknown, and Jesus Christ Whom He did send: life eternal was not his.

“For this the kingdom of the heavens is likened to a king who would make a reckoning with his bondmen. And when he began to reckon, one debtor for ten thousand talents was brought to him. But as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife and the children and all that he had, and payment to be made. The bondman then falling down did him homage, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay all. And the lord of the bondman, moved with compassion, released him and forgave him the debt. But that bondman, on going out, found one of his fellow-bondmen who owed him a hundred denarii, and having laid hold he was grasping his throat, saying, Pay what thou owest. His fellow-bondman then, falling at his feet, besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee. And he would not, but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay what was owing. But his fellow-bondmen, having seen what was being done, were greatly grieved, and went and fully explained to their lord all that was done. Then his lord, having summoned him, saith to him, Wicked bondman, all that debt I forgave thee, since thou didst beseech me: oughtedst not thou also to have pitied thy fellow-bondman, as I also pitied thee? And his, lord, in wrath, delivered him to the tormentors till he should pay all that was owing to him. Thus also shall my heavenly Father do to you, if ye forgive not from your hearts each his brother” (Matt. 18:23-35).

But one debtor is specified, and his debt enormous. Even if of silver, Haman offered no more in lieu of destroying the entire Jewish people. Not less guilty is the sinner before God. No wonder he “was brought to Him “: of himself he would never come. All depends on the reality of one's submission to God's righteousness. If he be not born of God, it is superficial. Profession may have no root of faith, but spring from the mere feeling of terror on the one hand or of sympathy on the other. It may be but creedism or deference to public opinion. It is often mental apprehension. In all such cases there is no thorough self-judgment, no divinely formed repentance, and hence no true sense of the grace of God, nor real appreciation of Christ and His work, whereby faith knows. But the sentence of judgment (for God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of them that hold the truth in unrighteousness) may alarm souls into the profession of the Lord's name apart from living faith. So it was when our Lord preached; as He warned such as quickly received the word with joy, and soon gave it up in trial. So it was yet more, when the gospel went out in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. A single case is more impressive than a crowd. Further, as individually one believes, so too judgment will be individual.

Here the debtor who did not keep the word, nor bring forth fruit with patience, “on going out,” soon betrayed his emptiness. He, being a dead stone, who had never tasted that the Lord is good, ruthlessly assailed his fellow that owed him a comparatively small debt. And his lord, incensed at cruelty so selfish after such grace, consigns him not to prison only but to the tormentors in irretrievable ruin.

O my reader, deceive not your soul: God is not mocked. Read not only Gal. 6:7-10 but Rom. 2:7-11, which press not the grace that saves, but the indispensable character of those that are saved. “He shall have judgment without mercy that showed no mercy.”

How is it then with your soul, my reader? Have you received Christ and believed the gospel to the remission of your sins? For this is the A B C of God's message based on Christ's redemption. There is far more given in His grace; but with this most needed and touching answer to our deep want God begins. He remembers no more our sins and iniquities, as He often assures us; but He would have us to know them blotted out by the Savior's blood, as we remember Him and show forth His death habitually. What can be conceived more contradictory of His grace than a hard vindictive spirit? Are not we who are forgiven distinctly charged to forgive? Nay more, are we not solemnly warned that Christ's heavenly Father will award unsparing judgment, not to open adversaries only, Jew or Gentile, but to the Christian professor especially, if from his heart he forgives not a brother's trespasses? Can any course be more fraught with danger than glossing over Christ's plain meaning under the fond claim that, whatever come, we are safe? He that believes to the saving of the soul is neither presumptuous nor cowardly where Christ is at stake, but keeps His word and denies not His name, sharing His life and displaying His character.

But this does not exhaust the full bearing of the parable, which (like others such as Matt. 22:2-14; 25:1-13) not only admits a personal application but is dispensational. For it needs little insight to discern that, in accordance with the kingdom of the heavens in its present mysterious form to which the Christ's rejection gave rise, God will have consistency with His own grace, and, as He is forgiving to the uttermost, insists on the same spirit in His children who call on the name of the Lord. Legal retribution is not in keeping with the kingdom of the heavens, least of all with His sufferings and death Who is gone on high, and Whom the Christian is to represent here below. The bondman with the debt to God of 10,000 talents is historically the Jew, availing himself greedily of a gracious oblivion of all in the gospel, but so little imbued with the Spirit of Christ, as to hate and persecute, forbidding any mercy to the Gentile because of his injustice to Israel, little indeed compared with the Jew's wickedness against God. Therefore, as the apostle shows, is wrath come upon them to the uttermost (1 Thess. 2:16). So also we see in the Acts of the Apostles, that though the blotting out of their sins was preached to them on their repentance and turning to God, they did not truly profit by His mercy. They dogged enviously and as enemies the steps of His messengers, whom He sent next to the Gentiles. Thus they pleased not God and were contrary to all men, and afford the sad witness that, if the despiser of Moses' law died without compassion on proof of two or three witnesses, much sorer must be the punishment of those that trample down and count unholy the blood of the covenant and do despite to the Spirit of grace.

Seeking and Receiving: Part 2

(Concluded).

IN the case of the poor woman that was a sinner, she had seen Christ in goodness and in love; she was one who might be ashamed to show herself to any decent person (Luke 7:37, 38). But she comes to Him, and He would not reject her. The light got in, and she saw how thoroughly vile she was. This is always the case. The light breaks in, and we get into the light as God is in the light; but the One Who has opened the door to God in our hearts is He Who has come in grace. You may frighten a man about his sins, but there will be no confidence. When the light in Him Who is love breaks into the soul, it gives confidence (I do not say a perfect conscience); but the soul trusts God.

The poor prodigal comes to himself again. All seems well in the far country, while he is spending his substance. But there is soon a “famine in the land;” and there is many a poor soul finding nothing to satisfy it, who knows what a famine is. Man's heart was made for God, and there is nothing to satisfy without Him. This was a case of real wickedness. It is not that everybody runs to that excess; but the Lord puts the case, that sinners, however vile, may know what to trust in that they can return. When he comes to himself, he says, The servants have “enough and to spare; and I perish with hunger.” There is goodness in God, and badness in me. However wise and clever a man may be, there is no conscience-work, and hence no real work, till he comes to that point, There is goodness in God, and badness in me.

Then, as regards the sin, the prodigal was as great a sinner, though not as degraded (for sin degrades), when he crossed his father's threshold, as when in the far country with the swine. When he came to himself, he said, “I will arise;” he was converted. His going was quite right, owning his sin and unworthiness. He meant to say, “Make me as one of thy hired servants;” but this was something he did not say to his father. He was reasoning from his own thoughts still, from his own condition, as to how his father would receive him. This is the principle of self-righteousness, though in a subtle form. How can God receive such an one as I? Mark, there is not a word of it when he had met his father. Your hearts turn to God, but have not peace. The young man had not met his father at all, and he did not know his father's mind. He was reasoning as to what his father would be when he met him. How many are doing this?

But God meets such in grace: this is what they do not yet appreciate, and this is why they are reasoning. They see the goodness in God, but measure His thoughts by their own condition. They see goodness in God, but still linger at this, “I am not fit.” Of course you are not. You say, “I am lost.” Very glad you have found it out; it is the means of getting peace. Conversion must be; but conversion is not the knowledge of the Father's heart in salvation. As yet the prodigal was not fit for the house; he was in his rags. What his intention to say (“Make me as one of thy hired servants”) proved was, that he had not met his father. Suppose you say of one you have done a wrong to, “I wonder how he would receive me;” it is clear, you have not met him yet.

Many sincere souls are reasoning from what they are to know what God will be; yet they are not competent to know what is in God's heart but from Himself. They reason upwards from what they are to God; the Holy Ghost reasons downwards from God's heart and Christ's work to us. This upward reasoning, from what we are to what God will be, is self-righteousness. The prodigal did not know his father's minds Then he goes up with his mind to his father. While yet a great way off, his “father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him.”

Now we have what the father does. The son was in what. is the effect of not knowing God's mind (that is, where conscience is at work)—self-righteousness. The principle of self-righteousness is, What will God be, seeing I am such and such? People say, “Must I not work?” Yes; but you are not in the place for it yet. People say, “Must I not have holiness?” Indeed you must; “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” But when you are in the state of the prodigal, it is not holiness you should be looking for, but righteousness. Holiness and righteousness are two distinct things. When I have holiness, I take delight in what God delights in; and it becomes my purified heart's affection, with the abhorrence of what is hateful and sin.

“Holy” means hating a thing, if evil, for its own sake; or loving it, if good. It is not a question of the ground of acceptance. Must I not be holy? Yes, it is just as true as righteousness; but such are looking whether they can be accepted or not. You have a holy nature, the moment you are born of God; but you have never holy thoughts and feelings till you get settled peace. Till you get this, it is righteousness you should look for; for it connects itself with acceptance by, God and must do so—yea, ought. When I have settled peace and am sealed, I look at the evil and hate the thing for its own sake. This is holiness; and there is growth in it too. I get to know more of God—what God's nature and character is;. and my soul becomes more like Him. As long as I mix it up with acceptance, it is a delusion to call it holiness. Righteousness is in question.

Well, the prodigal comes back to his father and there is not a word about “Make me as one of thy hired servants.” What made the difference then was that the idea of his position flowed from his father's thoughts, not his own. Why? The father was on his neck, kissing him. It was not a question what would be, but the blessed consciousness of what then was. Not a word have you of what passed in the prodigal's heart at all, save that he fully confessed his sins. A converted man, simply as such, is not fit to get into the house—he is in his rags. But the father went out to meet him where he was, in his rags without. Suppose he in that state were let in, what would the servants say? all unfitted, as his rags were, for his father and for his house! a disgraced son brought in!

But though on his neck in love, the father does not bring him into the house thus. He takes the best robe—it was no part of what the son had before; it was in the father's treasures. Thus God brings out what satisfies His love, and what suits us for His house, that is, Christ. The prodigal comes in with all the honor of a son: so now grace allows nothing to make us uneasy in going into the house. “Accepted in the Beloved,” we are made the “righteousness of God in Him.” The son comes to a point where the father clothes him with the very best robe. There is no condemnation for him; his sins are blotted out. Jesus “was delivered for our offenses.” Then He puts the ring on his hand, and does everything that puts the stamp of His delight on the poor prodigal, and brings him into the house to make all as happy as Himself.

This is what we have: the love that sought (as in the first two parables) is the love that received (as in the third); but received according to what a man must he for the glory of God's house—that is, Christ, and nothing else. We are in Him. “There is no condemnation for them that are in Christ Jesus.” What I find then, as distinct from being converted, is this: his standing in Christ. Then his thoughts about his father and about himself are according to what is in his father's mind. He is made a son. God brings us, in all the efficacy and honor of what Christ has done, into His own presence, and righteously there. He delights in the fruit of His own love to the poor sinner.

The gospel proclaims to us that in Christ's work God has anticipated the day of judgment. And this work is divine, perfect, and finished; and, in virtue of it, Christ is sitting on the right hand of God in the heavens. I may go on laboring to be accepted; but the moment I go on the ground of what the Father is, I am a mere sinner. But also I see God loves me, and has given His Son for me, and I am in Christ (this is the best robe); and He has given the Spirit that I may know it; so that, though in weakness, my relationship with God is settled by God Himself. And Christ did not sit down at the right hand of God till He had finished the work that God gave Him to do; and He is sitting there, because “by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” God gives us the knowledge of it by giving us the Holy Ghost. When Christ is the ground on which I rest with God, I am as fit to go into God's house as God can make me. You never get this till you give up your own righteousness.

The prodigal was not fit to go in till he got the “best robe.” This was a testimony to all that were there, that God put the highest honor on the prodigal. The love and light come in, and give confession of sins as seen in God's sight, with confidence; but righteousness comes in too—that is, Christ. Then the whole thing flows in upon my soul from the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ; and the gift of the Holy Ghost that makes me know that, being a lost sinner, my standing is not in myself. I am never to be thinking of anything good in myself. I am now before God upon the footing of what God has done, not upon what I have done.

So we get in Balaam's prophecy (Num. 23:23), “It shall be said concerning Israel, What hath God wrought?” A soul may now say, and that as it is standing before Him, What hath God wrought in Christ (2 Cor. 5:21)? Are your souls saying this now? Seeing utter sinfulness in yourselves, owning that in yourselves when converted you are not fit for God's house; but your souls resting upon what He wrought, and the infiniteness of the love that gave Christ. So Christ, as man, did not sit down at the right hand of God, till He had finished the work God gave Him to do, and He is “now appearing in the presence of God for us” (Heb. 9:24).

I desire earnestly that you would just weigh this: first, in ourselves, “I have sinned and am no more worthy;” second, where we have found it out for ourselves, we give up thinking whether we are fit to go in or not fit. But the sinner (seeing the love of the Father in the grace which, while it falls on his neck in his rags, puts the “best robe” on him) knows that He has “made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light,” and has given the Holy Ghost that we may know it. And I say to you what God is doing now, till the Lord Jesus comes to take us to be with Himself, is beseeching men to be reconciled to Him, that we may be made the “righteousness of God in Him” that righteousness of God shown in Christ's sitting at the right hand of God.

The Lord open the hearts not open, and give them and all not at peace with Him to see what the way of grace in the Lord Jesus is—giving Himself for our sins, to deliver us from this present evil world, and confer a place with Himself and in Himself forever. J, N. D.

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POPISH unity attaches Christ's name to unity, and hence legalizes with His name every corruption. Christian unity attaches unity to Christ, and therefore gives it all His excellence.

The Ways of God in the Acts: 2. The Calling of the Samaritans

Acts 8

WE have had before us the descent of the Holy Ghost, and His baptism of the waiting saints, constituting them the church—the body of Christ, and the house of God. We also saw that by means of the preaching of the gospel some 3,000 Jews were brought into the new circle of blessing. The following chaps. (3-7) show continued overtures to the nation. Peter promised them on God's part that, if they would repent, their sins should be blotted out, the times of refreshing should come from the presence of Jehovah, and He would send Jesus back to them. Their treatment of Stephen was the climax of their rejection of the testimony. They cast him out, and stoned, him, sending a messenger after the Lord (as it were) saying, “We will not have this man to reign over us” (Luke 19:14).

In this chapter we see the work of God extending, and reaching the Samaritans. This was quite in keeping with the Lord's word in Acts 1:8, though the twelve were not the honored means. The rage of the enemy was the immediate cause of this spread of the gospel. At the time of Stephen's death, “there arose a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem, and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.” It is strange that the twelve, who were in the forefront of the testimony, and consequently special objects of the enemy's spite, should have been allowed to remain. It is a fair question also, whether they should not have gone elsewhere with the gospel. To them the Lord had said, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” And He had also laid down as a general principle long before, “when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another” (Matt. 10:23); a principle carried out clearly by Paul and his companions later, even to the shaking off the dust of their feet (Acts 14:6; 17:10-14). However, God in His wisdom made important use of their presence in Jerusalem, as we shall presently see in stirring up persecution for the church. The enemy, as often before and since, over-reached himself. It only led to the spread of the truth, for “they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word.” Satan never intended this. His aim was the suppression, not the spread, of the testimony.

We see a similar state of things in Phil. 1. Satan had succeeded in getting Paul imprisoned, which at first sight was a real calamity; but see how God wrought through it! The apostle was enabled to speak of Christ in quarters where he could not have gone in the ordinary way; and besides, many brethren in the Lord, who were perhaps silent in his presence, were bold in his absence to preach the word without fear.

Verse 4 in our chapter has occasioned a good deal of discussion in days ancient and modern. It is a difficulty with some that the saints as a general class should be represented as “preaching the word.” That it is a serious verse for officialism is readily granted; but it is God's truth, and if traditional ideas did not becloud the mind, all who bear the Lord's name would understand it. The simple fact is that all set forth what they knew of the Lord Jesus. Every Christian is responsible to do this, as far as God gives grace and opportunity, though it is not denied that there are special gifts from Christ, as evangelists, &c. But in these there is no room for man; it is the ascended Lord Who gives, the servants are responsible to Him alone, and the church is but the receiver of the blessing.

Among the scattered ones who preached, Philip is particularly noticed by the Spirit. “Philip went down to a city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them.” This laborer was one of the seven who were set apart to distribute the church's bounty in Jerusalem.

There is no connection between the office of a deacon, and the gift of an evangelist, save that in a general way “they that have used the office of a deacon well, purchase to themselves a good degree, and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 3:13). The modern notion of a deacon appointed to “read holy scriptures and homilies in the church” &c., “and to preach if he be admitted thereto by the bishop,” in contrast with a priest ordained to forgive sins, and to be a dispenser of the holy sacraments, had no existence in simple apostolic days. As a deacon, Philip was chosen by the assembly, and appointed by the apostles; as an evangelist (which the Spirit elsewhere expressly declares him to have been), he had received his gift from Christ, neither the church nor the apostles having aught to say or do in the matter (Acts 21:8, Eph. 4:11). His services as deacon being no longer required (the Jerusalem saints being scattered), he is seen exercising his gift in dependence on the Lord.

Note, he preached Christ unto them. Compare verse 34 where the same Philip is seen dealing with the eunuch, “he preached unto him Jesus.” Why the difference? Simply this. The Samaritans, though a foreign race, had for centuries taken Jewish ground. They had their temple on Mount Gerizim, they had the Jewish scriptures, spoke of “our father Jacob,” and appropriated the Jewish hope—the coming of Messiah (John 4:12, 25). Philip therefore took them on their own ground, and announced the Christ unto them. The preaching was accompanied by many signs, as the casting out of unclean spirits, &c., “and there was great joy in that city.” One man in particular was arrested. Simon the sorcerer (of whom tradition has very much to say, largely no doubt fabulous), had for years held great sway over the minds of the Samaritans, “giving out that himself was some great one,” and had gained the title of “the great power of God.” Numbers believed Philip's testimony and were baptized, Simon among them, astonished at the miracles and signs which were done. Alas! it was these which struck him, not the word of God. Contrast Sergius Paulus in Acts 13:12. Faith founded on miracles is but little worth. The Lord, when here, would not trust Himself to such (John 2:23-25). Miracles may arrest and convince the intellect (and confirm faith where it exists): the word of God alone can lay bare the heart and conscience. This the unhappy Simon never knew.

But tidings of the good work reach Jerusalem; and when the apostles heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John. Did Philip resent and regard as intrusion the coming of men whose place in the church was greater than his own? Nay, the work was one, whether in Jerusalem or Samaria, and all were equally interested. Besides, the power of the Spirit was too deeply felt all round to leave room for such petty feelings. And God had a special reason for sending Peter and John at that time. The new converts had not received the Holy Ghost, the great characteristic gift of Christianity, but had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. The apostles prayed for them, and laid their hands on them; and they received the Holy Ghost. Why this order? Why did they not receive the Spirit when they believed, as the Gentiles later in Acts 10? Herein we may see the wisdom of God. Samaria and Jerusalem had been for centuries antagonistic religious centers; and had God dealt with the Samaritans exactly as with the Jews, who can say that the rivalry might not in time to come have revived under a Christian name? Have we never known such a thing in Christianity? Who does not know of the jealousy in early days between the great sees of Christendom, particularly between Rome and Constantinople, resulting at last in a total breach between east and west? God would leave no open door for this in Philip's day. Hence they must wait for the coming of the apostles from Jerusalem, ere the gift of the Spirit could be theirs. Thus did God bind the work together, and preserve unity. The saints on earth, whether Jews, Samaritans, or Gentiles, are one body, linked to the one Head in glory by the one Spirit sent down from on high. Independency of any sort misses the mind of God completely.

All this brought out what was in the heart of Simon. “When Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, saying, Give me this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee. For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.” He betrayed his utter ignorance of God. God has revealed Himself as a giver: for it is more blessed to give than to receive. He has given His Son, and in Him eternal life to us. The Spirit too is His gift, founded upon the work of Jesus. But of all this Simon knew nothing. It was power that had attracted him, and for power he craved. It was self-aggrandizement he sought, not the divine glory. Further, when Peter bade him repent and pray to God, he said, “Pray ye to the Lord for me.” Where was confidence in God for himself? The Lord was to him unknown; perhaps a human intermediary could act on his behalf! So thousands of deluded souls have thought since. At this solemn point, scripture leaves him, and tells us no more.

The apostles returned home, evangelizing on their journey many villages of the Samaritans.

W. W. F.

Priesthood of Christ: 3

THUS two goats, in fact, were needed to complete atonement, the formal and particular confession being upon the scapegoat or people's lot. Still for the type of atonement they were both involved in its two great parts: the vindicating of God, which was the first thought; and next the allied comfort of knowing that all evil on the part of the people was minutely brought out, laid on the live goat, and discharged to be seen no more. And these two truths are distinctly before us in Rom. 3 and 4.; chapter 3. answering more to Jehovah's lot, chapter 4. to the people's lot, in the latter part of both chapters. In the one case it is God just and justifying him that believes in Jesus; and there we have the blood on the mercy-seat. In the other, Christ is said to be delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification, which delivering of Him up for our offenses is exactly what the scapegoat figured when sent away with their sins over his head.

Azazel does not answer to the truth of resurrection. There is no type of this in the offerings here, though we find it in that of Isaac (Gen. 22). There was also a figure of it in the bird that was let loose, dipped in the blood of the killed one, for the leper; but it is not so with the live goat. For it was to be sent into a land not inhabited; and heaven is anything but this. It is a place already well inhabited, and will be so yet more forever. Impossible for it to be symbolized by the desert scene into which the goat was sent. What this was intended to set forth was the dismissal of Israel's sins, the visible testimony to all of their offenses—their positive acts of transgression—borne away. This seems to be all that was meant by it, the evident complement therefore of Jehovah's lot, as it was the people's. Substitution appears no less than expiation.

Atonement, however, though by the high priest alone, does not (strictly speaking) give us the proper ordinary action of priesthood, but the foundation, and hence is intimately connected with it. The purging of, or making expiation for, sins was a prime necessity, but also a foundation for the priest to appear before God day by day on behalf of the people.

We come now to another matter of the deepest interest in the person that could fittingly act as priest. “In that he himself suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted.” Let us weigh it the more because it so clearly concerns, not merely ourselves, but Himself, so often wounded in the house of His friends, as well as by heartless enemies. It is not only the person in both parts, or the foundation work for us, but the gracious, provision in His heart, as man tried in every possible way, that He might thus the better succor those that are tempted.

What is meant by the word “tempted”? As you may have observed, not a word is said about temptation till we hear of the sanctified people. “Tempted” in these cases, then, has no allusion whatever to the inward solicitations of evil. Such is not the thought: it should be needless to say the Lord never had any. But even where priesthood is spoken of on our behalf, it is remarkable that by it God does not make provision for sins or failures. So we see in chap. 4., where we learn not a little more. “Seeing then that we have a great high priest that is passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, [yet] without sin.”

Here the introduction of the word “yet” into the clause (printed in italics) is a very great blemish, calculated to ruin the sense. If you read it without that addition, you may apprehend what the Holy Ghost means a great deal more distinctly and correctly. As it stands now in the Authorized Version (and also in the work of the Revisers too, certainly of many individuals in our own day), the deduction is that the Lord was tempted, but never yielded, never sinned. This is not at all the point. The Holy Spirit was teaching quite another truth, more worthy of Christ's glory, and needed by the believer. Of course, it is true that Christ never did sin; but it is far below the truth here intended. What is revealed goes a great deal farther.

Christ “was tempted in all points like as we are, apart from sin.” He had no sin whatever. It was not only that He never sinned, but He had no sin; and this makes all the difference possible. He was the Holy One; and this was manifested, especially in the unparalleled temptations He endured. Assuredly He was all through the Holy One; but it was all apart from sin. In Him was no sin—not sins merely, but sin. It was not only that He did not yield to sin, but there was no sin in Him to yield. His nature as man had no evil to be acted on by the devil. There was evil without. He was assailed by every possible, the most subtle, effort of Satan in a ruined and wretched world. There was all that could give pain, not only in men and the Jews, but even in disciples. There was the presenting of what was agreeable to allure at the beginning of His path; there was the endeavor to alarm at the end by what was most tremendous and overwhelming in death, and, above all, in such a death as was before Him.

But whether it was by the pleasant or the painful, at every time, under all circumstances, Christ was tempted like as we are. It is not said that He was not tempted more. “There hath no temptation befallen us but that which is common to man,” i.e. a human one. Could one say this about Jesus? Who does not see that the Lord was tempted above all that man was ever tempted? that there was no temptation to compare with His? While, therefore, it is perfectly true that He was “tempted in all points like as we are,” it is far from being true, as many ill-instructed souls assume, that we have been tempted in all points like as He was.

The wilderness was the marked scene of Christ's characteristic temptation. Have we been ever tried so? Certainly not. There may be a measure of analogy, and I have no doubt that the three well-known temptations which closed the sojourn in the wilderness are full of instruction in their principle at least. Each one of the three efforts of Satan against the Lord—the natural temptation to make the stones loaves, the worldly temptation in the offer of the kingdoms of the world on the condition of homage, and the religious temptation in the exhortation to cast Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple according to the promise in Psa. 91—is full of the weightiest instruction and warning for our souls. But then be it remembered, that before these He had been tempted for forty days without food. Is this a trial that we have ever been subjected to? We may boldly say, I think, that it is one into which the Spirit will never lead us as Him. It was a trial altogether peculiar and suited to the Son of God, the man Christ Jesus.

(To be continued D.V.J)

James 1:9-12

THERE is indeed no excuse for him that confesses the Lord Jesus Christ to be a double-souled man. Without the knowledge of Him a man may easily be unstable in all his ways; and it is no real credit to him if he be firm in the pursuit of self, braving trial instead of bowing to God with profit and joy to his soul. Christ alone is the true measure of all; and such was His manifestation here below in absolute superiority not only to every circumstance but to all evil. He and He only was the Faithful Witness. In Christ is God's secret of steadfastness for man in a world of sin. And there is more, yea all, in Him to fill the heart with joy and give needed wisdom.

“But let the lowly brother glory in his elevation, and the rich in his humiliation, because as flower of grass he will pass away. For the sun arose with its scorching and withered the grass, and its flower fell away, and the comeliness of its look perished: thus also will the rich one fade in his goings. Blest [is] a man who endureth trial; because, having been put to the proof, he shall receive the crown of life which He promised to those that love Him” (vers. 9-12).

Here again it is Christ Who alone sheds the full light of God on the inequalities of position on the earth, and turns them into a ground not of acquiescence only, but of pleasing God in exercising suitably the new nature. In the world covetousness is the universal idolatry, and mammon its idol. And the Jew fell under a similar condition readily, as he looked for blessings on his obedience, in the city and in the field, in the family and in the flock, in the basket and in the kneading trough. But the day is coming when God will put down all evil, stilling the roaring of the seas and the tumult of the peoples, and lifting Israel out of their low estate, when at the feet of Messiah they truly own the God of their salvation. Then will the outgoings of the morning and evening rejoice, when God visits the earth and waters it, when He crowns the years with His goodness, and His paths drop fatness, and the hills are girded with joy, and the valleys, covered over with corn, shout for joy and sing.

For God will have blessed Israel then, and thenceforward will forever bless them, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him, It will be the day, not of man, but of Jehovah, when a king shall reign in righteousness and princes shall rule in judgment, Jehovah (yet Man) the judge, Jehovah the lawgiver, Jehovah the king, when the inhabitants of His land shall not say, I am sick, for the people dwelling therein shall be forgiven their iniquity. Yea, the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon. And no wonder: for they shall see the glory of Jehovah, the excellency of our God. And Jehovah will answer the heavens, and they the earth; and the earth the corn and the wine and the oil; and they Jezreel. And Jehovah will sow her to Him in the land, and will have mercy on her that had not obtained mercy, and will say to Lo-Ammi [not My-people], My-people thou, and they shall say, My-God.

But now the Holy Spirit, sent from heaven, is bearing witness to the church in one way, to the world in another. Christ is not ruling, as He will in power and glory during the age to come. It is the present evil age, out of which Christ, having given Himself for our sins, is delivering us who believe and constituting us members of His body for heavenly glory. We shall be displayed with Him on high when that day dawns on the earth. Thus, being called into God's marvelous light, it is our privilege to have the mind of Christ, and judge all things according to God in this scene of confusion.

Hence the lowly brother can glory in his elevation, for the glorified Christ is not ashamed to call him brother; and the rich one can glory in his humiliation, in fellowship with Him Who emptied and humbled Himself to the death of the cross. Whatever our natural place, we are now by grace not of the world as Christ is not. Thus we are enabled to read glory in the humblest believer; the wealthy and honorable can write nothingness on what the flesh values highly. For indeed as the Lord said, That which is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God (Luke 16:15). Truly and beautifully is the evanescence of all men think great and stable, here compared to the fleeting bloom of grass, put in the past tense of transiency; as the Lord put his case who abides not in Him (John 15:6). So certain is the passing away of that which flows not from life in Him. As flower of grass perishes before the scorching heat of the sun, “thus also will the rich one fade in his goings.” What is surer, or sooner forgotten?

From this parenthetical comparison in vers. 9-11 we return to a kind of summary of the previous exhortation; and happy is pronounced a man who endures trial. So it was with men of marked faith of old, Job, Abraham, David, and the prophets; so it is now for every believer, and made plain by Him Who endured more than all, and as He alone could. And what an encouragement in the path of trial for him whom grace has called “Because, having been put to proof [or approved], he shall receive the crown of life, which He promised to those that love Him” Faith receives the word of God that reveals God's holy love in giving us a divine Savior Who died for our sins; and we love Him Who first loved us; but also how sweet while pilgrims and strangers to have so cheering a promise in the trial we endure! The new nature is exercised in trial and drawn out in its affections by God's love, and becomes more conversant with the things above and the coming glory.

To Correspondents

IN reply to M. H. (Buffalo, N. Y., U. S. A.) the Ed. B.T. would say, that, besides the interpretation of Matt. 13, he has long seen how the chapter applies historically, like Rev. 2, 3. Only it begins earlier and ends later, being larger also throughout. In this point of view, it is hardly possible to differ in applying the earlier four parables. But all could not be expected to distinguish the application of the treasure to the recovery of individual blessing so widely spread at the Reformation, from that of the one precious pearl when grace in our own day brought out the church's association with Christ, before the final scene at the consummation of the age. It is cordially owned that, in order to enjoy the relation of the Christian and of the church, Christ Himself must be appreciated, incomparably more according to God and the word of His grace than could be where justification was in question. Thus the supposed difference almost vanishes in Him, though the application here sketched seems to adhere more closely to the exact interpretation.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:5

THE general summary of the Japhetic distribution is given in the closing verse 5: “From these were separated the isles (or, maritime districts) of the nations in their lands, each (man) after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.”

Of the seven sons of Japheth, we have the descendants of but two, Gomer and Javan; from Gomer, three, and from Javan, four; seven only specified of the second generation, as of the first. That Magog and Madai had sons cannot be doubted, for we hear of their posterity to the latest times as well as of Tubal and Meshech; and as little can we doubt of Tiras. But it did not here fall within the design to give details of more. The prophets speak of others who sprung from these early forefathers to figure in the latter day. It is clear also that the order of time is not in question here; for in the following chapter difference of tongues is shown to have been imposed suddenly by a divine act of judgment, only after the project of building a city and tower, and thus making themselves a name. Our chapter therefore anticipates what is historically set out in what follows, and so speaks of the sons of Japhet distributing their seats of settlement, as it does of the Hamite race and the Shemitic in their respective places. On the other hand the “dividing” of the earth in the days of Peleg (chap. 10: 25) should be distinguished.

Dispersion preceded: a different term is employed in the Hebrew, as there ought to be in the translation. The isles are said here to be “separated,” as the earth there is “divided.” The orderly partition followed the confused dispersion.

Hence in Deut. 32:8 we read,

When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,

When He separated the sons of Adam,

He set the bounds of the peoples

According to the number of the sons of Israel.

Israel is thus declared to be His earthly center, though as yet we see not His glorious plan, which the prophets fully disclose. Hitherto no more appears than a passing but instructive shadow under David and Solomon, even these bringing in seeds of ruin, with occasional glimpses of better things in such as Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah, but as a whole gradual yet sure downfall till “there was no remedy,” and the chosen people were by reason of their apostasy branded as Lo-ammi, Not-My-people. And so they are from the Babylonish captivity to this day. A remnant of Judah was according to prophecy restored to the land by Cyrus; and a further test of the first man followed, no longer under the failing sons of David, but in the presentation to them of Messiah Himself, the Righteous Servant. But those who had wholly broken down in violating God's law and even in persistent departure after false gods to their shame by the renunciation of one Jehovah, their only true God, proved themselves yet more inexcusably His enemies and the slaves of Satan by rejecting His anointed, though according to flesh of Israel—of Judah—He was, Who is over all, God blessed forever, Amen. But Him they crucified in blind hostile unbelief by the hand of lawless men, and therefore are they dispersed to the ends of the earth. Beauty and Bands are severally both cut asunder.

But the cross of Christ in the wondrous wisdom of God is made His basis for the counsels of His grace, and the display of His righteousness, and the bringing out of His heavenly purpose, the hidden mystery or secret concerning Christ and concerning the church. For He is now in glory made Head, not merely over Israel or even all nations too, but over the universe, expressly over all things that are in the heavens and that are on the earth; and the church is united to Him as the Head of that one body which is soon to share His heavenly and universal glory. Yet shall the Jews, purged by disciplinary judgments, be brought to His feet, and see Him as their Deliverer Whom once they pierced, and all Israel be saved in God's mercy, to make good His plans, laid down from the first, accomplished at the last, to bless all the families of the earth, and fill it with the glory of Jehovah, and with the knowledge of it and of Him, as the waters cover the sea. So little is this chapter to be counted dry or unedifying; for barren as it may seem now, what fruit of righteousness shall be in that day through Jesus Christ unto God's glory and praise

At present God is working in the gospel, and in the church, but it is for His heavenly purpose in Christ, Whose members suffer with Him and wait for Him. The sole dispensation now as to the kingdom is of the heavens in its mysterious form, while the earth-rejected King sits at God's right hand on high. He must come and appear in glory to bring in the manifested kingdom, which alone the prophets predicted, when the daughter of Jerusalem shall have the first dominion here below, as Micah declared. Then, when the heavenly counsels have been completed, shall Jehovah make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: not according to the former Levitical one which they broke; but He will put His law in their inwards and write it in their heart, and He be their God, and they His people. Then, and not till then, shall Jerusalem be the throne of Jehovah; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of Jehovah, to Jerusalem; and they shall no more walk after the stubbornness of their evil heart. Instead of taking out of the nations a people for His name, as God is doing now by the gospel and in the church, the day will have come to destroy in the mountain of His holiness the face of the veil which veileth all the peoples, and the covering that is spread over all the nations. For Jehovah of hosts shall reign on mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before His ancients in glory: a state in strong and manifest contrast with all that goes on now, whether we think of God or man, of heaven or earth.

The word usually rendered “isles” not only admits of an application to coast-lands also (as to the Greek, Italian, Spanish, and Scandinavian peninsulas), but to settlements or habitations wider still, as Gesenius contends with ample consent of the more learned modern Jews; and such is the version of de Sola, Lindenthal, and Raphall in this verse. Again, the division is marked by four particulars: their lands, the tongue spoken, their family descents, and the resulting nation.

We shall see from chap. 11. how little man's will had to do with the distribution. Here we have simply but clearly the fact. It was quite a new thing on earth, not only unprecedented before the deluge, but the very opposite was man's purpose after it; so that the replenishing of the earth could not but seem distant indeed, however fruitful Noah's sons might be. But the God of creation is the God of providence, and He knows how to give effect to His word.; and here we have Europe, though not Europe only, the destined scene for the Japhetic line, of all the earth the most varied in contour, the fullest of coast-line as being the most deeply indented, and so the most accessible through its inland seas, and as well the most open to foreign connection. It was exactly suitable for him who was to be enlarged in his activity beyond his brethren. What a contrast with Africa or even Asia, and their more elevated highlands and extensive plateaus!

Yet contrary to this common purpose each country was allotted to its respective race, and in all this startlingly new fact of lands partitioned by families constituting nations, and distinguished by its tongue appears, as we have seen, the line of Japhet, which mainly and in due time settled in Europe. The remembrance of the deluge would not dispose men to separate. But God meant it to be, and so it was: one race of Adam, but with all the variety into which the several stocks were to divide and replenish the earth. And the immediate occasion was the opposing determination of man, and the practical end for which they united, as the history relates afterward, along with the simple and effectual way in which God confounded their vain and selfish purpose and accomplished His own.

Nor was the earth itself externally out of harmony with God's mind about man, but adjusted in general to his use who was to eat bread in the sweat of his face, and especially to the new condition, fitted to their separate life as nations with mountain barriers and river boundaries, till man's enterprise made even the seas the ready means of intercourse, commerce, and conquest.

Thus also the principle of government, which God laid on Noah and his sons, was to prove its great practical value, as its control could now be brought to bear far more readily when men were distinguished in their nations. If it was a fresh start for the race, it was not under one man, Adam. The post-diluvian earth began with three sons of Noah, and their three wives, besides Noah and his wife, all of them inheriting whatever was known and learned in the long era before the deluge. Agriculture and live stocking were long familiar, city as well as tent life had begun, forging of copper and iron for instruments of every sort, with musical instruments for wind and hand, and metrical composition, from very early days. Since the flood God had entrusted to man's hand the responsibility of the civil sword (Gen. 9: 6), the root of government in restraint of human violence which includes the lesser rights in the greatest; and this well suited to the national bond of each independent nation which was now commencing. Families of course had been before in the midst of an undivided race. Henceforth in the new state of things they take their place in their lands by the lesser relation of their nations, each welded together by that tongue which severed him from others of different descent and locality, with their own associations and their independent interests and aims.

The importance, as well as the permanence, of this new condition of humanity will be felt all the more by comparing the prophecies of the O.T and the Revelation of the New. In the former may be identified the descendants of the Japhetic line as well as those to follow of Ham and Shem. In the others, when the heavenly saints are transferred to their proper home on high, the question of the earth is raised, and we hear of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, out of which the Lamb purchased saints to God by His blood, and the ensuing conflict for the inheritance here below. For Christ, the Son, is alone Heir of all things, and the day hastens when His rights shall be asserted with indisputable power.

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 5

Chap. 4

IT may be well to add that the believer is in no way bound to defend the procedure of Mordecai, save just so far as we recognize his real faith. We do not learn that he was under compulsion to present Esther to the monarch, nor was he called to conceal that she was a Jewess; nor can it be made out that he could not bow in civil respect to Haman, Agagite though he was certainly we read of Abraham bowing down to the sons of Heth, though of the cursed line of Canaan. And we find Jacob blessing Pharaoh though head of those to afflict his seed four hundred years, and to be judged of the Lord Jehovah. It was the unbending spirit of the Jew in exile, who hated the deadly enemy of the chosen people, and believed in the day of vengeance of their God. They are the simple facts of the case, which we are taught and can judge according to the far deeper principles of Christ in the gospel.

Our chapter opens with the profound grief of Mordecai and among the Jews where the king's decree penetrated. The report of it soon reached the queen, as it was meant to do; for Mordecai fully counted on relief and deliverance through her means, and, till it came, utterly refused even her to divest himself of sackcloth and ashes.

“And when Mordecai knew all that was done, Mordecai rent his clothes, and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and cried with a loud and a bitter cry: and he came even before the king's gate; for none might enter within the king's gate clothed with sackcloth. And in every province, whithersoever the king's commandments and his decree came, [there was] great mourning among the Jews, and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes. And Esther's maidens and her chamberlains came and told [it] her; and the queen was exceedingly grieved: and she sent raiment to clothe Mordecai, and to take his sackcloth from off him: but he received [it] not. Then called Esther for Hathach, [one] of the king's chamberlains, whom he had appointed to attend upon her, and charged him to go to Mordecai, to know what this [was], and why it [was]. So Hathach went forth to Mordecai unto the broad place of the city, which [was] before the king's gate. And Mordecai told him of all that had happened unto him, and the exact sum of the money that Haman had promised to pay to the king's treasuries for the Jews, to destroy them. Also he gave him the copy of the writing of the decree that was given out in Shushan to destroy them, to show [it] unto Esther, and to declare [it] unto her; and to charge her that she should go in unto the king, and to make supplication unto him, and request before him, for her people” (vers. 1-8).

But it is striking to observe how the furnace may be heated seven times before the rescue comes. For Esther fully realizes that her life was at stake in the charge her cousin laid on her. It was universally known at court and through the provinces how rigorously the law hedged the king's majesty, whom none dared approach, on penalty of death, unless called. And it was so ordered that even she had not been called to come to the king for the last mouth. Mordecai however is only the bolder in his demand, and the strength of his faith is as plain as that of Abraham.

“And Hathach came and told Esther the words of Mordecai. Then Esther spake unto Hathach, and gave him a message unto Mordecai, saying: All the king's servants, and the people of the king's provinces, do know, that whosoever, whether man or woman, shall come unto the king into the inner court, who is not called, [there is] one law for him, that he be put to death, except such to whom the king shall hold out the golden scepter, that he may live: but I have not been called to come in unto the king these thirty days. And they told to Mordecai Esther's words. Then Mordecai bade them return answer unto Esther, Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king's house, more than all the Jews. For if thou altogether boldest thy peace at this time, there shall relief and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father's house shall perish: and who knoweth whether thou art not come to the kingdom for [such] a time as this” (vers. 9-14)?

Not less fine is the reply of the queen. She is ready, now that all the truth is before her soul, to jeopard her life at least as worthily as Mordecai, and in a spirit far more gracious. Even here it is striking to observe that, though her faith shines, the Name is kept as secret as ever. Yet fasting without a doubt implied the most earnest prayer to Him Who dwelt in the thick darkness and would hear as surely in Shushan the palace, as in the temple at Jerusalem.

“And Esther bade to answer Mordecai, Go, gather together all the Jews that are found in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast in like manner; and so will I go in unto the king, which [is] not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish. So Mordecai went his way, and did according to all that Esther had commanded him” (vers. 15-17).

It is the undaunted Jew who now complies with all that Esther enjoined. He had warned her faithfully and with solemnity of inevitable ruin to herself and her father's house if she were silent. But at the same time he expressed the fullest certainty that relief and deliverance should come from another place. This is the victory that overcometh, even faith, as we may surely apply here; and its effect was no less apparent with Esther than Andrew's was on his own brother Simon. The queen is ready if need be to perish in such a cause, strengthened by the unseen hand that sustains the universe, as the king's heart was to be turned at His will.

But may we notice in passing the strange misapplication so common among preachers! “If I perish, I perish” was not unbelief, but a martyr readiness in the queen's mouth, about to fall at such a despot's feet. Does it warrant a similar sentiment at the feet of Him Who came into the world to save sinners? Who has already declared that “him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out?”

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream and Daniel's Vision: 5

Dan. 2; 7

BUT now what is the “little stone cut without hands,” which at length becomes a mountain? Perhaps all my readers are accustomed to hear this referred to the Lord gradually making good the kingdom of God. Undoubtedly He will come in that kingdom of God when the hour strikes. But take care that you understand its true force. Excellent men will tell you that it will be through the gospel—the kingdom of God introduced by the Spirit. Allow me to ask this, Does the gospel smite kingdoms of the world? Does the Holy Spirit by the word destroy powers that be? The first action of the “little stone” is to fall upon the feet of the great image, and the effect of that decisive blow will be to scatter its fragments like chaff of the summer threshing-floor's.

You know God's gospel is the revelation of Christ applied by the Spirit of God to save sinners, Jews and Gentiles that believe. But the “little stone” on the contrary symbolizes a power, small in appearance, which at once deals destructively with all that is high, great, and strong on the earth, at the first blow reducing the entire imperial system to powder. Consequently the attempt to make the gospel out of it wholly fails. The word of God is by the Lord compared to the seed that, sown in the good ground, bears fruit more or less abundantly, as a germ of life by the Holy Spirit. It is plain that the “little stone” is, not the gospel or the church, but the kingdom of God which Christ enforces when He returns. Conclusive and clear is the proof of this from the comparison of the closing scenes in Dan. 2 and the corresponding part of chap vii. It is not only an intervention from on high, but of a judicial and even executory character. The gospel is no doubt of God, but it is His sovereign grace based on the cross of Christ. Whereas the “little stone” smites the powers of the world, the mightiest then reigning no less than the remnant of all that preceded, and at once crushes them to atoms.

What can be more in contrast with the gospel? After this the “little stone” grows and becomes a great mountain and fills the whole earth. The gospel never smote any earthly power, never will destroy a single king or kingdom. God's work in the gospel is to reconcile the sinner to Himself and render him meet for heaven. Can one conceive things more different? All Christians profess to believe the Lord Jesus is coming again. What to do? Is it not to judge the quick and the dead? Even the common creeds of Christendom admit that; Copts and Jacobites, Nestorians and Greeks, as well as Latins and Protestants of every variety, confess this truth. They read, say, and sing that Christ is coming to judge, not the dead only but the living also; and these before the dead, we may add.

It is easy to theorize, but scripture shows Christ to reign a thousand years, and to judge the quick. The judgment of the dead follows, as Rev. 20 teaches, and this after the heavens and the earth flee away; whereas the quick He will judge on this earth. Will not Christ's feet stand on the Mount of Olives? and when He stands there, will not the mountain be split in two? So Zech. 14 declares. Yet there it is still, as solid as ever; but it will be cloven yet, giving testimony to its Maker and to the word of God. Who can wonder when the Creator stands there in power and glory? When He came the first time, it was in grace and humility, bearing all and enduring all, when He deigned to die a sacrifice to God, yet at the hands of His own creatures, that their sins might be blotted out. Then it was all pure and sovereign grace, in which He bore God's judgment of our evil that we who believe might be delivered from wrath. But when He comes again, it will be in judicial power and glory. And will He come alone? His own glorified hosts will follow Him—they that are Christ's. Rev. 17:14; 19:14.

Carefully avoid the new-fangled notion that seems to please some in the present day, that none are with Him but “superior Christians.” I have generally found those men when weighed sadly wanting. They and their set are no doubt excellent in their own eyes; but God forbid that a true-hearted saint should regard Himself as better than others. We are debtors to God's grace in Christ alone for salvation; and we have abundant reason to humble ourselves before God while here below. There is doubtless power in the Spirit of God to keep us; but as a matter of fact, in many things we all stumble. Let us look to Him Who alone can keep us from falling. It is a strange delusion, by way of what is called “deepening the spiritual life,” that any can jump into holiness practically; and why connect this idea of themselves and the like with the translation of the saints to heaven at Christ's coming?

For such self-flattering expectations scripture gives no warrant. “We shall not all sleep,” says the apostle, “but we shall all be changed in a moment,” and the same moment. The living saints found when our Lord comes are not to die. The dead in Christ shall rise first; then we, not some of us but all, shall be caught up together with the risen to meet the Lord. This is the mystery as it is called, or New Testament truth, added to that of resurrection revealed in the Old Testament.

When Christ comes and those that are His along with Him from heaven, He will smite the powers in open blasphemous rebellion (Rev. 19), and call all the nations to account, as He will in Matt. 25:31-46. The two leaders civil and religious will be thrown living into hell. Their followers and kings and armies will be slain on the spot. Did you ever realize who these will be? The flower of the civilized world, the rulers and hosts of the then kingdoms of the west. They will have hastened at the Emperor's demand to protect the Jews and their king in Jerusalem. The Jews who rejected the true Christ will then have received the antichrist. Then will all the powers of western Europe be involved in the same sin. Balance of power is long gone. The satellite kings “have one mind, and shall give their power and authority to the beast. These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them; for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and they that are with Him (the glorified saints) are called, chosen, and faithful.” “For God hath put in their hearts to fulfill His will, and to agree and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled” (Rev. 17: 13, 14, 17).

There will remain for divine judgment the last king of the north (Dan. 11:40-15); and after him Gog from the land of Magog, Prince of Rosh (Russia), Mesheoh (Muscovy), and Tubal (Tobolsk), the power that makes the king of the north mightier than his own strength could command. These shall all perish in due time after the Lord has appeared: all must receive the due reward of their deeds. Is this not as far as can be from the kingdom of God in spiritual power such as we know under the gospel? But it is in full accord with that which is the true meaning of Nebuchadnezzar's dream and of the prophet's interpretation, as well as of his own visions in chap. 7. and elsewhere. The destruction of “the beast” and other powers which will then be in a state of rebellion must be fulfilled at the end of this age.

And what is preparing for an end so awful? The superstition and the infidelity of the day: each provokes the other beyond measure. Where are these men so different in appearance and pretension, yet alike unbelievers, the one sanctimonious, the other profane? They are everywhere; their name is Legion. You have them both here in your quiet little town, lively and strong. But it does not matter where they may be: God is not mocked, and they are His enemies. How they swarm in the great city, the metropolis of the kingdom! It is not so strange that they often join arms, sometimes are combined in the same persons. Such are those who dare to say that God did not inspire the Bible, and deny him who wrote this book to be “Daniel the Prophet,” although the Lord declares so it was. They would make it a romance written hundreds of years after his death. Whoever so speaks, and whatever he pretends to be, no orthodox believers should shrink from denouncing such a man as infidel. They are corrupting this country and America, as others have Holland and Germany.

But let it be understood that no mistake is greater than to suppose Roman Catholic countries free from skepticism. No country more abounds in infidelity than France and other Popish lands. The women may go to mass and confession, and some of the men may follow occasionally; but this is no disproof of their infidelity. And the issue will be (spite of all forms, and processions, and what not) the falling away or apostasy, as the apostle told the Thessalonians. The open abandonment of the gospel is at hand. Then man under Satan's power will become the object of universal admiration and worship to the exclusion of God; and this will bring down the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven. So He in Dan. 7 answers to the “little stone” of chap. 2. He is seen coming to the Ancient of days, and receiving dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. It opens with the execution of consuming judgment on earth, and most unsparingly where most light had been given and given up.

Is it possible to find a scene in stronger contrast with grace? The gospel of God's grace is founded on Christ's first coming, and on His death, resurrection, and ascension; for His object was atoningly to suffer to God's glory for sins. When He comes again, it will be as the “little stone cut without hands,” wholly apart from human means to destroy the kingdoms (then apostate), and to establish God's kingdom in power, righteousness and glory over the earth. He will appear from heaven, and (falling, as we see in Dan. 2 and 7., on the Roman empire) will efface all the authority set forth by the image or by the four beasts. The beast (or he who then shall wield the power of the fourth empire revived) and the false prophet are to be consigned to the burning flame. That is, the imperial as well as the religious chiefs are to meet this unspeakably frightful doom, while their adherents are slain (Rev. 19:19-21). Besides, judgment falls on all the other elements. “Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together.” So too is it in Daniel's vision of the beasts whose dominion had been taken away and their lives prolonged (ver. 12). There is no sparing of evil longer. Jehovah reigns, and the earth rejoices. It is the Son of man Who makes good the kingdom over all the earth, as His first advent gave grace its scope for heavenly glory, which the Christian and the church should enjoy now in faith. W. K.

The Labourers Hired

Matt. 20:1-16.

PEOPLE have little difficulty in understanding the general drift of the answer to Peter, who said, Behold, we have forsaken all and followed Thee: what shall we have therefore? Our Lord shows that God will be debtor to no man, and that for every loss on account of His name every one shall receive again a hundredfold and inherit life eternal. But He adds the cautionary words, Many first shall be last, and last first. For as Christ is the motive where faith is, reward is but. the encouragement to him that follows the Savior; it cheers him when already on the way. Make the reward the object, and all becomes mercenary. Even where Christ is the constraining power, there is danger of clouding Him under an overweening estimate of sacrifices for His sake; and hence the need to think of the shortcoming implied through self-reliance. In every case however God never forgets but assuredly repays.

Why is it that there has been such perplexity and difference from of old to the present about the parable which opens chap. 20.? It is because man bulks so largely in his own eyes that room is not left for the sovereign grace of God. Now this is the very thing the Lord here asserts. Pious men might and must more or less distinctly allow it in His saving souls; but the Lord claims it for His dealing with service. And it ought not to be a question that in the parable not salvation but service is the matter in hand. Alas! in all ages the tendency has been and is to confound the two things to the deep injury of both; for if mixed up, no soul who has a due sense of his unprofitable service can or ought to be assured of his salvation; yet without that assurance God's grace is not fully received, nor has Christ's blood practically cleansed the conscience, so that the service is vitiated correspondingly from first to last. And no wonder; for never can exist the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope, which we are exhorted to hold fast firm unto the end.

Now what can be plainer in scripture than the truth that “the free gift of God is life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 6:23)? In John, Gospel and Epistles, it is no less plain that the believer has that life now. No doubt, it is in the Son, and alone in Him rightly and securely; but “he that believeth on Me hath life eternal” (John 6:47). And the First Epistle was written that God's children might know, that they believing on the name of the Son of God have life eternal. They do not wait for His coming again to have it; they have it now for their souls, they will have it for their bodies also, and in its proper glorious sphere, when He comes for them. And it is of life eternal by-and-by that the Synoptic Gospels speak.

But the parable contemplates, not conversion, nor life eternal, but laboring in the vineyard. How can those that know the gospel fall into a mistake so evident and profound as to overlook this? It was for Christ that Simon Peter left all and followed Him. Christ drew him, not reward, though reward there is; for God is not unrighteous to forget any work or labor of love shown to His name in the service of the saints or of the gospel. But it is divine love in Christ, seen by faith, which draws the soul after Him, and makes His call effectual. Such alone do work that pleases God; and life eternal is therefore shown in Rom. 2 to come at the end of a fruit-bearing course; but the utmost care is taken in the same epistle to declare that we are justified freely by His grace (chap. 3: 24). Yea, it excludes any work on our part from that great act of His grace. “Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt; but to him that worketh not but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom. 4: 4, 5).

In the parable on the contrary it is a question of work done for the householder, who calls and sends into his vineyard.

“For the kingdom of the heavens is like a householder which went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard; and when he had agreed with the laborers for a denary the day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing in the marketplace idle; and to them he said, Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing; and he saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard. And when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto the steward, Call the laborers, and pay them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a denary. And when the first came, they supposed that they would receive more; and they likewise received every man a denary. And when they received it, they murmured against the householder, saying, These last have spent one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. But he answered and said to one of them, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a denary? Take up that [which is] thine, and go thy way; it is my will to give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? or is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last” (vers. 1-16).

Plainly the Lord lays down the true spring and principle of service. It is confidence in him who calls. All is set out with divine wisdom. The workmen first called agreed to the terms. Those at the third hour went to work on his word; “whatsoever is right I will give you,” as did those at the sixth and ninth hours. The last batch at the eleventh went there simply at his call: “Go ye also into the vineyard.” With these last the steward is directed to begin, giving each a denary. This aroused the murmurs of the earliest workmen, who resented the householder's liberality. But he stopped the mouth of their spokesman at once. The injustice complained of was solely in the complainant. “Didst thou not agree with me for a denary?” Grace reserves its title to bless. “Is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last.” The despised enjoy the grace that abounds beyond all question of man, and those who indulge in selfish thoughts justly sink. God Who never fails in righteousness maintains His right to act according to His own goodness. He is sovereign even in this where man sets up his claim to his own chagrin. Indisputably just, He is good and will act upon it, as He loves to do: what loss and misery those make for themselves who dispute it!

W. K.

The Ways of God in the Acts: 3. The Calling of the Gentiles

The Calling of the Gentiles.

Chap. 10.

THE time had now come, in the ways of God, for the presentation of the gospel in a formal way to the Gentiles; and Peter, spite of his strong Jewish sympathies and prejudices, was to be the honored means. This was quite in keeping with the word of the Lord to him in Matt. 16— “I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” These words indicate no sort of princely supremacy (not even of a personal character, far less of a sucessional for all time); but it was a privilege and honor conferred upon the apostle. He had opened the door to the Jews on the day of Pentecost and 3,000 had entered; he was now to open it to the Gentiles. He had himself alluded to this day in Acts 2 (however little he then entered into it), saying to the Jews, “The promise is unto you and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” And speaking of the same thing in a later day, he reminded his brethren, “Ye know how that, a good while ago, God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel and believe” (Acts 15:7).

God would not have the moment farther deferred. The apostle had just been called who was to be the Lord's chosen vessel to bear His name before the Gentiles pre-eminently (Acts 9:15); it was fitting therefore that the door of faith should now be opened to such.

The individual first called was a remarkable character. “He was a centurion of the band called the Italian; a devout man, and one that feared. God with all his house, who gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway." It was a rare thing probably for a Roman officer in a garrison town to be spoken of in this way. We read of one in the Gospels, who loved the Jewish nation and built for them the synagogue (Luke 7:5); but the usual character of such was in every way different. Instead of giving alms to the conquered, it was rather the custom to oppress and exact as far as possible. But we must look a little deeper here. All was not mere benevolence in Cornelius, but the fruit of a man quickened by the Spirit. Cornelius was not yet saved, for he had not yet had Christ presented to him as a Savior; but he was undoubtedly born of God. In Zaccheus's case, I think there is a difference. He merely spoke of giving half of his goods to the poor, and of restoring fourfold to any man he had wronged (Luke 19:8). This was kindness and conscientiousness; but Cornelius went much farther. Does an unconverted man fear God and pray to Him always? Assuredly not. Such fruit is never borne on the corrupt tree of the old man. “Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?” (Matt. 7:16-18.) This godly Gentile was in reality pretty much where Old Testament saints were, born of God, confiding in Him, but not knowing accomplished redemption through a dead. and risen Christ, nor having received the gift of the Holy Ghost.

We must ever distinguish between the quickening work of the Spirit and sealing. The first was true from the first. Ever since grace introduced a hope for the sinner, there have been those in whom the Spirit of God has wrought producing new life and faith in God; but the gift of the Spirit to believers is a wholly new thing, not true until Christ rose from the dead and went on high.

The truth as to Cornelius comes out even more clearly as we proceed with our chapter. “He saw in a vision evidently about the ninth hour of the day an angel of God coming in to him and saying unto him, Cornelius. And when be looked on him, he was afraid and said, What is it, Lord? And he said unto him, Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God.” How plain is all this! When did the prayers and alms of an ungodly man ever “come up for a memorial before God?” Such are “dead works,” as valueless, if not as offensive, as wicked works.

To this interesting Gentile, then, the gospel of Christ was to be declared. The angel bade him send for Peter, who was then at Joppa, lodging with Simon a tanner. His obedience was prompt, his heart being simple before God; and two household servants with a devout soldier were dispatched.

At Joppa, meanwhile, the same God Who wrought with Cornelius at Caesarea, wrought with the apostle, graciously preparing him for what was before him. Peter is shown praying on the housetop (reminding us of Acts 6:4).

Falling into a trance he saw heaven opened and a vessel like a great sheet, knit at the four corners let down to the earth, filled with all manner of four-footed beasts, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. A voice bade him kill and eat. He objected, “Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.”

The answer was given, “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.” To make it all the more emphatic; this was done thrice, and “the vessel was received up again into heaven.” Thus did the Lord graciously wait on His servant's scruples, and instruct him as to the new work of grace now in hand. Fleshly distinctions were to obtain no longer, uncircumcised Gentiles were to be brought in, and blessed on common ground with the believing Israelite.

The middle wall of partition was now broken down, however slow those of the circumcision might be to comprehend it. While Peter pondered the vision, the servants of the centurion arrived, and the Spirit instructed him to go with them, doubting nothing. He had the precaution to take with him certain brethren from Joppa as witnesses, and to silence objectors afterward. Cornelius would have worshipped him, but Peter took him up, saying, “Stand up, I myself also am a man.” Compare with this the indignation of Paul and Barnabas when the men of Lystra would have offered them sacrifice (Acts 14:14), and the words of the angel in Revelation whom John was disposed to worship (Rev. 22:9). These servants knew their place, and what was due to the Lord.

Considerable and charming simplicity is to be observed in Cornelius throughout. There was simple following of the Lord in all things step by step, and when he had Peter beneath his roof he said, “Now therefore are we all here present before God, to hear all things that are commanded thee of God.” There was no reserve, and no desire for the suppression of any part of the counsel of God. What a contrast with this day of itching ears! Peter has at last perceived that God is no respecter of persons, but that in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him. This does not go beyond the admission of the fact, that blessing is for Gentiles as truly as for Jews; as yet the truth of the one body was not declared. Of this Paul was the honored administrator. To him it was given to unfold the heavenly union of all saints with the risen and exalted Head by the Holy Ghost. Peter went no farther than to admit the Gentiles to an equal place with the Jews: “God gave them the like gift as unto us.”

His preaching is characteristic. He speaks as ever of the Lord Jesus as One Who had walked up and down among the Jews, having been anointed by God with the Holy Ghost and with power. He went about doing good, Peter and his companions being witnesses, yet was slain, hanged on a tree, but raised by God on the third day and shown to chosen witnesses. All these were public and notorious facts (he could say to his audience— “Ye know”); but Cornelius and his kinsmen and near friends had never before heard of an interest for themselves in that blessed One. They knew His path among, and His presentation to, the Jews; but they were Gentiles! Now they learn that He is a Savior for all—for “whosoever.” He is the appointed Judge of living and dead; but is that all? “To Him give all the prophets witness, that through His name whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins.”

What a message from God to needy men! At once solemn and blessed, it wrought immediately with this first Gentile company that heard it. Generally audiences are divided after a discourse; as in Acts 28:24, “And some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not.” But there was no such division here. “While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word.” Though not stated, it is implied that all believed the testimony. The Spirit is given only to believers, as we read. “After that ye believed, ye were sealed with the holy Spirit of promise” (Eph. 1:13). Peter's companions were astonished, “because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost.” Why should they have been? Why so slow to rise to the thoughts of God? Peter afterward said, “God gave them the like gift as unto us” (Acts 11:17). Mere fleshly standing is no more, distinctions have no place in Christianity, salvation is available to flesh, whether Jew or Gentile. “There is no difference.” Signs accompanied the gift, for these new believers began to speak with tongues, and magnify God.

What hindered now their formal reception among Christians? Who could withstand God? Consequently Peter asks, “Can any man forbid water, that these should be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?” And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord.” Baptism is nowhere spoken of as a command (save to the evangelist), but as a privilege granted to all who are Christ's (compare Acts 8:35).

It is a sign of death—death with Christ—a figure of salvation and the washing away of sins. In apostolic days, when things were done according to God, it was the first act of the believer. As remarked before, the order here varies noticeably from that in chaps. 2. and 8.

In chap. 2. the conscience-stricken Jews must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ ere they could have remission of sins, and the gift of the Spirit.

In chap. 8. the Samaritans were baptized by Philip, but had to wait for the Spirit's seal till the apostles came down. In the first case God would humble the proud rejectors of His Son unto the very dust; in the second God would preserve unity.

Here at Caesarea neither consideration had a place, consequently the Holy Ghost fell upon them at once. They heard of remission of sins through faith in the name of Jesus, they received the testimony, and then the Spirit of God. This is what we are warranted to expect. Let the gospel be but simple and full, and God will not fail in His blessed part. To His name be all praise.

W. W. F.

A Heavenly Christ, Therefore a Heavenly Church: Part 2

THE strongly and distinctly marked clauses of the apostle's first prayer for the Ephesian saints (Eph. 1:16-23) have already been noticed. He sought on their behalf that they might be made to know (1) the hope of His calling, (2) the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and (3) the exceeding greatness of His power toward believers.

The last petition introduces a subject on which the apostle in a characteristic manner enlarges in a very full way. It was a theme especially near and dear to the heart of Paul. Christ in heaven and the consequent effects for us of His present exaltation are prominent in almost every epistle. Paul knew not Christ in the days of His flesh. He did not meet Him on the banks of the Jordan, like John or Peter. It was a heavenly Christ that confronted the mad persecutor; and it was the memory of that vision of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ which ever hung like a brilliant beacon star on the horizon of the apostle's life, shaping his course and animating his zeal. He loved to think of Christ in the glory, and when led to speak of the power now working in us, he immediately unfolds its connection with the power that put Christ there. The self-same power that wrought in Him works in us.

Thus the doctrinal truth is made as ever to rest on the solid substructure of fact. It is a fact however only to be appreciated by the spiritual mind; and this the apostle has in view. Such he calls to, consider the most recent display of God's omnipotent power in the resurrection of Christ, unveiling its profound import to the church of God.

In the beginning God displayed His power in the creation of the heavens and the earth. In the history of Israel, He showed His power by their redemption from Egypt. But the greatest exemplification of God's power for the Christian is in the resurrection and exaltation of Christ. This transcends in character the power exercised in furnishing the material universe, as it also does that which crushed the military power of. Pharaoh and over-ruled natural phenomena for the deliverance of His enslaved people. For here we have the annulment of man's last enemy—death, God raising Him Who lay under its power, not merely to life but up to the very chiefest place of authority and glory.

In that supremest position dominion is given Him, and that over all things; “He hath put all things under his feet.” He is Lord of all. Though this universal sway is unseen as yet, the time of its public administration not having come, the glorification of the One Who lay in the rich man's tomb is no secret to faith because revealed. It is to the believer the most signal exercise of divine power. Wondrous are the potent and invisible forces of nature operating alike on the mightier orbs, forming the remoter stellar systems, as in the countless swarms of minute life which people the stagnant ditch. But the glory of God in creation is infinitely surpassed by the glory of the Father in raising the Son.

It is surpassed to the same degree as spiritual things surpass natural, and as eternal things surpass temporal. Mechanism of the universe! Cleavage of the Red Sea! Of what small account are these in comparison with what He has done for the Son of Man, for Him Who was “crucified in weakness,” but “raised in power.” He Who passed by the heavenly dignitaries, in His descent to the assumption of manhood and the subsequent shame and death of Calvary, has now passed them by in His ascent to occupy His seat on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens, “far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.”

What a super-eminent example of the working of God's mighty power is this Life from the dead is much, but exaltation to the very utmost how much more! Singularly few are the instances of resurrection in Old Testament times. And those who thus issued from the gates of the grave through direct divine interposition full soon returned. But here is One thither again truly raised but raised to die no more, being elevated out of the domain of death beyond its reach into the heavenlies whereto death can never come. There even now abides the Son of Man, the permanent demonstration to faith of Omnipotent interference.

Now having strained our thoughts to their utmost in setting forth the heights of exaltation to which Christ is raised, the apostle brings forward a fact of the profoundest interest to the church. In that place of conferred glory, the church is associated with Him., He is not only “head over all things” but “head over all things to the church.” The self-same power, that wrought in Christ to set Him on high, works in us to set us along with Him there. As Son of Man He has those who are destined to share the headship bestowed upon Him in resurrection; and they are described as being already, in purpose and effect, associated along with Him there.

The intimate connection of the church with Christ is illustrated by the figure of the body— “the church which is His body.” This is not the relationship of subjects to a rigor, though of course it is at the same time true that the church is subject to Christ. But this expressive metaphor implies the marvelous truth that the eternal purpose of God would not be realized unless the church is united to the Risen Man in the place of glory to which He is exalted. Indeed, this is the particular import of the succeeding phrase, “the fullness of him that filleth all in all.” The church is called out to become the complement, that which is necessary to complete the Mystic Man on high.

Here then we have the revealed purpose of God with regard to Christ and the church. We are brought into indissoluble association of the most intimate character with Christ, not as a man here below, for this could not be, but as a man in resurrection and exaltation to God's right hand. The fact (for it certainly is not a theory) of itself stamps a unique distinction upon the church. The grand objects and purpose of God in reference to her will never be accomplished on earth. The scene of her consummation in glory is on high, a secret as completely hidden from the world now as the fact of the present glory of Christ. On this account the aspirations of the church, where the true nature of God's calling is apprehended, will be exclusively heavenly, while the world will be regarded as a place of temporary sojourn in which all arrangements are purely provisional and in no way objects of chief concern.

How far this is borne out by the practice of the professing church of to-day needs no word of comment. W. J. H.

Priesthood of Christ: 4

Heb. 4:14-16.

WHILE, therefore, our Lord Jesus here below was tempted like as we are in all points, He was tempted in a most important way that was altogether proper to Himself. And it was meet that it should be so; for He was not what one may call a merely natural member or natural head of the human family. Most truly a man He became, by grace made of a woman; but in His own right God, and the Son of God. And soon He was about to take the place of head of the new creation. He was to be the counterpart of the first man—as he in sin, so the Second in righteousness and grace; and just as Adam fell in a place that was peculiar to him in his measure, so the Lord Jesus stood under incomparably more severe temptations, and is now. the glorified man in resurrection, as the other brought in death for himself and his race. Thus Adam's case, here briefly sketched, helps, or ought to help, any soul that wants to know what temptation is; for the common notion that temptation supposes inward evil is a fatal mistake, and Shows that there is a leaven of unsuspected heterodoxy in all who think so, and thereby fail to conceive of temptation apart from proclivity or tendency to sin. One need not do more than just ask the simple questions, Was not Adam tempted? and what was his condition when tempted? Certainly there was no sin, no inward proclivity to evil, in Adam before he fell. Sin therefore is in no way necessary to temptation in the sense of the word here meant; for the first great instance of temptation, and alas! of sin, was the case of a man who was made without sin. So here; so with the Son of God Who conquered Satan, the destined extirpator of sin, and this too not by power but by suffering, that it might be by righteousness, and thus grace have all its blessed way for and with our souls. How admirably, here on earth morally, now in fact on high, was not our Lord Jesus the counterpart of that first man, Himself the second man, and last Adam!

I affirm then, that He, absolutely without sin, was therefore the very and only One that could be a prime object for temptation on the part of Satan. The enemy's aim was to get sin in; but no, even at the very close, the prince of this world came and found nothing in Him. There was neither sin inwardly to excite, nor was there lack of dependence on God which admitted sin. It was not there, nor could it ever find entrance by independence of God. If Satan had only contrived to lead Him to use His own will, there had been sin at once, and all was ruined, every hope gone. It could not be indeed; for He was both a divine person and the dependent, obedient man. The foe was utterly foiled. And there is the great mistake—that many reason from themselves to Him, and conceive it was a kind of virtue or merit in the Lord. Jesus that He never sinned. Whereas there never was a question about His sinning, either to God or even to any man who believed in Him.

How could any one born of God entertain for one moment the thought of the Lord Jesus failing? Could such a profane dreamer be really supposed to believe that He is the Son of God? All these speculations of men which lower the glory of Jesus simply show that they do not really believe that Jesus is God while a man. They do not know what they mean by such a confession as that He is the Son of God to be honored as the Father. They do not truly believe that He is God Himself as truly as the Father or the Holy Ghost; for His becoming a man detracted nothing from it. He took manhood into union with His deity; but the incarnation in no way lowered the deity, while it raised humanity in His person into union with God. Each nature, however, preserved its own properties. There was no confusion. Each was exactly what it should be—human nature, and divine nature, each in all its own characteristic excellence, combined, not confounded, in His person. And such was Jesus, Who came to glorify His God and Father, and deliver us from our sins to His glory by redemption through His blood.

( To be continued, D.V.)

James 1:13-15

THERE is another class of trials, with which souls are everywhere conversant in Christendom, even though they know but little of the blessed ones, which our Epistle heretofore has brought before us.

It is ridiculous to deny the evident distinction. How could it be said, Count it all joy, when ye fall into various temptations in the form of inward lusts? or blessed is the man that endures solicitations to evil from his corrupt nature? We have already seen that thus far the trials are from without. Our Lord knew then not only as do others, His saints, but beyond any, as we hear not only in the three earlier Gospels, but in Heb. 2:18; 4:15, where it is expressly treated for our consolation, yet with the all-important reserve, “apart from sin,” He was tempted in all things in like manner, without sin, not without sins or sinning, but sin excepted. Of sinful temptation He knew nothing, for in Him was no sin. His nature as born of Mary was holy. It was so constituted from the womb; and therefore it was said by the angel Gabriel, The holy thing which shall be born shall be called the Son of God.

But the believer, though born of God, has another principle—what the apostle calls “the flesh,” which is not subject to the law of God, for neither can it be. Its mind is enmity against God. Not that the Christian is excusable if he allow it to act, now that he has a new life, and the Holy Spirit also given to dwell in him expressly that he may in no way fulfill flesh's lust but oppose it, and not do the things which he naturally desires. For the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control: against such things there is no law. But they that are of Christ Jesus crucified the flesh with its passions and its lusts.

From this, our naturally deplorable state, the person of our Lord Jesus was wholly exempt. He was the Holy One of God. Even the demons owned Him thus, though men are not wanting who have dared to blaspheme His moral glory by imputing to Him the same fallen nature with its proclivities as we have. And such as thus lower His person are only to consistent with that fundamental error by obscuring or even annulling the true sense and power of His atonement, thus in their ignorance and unbelief humanizing alike His person and His work. It is the working of the antichrist, of which we have heard that it comes, and now it is already in the world; nor is any error more dishonoring to God or more deadly to man. It is the more dangerous because with it is often mingled a good deal of truth apparently in advance of what is commonly known, which some perceiving are enticed to accept the error. But no lie is of the truth; and no lie more sure or evil than that which denies the Christ, the Son of God.

It is blessedly true that Christ died to sin once for all; but this was not for Himself but for us who had sin in the flesh. To teach. that Christ could say till the resurrection, Not I but sin that dwelleth in me, is apostasy from the truth, and is Satan's enmity to it, in order to degrade His person and to exalt ours; also to insinuate that sin in the flesh was conquered in Him as it may be in us, instead of being condemned in Him made sin. Never therefore is it nor could it be said, that the Lord mortified His members that were on the earth, never that Ha reckoned Himself dead to sin and alive to God. Precious as all this or more is for the Christian, it would be to the last degree false and derogatory to Him Who knew no sin but was made sin for us.

The Epistle then turns from our holy trials to our unholy ones, and shows their source to be, not in God, but in sinful man. “Let none when tempted say, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted by evils, and himself tempteth none. But each is tempted when by his own lust drawn away and enticed; then lust having conceived bringeth forth sin; and sin when completed giveth birth to death” (vers 13-15).

The distinctness is evident when we read on the one hand that God tempted or tried Abraham (Gen. 22:1, and Heb. 11:17), and on the other that Israel tempted God (Psa. 78: 18, 41, 56, compared with Ex. 17:7). Never does God tempt any one to evil, but He may and does so bring out their faith and fidelity; but it is alas! too sadly common for His people to tempt Him by doubts of His mercy and active care. Hence the word in Deut. 6:16, “Ye shall not tempt Jehovah your God,” the Lord's answer to the devil suggesting that He should cast Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple on the, strength of Psa. 91:11. But the Lord utterly refuses to test God, as if His protection were doubtful in the path of obedience. God is not to be tempted by evils, any more than He so tempts.

The evil temptation comes from within man, though Satan may act on him, for he ever evilly tempts to evil. So it was man at the beginning was tempted when his nature was not evil; but instead of repelling it as the Lord did, he allowed and received it; so that henceforth the race was contaminated like its fallen head. The precise contrast is seen in Christ, to Whom the prince of the world came at the end, and had nothing in Him then any more than when first tempted. But it is wholly different with us, conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity as we are naturally, though now by grace born anew. Therefore have we an altogether distinct class and character of temptation, which the Lord had not, as incompatible with His person as with His work. In Him was no lusting against the Spirit, no contrariety in Him, because He was, as no one else could be, the Holy One of God. The Word became flesh (John 1:14). Incarnation was true of Him, but of Him alone. But the believer, though having life in the Son, has the fallen nature, and hence is liable to evil temptation.

“But each is tempted when by his own lust drawn away and enticed.” The Lord though tempted in all points similarly could not be in this way, because it would have denied and destroyed His moral glory, and it would have frustrated the purpose of God in saving us to His glory. That the Lord was in like manner tempted in all things has this immense limitation, “sin excepted,” not sinning only in fact, which is true of course, but “sin” in the nature from which He was absolutely exempt. He had not and could not have such evil temptations from a corrupt nature, because His was expressly holy. There was no lust of His own to draw away or allure. Evil suggestion from without He therefore uniformly rejected with indignation, even if an honored apostle, shocked at the suffering before Him as inconsistent to his mind and feeling with His glory, repudiated His death and such a death as an impossibility, and received rebuke stern beyond example. With the believer too often is it likewise, when like Peter his mind is not on the things of God but on those of men. Christ sought His Father's glory, and unrighteousness was not in Him, but He did always the things pleasing to Him. Self-will there was none. He was come to do God's will, and did it perfectly and at all cost.

Far different is the saint when thus off his guard and ceasing ever so little from dependence on God. “Then lust, having conceived, bringeth forth sin; and sin, when completed, giveth birth to death.” How graphic and true! But it is the strict line of James who looks at the moral effects, and does not occupy himself or the reader with that deep sounding of causes which we find in the Epistles of Paul. It is scarce needed to say that both views are invaluable, and alike given by inspiration.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:6

THE Holy Spirit now brings before us in a general way the descendants of Ham or Cham. As there seems prophetic significance in the name of Japheth (“may he spread”), and it was expressly claimed for Noah in Gen. 5:29, there appears to be also in that of his younger son, which means “warm” or hot, and so “dark” or black.

“And the sons of Ham, Cush and Mizraim and Phut and Canaan” (ver. 6).

The prominent fact that strikes one here is that this is the branch of mankind which after the deluge distinguished itself by the earliest and most vigorous civilization; and this not in an isolated instance, but alike in Asia and in Africa. Scripture attests the truth; and even rationalism, though ever hostile, cannot dispute it. But along with material progress another characteristic is no less marked: the degradation of the race, their fall into ways and habits of savagery. Phut illustrates this as distinctly as Cush and Mizraim and Canaan showed themselves in different respects pioneers of earthly progress.

However opposite, both are effects of departure from God. In an unfallen earth and the innocence of man, there was room for neither the savage nor the civilized state. No dream of unbelieving poets is more remote from the truth than the pictures they have drawn of early human beings, unable as yet to converse, and subsisting on acorns, wild fruits, edible roots scooped with difficulty out of the reluctant earth; at length imitating the birds, or rising from ejaculations, to express wants and feelings. Then in the course of time, instead of wandering after precarious food, some conceive the idea of collecting seeds, and cultivating their growth in patches cleared from the forest or brushwood; others, again, betake themselves to the chase, and so provide food and clothing for themselves, and begin also to barter with those that tilled the earth, who bethought them too of rearing the animals capable of domestication in order to their supply or exchange. Later in time rude huts and ruder rafts or canoes were made for land and water; and with the long awaited social life villages and towns would arise and give birth to the useful arts in their variety, and to the unlimited refinements of life.

We have already seen how the inspired history contradicts this fanciful scheme. In God's account of man sinless in the paradise of Eden we see our first parents surrounded by every good thing, endowed with mind and moral feelings as well as speech, with a given sphere for activity, and placed under a defined responsibility to the only true God Whose presence and intercourse they enjoyed, and Who thus blessed them whom He tried as bound to obedience under penalty of death. It was a state of natural blessings enjoyed with thanksgiving to Him Who gave them. Alas! they disobeyed Jehovah Elohim, and were expelled from their earthly paradise, but not without a fresh revelation suited in God's mercy to their fallen condition, and directing their hearts to a Deliverer. He from the nature of the case could not but be divine, yet One Who in seine wondrous way must be human also, to suffer indeed but to triumph over the mighty and subtle foe—the bruised Seed of woman to bruise the Serpent's head. Along with this hope did Jehovah Elohim clothe them with coats of skin—with that which had its origin in death: a thing suggestive, especially in connection with the revelation then given, of grave but comforting assurance to guilty man, in lieu of a merely natural device in vain adopted to cover their nakedness.

But it is equally sure, according to scripture, that the arts of civilization began and were developed in that family which rejected God's revelation for nature; which resented His disapproval and vented hatred on the believing brother, as righteous as Cain was not; and which in despair and defiance betook themselves out of a bad conscience and its fears to civic life in its cradle, and sought to make, if not a paradise, a substitute for it in the elegant arts and letters that embellish society. This is surely civilization in the germ; and we see it in Cain's line from the earliest age ever expanding, and recounted for our serious thought in the same chapter 4. of Genesis. To impute its rise or progress to revelation is what none could do who reads believingly.

It is no less plain that Ham and his sons are as marked after the deluge by their progress in civilization, as by the degeneracy into barbarism. To this, war would naturally expose the sufferers from superior power, fleeing into distant lands and forgetting at length what had once been familiar in the new sphere where they sought liberty.

Of Ham's sons Cush has the first place. According to scripture that stock settled in lands the most remote. There is without doubt an Asiatic as well as an African Cush. Gen. 2:13 presents its difficulty, but it would seem to be anticipative like Havilah and Assyria; for it is certain that till the flood there was no actual settlement of lands in their nations. But we know from our chapter that a notable departure was first taken by one of the Cushite descent to possess himself of power by usurpation, and this not in Africa but in the plain of Shinar, of which there are details to follow. It was certainly not after their arrival in Africa that this ambitious movement took place, but early in that day of change; and in fact not a few traces exist, philological and historical, of early connection between Ethiopia, Southern Arabia, and the cities on the lower Euphrates, as may be seen in Rawlinson's Herod. i. 442, 443. No one doubts that in general Cush as a country lies beyond higher Egypt; but as a race they settled far more widely, as already pointed out. And this explains more than one passage, which is commonly and altogether misunderstood from not taking the facts into account no less than from holding fast the strict wording of scripture. Thus, Isaiah (18:1) says, “Ho! land shadowing with wings, which art beyond the rivers of Cush.” It is absurd to infer that this means either Egypt or Ethiopia, any more than Babylonia. The object of the phrase is on the contrary to distinguish the land in question from either those lands or from any within those limits, which had in the past interfered with Israel. It is the prediction, not yet accomplished, of a land beyond the Nile in the south and the Euphrates in the north, which are the rivers of Cush. That unnamed land, described in striking terms as distinctly outside the Gentile powers which had hitherto acted on the chosen people, is to espouse their cause at a future day; but to no good effect, for the nations will oppose, jealous and hostile as of old, just before Jehovah takes up the matter and restores Israel to the place of His name, to Mount Zion. So in Zeph. 3:10 we read, “From beyond the river of Cush my suppliants, the daughter of my dispersed, shall bring my oblation.” Egypt or Ethiopia might be described as on one side of Cush, and Babylonia on the other; but Jehovah shall bring His dispersed from lands expressly beyond both.

There is no question as to the identification of Mizraim, and the great magnificence of its civilization as of the Asiatic Cush in the remotest antiquity. The form of the word in Hebrew is the dual, which some would refer to higher and lower Egypt. However this may be, the context decides that both Cush and Mizraim mean men, and sons of Ham. Ephraim, born in Egypt, has also the dual form, but is none the less surely the name of a man.

Phut or Put exemplifies the more degraded stock of Ham's descendants in Africa, contiguous to Egypt and Ethiopia, and named with one or other at times. But Phut can hardly be the Libyan as A.V. makes out of Jer. 46:9, or Libya as from Ezek. 30:5, and 33:5 where it should be Phut as in chap. xxvii. 10. The Lubim as in Nah. 3:9 point rather to the Lybians. The very obscurity which covers this African branch of Ham's sons serves to show how low they had fallen.

But Canaan, last named, has the most unenviable place of all, as the early object of curse, and the direst adversary of Israel in the land assigned according to promise: a highly civilized race, but steeped in shameless idolatry and every moral abomination, and therefore given up according to earthly righteousness to extermination, both because they deserved it, and as a safeguard lest Israel should be drawn into like iniquities; as indeed, failing to execute His sentence, they proved to their own sin, shame, and cost. More details we hope to have in due course.

The Atonement Money (duplicate Rev)

Ex. 30:11-16.

THE simpler our apprehension of “atonement” as in the scriptures, the happier. It implies a change of condition toward God. Instead of being at a distance from Him, we are brought nigh; instead of being in a state of enmity, we are at peace with Him. Such is our standing. Whatever experience we may have of it, our standing is that of peace with God, when we have received the reconciliation which has been accomplished by the blood of the Cross.

But this reconciliation, this rectifying our relation to God, rests on the fact that God finds His satisfaction in what Christ has done on the cross for us. My peace with God depends on faith in His satisfaction in Christ. If God did not rest in Him and His work for me, how could I rest in God? If God's demand in righteousness against me had not been answered, I could have had no warrant for talking of reconciliation, or taking my place in peace before God. I was God's debtor—debtor to die under the penalty He had righteously put upon sin. Christ acted as my Surety with Him, for He undertook my cause as a sinner. If God had not been quite satisfied as to my responsibilities, I should still be at a distance from Him, and He would still have a question with me, a demand upon me and against me.

Therefore I ask, has God been satisfied with what Christ has done for me? He answers that He has; and He has let me know this by the most wondrous, glorious, magnificent testimonies that can be conceived, He has published His satisfaction in the cross of Christ, in Christ as the purger of sins, by the mouth of the most unimpeachable witnesses that were ever heard in a court where justice or righteousness presided to try a matter. He tells me that all His demands against me as a sinner are fully and righteously discharged. The rent veil declares it, the empty sepulcher declares it, the ascension of Christ declares it, the presence of the Holy Ghost (gift as He is, and fruit of the glorification of our Surety) declares it. Were ever such august testimonies delivered on the debating of a cause? Were witnesses of higher dignity or of such unchallengeable credit ever brought forward to give in their depositions? Were depositions ever rendered in such convincing style?

The sequel is well weighed. Peace with God is ours, settled by God Himself. For we plead the cross of Christ as a very title to peace, God having declared that He and all His demands against us are satisfied in and by that cross. God rests in Christ, and so do we. My experience may be cold and feeble, and is so surely; it may be blotted by doubts and fears and other affections of which I ought to be ashamed. But my standing is sure and strong—just as the throne of God itself. The Purger of sins has been raised from the death by which He answered for sins, and has been taken up to that throne as such a Purger; and if He can be moved, so must the throne where He sits. If He be disallowed there, the word and call and voice of God that summoned Him there must be gainsaid and disallowed also. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God,” is to be read as setting out our standing on that stable basis. By faith in the death and resurrection of the Lamb of God we are justified and have acceptance with Him, standing in divine righteousness, on what God owed to His work. This is our standing before Him, our relationship to Him. Our experience may not measure it, but such it is; though surely our experience should be true to our standing.

But let me look a little particularly at Ex. 30. The ordinance of the atonement-money tells us that God appropriates His elect to Himself, only as a ransomed people. And surely we know this to be so. If we be not ransomed, we are not His. If we be not in the value of the blood of Christ, we are not numbered to Him as belonging to Him. The act of numbering is the symbol of appropriation.

To number things expresses ownership of them (Psa. 147:4).

Before the institution of the ordinance, this had been a recognized truth. It was the first-born whether of man or beast that was His in the land of Egypt, though it was the first-born who had been ransomed (Ex. 12; 13). And afterward in the day of the New Testament we learn the same. And surely again I may say that we know it is so. Only we have it here, among a thousand others, in the mouth of these three witnesses: by the testimony of the Passover, by that of the atonement money, and by the word of the Lord Jesus.

But this testimony not only tells us that we are there to find ourselves in relationship with God by being ransomed—people who make mention before Him of Christ's blood, and of that only, bringing with them into His presence the atonement-money and that only; but it tells us that He has fixed and settled what the ransom or atonement-money shall be. This is full of consolation when we think of it. We learn all about the way of coming to God from Himself. We have not to reason about it, but to accept His account of the matter in all its characters. Every Israelite had to present himself to God with his half-shekel, which was called “the atonement-money.” Whether he was rich or poor made no difference. He had not to measure his offering himself: Jehovah had prescribed and settled what it was to be. And each and all appeared in virtue of one and the same ransom. We gather these conclusions in all clearness and decision and simplicity. It is the divine good-pleasure, and the sure revelation of God, that He have His people with Him and before Him only as a favored people. The price and quality and measure of the ransom were settled by Himself, so that they have not to object or to question, be they who they may. And it is in this way all His people are not only then reconciled and brought home to Him, but linked in one and the same salvation, and animated by one and the same spring of triumph and exultation.

The conscience of a sinner, instructed by scripture, may therefore indulge itself in these thoughts and assurances. The true half-shekel, the real atonement-money (that is, the blood of the Lamb), is the consideration, the full adequate settled consideration, on which the covenant of peace rests. It is a righteous ransom: God is just while He justifies the sinners who trust in it. The Lord Himself says of it, “This is the blood of the new covenant in my blood.” It is called “the blood of the everlasting covenant;” and it is preached to us that by the virtue of it God, as “the God of peace,” has “brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep,” a Savior-Shepherd for those that believe (Heb. 13:20).

And I might add to this, and to what I have already said, that the adequacy of this mystic half-shekel, this precious blood of atonement, is finely set forth in contrast with the insufficiency of all other sacrifices in Heb. 10:1-18. The insufficiency of all the Levitical offerings is there concluded from the testimony which they bear themselves. Out of their own mouth they are judged; and no judgment can be of a higher quality than that. Take the fact that he who made these offerings, the priest in the Levitical sanctuary, only stood before God, having to go out again from the divine presence in order to repeat the same sacrifice in the appointed time. The fact that such repetition was made year by year thus kept sins, not the remission of them, in remembrance. How solemn the recognition of insufficiency in these sacrifice-offerings by Christ Himself, when according to the volume of the book He comes to present Himself as ready in the cause of sinners to do God's will by His own death! For indeed it was impossible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.

In contrast with this, we have the adequacy of the blood of Christ strikingly testified and concluded, in the fact that He is seated in the heavenly sanctuary, as having satisfied God by the sacrifice He has offered, and accordingly was greeted and welcomed and made to take His place forever before God al the Purger of sins. The fact is also that He is now occupied with thoughts and expectations of His coming kingdom, needing no more to think about sin and the atonement for it, as He did in the volume of the book or in the day of settling the terms of the everlasting covenant. And the further fact is that the Holy Ghost, in the new covenant which is sealed by the blood of Christ, tells of remission of sins, not as did the Levitical priests over the sacrifices they offered of their remembrance.

This is all encouraging and assuring. But I note another thing. The adequacy of the true half-shekel, the true atonement-money, is not to be rested simply on the fact of its being appointed by God, but on its own nature. It is appointed by God because of its efficacy, because of its intrinsic adequacy. It is a half-shekel “of the sanctuary,” having been weighed in the balances of the holy of holies, and found of full value before the throne of God. We are not to say, the blood of the Lamb is the appointed way, as though God might have chosen or taken some other. We are rather to say, it is the only way; for in that sacrifice, but in that only, God is just and the justifier of the believer. It is the price, the only price, which satisfies the balances of the sanctuary, and which gives the sinner an answer to the throne of righteousness. Blessed truth l it does all this; so that the apostle loses himself in admiration, as he gazes at this great sight and meditates on the sacrifice which had the virtue of “spotlessness” and of the “eternal Spirit” in it. We see him treating with some scorn and indignity the thought of the blood of bulls and goats, saying, “It is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.” But with fervency of spirit, as one that was losing himself in wonder, love, and praise, looking at the cross of Christ, he says, “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your consciences from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb. 9:14; 10:4).

J. G. B. (corrected).

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 6

Chap. 5.

IT is not necessary according to Jewish reckoning, as applied to the most important of all events (the death and resurrection of our Lord), to extend “three days, night or day” beyond the closing hours of the day when Esther appointed the fast, the next day, and the morning after; for any part of a day counted as a night and day. When the third day arrived, the queen acts on their solemn laying of the matter before Him Who governs all.

“And it came to pass on the third day that Esther put on royal [apparel] and stood in the inner court of the king's house, over against the king's house: and the king sat upon his royal throne in the royal house, over against the entrance of the house. And it was so, when the king saw Esther the queen standing in the court, that she obtained favor in his sight: and the king held out to Esther the golden scepter that [was] in his hand. So Esther drew near, and touched the top of the scepter. Then said the king unto her, What wilt thou, queen Esther? and what [is] thy request? it shall be given thee even to the half of the kingdom. And Esther said, If [it seem] good unto the king, let the king and Haman come this day unto the banquet that I have prepared for him. Then the king said, Cause Haman to make haste, that it may be done as Esther hath said. So the king and Haman came to the banquet that Esther had prepared. And the king said unto Esther at the banquet of wine, What [is] thy petition? and it shall be granted thee: and what [is] thy request? even to the half of the kingdom it shall be performed. Then answered Esther, and said, My petition and my request [is]—if I have found favor in the sight of the king, and if it please the king to grant my petition, and to perform my request—let the king and Haman come to the banquet that I shall prepare for them, and I will do to-morrow as the king hath said” (vers. 1-8).

Whatever the circumstances, God remains God; and faith knows it and counts on Him. To all appearance it was a dangerous adventure. Even so Esther was ready to risk her life for the Jews in their lowest estate. But she knew no less than Mordecai that deliverance must arise, because God is pledged to it, Whose purposes of blessing for man on earth and glory to His own name are bound up with His promise to the seed of Abraham. This made her path clear to seek at all cost that the blow aimed at their destruction should be averted. The spurious additions of Jewish traditions strike one by contrast with the noble simplicity of scripture here as everywhere. But we do well to consider how Esther was led to defer making the request which filled her heart, when nature would have at once spread it before the king moved deeply as he was by her personal charms. And what a trial the delay even of a day so promising must have been to the Jews if not even to her cousin! But the Unseen was secretly guiding and would use that seemingly dangerous delay to work for her and all as well as for His own deep and good designs.

The second banquet gave rise to fresh pride and undisguised malice in the enemy, who sought immediate revenge destined to fall on his own head.

“And Haman went forth that day joyful and glad of heart; but when Haman saw Mordecai in the king's gate, that he stood not up nor moved for him, he was filled with wrath against Mordecai. Nevertheless Hainan refrained himself, and went home; and he sent and fetched his friends and Zeresh his wife. And Haman recounted unto them the glory of his riches, and the multitude of his children, and [all the things] wherein the king had promoted him, and how he had advanced him above the princes and servants of the king. Haman said moreover, Yea, Esther the queen did let no man come in with the king unto the banquet that she had prepared but myself; and to-morrow also am I invited by her together with the king, Yet all this availeth me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate. Then said Zeresh his wife and all his friends unto him, Let a gallows be made of fifty cubits high, and in the morning speak thou unto the king that Mordecai may be hanged thereon: then go thou in merrily with the king unto the banquet. And the thing pleased Haman: and he caused the gallows to be made” (vers. 9-14).

In the result we shall see how Satan outwits himself though all the power of the world seems on his side, and those who unworthily bear the Name are exposed to the last degree of peril. How encouraging then to look up! Yea, how sad if we do not who know His love incomparably more displayed than in Old Testament times, and have His word more fully communicated! who have His Son, and His Son now man glorified on high, and His Spirit sent forth to abide in us! If then we have little strength, as is undoubtedly true, let us keep His word and not deny His name. How great is the snare of not holding fast what we have!

The Eastern Little Horn: 1

Dan. 8

WE have had before us most prominently the West, which among the earthly powers was the chief object for the prophet's contemplation as unveiled by the Spirit of God in the second and the seventh chapters of Daniel. This is the fourth and last Empire of man, and its revival under Satan's power, the occasion which will bring the Lord Jesus from heaven (2 Thess. 2:8, Rev. 17, 19.) to the judgment of the world, and to the setting up of what is called in the Revelation “The world-kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ” (Rev. 11:15). Thence we see the Christ has not yet received His world-kingdom. It is clear that the state of things proclaimed under the seventh trumpet has not arrived, but assuredly it will in due time. It is plainly to be at the end of the present age or dispensation, which is followed by a new “age to come” before the everlasting state.

Now you will find in all these visions of the Book of Daniel, whether made to Nebuchadnezzar or vouchsafed to the prophet, that they look forward to that epoch or what is called in a later chapter, “the time of the end.” As the additional visions are given, further light is afforded or there would be no reason for giving them at all. They all, more or less, evidently end with divine judgment on the power to which they refer. Further it is clear that the vision of which we have been reading in chap. 8. is of a comparatively limited nature. There is a preliminary review of the second and third empires; and you may wonder why a branch of the third should stretch away to the still future time when the Lord comes in judicial power and glory. But the reason of this will appear presently. You will do well to remember the truth already stated, that these successive world-powers or empires were superseded by one another; but there is no intimation that they lose their existence when they lose their supreme power. They retained a subordinate place after they were subdued; but they are shown to have a continued existence still. This indeed is distinctly stated in Dan. 7:12: “As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away; yet their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.”

Here then we now hear of the Persian empire; where we would draw attention to the fact that Persia is no longer as in chap. 7. shown as a bear. There the moral judgment of the Holy Spirit expressed itself symbolically about it and the other powers to Daniel. Nor is it either the arms and breast of silver, such as Nebuchadnezzar saw. The glory of Persia is somewhat diminished in comparison with the kingdom of Babylon, under Nebuchadnezzar; but still it was a kingdom of great energy and conquest, especially at first. But why is it here changed from the bear of Daniel in the seventh chapter to be the ram as portrayed in chap. 8.? It would appear to be for a very interesting reason. The second and third kingdoms were friendly to Israel in a way that neither Babylon nor Rome could pretend to be. Rome has hitherto and always been the enemy of the Jews. It was Rome that also razed the city and the sanctuary of Jerusalem to its foundations. None save the Edomites have been such unrelenting persecutors of the Jews as the Romans. And so the Rabbis identify Edom of old with Rome in modern times as the unsparing enemy of God's earthly people repudiated for a while for their sins.

No doubt the guilt of Israel was inexcusable and shameless, but God has not forever cast off His people whom He foreknew; He may be indignant, but always has pity for them; and He is looking onward to the day when He will gather Israel out of the lands from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. Whatever God gives, He stands to it; and sooner or later, when the day comes for His grace to work according to His promise, His call will indeed be effectual. The Jews are enemies now as regards the gospel, and grace brings Gentiles meanwhile to God. But as regards election, they are beloved on account of the fathers. For as the Gentiles once were disobedient to God but now become objects of mercy through Jewish unbelief, even so these were disobedient to your mercy, that they also may become objects of mercy. For God shut up all unto disobedience that He might have mercy on them all. And so, when the fullness of the Gentiles is come in, all Israel shall be saved. There ought to be no doubt that their call was from God and in the end sure. Every Christian knows it for himself and for the church; but he ought in no way to question it for the Jew. Rom. 11:29 is said by the apostle himself expressly about Israel, though the principle is no less true of ourselves, who should never forget His people, and God's mercy yet in store for them.

Now there was exceptional kindness on the part of Medo-Persia; and this is seen from the first in the conduct of Darius, who was the first actor of that empire recorded in this book (chap. 6.). If Babylon was the power which became the enslaver and jailor of the Jew, Cyrus was the characteristic restorer of the Jews to their own land; and this in the very first year of his reign. It is clear that the prophecies of God had a powerful influence on him. It is true he did not know God; but God knew him, and this struck him immensely. He was not disobedient to the vision, as some men nominally Christian are to-day. Isaiah wrote not his chapters 44., 45. in vain even for him. Daniel too was famed among Jews and Gentiles before that day; as the prophets were acquainted one with another, and cherished the highest reverence for such as had gone before. It is only a conceited age that raises up its petty head, and shakes it at the word of God. But what opens the door of true intelligence in the scriptures is on the contrary faith, and as a consequence love for everything of God.

Christ personally is the living bread that came down out of heaven that the eater might live forever; and such is His written word, the sustenance of that life: not bread, but God's word; and in such a way as cannot be destroyed, though in detail it may by man be injured as other things. How perverted has Christian baptism been and the Lord's supper, in what divergent ways, how deeply! And what shall we say of priesthood, ministry, the church itself, from early centuries? So the word of God may be perverted through either ignorance or craft; not only if truly rendered, it stands, but nothing can be conceived so admirable. Even the scholars of the world cannot rest without being occupied with it. Who in Christendom but litterateurs care about the Vedas, or the Avesta the Yik-king, the Shooking, or the She-king? or about the Koran if we come later? Yes, the remarkable fact confronts us of mere rationalists, who believe in nothing of the Christian truth, spending their lives on the Bible, Old Testament and New. A few scholars may look into the heathen books to see what were the beliefs of ancient races; but think of the many baptized skeptics who give themselves up to the life-long study of the Bible! No doubt they do not lack boldness in treating of the holiest themes; nor are they indisposed to show by their peremptory decisions what wonderful critics they are, as well as the strange shortcomings of others who differ or are opposed to them. What a contrast with the inspired, both in communicating their messages and in estimating the prophets of old!

However, be this as it may, the seventh chapter of our prophet sets before us a bear and a leopard as the symbols of the Persian and the Macedonian empires, which chap. 8. represents under a ram and a he-goat. The reason for this change we take to be the close bearing of the latter chapter on Israel, and the kindness shown by those empires in their early days. Cyrus and Darius Hystaspes stand out prominently as their benefactors; and Alexander the Great paid them marked honor, as is known, whether or not we receive the account Josephus gives of the High Priest meeting Alexander and the reverence paid him by the conqueror.

Although viewed before God the Medo-Persian and the Macedonian were but “beasts,” and no better than the Babylonian before and the Roman after, still God did not fail to appreciate kindness done to His chastened people. Hence the change of the symbols in chap. 8. compared with 7. In this special aspect they are presented as clean animals. First, Medo-Persia is now viewed as a ram; and, secondly, Greece as a he-goat. Whatever might be their consideration of the afflicted Jew, there was no mercy, nor lack of ambitious will one toward another. We have the ram as remarkably described now as the bear had been in the preceding vision. It was necessary to intimate a composite power. In chap. vii. the bear raised itself on one side. In chap. 8. the ram had two horns, both high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last. Nothing like this was the case with the eagle-winged lion of Babylon. Notably distinct was the Greek he-goat, first with one conspicuous horn between his eyes, and later, when it was broken, four of mark (answering to the four heads of the leopard) toward the four winds of the heavens. Still more different was the Roman beast, with its ten horns, and a little one that subsequently overthrew three of the first horns.

Plainly then we herein see the peculiarity of Medo-Persia thus described as a twofold imperial power, and so contrasted with the one before, and the rest that succeeded. This quality belonged to it only. Nor this only; for, as we have read, it is stated carefully that one of the high horns came up after the other, and that the later one became the higher. This was the Persian element, which, though later, surpassed the previous Medish state.

There was nothing similar in any other of these world-powers. (To be continued, D.V.)

The Two Children

Matt. 21:28-32.

The proud men who were blind to the glory of Christ, and averse alike to God's grace and truth, raised the question of His authority. It is always so with such as value themselves, and love not God's intervention, and are jealous of those that do His work. He could have pointed to witnesses greater than John; though among women-born none had risen greater than John the Baptist. But the works which the Father gave Him to complete testified yet more. So did the Father's voice. And the scriptures which bore witness of Him He treats as the highest possible, for they have a permanence which no mere words can possess. But here the Lord met their unbelief by appealing to the baptism of John: whence was it? Of heaven, or of men? They saw their dilemma, and fearing man, not God, they answered, We cannot tell. Confessing their incapacity, chief priests and elders though they were, as the cover of their dishonesty, they are left without an answer. The Lord however presents them with a portrait, not of themselves only, but of those they despised.

“But what think ye? A man had two children; and he came to the first and said, Child, go work to-day in the vineyard. And he answered and said, I will not; but afterward he regretted and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise; and he answered and said, I [go], sir, and went not. Which of the two did the will of the father? They say, The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say to you, that the tax-gatherers and the harlots go before you into the kingdom of God. For John came in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not; but the tax-gatherers and the harlots believed him. And ye, when ye saw, regretted not afterward to believe him” (vers. 28-32).

It is a plain and direct dealing with conscience. For two classes were then before the Lord's eye: the rude and profligate, the careless and profane, who made no pretension to religion and pursued worldly profit and open sin; and the respectable and decorous, who piqued themselves on heeding the rites of religion and on their own decent character. Now mankind in Christendom is the same still, tested by a standard more searching than John's, though his was a mighty work, as the Lord bore witness to him. Viewed in themselves or in the light of testimony, how living is the picture! The one class puts shameless insult on God, and glories in lawlessness. But an appeal comes which convinces the daring sinner of his outrageous evil: he breaks down in self-judgment; he turns to God and serves Him whom he had set at naught. The other class, on the contrary, claims credit for its proper ways; and as conscience is untouched, they are self-satisfied, and God remains unknown. How exactly such souls answer to him who says “I go, sir, and went not!” Are there not many like him now?

Hence when John, who did no miracles nor claimed official position, came preaching a baptism of repentance for remission of sins, people flocked freely to be baptized, confessing their sins. But as the rule, the Lord here shows that it was not those who justified themselves before men that were baptized by John. They disdained to enter the kingdom by the same strait gate and narrow way as was open to the tax-gatherer and the harlot. But there can be no other way to God for the sinner. The grace of the gospel condemns sins and insists on repentance still more than John coming in the way of righteousness; for the gospel proclaims that nothing but the blood of Jesus, God's Son, could cleanse from sins, and that His blood does cleanse us from every sin. How deadly and defiling were our sins that such a propitiation alone could avail! Therein is a test far deeper than John's preaching, excellent and efficacious as it was; for it was repulsive for a moral man and zealous Jew to confess his sins, like a tax-gatherer or a harlot. How intolerable to be put with such on the same common level of guilt and ruin! This is precisely what the gospel does even more thoroughly; and it is therefore of all things most odious to the self-righteous formalist.

When John came, calling men to confess their sins in view of the coming Messiah and the kingdom of the heavens, conscience answered to his call in those who had walked in gross lusts and indifference to the religious world. “The tax-gatherers and the harlots believed him.” They knew in their souls that they had led a life of shame and iniquity; and they bowed to a call which they recognized to be of God. But not so those who stood well in their own eyes and in the public opinion of the day. They therefore annulled for themselves the counsel of God, instead of justifying God by being baptized by John as the despised ones did (Luke 7:29, 30). The self-righteous when they “saw, had no regret afterward to believe him.”

Hence too, since that day, when the gospel is preached, men who are boastful of their religion, their church, or their character, are ever its bitterest enemies. The Jews as the general fact not only refused it but tried to stir up the Gentiles against it everywhere. Nothing in their eyes more hateful than that grace which denied the value of their righteousness, and announces God's righteousness that He may be just and justifier of him that has faith in Jesus. For this openly declares that there is no difference, all having sinned and coming short of God's glory; as it also declares to all who believe, that they are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Therefore, being apart from works of law, the gospel is as open to the Gentile as to the Jew, since God is one, Who shall justify circumcision by faith, not otherwise, and uncircumcision through their faith since they believe. Jesus the Lord is the way to the Father: the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And salvation is in none other name under heaven that is given among men whereby we must be saved. Did any wonder at the Lord eating with sinners and the disreputable? His answer was, They that are strong have no need of a physician, but those that are sick. But go and learn what that is, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice; for I came to call not righteous but sinners. Do you, dear reader, know Him thus?

Salvation by Grace: 1

Luke 23:39-43.

THE occasion was unique. It was just the moment for God to make manifest His grace. Man's iniquity was complete. And when all classes, the high and the low, were alike implicated in pouring scorn upon God and His Son, it was of no use to be drawing distinctions. It was due to the Son of God that His Father should show the efficacy of His blood for any—the immediate and abiding value of His blood.

The moment gave a striking opportunity; for there was a man openly a sinner, a criminal, a malefactor of the darkest dye. Indeed there were two; and we have no ground whatever for supposing that he who repented and believed was less a criminal than the man who died in impenitent rebellion against God. Still less is there any ground to suppose that the man who there confessed the Savior had been under previous process, or that any deep work had been going on in his soul before he hung upon the cross. Scripture, as far as it speaks, is distinctly against such a thought. Matthew and Mark speak of the robbers railing upon Him; not of one only, but of both. We know that men try to get rid of this, and would make out the one to be something not so bad as his fellow. A good deal has actually been made of the fact that they were not thieves, but robbers! Is it not extraordinary that men should think there was any difference to signify? A thief may be a sneaking robber, and a robber a bold thief; but one would think that when sin is weighed in the presence of God, it is not very much worth talking of the difference between them. For one thing is very clear—that they were both suffering as robbers. That is, they were not merely dishonest men, purloining what was not their own, but they accompanied it as usual with boldness rather than treachery, with violence or even murder. Barabbas certainly did so; and these at any rate were both of them robbers.

The difference between them does not lie there at all; and they would have been no better or worse if they had been thieves and not robbers. We must not lose ourselves by letting slip the grand truth of the grace of God through Christ toward the lost. But there was an expression produced not merely in the feelings, but in the conscience, of one of these robbers; and we can well understand that the wonderful spectacle of the Holy Sufferer, which had impressed Pilate when He was not in the depth of His sufferings but only in the outer circle of them, should have deeply impressed the dying man. Even such a hardened soul as Pilate, accustomed to condemn so many to death, and historically known to have been a man of desperate character, and most unscrupulous—even he had his feelings, and shrank (I do not say with really righteous indignation) from the suggestion of the priests. He morally condemned them, and evidently felt how false they were, and hypocritical and bloodthirsty. He wanted to let Jesus off, not wishing to add one more crime to the long list of his life's villainies.

But there was more than this, and quite different from it, dawning on one of the robbers; and what brought it out was the continued railing of his fellow. “If thou be the Christ, save thyself and us.” The conviction evidently pierced the soul of this penitent robber that here was a Man who differed not so much externally as morally and essentially.

No circumstances made such a difference. Education, religion—as people call it, or whatever they like—none of these things made the difference. The robber had heard Him, for faith cometh by hearing, not by seeing. It was not the sight of Jesus, for thousands saw the same thing that he saw; but he heard the Holy Victim for sin on the cross say, “Father, forgive them.” One may not say that these were the words to sink so deep into his soul; but how calculated they were to go right through the conscience of the man, and to act on his heart!

So it is written “There is forgiveness, that Thou mayest be feared.” Yes, “forgiveness with Thee that Thou mayest be feared!” not fear of being lost merely, that he knew. No Jew could be without more or less knowing the danger of ruin if a man die in his sins. But “there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.” And here was that most solemn moment, when never were so many, not merely of the rabble but of the greatest in the land, and those that occupied officially the highest religious places, animated with one implacable desire for the destruction of this most holy Man! and this most holy Man uttered not one word of judgment, but at that awful crisis pleaded that His Father would forgive them! A new light dawned upon the dying robber. Samuel did not so pray, nor David, nor Solomon. Who ever before? You must wait for Christ that you may have such a prayer: then only is everything in perfection.

It was the proof of this perfection of the Lord Jesus, along with His wonderful words, His looking for and counting upon mercy for others, which touched the heart of the robber. Who could He be? There was but One Person conceivable. The woman of Samaria, although she was utterly dark and ignorant, knew quite well that “when the Messiah cometh, He will tell us all things.” Every Jew of course knew that. Now this poor crucified robber sits in judgment on himself, and wholly refuses the railing in which he had up to that moment himself participated.

“Dost not thou fear God?” said he. He feared God then. He is astonished at the other robber. He cannot tell why the words that had won his own soul to God had not won his fellow. “Dost not thou fear God, seeing that thou art under the same condemnation?” They were all alike crucified; but, oh, how different each! The Messiah crucified; hardened, unbelieving, robbers crucified. But in one, as he hung upon the cross, there was such a new-born sense of grace that it produced “fear of God,” horror of sin, faithful dealing with it, reproving his fellow with whom he had joined, not dreading a retort, nor afraid of being asked— “Who are you? what do you pretend to? Why, you have been railing, too!” What then produced such an entire change of feeling in the man? Faith. Yes, it always produces repentance when it is itself genuine. Faith makes a man willing to see sin as he never saw it before, and makes him see it because God is revealed to him. We never can see sin, except through the cross of Christ, in the light of God. It was Christ crucified Who brought the light of God into the man's conscience. How exceeding sinful must his sins be to bring down the Son of God to die for them.

The very effort to please God makes a conscientious renewed man feel his inability, and sin becomes increasingly sinful. There is nothing that brings out the hideousness of sin so deeply, and so prominently, without destroying confidence before God, as the grace of Christ. Law does it in measure. Christ does it far better than law, as was the case with this poor robber. It was not law, but Christ that made him thus judge himself, and form a sound estimate of the sin of his fellow— “Dost not thou fear God, seeing that thou art in the same condemnation? and we, indeed, justly.” His conscience was purged. When a man has a purged conscience, he can afford to confess his sins. He now tells all out exactly now, even to men. He had been with God in the secret of his heart. It might be only just before, but he had been with God. No man is ever true before men that is not true before God; and truth before God must come previously to truth before men. It was the Lord Jesus that stripped him of all the disguises of his soul. It was His grace to the guilty that gave him confidence to make a clean breast to God, no longer hiding his sins, but assured that God would receive him by the blood of Jesus.

“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven; whose sin is covered.” But he is not a blessed man who covers his own transgressions; and such is the way of the unbelieving man. The believer has God to cover him, and God covers his sin with the blood of His own Son. The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from every sin. Such was the real secret of this converted robber; and now he takes all the shame to himself. He owns his guilt, and says to his fellow— “We indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this man hath done nothing amiss.” Who told him so? He had never heard it from the lips of man. On the contrary, men had been condemning Christ; not least those who paid mock honor. Pilate would have let Him off. Herod found nothing to call for death. It was the chief priests—the High Priest above all—the religious heads of God's ancient people, who would crucify the Lord Jesus; and the voices of the crowd gave their loud approval. Had public opinion been his guide, had he listened to the great men of the nation, he would have come to a different conclusion. Just apply it to yourself. Are you not influenced by to-day's opinion? Are you not influenced by what great men think? Evidently, you must see, man does not change. The world is just the same world substantially as it was then. There may be superficial changes, but the world, as such, is the same.

Not Self but Christ

IT is very difficult to get rid of self-esteem in respect of others. But it must be rooted out. “More than these” the Lord recalls, but Peter now no longer pretends to. We must be brought down to a level with others, if we exalt self at their expense. But the effect is to make Christ everything, being ashamed of self. Peter says simply, “Thou knowest that I love Thee.” At present I think anyone could (though I would not be behind) love Christ better than I do; but that I love Him, and as to object none but Him—that He knows Still how poor what is there!

Priesthood of Christ: 5

And such is the Priest we have before God. Hence we see the great force of the words, “In that he himself suffered, being tempted.” Truly He did suffer. Where you yield to evil, you do not suffer when you are tempted. When there is only evil, it is yielded to; and evil is gratified by its own indulgence. The sinner does his own will, pleasing himself without the fear of God. This is sin—the exercise of one's own will or lawlessness, than which nothing is more pleasant to any ungodly one. This the Lord never did, never wished, never wavered about for an instant; and this we surely find throughout the whole of His course. “Lo, I am come to do thy will, O God.” So it was before; so it was at the end; and all before God. He was the doer of God's will—of all things, to my mind, the most astonishing in the Lord Jesus regarded as God's servant here below. He never sought, never once, His own will; He always did or suffered the will of God. It was the perfection of man morally. No miracles, no deeds of power, can be compared with it. God could work wonders by a worm, as He has often wrought by the merest sinners. But there never was that only did the will of God except One; and He was the One therefore that was called to suffer as no one else could; for it is just in proportion to love and holiness that one suffers, not to speak of His intrinsic glory.

Just so with a child of God now. You refuse to do your own will. Assuredly it costs no trifle to cleave to God's will in a world where nothing else is done but man's; for the world lives, moves, and has its being in seeking out its own will. The Lord Jesus was just the contrary, and so those that are of Him, the sanctified. For this indeed they are, as the apostle Peter teaches, “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by (4) sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” This, I believe, goes very far too, as it means the same kind of obedience as the Lord's; for He here below never obeyed in a single instance as under compulsion or resisting an influence within that was opposed to the will of God.

Our Lord Jesus suffered; but the suffering was because of Satan's devices against Him Who always pleased God, refusing absolutely and always to swerve from obedience, besides the holy horror of His soul, not at evil within, because none was there, but at evil everywhere else outside Himself. The suggestions too of the enemy, instead of awakening will, only inflicted pain and suffering on Him. He was a sufferer just because He was the Holy One, not in the least degree (as with us) from the sense of the mind—of flesh; and therefore it is said, “In that he himself suffered, being tempted.” When man as he is yields in anything, it is of course to gratify his nature; it is self-pleasing, whatever be the bitter result. There neither was nor could be aught like this in Jesus. He “suffered, being tempted,” and He is “able to succor them that are tempted.” But the remarkable thing to note here is, that an obedience similar to His is looked for from us: to obey God as sons in the new nature, and by the Spirit of God. In this path there is and must be trial.

In exact accordance are Christians viewed here below in the Epistle to the Hebrews. They are redeemed; they are sanctified; they are children; they are Christ's brethren; and meanwhile they are in the place of temptation, which the wilderness is and must be. So we find the Psalmist reminding the children of Israel of “the day of temptation in the wilderness.” For us too now, as for them, there is the substantially same trial. The scene around is the wilderness, the time is the day of temptation. We are tried and thoroughly put to the proof. And this our God turns to our good; for we are in a place too where every spring of power, all the food that sustains, the light, and the direction that guides, are from above, not from within ourselves, nor from the world without of course. There is nothing here around us, any more than in our own old nature, to help us on; but just the contrary, to impede and defile, to injure and destroy. Above the rest in malice is the great enemy that tempts to evil. Christ knows it, having His wakeful eye on him as well as on us.

As the general, who in a beleaguered city had to stand and beat off the enemy, though he suffered, is just the one most of all to feel for his friends, who, being besieged by the same foe, have besides to contend with a traitor within: how much more cannot Jesus feel for you and sympathize with you? Never was a greater mistake than the supposition that He must have the traitorous old man within in order to sympathize. Had there been evil within Him, it would simply have destroyed the person of Christ in His moral glory and perfection, as well as His sacrifice and its consequences. There would have been no Savior at all. This is what unbelief ever comes to—a virtual denial of Jesus, of the Son and His work. And hence, therefore, it matters but little whether men deny His Godhead or undermine His spotless and perfect humanity: either way, no Christ remains for God, no Savior can be for man. It is the merest naturalism to imagine that the perfectness of the Savior and of His salvation takes away from the completeness of His sympathy. Divine love and holiness in our nature tried here below, with suffering to the utmost, are the basis of His sympathy; and He, if one may repeat, Who knew fully what it was to suffer in having to do with the tempter, knows best how to feel for you who, besides the same tempter, have to watch against traitorous flesh within you. If He had this not, does He therefore care for you the less? Nay, but the more and perfectly; for the old man occupies one with self in one way or another: He was absolutely free to love, serve, and suffer.

But then the succor that the Lord renders is to holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling. They are “the sanctified.” The priesthood of Christ applies itself only to saints. This is so true that we never find the slightest raising of the question of sins when Christ's priesthood is discussed by the apostle. It is a common enough thought among believers that Christ acts as a priest for us when we fall into sins from time to time. This you will not find in scripture. The teaching of the Epistle applies His priesthood to succor and sympathy when we are tempted as Christ was; and I have no doubt there was the holiest wisdom in this.

Another opportunity I hope to have for showing what is the admirable and gracious provision for us, whatever may be the depth of our need in failure. We shall then see that, if a believer sin, his sad case is not overlooked, but that God does in His own most merciful and wise goodness provide for it, whatever the want may be.

But your attention is now drawn to the first great truth, which, believe me, ought to be gravely weighed; for not the least unhappy feature of modern Christendom is this, that people have imbibed the notion that we must sin, and that there is no adequate help or power against it. They are apt therefore to regard sin as a small, or at least inevitable, matter, making up their minds for it because we are only “poor sinners:” such is the language constantly adopted, and by evangelicals pre-eminently, whether Anglicans or dissenters.

Now, I do not deny that the Christian may be viewed as a sinner, yea, as the chief, looking back at what one had been, or at what one is in oneself apart from Christ, as the apostle Paul speaks of himself in 1 Tim. 1. But surely he did not mean that he was then going on in his sins? or in constant failures as a believer? This is the way many people use it; and I grieve to think that the object desired is to reduce the holy apostle to their own level as much as possible. Sad to say, they would like to get a license for a little sin out of the Bible. Hence, one party try to make sin only a violation of known law; others take advantage of the later portion of Rom. 7, and the ineffectual struggle against sin there described in a quickened but undelivered soul, as if it were the ordinary and normal state of a Christian here below. What can one call this but Antinomianism? And yet you will find that these evil thoughts reign most with a great many persons who think themselves the most opposed to Antinomians. But there is no one thing more remarkable in the present confusion than the fact that the very people who most fail take credit for what they least possess, and bandy charges against those too who, through the mercy of God, seek to be as far as possible from affording ground for them.

James 1:16-18

THERE is no small danger of error on the subject of man's nature as it is, and the new nature which the believer receives by grace. Mistakes abound to this day, as they ever have since very early days. How many speak of the original Adamic state as holy? It was merely one of innocence, which was lost at the fall irrecoverably. Through the word applied, by the Spirit in the faith of Christ we become partakers of a divine nature. It is not restoration to the primeval creature estate, but an incomparably better life in Christ the Son of God, the ground of fellowship with the Father and the Son, and of a holy walk with God. Christ Himself and alone was the manifestation of this eternal life on earth; and chosen witnesses were given to see and hear and come into the closest contact with Him, and enabled to bear witness by inspiration that we too might have fellowship with them. Never was there such intimacy, never such testing, never such scrutiny, that we might behold and know life eternal in every variety of circumstances, in the simplest as well as the most profound here below; and this is the life we have in Him.

But while we have in Christ an incomparably higher and sure standing, there is the effect of the fall in our old nature which abides for the present life with its lusts which. Adam innocent had not. It is not a change merely, but a new life never possessed before. The disciples were born of water and the Spirit; and what is so born is “spirit,” not flesh improved, changed, or annihilated. They were purged already because of the word which Christ had spoken to them before the gift of the Holy Ghost in power at Pentecost. The heart is purified by faith, yet there is a new life, life eternal, given in Christ; and there is progress and growth through the truth. But besides, we are in Christ, and freed from all condemnation, as we are purged by His blood from our sins once for all. Our being perfected in perpetuity (Heb. 10) is true of all Christians, as it is by His one offering in Whom and in which we believe. The notion of an attained state; where no lusts work for a few superior souls is a mere delusion; it is the real unholiness of denying sin in them and excusing evil because the will does not consent. The apostles Paul and John are no less opposed to the dream than James, though he is occupied with the process and result, rather than with its origin and spring as they.

“Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation nor shadow of turning. Having purposed he begot us by the word of truth, that we should be a certain first-fruits of his creatures” (ver. 16-16).

Men's thoughts being so far from the truth, as it is a subject altogether beyond his mind, we are the more bound to see that we be not misled, but subject to scripture. Here there is no obscurity, but all is light; for God is light, and His love has communicated all that we need to know. As man's nature is defiled and sinful, the God (Whom we know by faith and with Whom grace has given us the nearest relationship) is good. He cannot be tempted by evil and tempts none in this way. He is so absolutely good that our Lord laid down that none is good save one, God: not of course as Himself disclaiming it if owned as God, but refusing it from him who saw no more than humanity in Him.

But God is much more; He is the source of all good. He gives freely and fully to those who were evil and enemies. So we are here told that “every good giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” In Him is no darkness at all; in the world it is so dense that, though Christ His Son was here, the true Light, and shining in the darkness, the darkness comprehended it not: so much did moral darkness exceed the natural which is dispelled by natural light. It is humbling that man, with all his boasting, should be proved thus evil. But Christ solved the difficulty, the giver of a life in Himself risen from the dead, after being made sin to annul it righteously. Thus of His will or purpose (for nothing was more remote from man or more opposed to his will) did God beget us.

There is another consideration added, full of comfort. The greater the blessing, the more is the sorrow if it be exposed to loss or change. Now in our relationship with God we are assured that the goodness displayed suffers no diminution, nor eclipse. Even the greater light that rules the day, which men adored early and long, the bright orb of the sun to which they applied the epithet here predicated of our God, is liable to the variations of nature all day long, and is the salient example, in its apparent motions, of shadow that is cast by turning. But it is not so, as here declared, with the Father of lights, Whose unchangeableness is as perfect as His goodness, and His goodness to us who deserved nothing less, still in our weakness, and still in a world of evil.

But His purpose is to have the world governed righteously. This cannot be according to God till His Son, the Lord Jesus come forth to make good the kingdom, the world-kingdom in power and glory; as He has already vindicated His God and Father in obedience and suffering that He might save to the uttermost. Of this the Old Testament prophets have spoken amply, and the New Testament reiterates the truth in all plainness of speech, as it shows also the more distant and glorious vista, when all evil shall be done away and the new heavens and a new earth shall be, not in measure and pledge only, but in fullness. For government shall yield to everlasting righteousness dwelling in unbreakable peace, after all judgment is executed by Him to Whom it is given. Of this we are a certain first-fruits already, for we are begotten by the word of truth, and this nature is holy. But there is another which we ought never to ignore, and which, if not judged, breaks out into sins; so that, till we are changed at Christ's coming, we can only be called “a certain first-fruits.” We follow Christ's steps and ought to walk as He walked; but we shall be like Him when we see Him as He is.

Time and Space

I DO not think we have any knowledge of time as time in itself. We measure from one event to another, but cannot without facts with intervals. Space is not exactly the same, because we discern it by a sense which sees an interval at one time. All I know of time is, “I am now.” When I compare this with events, I am conscious that it is not “now:” there is time. As events only proceed from God, “I am” to Him never changes. He is in Himself always. Events come from His will, and are relative, not absolute. When I speak of an event before what happened to-day, I look at it as having happened in a “now” which is not present. This I extend by invented measures. “Infinite,” I admit, we cannot know, though we know it is not “finite infinite.” But without existence I do not understand time or eternity—but God is.

When I begin to count time, I count necessarily from “now,” for I am now. I then speak of time not finishing in thought. Before and after make no difference whatever, save by events, and if I look after, I must imagine events or I cannot take a step beyond now. The starting-point in both is “now;” and I go on both ways from that and cannot finish.

Hence when Christ's eternal nature is spoken of, it is said ἐγ ἀρχῆ ἦν ὁ λόγος;. “In the beginning was the Word,” all events and γενόμενα by which time had an existence being supposed. His is existence per se eternal and divine. When historical creation is spoken of, it is supposed God created. All things made came into being, there must have been a Creator. What we wanted to know was Creation. The highest, holiest, way of speaking of God was thus saying nothing about Him, but that He acted. As to Christ, it was of the utmost importance to know that He was before, and eternal.

But all the talk about “bounded” or “unbounded” space is a mistake. I know very well indeed what “bounded space” is: a field is a bounded space, because I know what a bound is, being bounded. That I can negative; but I never conceive any negative proposition. I can deny a bound when a bound is supposed, but it is no idea of the opposite at all. I cannot conceive all space as a known whole. My only conception of it is that it is not within the limits of my finite conception. But this is what “infinite” means. It is no positive idea, for then it is finite—has bounds.

If it be said that “we cannot conceive God,” I answer, Certainly not by an idea. If I did, it must be adequate, and He would not be God. But I do know He is not within the range and capacity of my idea. And this is something very material in our knowledge. When it is said, “He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love,” it is another thing. It is not an idea but a moral nature morally apprehended; and space, and time, and measures have no place in it at all. It is another order of things. Affections, even human, are not ideas.

Past time without a commencement is not possible thought; because when I say “past,” I have already commenced with the “now.” I do not see why infinite division cannot be thought of, because the parts are bounded. I remember a teacher of Mathematics sought to show by a tangent an indivisible angle; but he had only to make a circle with a longer radius, and division was made.

The only idea I have of time is bounded by events which are not “now.” But as far as without, then I seek to know it. I have no idea of time but the principle of eternity, only contradicted by experience. “I am” —that is not time as having duration, but in a point, and with a notion excluding bounded time, and so leading up to God Who is necessarily “I AM,” the nearest approach to conceiving eternity; which in itself I cannot conceive. But I conceive God existing, and never doing anything but existing.

My only idea of space, save bounded or enclosed space, is practically infinitude, not conceived as so much (for then it is finite), but as simply endless, i.e. negatively. I do not say “existing time.” Nothing properly exists in time which exists consciously; that is, consciousness is not cognizant of time. But I exist in space. Hence I do not begin it here, as I do time by “now.” And I cannot conceive where a body cannot be unless where one is; that is, I only conceive space as space without measurement, but room where.

“Nothing” cannot become, because there is nothing to become; but this does not say that God could not speak, and cause to be made, that is, create. J. N. D.

Scripture Query and Answer: 1 Corinthians 11:20

Q.— 1 Cor. 11:20. As it is argued that, in refusing the title of some professing Christians to partake of the Lord's supper, we make it “our own,” not His, I wish to know what is His revealed mind.

A.- All depends on whether the professing Christians are “leavened” or even worse. The New Testament is clear that “leaven” includes I both moral corruption (1 Cor. 5) and doctrinal (Gal. 5), neither of which is compatible with the communion of saints. They are “unleavened” in Christ and are commanded to purge out the old leaven that they may be a new lump in consistency with their standing. So runs His word in the scripture which specially treats of discipline in the assembly. The Galatian evil was yet more dangerous though different. But more hateful to God than either is the case of those who allow such as bring not the doctrine of Christ; and all the worse if they have the reputation of piety. The elect lady and her children (2 John) are charged with no heterodoxy, but are bound not even to receive into the house one who falsified Christ. To salute him knowingly was to partake of his evil deeds. How much more to join with him in the Lord's supper! Such a supper would have become not “their own” merely, but anti-Christian. It is precisely because it is the Lord's supper that no one should be welcome there who is known to be deliberately dishonoring the Lord. Doubtless he that does not bring the doctrine of Christ (the truth of His person as come in flesh) is an enemy of the darkest dye; and no principle can be falser or less holy than that piety or orthodoxy gives immunity where that evil is allowed, or fellowship with such an one, no matter what the plea. It would be “our own supper,” if the Lord's authority were supplanted by our own will; but if it went so far as to allow any who undermine His personal glory, it becomes the enemy's. It is Christ's dishonor to screen and condone the sins of those that bear His name, and far worse than belonging to a sect, evil as this is.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:7

THE posterity of Cush we have next, as being Ham's eldest son. “And the sons of Cush, Seba and Havilah and Sabtah and Raamah and Sabtecha. And the sons of Raamah, Sheba and Dedan” (ver. 7; see also 1 Chron. 1:9).

The man Seba gave his name to the country and people afterward known as Meroe between Ethiopia and Egypt. The ruins of the metropolis also so called are not far from the Nubian tower of Dschendi or Shendy, as Gesenius tells us (Thes. Ll. H. and Ch. ii. 993). Bruce in his travels (Sec. Ed. v. 317) says, “If we are not to reject entirely the authority of ancient history, the island of Meroe, so famous in the first ages, must be found somewhere between the source of the Nile and this point where the two rivers unite; for of the Nile we are certain, and it seems very clear that the Atbara is the Asaboras of the ancients.” In his vol. vi. 445, 446, he confirms the former statement, and gives its latitude as 16 deg. 26 min. for the city, adding that there are four remarkable rivers that contribute to form the island Meroe, the Astusaspes (or Mareb), the Astaboras (or Tacazze), the Astapus (or White river), and the Nile (or Blue River). It is rather of course a Mesopotamian tract than an island proper; but no one need wonder that it was so called. Strabo (xviii. 823) corrects Diodorus, Sic. (i. 23) in that 375 miles would be not the length but the circumference, and 125 miles the diameter. It was rich in mines of gold, copper, iron, and salt; possessed woods of ebony, date-palm, almond-trees, &c.; and abounded in pasture-lands and millet fields of double harvest, to say nothing of forests where game and wild beasts were caught.

But its fame was long after the first ages of the Pharaohs; and the derivation (Diodorus Sic., Josephus, &c.), of Meroe from a sister of Cambyses who died during his expedition, is very doubtful. It is rather an adoption from the native designation Meru, which in ancient Egyptian means island, as shown in Smith's Diet. B. iii. 1189. Our Auth. and Rev. Vv. have “Sabeans,” in Isa. 45:14, where it should surely be Sebeans (Sebaim), as the country is named with Cush or Ethiopia in 43:3. In Job 1:15 the error occurs of calling the men of Sheba “Sabeans.” Both Sheba and Seba are brought together in Psa. 72:10; and we shall find a Cushite Sheba presently, as well as a Joktanite and a Jokshanite of the Shemitic line later on, both—of whom found their settlements in Arabia, not in Africa.

There is far from the same clear evidence as to Havilah, the second son of Cush, and also another of similar name, the twelfth son of Joktan (ver 22). As we know there is a country so called in the account of the rivers of Eden (2:11), some have sought it in Colchis or in modern Georgia; or again to the north of Suez (cf. Gen. 25:18; 1 Sam. 15:7). From the scanty references to the Cushite Havilah in scripture, it is not possible to speak with decision; but there is no doubt that they found their way into southern Arabia; and it would seem that the difficulty is increased by their intermingling with the Shemites of the same name, where the district of Khawlan is supposed to have been theirs. It is well known that Niebuhr the elder says there are two districts of that name (Descr. 270, 280); whence some have inferred one for each of the two races. But the second seems a town rather than another large district. There is more ground to look for the Cushite Havilah in the Avalitae on the African coast S.W. of the straits of Bab-el-Man-deb.

The next son of Cush, Sabtah, is generally thought traceable among the Adramitae on the Red Sea coast of Aden, where we have the modern name of Hadramaut. Cl. Ptolemy and Arrian speak of them, and Pliny the elder (N. H. vi. 32) notices a city, Sabatha, which seems to recall their forefather. It is mentioned by Knöbel (in his book on these peoples) that there is a dark race in that quarter though not confined to it, quite different from the ordinary Arab, and pointing to a Hamitic stock.

More distinct is the identification of Raamah, not only through his own name, but in his sons' too. Indeed Ezekiel names father and son as represented long after by the merchants from the eastern coast of Arabia. “The trafficking of Sheba and Raamah, they were thy traffickers; they traded for thy wares with chief of all spices, and with all precious stones and gold” (Ezek. 27:22). These were preeminently products of Arabia Felix on the Persian Gulf. It is interesting to observe, as Mr. E. S. Poole points out in Smith's Diet. B. ii. 983, that the LXX. version of our text helps to trace Raamah's name, Ῥεγμά in connection with the same in Ptol. (vi. 7) and with, Ῥεγμά in Steph. Byzant. (de Urb. ed. Berk. 653). Mr. Forster (Arabia, i, 62, 64, 75) thinks that the tribe's name, whether in Ptol. or in Pliny, is drawn from “Rhamanitae,” and hence from their progenitor; and he says that Ramah is still the name of a town as well as of a tribe and a district in that region.

Sabtecha is the last-named of Cush's sons, of which scripture makes no mention beyond the genealogical list here and in 1 Chron. 1. Hence we cannot say anything sure, and need not repeat more than Bochart's conjecture that they found their way to Carmania on the Persian shore of the Gulf, and that the name seems changed to the Samydace of Steph. Byzant. In his Thos. Gesenius suggests a yet less probable idea.

Of Sheba and Dedan, sons of Raamah, we may say more when we come to compare them with the same names in the Shemitic line. This only may be noticed that in Ezek. 27 Sheba occurs twice; first, with Raamah in ver. 22, which fixes him as the Cushite in the same part of Arabia; secondly, with Asshur, &c., in ver. 23, which points to the Shemitic line, confirmed by the distinct merchandise of each. In like manner the men of Dedan in Ezek. 27:15 appear to be Cushites on the Persian gulf (where the isle of Dedan perpetuates the name) and with imports and exports accordingly; whereas we have Dedan distinguished in ver. 20, who seem to be Shemitic through Keturah. Compare ch. 25:13.

The Jews therefore did not err in assigning to Cush, not only Ethiopia and the contiguous parts in Africa, but the opposite coast of Arabia and the southern shore of Asia generally unto India. But Arabia received also a large Shemitic population, as we shall see, which gave character to their language; and this not only from Joktan, Eber's son early, but from Ishmael's twelve sons, and from Jokshan, Abraham's son still later, with some of Esau's descendants. Even Homer (Od. i. 23, 24) speaks of Ethiopians divided into two parts, the most distant of men, some at the setting sun, and some at the rising. We shall find a Cushite element active early in Babylonia and Africa. It was a Turanian race which included the Turks, but not the Armenians whom they rightly gave to Japhet. But they seem never to have realized that the ancient Persian (Zend) language, and that of northern and central India (Sanskrit), disclose the same Japhetic source.

Divine Care and Interest

THAT the Lord shows peculiar interest for His people is an undeniable fact, of which the scriptures give many a touching sample. Moreover His watchful active care is ever in character with their relationship and position. Nor this only, but the obedience of His people in answer to His revealed mind is made the blessed and timely occasion to draw forth His interests.

In chapter 34 of Exodus where Moses is receiving a second time the Tables of the Law, with other instructions, there is a striking instance of this respecting God's earthly people; not so much in the form of His care, but rather in protecting and preserving what He had freely given them.

When in Canaan Jehovah enjoined three special Feasts for Israel to keep. Three times in the year they were to go up to Jerusalem for that purpose, which involved leaving their allotted portion and sphere, and seemingly exposing their land to danger during their absence. Then it is that Jehovah assures His obedient-people saying “Neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before Jehovah thy God thrice in the year.”

Most telling and significant words when weighed in their connection, calculated to beget uncompromising obedience with unbroken confidence in Himself! True, it is not in the form of Abram who obeyed by leaving the land of his nativity, and going he knew not where, nor by getting to Canaan and becoming a stranger in it. But the land possessed and its portions allotted and enjoyed, they were to reckon on Jehovah to protect both it and their interests, when going up to appear before Him at the appointed feasts. When specially engaged with Him, Whose power drove out the nations before them, He would not allow any even to desire their land. Thus all was secured to them, not by any human expedient or forethought, but in doing the will of Jehovah: their obedience in appearing before Him fully guaranteed His power and protection. Each appointed feast also had its own voice in a still higher key.

Never were they to forget the way and means whereby they left Egypt with its terrible bondage any more than their beginning with Him Who claimed them for Himself from the time they were safely sheltered by the blood of the slain lamb. Their redemption from Egypt to Himself with grateful consistency was evidently the lesson in the first feast; whilst that of the first-fruits manifested the bestowed fruit of their land in the earnest of their blessing being presented to Him, Who was no less jealous of being the primary and engaging object as the Giver. If He claimed the first-fruits, the in-gathering at the harvest became the appointed occasion for them to appear in obedient delight, publicly owning that their God, Who had made them His own by redemption, had given them their harvest of blessing in Canaan.

Jehovah's claims and interests being obediently answered to by His people, they would prove how all their interest and blessing would be cared for, and secured by, Him Who holds the hearts and desires of all in His own keeping, and can turn them to serve His own purpose. Alas! as is ever the case with man under responsibility, they signally failed, using their feasts to serve themselves, forgetting and despising Him Who appointed them. Finally they rejected Him to Whom all pointed—Jesus their promised King and willing Savior, Who when presented was refused, and finally crucified at the time of the very feast, which should have taught them their deepest need of Him.

But to return to the Lord's loving care and interest in His people. In chapter 12 of Luke there is a touching instance given by the Lord Himself to His disciples, in view of His rejection and departure to heaven. It is certainly after another order than that already considered, yet most important, not only for what awaited His disciples, but for a moment like the present, when Jewish feasts and customs are so readily adopted in Christendom. For even true believers little know their present living association with Christ in heaven, together with suffering for Him in the place of His rejection here below. Distinct indeed the change; marvelously so for those who were looking for their Messiah's kingdom in power and glory, and their own assigned portion with Him in it. In preparing them for the practical consequences of His rejection, a volume of loving care and assured interest is told out, making good that the hour of sorrow and difficulty is the time to prove true love. Nor this only; but their rejected and soon to be crucified Messiah seeks to put them in sweet connection with His Father, as well as promises the presence and help of the Holy Spirit.

Whatever awaited them of trial and persecution, they were enjoined to “fear not.” He Who so loved them as to die for them, and for Whom they would be called to suffer, had power over body and soul. Moreover, if their Father clothed the lily excelling the glory of Solomon, and fed the ravens which had neither storehouse nor barn, how much more would He make them the objects of His loving care, so that peaceful confidence should possess their hearts. Moreover, if “fear not” was connected with trial and persecution, together with the exercises in daily circumstances, there was also heaven's side shedding its brightness and blessedness into the heart. For He, Who would have them without anxious thought or care for the morrow, no less said, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

The Messiah's kingdom being in abeyance, the gift by the Father of the heavenly kingdom, according to His good pleasure, would take its place, and thereby set those having part in it in like position as their Lord in relation to the earth. Indeed this precious heavenly promise follows the enjoined truth, not to live in anxious suspense or be seeking the things of this life, after the manner of the nations. “But rather seek Ye the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Thus at least this promised care is in character with Jehovah's promise (although obedience was henceforth in connection with heaven and its things) to insure interest in the daily necessaries of the life here. If the disciples made heaven and its things, with Christ the central object, their purpose and heart's concern, it would be the happy occasion for the supply of their Father in the things He knew they stood in need of.

Such is the change of dispensation. Moreover when Christ had gone to heaven, it would no longer be a question of any desiring their land, but they were to sell what they had, and give alms.

This was actually done, when the Holy Ghost was given. Then they learned their treasure was in heaven, and that they were one with Christ there. To form their hearts by this marvelous change of place and circumstances was the grand mission of the Holy Ghost, as well as testimony to Christ in the gospel of His glory. When Christ and the heavenly kingdom thus became known, no wonder that the hearts of the disciples should turn there, as their feet trod the scene of their Lord's rejection, and tasted, in their given measure, their share in it.

Beyond this their privileges excelled; for with the departure of their Lord to heaven, the blessed hope of His return from thence was given. They were enjoined to have their loins girded and lights burning, so as to be waiting to open to Him immediately. To have their possessions with Christ above, crowned with a Father's loving care as to all their need here below, left nothing save doing the will of the Lord in the new order of obedience, conscious of His love Who knows and cares in character with such associations and privileges.

Surely in all this there is a lesson for to-day, particularly now that Christ and heavenly things have been made known, not only according to Luke 12, but in the fullness of heavenly life and blessing unfolded in the Epistles, and no less made good by the Holy Ghost. All being so secure and precious in Christ, that none can either desire or in any way, touch the believer's portion, it needs only to give heed to the two little words in Col. 3, “seek,” and “set” the mind and heart on the things above, where Christ (Who is the believer's life) sits on the right hand of God. There the things below, often so engrossing and ensnaring, would not detain the heart, or hinder the feet moving obediently onward, toward Him Who is saying to-day, “Surely I come quickly,” and will welcome the hearty response, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

Till that moment may the indwelling Spirit beget deepened devotedness, and our fuller restful confidence in a Father's love, and the Shepherd's constant care, conscious of an interest in character with the relationship of the heavenly family, whose possessions are on high, and their home with the Son in the Father's house.

In spirit there already, Soon we ourselves shall be,

In soul and body perfect, All glorified with Thee:

by Father's love is cheering The brief but thorny way,

Thy Father's house the dwelling Made ready for that day.

G. G.

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 7

Chapter 6

THIS portion opens with that which looks a slight matter under His hand Who works unseen; but it proved full of the most important consequences. The king could not sleep and asked for the strangest soporific that was ever sought—to hear the records of the kingdom. He had forgotten the best deed yet rendered to him. When two of his chamberlains plotted against his life, Mordecai came to know their wickedness and saved the king. But unaccountably as it seemed, it was quite forgotten. The king, now on hearing, inquired what was done, and learns to his own shame that so great a debt was unrequited; which made him the more urgent to remember it now.

“On that night sleep fled from the king; and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles, and they were read before the king. And it was found written that Mordecai had told of Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king's chamberlains, of those that kept the door, who had sought to lay hands on the king Ahasuerus. And the king said, What honor and dignity hath been done to Mordecai for this? Then said the king's servants that ministered unto him, There is nothing done for him” (verses 1-3).

Even so, though a neglected duty was now to be repaired, far more was in His mind Who wrought secretly, and, what was most surprising, by means of the bitterest enemy, not merely himself to honor in the highest degree him whose ruin he was at that moment come to seek, but to deliver a whole people, His own people, whose existence was at stake. The banquet which seemed abortive on their behalf, the delay which in all likelihood must have tried Mordecai, was just the occasion to prepare the way effectively for the overthrow of the enemy, and the exaltation of the instrument of a greater preservation.

“And the king said, Who [is] in the court? Now Haman was come into the outward court of the king's house to speak unto the king to hang Mordecai on the gallows that he had prepared for him. And the king's servants said unto him, Behold, Haman standeth in the court. And the king said, Let him come in. So Haman came in. And the king said unto him, What shall be done unto the man whom the king delighteth.to honor? Now Hainan said in his heart, To whom would the king delight to do honor more than to myself? And Haman said unto the king, For the man whom the king delighteth to honor, let royal apparel be brought which the king useth to wear, and the horse that the king rideth upon, and on the head of which a crown royal is set: and let the apparel and the horse be delivered to the hand of one of the king's most notable princes, that they may array the man [withal] whom the king delighteth to honor, and cause him to ride on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaim before him, Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honor. Then the king said to Haman, Make haste, [and] take the apparel and the horse, as thou hast said, and do even so to Mordecai the Jew, that sitteth at the king's gate: let nothing fail of all that thou hast spoken. Then took Haman the apparel and the horse, and arrayed Mordecai, and caused him to ride through the street of the city, and proclaimed before him, Thus shall it be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honor” (vers.4 -11).

So it is, the pride of the wicked blinds them to their own destruction no less than to hate the righteous they despise. He Whose eyes are over all is slow to act that men may show out what they are, while in the end He accomplishes His counsel manifestly to His own glory. Haman, after honors beyond example, assured that he only could be the one whom the king delighted to honor, and invited by the king to indicate its largest measure, was certainly unbounded in his suggestions; and thus did he fall into the pit which he had himself made, and which awaits those who ignore and defy Him Who never forgets His own, however faulty, or those who hate and would injure them. Mark however how all seems to flourish brightly for the enemy and to threaten inescapable danger for His own till the hour is about to strike.

Nor could any issue be more evidently righteous. The man (whose immense benefit to the king, in the discovery of murderous treason, had passed into oblivion) is justly honored, and so much more because of his own unselfishness and that of the queen his near relation. The man, who only sought his own things and the destruction of those who, owning the true God, stood in his way, by his own advice plays the part of attendant on the one whom he most abhorred, and whose immediate and ignominious death he appeared to have within the hollow of his hand. But no power in present things allowed to Satan annuls the will of the invisible God. What will it be, when the “old serpent” is consigned to the bottomless pit, and Immanuel takes the public rule of the world?

Meanwhile at the last moment the wicked man is not left without solemn warning, as is often given, before the blow of doom falls on his guilty head; and this warning from the last quarter whence it might be expected. His own mortification and misery prepared him for bearing the worst. What a contrast with the righteous who returned in peace and lowliness to his post of duty!

“And Mordecai came again to the king's gate. But Haman hasted to his house, mourning and having his head covered. And Haman recounted unto Zeresh his wife and all his friends everything that had befallen him. Then said his wise men and Zeresh his wife unto him, If Mordecai, before whom thou hast begun to fall, [be] of the seed of the Jews, thou shalt not prevail against him, but shalt surely fall before him. While they [were] yet talking with him, came the king's chamberlains, and hasted to bring Haman unto the banquet that Esther had prepared” (vers. 12-14).

The Eastern Little Horn: 2

Dan. 8

CARE is taken that one cannot among the nations and kingdoms of the earth find anything really analogous but the Medo-Persian kingdom, thus assailed and superseded by Alexander the Great. He of course is the he-goat's notable horn. All is contrast. No other horn comes up to dispute with that conspicuous horn. Yet was it broken, as neither Nebuchadnezzar was, nor Cyrus. Alexander did indeed come from the west as one that touched not the ground, and in the fury of his power ran upon the hitherto mighty Persian power that pushed westward, and northward, and southward. Yet in the strangest and saddest way Alexander's course was cut short as a young man of thirty-two, in the midst of far-reaching plans beyond all his predecessors. And his generals began, as they often do, to fight one with another, if one could not inherit all, which should have the largest possible share of the broken Macedonian or Greek empire. After a few years' conflict emerged four kingdoms, four notable horns. Give if you can, out of all history, anything that so clearly answers to the vision. The facts are notorious and exactly correspond with the prophecy, and as contrasted as can be conceived with other conquerors in the East.

But two of these four horns are specified, and in a continuous manner beyond example in Dan. 11, whereas in this chapter 8. one only is selected. Why? Because of its bearing upon Israel and their worship in contempt of their God, Who at the set time (“the end of the indignation”) will surely judge it. It is not at all here a question of Christianity but of the ancient people, already captive and scattered, a revelation for whose instruction and consolation was given to the prophet. There was then no such thing as the church as we know it now. Only one people had the law of God, yet broken and unhappy, because they had been guilty and even apostate—people, priests, and kings. But still they had most of the Old Testament scriptures; and God looked on them with matchless patience. So He is still doing with fallen Christendom in spite of those men whom it ill becomes to fight against Him and His word. And while the Gentiles are being called by the gospel, God has not done with Israel, who are, spite of all, beloved for their fathers' sake. “The last end of the indignation” is an instructive statement in this very chapter, which shows how God, while cutting off the transgressors of Israel, will yet assuredly accomplish the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For God cleaves to His word and His oath, though we may have to wait for the set time. Israel will yet awake to far greater love than that of the fathers, and on a deeper basis. They are beloved of Christ, and will be brought into living relationship with Jehovah under the new covenant.

It is clear that this time is not yet come. But all these visions bring us down to the border of that wondrous change, if they do not prepare the way for it. Accordingly, toward the end of chapter viii. in the interpretation given to Daniel, we find not the date named in the vision, which appears to be already verified under Antiochus Epiphanes, the type of the coming foe, with details about this closing personage. The main interest centers in what is still future. There is no excuse for turning back on the past after so close an intimation from Him Who knows. Full information is given immediately after from verse 19, where we read “Behold, I will make thee know what shall be in the latter time (or end) of the indignation.” What was the beginning of the indignation? What does “the indignation” mean? It is first employed, similarly applied as far as one knows, in the prophet Isaiah, as you may verify for yourselves in chapter 10 especially: God's holy displeasure at the persistent idolatry and corruptions of Israel. Therefore did He at length let the Gentiles not only master them but use their victory to expel them from the land. The “end of the indignation” will terminate in their restoration inwardly and outwardly, as all the prophets testify. It has nothing at all to do with the Christian or the church.

Christian interpreters rack their wits in vain to bring in their own relations with God and His Son; and as the Papist tries to fasten on Luther or Mahomet, so do Protestants on the Pope. But this controversial style is a wholly unintelligent way of reading prophecy. Besides, it panders to the selfish and schismatic leaven which alike produced, and is perpetuated in, the anomalous sections of the Christian profession. We surely ought to search and understand the scriptures, having the Holy Spirit to this end among others; and we are bound not to force or twist them, either for outdoing others or for our own comfort. In the gospel we have got good measure, well pressed down, and running over. Being thus blessed as we are in the Lord Jesus and by His perfect work, we ought to be under no temptation to take anything away from Israel. There they are through idolatry first, and rejecting the Christ last, in the worst plight possible, scattered and banished till the latter day, when they must pass through a tribulation unparalleled; and for what could it be but because of national apostasy? They will once more return to idols, little as they think it, and set up “the abomination of desolation” in the sanctuary. They refused the Christ; they will receive the anti-Christ as the retribution. God never chastises nor does He ever give His people up to their enemies, except they flagrantly depart from Himself. Then His aggrieved love proves that He is a jealous God, and has indignation against the enormities of His people. Judgment begins there.

What has all this to do with the Christian or with the church? It was through Israel's fall that salvation came to the Gentiles, but even thus ultimately to provoke Israel to jealousy, and to display at the end the saving unfailing mercy of God. You may tell me Christians are often unworthy in their ways; and so they indeed are. You may tell me the church has been quite as guilty as ever Israel was in the past; so much, that one, who knew what it was to be alternately a Protestant and a Papist and a freethinker, ventured to say, “The annals of Christendom are the annals of hell.” He who so spoke never knew the Lord in any of his phases; yet his words do not misrepresent Christendom. He was a brilliant historian, but not having the Son of God, he therefore had not God. He could see evil, but knew neither grace nor truth. Thus and there it is, that man's judgment comes into such collision with everything divine, while believers are bound to judge the wickedness of a hollow Christian profession. “Everyone that is of the truth heareth My (Christ's) voice.” The only true God is faithful and true, and having given us grace and truth in the Lord Jesus, He calls us to be decided and uncompromising before the world. Begotten by the word of truth, it becomes us to be ever careful about the truth; but where we are not assured of it from God, it were well to wait in silence, yet earnest to learn and confiding in His love.

To resume then, this power that stood up (one of the four from out of the broken Greek empire) has its representative at the end of the indignation. “The ram which thou sawest having two horns; they are the kings of Media and Persia. And the rough goat is the king of Greece (Javan); and the great horn that was between his eyes is the first king,” Alexander of Macedonia, surnamed the Great. “Now that being broken, whereas four stood up in its stead, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not with his power. And at the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors shall have come to the full, a king of bold countenance and understanding dark sentences (or riddles) shall stand up.” Who are “the transgressors” in this or in other scriptures? The reprobate among the Jews; and why? Israel only had the law of God given direct to themselves, the violators of which are therefore termed “transgressors.” How does scripture describe Gentiles? “Sinners of the Gentiles,” not transgressors. We of the nations were led away to dumb idols, howsoever we might be led, as the apostle describes it; and by the gospel we were brought straight from idolatry to Christ. Gentiles did not pass through the kind of legal apprenticeship which the children of Israel knew. It is plain that the correct designation of our once heathen state is therefore “sinners of the Gentiles.” Scripture is more accurate than theology or any human authority; and to unlearn current phraseology in divine things is an invaluable Biblical exercise.

The text intimates here that the Jews are at the end of the age to become worse than even now. So said Isaiah and the prophets generally; as our Lord also in the parable, as we may call it, of Matt. 12:43-45. The unclean spirit, which had gone out of the man, but returns to his house, empty, swept, and garnished, takes with him to dwell there seven other spirits worse than himself, and thus the last condition of that man becomes worse than the first. So shall it be to this wicked generation also. “Empty, swept, and garnished” had been, was then, and is now the condition of the Jews. In striking contrast with their ways of old, there has been no idolatry among them for more than 2,000 years. God's discipline in sending them to Babylon suppressed their inveterate love of strange gods, which were no gods but demons. As a clever Hebrew apologist admitted in the Quarterly Review some few years ago, the Jews that forced Pilate to crucify our Lord, Pharisees, priests, and all, were just like the Jews of the present day. Granted; and therefore did our Lord characterize them as “this wicked generation “; but as He said elsewhere, “This generation shall not pass away until all these things shall be fulfilled.” It is still the same moral state, till all that the prophets predicted of “the end” be accomplished. This Christ-rejecting generation that crucified Him is going on still; there is the same self-will, the same enmity, against Him Who came to die sacrificially. There is no change for the better, no repentance to believe. The house is still “empty, swept, and garnished.” The Holy Spirit does not dwell there. Consequently the Jews, though fairly moral and clear of idolatry, have no life Godward, and lie open to the final delusion. So the Lord declared there is a sad change coming at the end; and that change is parabolically described by the old unclean spirit accompanying the seven spirits worse than himself, when he returns for the close. How little the Jews believe they are going to establish idols again! Yet this is as certain from various scriptures as anything can be, notably Dan. 9:27, and 11:38, 39, which await their fulfillment. Thus the last state will be worse than the first. But only at that time will deliverance come, as well as destructive judgment for “the many.”

The Guilty Husbandmen

THE parable before us is morally historical. It presents briefly but fully the ways of God with His people of old up to their ruin in the rejection of the Christ, and not morally alone but nationally. The Lord even adds from the scriptures His own consequent exaltation, and their setting aside meanwhile, Himself in humiliation the stumbling-stone of unbelief, but about to return in power as the executor of judgment in this world.

“Hear another parable: There was a householder who planted a vineyard, and made a fence round it, and dug a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and left the country. But when the season of the fruits drew near, he sent his bondmen to the husbandmen to receive his fruits. And the husbandmen took his bondmen, and beat one and killed another and stoned another. Again he sent other bondmen more than the first, and they did to them likewise. And afterward he sent to them his son, saying, They will feel respect for my son. But the husbandmen, when they saw the son, said among themselves, This is the heir: come, let us kill him, and get his inheritance. And they took and cast him forth out of the vineyard and killed [him]. When therefore the lord of the vineyard shall come, what will he do to these husbandmen? They say to him, He will wretchedly destroy those wretches, and let out the vineyard to other husbandmen who shall render him the fruits in their season” (vers. 33-41).

It is plain that the Lord here takes the ground, not merely of relationship and conscience as in the preceding parable of the two children, but of responsibility to render fruit to God Who had done all possible for His people to that end. The prophet Isaiah had similarly appealed in his chap. 5. Here the Lord adds a great deal more, but on the same ground, and with similar result, only yet more plainly proclaimed. For it is not only that the vineyard, instead of grapes, brought forth wild grapes. Here the upshot was growing enmity manifested to the lord of the vineyard. In both what could have been done on behalf of the vineyard that He had not done? The prophet announced that Jehovah was going to lay His vineyard waste; and so it has been, as the state of the Jews proves. The Lord shows the patience that for ages waited on those active among the Jews, if there might be fruit for Jehovah. But His bondmen, the prophets, whom He sent to recall His people to their duty, met with nothing but contempt, ill-usage, and death. Others He sent increasingly, as the evil grew; but they fared alike contumeliously.

Lastly, He sent His Son. The Lord spoke of Himself. But the dignity of His person and the intimate nearness of His relationship to Jehovah gave the opportunity to the religious leaders among the Jews to demonstrate their contempt and deadly hatred to both the Father and the Son, as the Lord says in John 15, Could evil go farther? Other sins, shameful and ungrateful as they were, became in comparison as nothing. “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. He that hateth Me hateth My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other did, they had not had sin; but now they have both seen and hated both Me and My Father.” And they had been fully warned. For they simply fulfilled what was in their law, “They hated Me without a cause.” It was not only utter unrighteousness, but deadly enmity to Jehovah and His Anointed, to the Son, their own Messiah.

And the Lord, on the near approach of this fatal result of their rebellious alienation from God, Himself puts the question to them, “When therefore the Lord of the vineyard shall come, what will He do to those husband men?” And they could not but answer, “He will wretchedly destroy those wretches, and let out the vineyard to other husbandmen who shall render him the fruits in their seasons.” So it is that the guilty own in their consciences their just punishment for positive rejection of One so good and faithful, and of their own obligations to Him, yea, of apostasy carried out to blood.

Is this nothing to you, reader, with the still greater privileges of Christendom? Are you hardening your heart against the truth, and shrinking from the God Who came so near to you in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not reckoning to men their offenses, and having put in His servants the word of reconciliation? Beware then of a fate not better but worse than what befell and is to befall the Jews. “Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, this was made the corner-stone: of Jehovah this is, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore I say to you that the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits of it. And he that falleth on this stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will scatter him as dust” (vers. 42-44). Such is the danger of stumbling now; such the judgment the Lord will execute on living man when He appears in glory. And the time hastens. See therefore, lest that come upon you which is spoken in the prophets, “Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish; for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, if one declare it unto you.”

Reflections on Galatians: Introduction

THE epistle to the Galatians has a character peculiarly its own. It is not an orderly doctrinal treatise as Romans, nor an unfolding of the eternal counsels of God as Ephesians, but an earnest effort on the part of the apostle (guided by the Holy Ghost) to recover to the truth souls who were being allured from it. Scripture has many uses, as we learn in 2 Tim. 3:16, not the least important being “correction.” It is to be noted that we owe a large measure of revealed truth (humanly speaking) to the failure and delusion of man. So wondrously does the goodness of God rise above man's evil.

Paul had planted the gospel of Christ in Galatia. Though through (or in) infirmity of the flesh he preached to them, they received him as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus (Gal. 4:13, 14). But alas! the enemy followed in his track. Men from Jerusalem, ever ready to subvert the heavenly testimony of the apostle insinuated themselves among them, telling them that, unless they added circumcision and the law of Moses to their faith in Christ, they could not be saved. In every direction Paul had to meet the same efforts: so ready is man to teach and to adopt that which puts honor on flesh.

Apostolic energy checked it to a large degree; but when this was removed, how widely and generally the Galatian leaven spread! The general condition of souls in Christendom in our own day tells a sorrowful tale. In connection with this Judaizing, the law-teachers invariably called in question the apostleship of Paul as being independent of the twelve and of Jerusalem. This the apostle explains in chaps. 1. and 2., and speaks of his connections with the twelve specially with Peter, whom he had to publicly rebuke for dissimulation at Antioch.

In chap. 3. he challenges them as to their reception of the Spirit, and his own working of miracles among them. On what principle had all this been—faith or works? Faith surely. The contrariety of the two principles is then plainly shown, and in connection with Abraham, the question is then raised as to the relation of law to promise. The law was added subsequently “because of transgression, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made.” But what was the state of believers before the coming of the Seed? (chap. 4.) It was that of infancy. They were kept “under tutors and governors” — “were in bondage under the elements of the world.” Believers now whether Jews or Gentiles are sons, and have the gift of the Spirit, “whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” The apostle then appeals touchingly to them, reminding them of their happiness when he was among them.

He desires them to hear the law, i.e., the Old Testament scriptures. Had they not heard of Sarah and Hagar? These set forth the two covenants. The fruit of the one was cast out, while the child of promise inherited the blessing. “We are not children of the bondwoman but of the free.”

The Galatians were to stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ makes free and not be entangled again in the yoke of bondage (chap. 4.). If they adopted circumcision they were debtors to do the whole law, and upon that ground Christ availed them nothing. This persuasion was not of God. He had not led them to this: they had been hindered in their race—turned aside by the enemy. But he had confidence in them through the Lord. Yet those who had beguiled them should bear their judgment.

At verse 13 the apostle enters upon another phase. If the law cannot justify, can it sanctify? Is it the believer's rule of life? Nay, Christians have been called in this respect also unto liberty. Such are to walk in the Spirit, and thus flesh is subdued. The law provokes sin—it does not produce holiness. But the Holy Spirit is in the believer to work this out. The works of the flesh are known, and to be shunned: the fruit of the Spirit is looked for in all in whom He dwells. But if any be overtaken in a fault (chap. 6.), the spiritual are to restore him in the spirit of meekness. The law of Christ is to be considered, not that of Moses. If responsibility cannot be shifted, godly care is to be exercised over each other. We get here God's standing governmental principle, “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Was it flesh or spirit the Galatians were sowing to? Their law-teachers sought a fair show in the flesh, and to avoid persecution. As for the apostle, he would glory in nothing but the cross of the Lord Jesus. He bore in his body His stigmas (or brands). Let none trouble him. Such, briefly, is our epistle.

As evidence of his deep concern for these brethren, and the grave light in which he regarded their departure, the apostle mentions that he wrote this letter with his own hand (ch. 6: 11).

James 1:19-20

The critical correction which opens verse 19 rests not only on excellent authority, but on internal evidence of no small weight; while the common reading followed by the A. V. seems a rather obvious change of transcribers who failed to apprehend the force of the verb here.

“Ye know [it], my brethren beloved; but let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for man's wrath worketh not God's righteousness” (vers. 19, 20).

It is characteristic of Christianity to know not only the privileges and experience of saints but the depths of God, as we are told in 1 Cor. 2:10, and not simply as revealed objectively but in inward spiritual consciousness, as being born of God and thus having a new nature derived of Him. Of this we were fully told in the verse before; and, as knowing it, we have important consequences now urged on us. It is not that saints of old were destitute of that nature, as answering to faith which is the ground of all divine affections and of everything that pleases God in holy conduct. But it would be difficult to find, throughout the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets, so simple an enunciation of it as our Epistle lays down; and this not as a novel communication to those addressed, but as a truth so known to them that there was no need of enforcing the fact or enlarging on its importance. We are therefore led at once to weighty practical results.

Others were given to set forth the work of redemption in Christ, or His personal glory, which are outside the believer and of all moment for purging the conscience and filling the heart. But it was the place of James writing to those peculiarly liable to be content with objects of sight only, to instruct in that interior dealing with the heart which is no less essential to the Christian, and secured to faith, both by a life given in Christ and by the gift of the Holy Spirit consequent on His blood-shedding and ascension. Here James had taught them in the clearest terms, that of His own purpose God gave us birth by the word of truth. So in the Fourth Gospel the apostle told us that “as many as received Him (Christ), to them gave He title to become children of God, even to them that believe on His name: who were born, not of blood nor of flesh's will, nor of man's will, but of God.” It is inexcusable to mistake so plain an intimation, or (if seen) to lower its importance. The believer has already this new life, knows it, and is called to manifest it accordingly. Christianity is not only the revelation of a Lord and Savior not less truly divine than the Father, but this inseparably from a new nature now imparted to the believer, who is responsible to walk suitably in the practical exercise of that life.

The exhortation therefore here is: “let every man be swift to hear.” Christ Himself is the model of this, as of all else that is good. Though the Holy One of God, never was any so swift to hear God's word. So the prophet distinguished Him, “The Lord Jehovah hath given me the tongue of them that are taught, that I should know how to speak a word to him that is weary. He wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as they that are taught. The Lord Jehovah hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away backward.” Nor was it otherwise with His bearing in presence of the tempter: the word of God was His constant resource, and only the more if Satan perverted it. “It is written again” was His lowly God-honoring answer. And so it is, and has ever been, with His sheep. They hear His voice, and follow Him; they know not the voice of strangers.

The word of truth abides in its value. By it they were begotten of God; by it the new life is fed, formed, directed, and strengthened. All the written word is prized as well as authoritative; but for special instructions God has been pleased to furnish those communications we call the New Testament. If we rightly heed all scripture, we assuredly shall welcome every word that explains the new life and its duties, and His glory and grace Who is its spring and fullness.

But we are told also to be “slow to speak.” For we have another nature which is self-confident and impulsive; and there do we need to be on our guard, that, knowing ourselves weak, ignorant, and naturally prone to evil, we may look up to God and wait dependently on Him. As born of Him, it is ours to be jealous that we may neither misrepresent nor grieve Him. And therefore are we warned of another danger, when it is added “slow to wrath.” How often it is impotent and hasty self-will! We are now sanctified to do His will, to obey as Christ obeyed. There is of course a right occasion for wrath. So the Lord looked round about on those that misused the sabbath to oppose God's grace in an evil world. But we are exhorted to be slow to wrath, and to let it soon be over. “Be ye angry and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath; neither give place to the devil” (Eph. 4:26, 27).

A weighty reason is added which calls for explanation, because the similarity of phrase might lead the hasty to confound it with the well-known but little understood language of the apostle Paul. The two writers can only be rightly appreciated by giving due weight to their respective aims. In Romans and elsewhere in that apostle's writings, it is God's consistency with what is due to Christ's work in redemption. God therefore justifies him that believes in Jesus according to the value of His atoning death in His sight; and so we are made (or become) that righteousness in Him risen and ascended. But James is occupied with our practical ways in consistency with God's sovereign will in begetting us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruit of His creatures. And He looks for conduct according to that new nature He has given us by faith. Submissiveness of heart becomes us in hearkening to Him, and in avoiding our natural haste of speech and proneness to wrath; for, he adds, man's wrath worketh not God's righteousness. It is practical, not our standing according to Christ's work as in Paul's epistles; and it recalls our Lord in Matt. 6:33, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness.” This again is not our standing in Christ by virtue of God's righteousness, but the power of His kingdom and character in our souls and ways.

Priesthood of Christ: 6

IT is, however, the fact now, that throughout Christendom theology limits sin to flagrant, or at any rate overt, acts of transgression, and teaches men that, human nature being what it is, there must needs be sin on the part of the Christian; and one reason of this Christ-dishonoring result is very plain. They agree in general to put themselves under the law as the rule of life. Now, as surely as the flesh is in us, it is utterly impossible that the law should not provoke those under it to sin. Nay, it was what the law was given for. It is not meant to make men sinners, which God could not do, but when they were sinners, to make the sin evident, and to bring it out unmistakeably. In a certain sense the object was wholesome and merciful in the result, because it was to hinder people from deceiving themselves. It was directly calculated to guard those that had sinned, and really were guilty before God, from being able to gloss over their sins and pretend they had none. It was to prove them distinctly obnoxious to judgment, and to make them cry out to God for mercy, glad to find the free grace that God has provided in the Lord Jesus Christ and by His redemption.

Such a process it pleased God to carry on before the Savior came, preparing the way for Him and His work in this as in other respects. But then it is another thing altogether, now that He is come, and the grace and truth of God in all its fullness, and the redemption that Christ has accomplished. It is a totally different thing to go back from the gospel and put oneself in that condition of law in which souls necessarily were before, in order to make them feel the impossibility of law availing them and their need of grace in Christ. If it was in due season then, it is unbelief now, when God's word entitles the believer to the enjoyment of what He has wrought and of what He is. Law is not enacted for a righteous man (which and more the believer surely is), but for lawless and insubordinate souls, for impious and sinful (which believers are not); as, on the other hand, the right and intended use of the saving grace of God is to teach us, that, having denied impiety and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, and justly, and piously in the present age (or course of things), awaiting the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. By grace, therefore, the soul is put as absolutely clean by virtue of Christ's redemption before God, once utterly guilty and lost, but now without a charge on His part.

What more do I want? That the same Savior who died and rose for me should be now living and active on my behalf in all the gracious exercise of His watchful loving holy care, succoring me in the midst of my trials for His name's sake, and from man's, the world's, and Satan's hatred. He is in the glory, and I am in the wilderness, going on, toiling, suffering, but awaiting Him to come and take me to Himself in that glory whither He is gone. For the present I am here. He was crucified, and, while here, exposed to very various enemies, not only to their malicious power, but to the serpent's wiles. And who and what am I to stand or march through? It is here that priesthood applies to saints, and for such ends. It is to minister to them the suited succor, that we may receive mercy and find grace for seasonable help. It is from One too, Who knows all by His own experience in depths beyond comparison; Who knows what an enemy Satan is, and how great his subtlety and his malice; from One therefore not only as divine, but that can succor on the ground of being once tried to the uttermost Himself as man, but still One Who is priest as Son of God, and not merely because He has that nature which I have, although I have it in a fallen unholy state which He had not. I have humanity tainted: He was and is the Holy One, not only as God, but as man. Certainly however, this is no reason why He should not sympathize, but the contrary. For it is selfishness and sin which hinder sympathy, not holiness and love.

But we are told “we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” Mark, the apostle does not speak about our sins; nor is there any ground whatever to confound “infirmities” with sins. He supposes a people that have now done with their sins by the grace of God, because by the blood of Christ they are blotted out forever. They are set, therefore, with their faces Godward and heavenward; but still they are in the wilderness. And above is the Lord Jesus in all His active love and grace occupied with them individually, and able to sympathize with our infirmities, as One tempted in all things in like manner apart from sin. No doubt one of the sources which commonly pervert the character of Christ's priesthood is from looking in a natural way to our Lord Jesus. Men can not make out how He can be dealing with every one at once according to His word. But this is a simple matter of faith. The word of God is as plain about the suited care of the Lord Jesus in His priestly office, as about the efficacy of His redemption for each believer. And as to the total absence of sin, there is exactly the same phrase used for the one case as for the other, as displayed in salvation when He appears a second time. (Compare Heb. 4:15 with chapter 9:28).

Accordingly it is in this way that the Holy Ghost treats it. “Having therefore a great high priest passed as he hath through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast the profession.” For therein lay the difficulty. Their peril was lest they should compromise Christ Jesus or go back. The apostle never hints at the danger of assurance, but insists on holding it firm to the end. That they should doubt the forgiveness of their sins does not occur to the Spirit of God, if I may so speak. Beyond controversy He could not treat the work of Christ with such contempt as to raise the question whether it does not absolutely effect the end for which God had given Him to die. Rather does He call on the children to hold fast the boldness and the boast of hope firm to the end, resting in their simplicity, which is their wisdom, on the fullness of divine grace in Christ. It is for this very reason they in their trials want sympathy, as well as to be helped and strengthened; and the priesthood of Christ does this for the holy brethren.

It is not a question here of meeting unholy men, and pardoning those who are taught of God to cry to Him about their sins and ruin. This is in the gospel of God's grace found elsewhere, but not here. It is not the point in priesthood, but rather “let us hold fast the confession.” Christ was in all points tempted like as we are, without sin excepted. It is not merely without sinning, but without sin:” temptation in His case was absolutely apart from sin. “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need,” grace for seasonable help.

In the next chapter (5.) this is pursued, and in a manner full of importance and interest, although men often overlook it. “For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God.” This they apply to the Lord Jesus. “Well,” you ask, “was He not taken from among men?” I answer that the Holy Spirit is not giving this as a description of His priesthood at all, but of priesthood in contrast with His. “For every high priest taken from among men is established for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins; who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way, for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity. And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins.” The third verse ought to make it indisputably plain to any believer. The same high priest of the first two verses is described in the third verse also; and he expressly requires to offer for himself—not merely for others, but also for his own need—to offer for sins. Is it not obvious then, that it is such a high priest as Aaron or Aaron's son, not such a one as Christ, Who, if compared, is accordingly also contrasted in the description? “And no man taketh this honor unto himself, but he that is called by God, as was Aaron. So also Christ glorified not Himself” (ver. 4, 5). He begins with a point of similarity, but it is only to bring out contrast. He did not take it to Himself. He Who said to Him, Thou art My Son, said also elsewhere, A priest Thou forever after the order of Melchisedec. He was addressed by God accordingly. Thus the essence of our Lord's priesthood here, where the root, stock, and fruits are all before us, is this, that He was not merely Son of man, but the Son of God.

Most blessed to see, that being Son of God He deigned to become a man, the Son of man; but the ground laid down is what He is essentially in His own right and title, not merely what He became, but what He is, the Son of God, as none else was of men or angels. The high priest, with whom chapter 5 opens, is merely a child of Adam like another, who could exercise forbearance toward the ignorant and erring, because he was no better himself. He was himself also clothed with infirmity. It was but natural therefore that he on this ground should feel for his fellows. But all this is exactly in contrast with the place, and dignity, and grace of the Lord as priest.

(To be continued, D.V.)

The Titles in the Epistles

THERE are but Paul and Peter who name their apostleship at the beginning of the Epistles; and Paul, supposing the Epistle to the Hebrews to be his which I do not doubt, does not call himself so there. This title is not found in Philippians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and Philemon, the character of which epistle is much more personally fraternal. He associates also others; but this is not by itself the absolute reason. But these facts show that the title is assumed with a definite purpose and meaning: Paul and Barnabas, and in result Paul, having mission to the Gentiles, and Peter to the Jews, assume their title when in special exercise of their mission.

The others write according to the wisdom and gift of God. This is the case with Paul to the Hebrews, for he had not the place of apostle with them; and the kind of intercourse, as with the Thessalonians and Philemon, instead of claiming such a title, rendered it unsuited to the occasion. It was not authoritative revelation, or mandate, or the assumption of this place as title or ground of intercourse, but brotherly occasions of tender care or thoughtful communication. Though the truth he might announce might be the same, and its authority equal, its proper bearing is evident in the cases in which it is used.

Paul had never seen the Romans, and he was to present himself as the called apostle of all the Gentiles. Among the Corinthians he had to exercise this authority, and an authority contested, to put things in order. In the Galatians it was the question in a great measure, though scarce, of the truth which he taught. In the Ephesians and the Colossians he is the depository, as apostle of the Gentiles, of “the great mystery,” of Christ in them the hope of glory. The position of Timothy and Titus, who were to regulate important things in virtue of his authority, makes the use of this title evident and clear. Hence the use of it in an inspired Epistle is not to be looked for without a reason; and, generally speaking, Peter and Paul alone are in this place in respect of their scriptural relationships with the church. The authority does not come simply from apostleship, but from the will of God acting by inspiration. The manner of address is connected with the bearing of the letter, though it be an instruction for all times. For it is in these circumstances that the ways of God in the church are fully developed, and the proper Christian relationships, as well as divine truths, unfolded.

J. N. D.

The Judgment, Not Reunion, of Christendom

IT need not surprise anyone that, in a letter to the Archbishop of York, an experienced and able politician of the day has expressed the hopes of such as look for a reunion of Christendom. Some were unprepared for this, and are pained at a tone throughout very deferential to the Pope, to say the least. In fact, however, Mr. Gladstone is more consistent with himself than on most of the burning questions he has ever approached. Christendom has always been a cherished idol. In this he is unchanged still.

Now, if we believe the scriptures, Christendom spiritually judged is a ruin; and this by the confession of almost every conscience when probed. The Pope, to begin with, acknowledges it in his manifold anathemas; so in effect do Mr. G. and all that yearn after reunion. Were things according to God, there would be room for neither. Much more deeply do those feel the ruin who habitually in sackcloth and ashes confess the sins which caused it. By divine constitution all the saints since Pentecost had originally but one communion. There might be thousands or myriads that believed (Acts 21:20); but they were “the church of God in Jerusalem,” in Antioch, in Corinth, in Ephesus. So it was everywhere in apostolic days. Churches in distinct provinces or countries of course there were. But the gospel even then was preached everywhere, the Lord working with those who preached (Mark 16:20, Col. 1:6, 23); and the believers throughout the earth were builded together as God's house, a living God's assembly, pillar and base of the truth.

On a rough reckoning of Christian profession there are said to be 216 millions of Romanists; but there are 137 millions of Anglicans, Lutherans, Reformed and other Protestants, and 97 millions of Greeks, orthodox or others, with Nestorians, Copts, Abyssinians, &c. There are at least as many that bear the Christian name outside as within Roman-ism, though itself containing far more than any other single denomination. But unity there is none. Can any claim be weaker in presence of the facts? It is equally certain, that holy unity in the truth ought to have ever been, and that it has for ages ceased to be. The claim therefore is now demonstrably false, its absence a sure proof of ruin. Catholicity of the visible church is a self-complacent dream. And if apostolicity in the historic sense count, it is plain that Rome cannot vie with eastern churches, which, planted by one or other apostle, were ruled by John, the last. Rome never had apostles save as prisoners or to die: the assembly therein was planted or ruled by none of them. As to this scripture is decisive.

Much is argued in a human way for succession. But what faces the believer first to last in scripture is the vanity and breakdown of man, no matter when, where, or how tested by God, no matter what the privileges conferred on man. So it was with Adam, with Noah, with Abram, &c.; with Moses, Aaron, and Israel; with Saul, David, and Solomon; with Nebuchadnezzar or any other of the Gentiles. In nothing did God fail, but sustained faith notwithstanding failure in His own; yet man failed under each and every trial. Meanwhile God pointed to the Second man Who not only stood perfectly, but will in the end gloriously display all the titles which crumbled away in the first man and his sons: the Last Adam, First-born of all creation, Governor of the earth, Seed of the woman and of promise, Priest on His throne, King in Zion, Son of man Whom all the peoples, nations, and languages shall serve in the age and habitable earth to come.

But is not the church an exception to the law of human failure and misery? By no means. Hence the momentous caution (and to the saints in Rome notably in chap. 11 by the great apostle of uncircumcision), that they should not be wise in their own conceits. If the professing Gentile did not continue in God's goodness, thou also shalt be cut off,” as the Jew had been. Are any so blind, hard, or high, as to say that Christendom has continued in His goodness? Will the Pope affirm it of half the baptized? Will the Protestant of the Romanist majority? Will the pious Anglican say it of his own community? Will a God-fearing Nonconformist plead, Not guilty, for his society or for any other? But if it be so, scripture (without a single qualifying word in any other passage, with many and even more solemn menaces elsewhere) lays down inflexibly, “thou also shalt be cut off.”

Christendom, mother and daughters (Rev. 17:5), falls under the universal sentence. God's ways with the faithful fail now no more than ever; God's purpose of grace will be established in Christ and the church on high beyond all the power of the enemy. But there is no difference from the Jew in the Gentile as to responsible profession on earth. The one exception is the Lord Jesus, Who will give effect to this as to every other design of God in the coming day. He, not the Pope, is the head of the body, the church; He Who is the beginning, firstborn from the dead (for it is in this condition, not as incarnate merely, that church relationship begins), that in all things He might have the pre-eminence.

Let none deceive in any way. The day will not be, as the apostle assures, except the falling away, the apostasy, first have come (not reunion but apostasy, unless indeed the two coalesce) and the man of sin have been revealed, the son of perdition (2 Thess. 2). Those who believe with Luther and Calvin and Knox, with Cranmer and Jewel and Parker, with Baxter and Howe and Owen, that Romanism is the apostasy and the Papacy the man of sin, must profoundly regret the aged statesman bowing before Pope Leo xiii., and deprecating that which the power behind the Vatican will demand in their never-failing pride and the unslumbering thirst after universal domination for their chief. But while it is sheer unbelief to doubt that Rome is the harlot of the Apocalypse, a more audacious portent will be the issue of the baptized, including Popery and Protestantism and Jews too in a more complete apostasy, and in the exaltation of the lawless one whom the Lord will destroy by His shining forth, and thus introduce the days of heaven on the earth, as He alone is competent and worthy and fore-appointed.

With this agree all the oracles of the New Testament as of the Old. The darnel (Matt. 13) ruined the crop; but there is no remedy sanctioned till the Son of man judges in the consummation of the age (13: 27-43). As in the days of Noah and of Lot, so it will be when the Son of man is revealed (Luke 17), not reunion, but judgment of the quick. 1 Tim. 4 and yet more strongly 2 Tim. 3 prove non-continuance in God's goodness, and therefore the necessity for excision (as in Rom. 11). And what mean 2 Peter 2, Jude 1 John, and the Revelation? Even 1 Peter 4:17 declared the time come for judgment to begin at the house of God.

Individuals may be through grace delivered. But evil as a whole once insinuated abides worsening till divine judgment; which assuredly is nigh, as the Lord is ready to judge living and dead. The hope of reunion for Christendom is not only unwarranted by one word, but opposed to the uniform testimony, of the Lord and His apostles. It springs from fallen self; which first departs from God's will, and then neglects or defies His word, never abandoning vain trust in man. The prophets declare that God will in sovereign grace restore Israel. The New Testament is equally explicit that He will destroy, not restore, Babylon.

How can sober men expect her who says in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall in no wise see mourning, to quit her spurious throne, and to betake herself to the dust in repentance? Now especially, that they have set up an impeccable woman and an infallible man as their new calves of gold? Does her forehead yet blush for worship in one form or another to the virgin and the angels, to dead men's bones and clothes, to the crucifix and the wafer? Is she ashamed of a celibate priesthood with its auricular confession and other horrors direct and indirect? Does she repudiate her pretended transubstantiation, and her real enmity to scripture reading? Has Rome delivered herself from that lie in her right hand, the Mass? On her own showing it is a propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead. This would be, according to scripture, a sacrament, not of the remission of sins (as the Lord's supper announces), but of their non-remission. Is it not a sacrifice avowedly going on day by day, with just the same proof of inefficiency as in Jewish sacrifices, which the Epistle to the Hebrews contrasts with the offering of Christ's body once for all (Heb. 9; 10), and its result now to the believer? For where remission of sins is, “there is no more offering for sin.” This the gospel proclaims, and the Mass contradicts: a different gospel, which is not another.

What then can one think of Anglicans listening to Rome, when their own Articles of Religion (xxxi.) pronounce that the sacrifices of Masses are “blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits?” and that Rome (xix.) “hath erred not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith?” Has not the profound and progressive alteration of the last half-century in the Anglican body been a return, not to “that which was from the beginning,” but to the rites and doctrines of unreformed Christendom in East and West? Has it not led to this retrograde letter?

If you value scripture, if you cleave to the gospel, if you have redemption in Christ, if you honor the Son as the Father, if you know that corporately you are God's temple and your body a temple of the Holy Spirit, beware of reunion with the city of confusion, doomed to destruction as God is true. Beware even of looking back, lest you become a pillar of salt. For God is not mocked, and the Lord may be provoked to jealousy. W. K.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:8-10

FROM the manner in which Nimrod is introduced, it would appear that he was a descendant of Cush rather than son in the strict sense. Why else should he be named after not only the five sons of Cush, but his two grandsons through Raamah?

“And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before Jehovah: wherefore it is said, like Nimrod a mighty hunter before Jehovah. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar” (vers. 8-10).

Nimrod then was assuredly a Cushite. This only it was of moment to communicate, because of a new departure which originated in him. And as we do not hear particulars of his immediate connection beyond that fact, so neither are we told of his descendants. Personal ascendancy is ascribed to him first, which made the brief notice of himself of sufficient interest to turn aside from the hitherto simple tracing of the genealogical lines, the origin of the various races. “He began to be a mighty one in the earth.” It was no question of divine appointment or providential succession. His own right hand wrought on his own behalf. The Jews have as usual much to say where scripture is silent, and strive to fill up the outline of truth into a fabulous picture. So do others follow them in this natural propensity, which they represent as hoary tradition; so in Arab astronomy Nimrod is transformed into the constellation Orion, “Giant,” in Hebrew “Chesil” (Job 9:9; 38:31, Amos 5:8). We need not occupy our readers with the various hypotheses which have been reared on this latter word; but those curious in such speculations can find them in Michaelis Suppl. ad Lex. Hebr. No. 1192.

But there is nothing mythical in the little that scripture says. Nimrod “began to be a mighty one in the earth.” Not so had it been with Abel or Seth, with Enoch or Noah. What they enjoyed was God's gift. They looked for Him Who is coming; Nimrod sought great things for himself like Cain who was the first builder of a city in primeval days, as Nimrod was the first after the deluge, and on a large and repeated scale. Present power was his aim; and God allowed it apparent success.

We are further told that “he was a mighty hunter before Jehovah.” There seems no sufficient reason to question that this is meant literally. It made a great impression on his contemporaries, so that his prowess as a hunter became proverbial. “Wherefore it is said, like Nimrod a mighty hunter before Jehovah.” It evidently gave him the exercised skill and strength which passed at length into another field of far deeper interest and gravity.

Yet more important is it to note that Nimrod was the first to set at naught the patriarchal headship which hitherto prevailed, as it subsisted elsewhere for ages afterward. His ambition could not be bounded by the chase, and led him from wild beasts to mankind. “And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel.” We have to wait for the chapter which follows to see the significance of this fact; and we learn from it and other remarks how little our chapter has to do with chronology. For though it does give the origin of races in their lands and tongues, it intersperses notices by the way which occurred not a little while after; and this episode of Nimrod is one of them.

It was among the Hamitic sons then that a kingdom was first set up among men. God was not in any of Nimrod's thoughts; He was not sought, nor did He give the least direction, in the case. Nimrod conceived the design through his own ambition, and executed it through the force of his will, and the address and skill he had acquired in his hunting. How different the way of Jehovah at a later day! For, when Israel would have a king in imitation of the nations and chose one who served himself, and brought no deliverance even from Philistines within their border who slew him and his sons, He took His servant David from the pasture, from following the sheep, and made him prince over His people, over Israel, to feed them, and assured him that his house and his kingdom should be made firm forever before him—his throne established forever.

But the present use made of this is not the perpetuity of that kingdom, secured as it did become in Christ risen, the sure mercies of David; but the beautiful preparation which pleased Jehovah Who chose him lay, as we have seen, in his lowly and tender care of the sheep, in marked contrast with the first king among men who made his mark in the snaring and slaying of wild beasts. The race of man had already proved how little it regarded aged Noah who was not only chief of all the saved from the deluge but set up by God with the sword of magistracy then first committed. And if he had through heedless self-indulgence fallen into an act whose effects put him to grievous shame, what wickedness in and near him to expose him to mockery who had covered all his own through the dangers of the flood! Of this line it was, though not of Canaan's descent, that Nimrod arrogantly set up first a kingdom. Terrible and dreadful we may say, as the prophet said of the Chaldeans, his judgment and his dignity proceeded from himself.

His kingdom Nimrod began with Babel. This is most characteristic. What recked he, if it had begun in impious self will to centralize mankind in direct opposition to the divine design and command of replenishing the earth? or if it had been abandoned by the builders under a divine judgment which compelled them to scatter abroad upon the face of all the earth? The abandoned city and tower exactly suited his project of a kingdom for himself, not a universal commonwealth. So “the beginning of his kingdom was Babel.” And success in his project encouraged him to go forward; “and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar” followed. As there is no doubt about Babylon, there need be as little that Warka (Irka, or Irak), some forty-three miles east of Babylon, answers to Erech, certainly not Gesenius' identification with Aracca on the Tigris, any more than Jerome's notion of Edessa (or Urfah). More weight is due to Jerome's report of Jewish judgment, that Accad was represented by Nisibis, the ancient name of which was Acar (Rosenmuller 29). The Talmud identifies Calneh with Niffer, about sixty miles south-east of Babylon. Here Arab tradition revels abundantly; but their flights of fancy are not worth recounting.

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 8

Chapter 7

THE catastrophe soon follows the second banquet. The murderous plotter against Israel, in their low estate for their sins, perishes by that which he designed for Mordecai.

“And the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen. And the king said again unto Esther on the second day at the banquet of wine, What is thy petition, queen Esther? and it shall be granted thee: and what is thy request? even to the half of the kingdom it shall be performed. Then Esther the queen answered and said, If I have found favor in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request” (vers. 1-3).

For the third time the king renews his desire to know and to grant the queen's petition. He who was made to remember his forgotten deliverer did not forget that some deeply-felt request of Esther remained behind. The moment ordered by His secret providence Who alone can order aught aright was now come. And the queen unburdened her pent up soul freely in terms the most pathetic as to her people, the most indignant as to their enemy. “For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. But if we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my peace, although the adversary could not have compensated for the king's damage. Then spake the king Ahasuerus and said unto Esther the queen, Who is he, and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to do so?” (vers. 4, 5.)

Astonished to the highest degree, and with burning wrath, the king demands, who and where was he that could dare to do a villainy so monstrous, now to learn, to his amazement, how he himself had been entrapped into it by his own prime minister. Esther however spoke only of him who had malice against her people. “And Esther said, An adversary and an enemy, even this wicked Haman. Then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen” (ver. 6). The king would feel his own part. No wonder that in his agitation he sought to be alone; while Haman made abject supplication to the queen, for he could not doubt the fate that otherwise awaited him. His very earnestness exposed him to the king's mistaken resentment when he returned; and the information of Harbonah furnished the occasion for immediate execution. “And the king arose in his wrath from the banquet of wine [and went] into the palace garden: and Haman stood up to make request for his life to Esther the queen; for he saw that there was evil determined against him by the king. Then the king returned out of the palace garden into the place of the banquet of wine; and Haman was fallen upon the couch whereon Esther was. Then said the king, Will he even force the queen before me in the house? As the word went out of the king's mouth, they covered Haman's face. Then said Harbonah, one of the chamberlains that were before the king, Behold also, the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman hath made for Mordecai, who spoke good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman. And the king said, Hang him thereon. So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king's wrath pacified” (vers. 7-10).

When the favorite falls, not a voice is raised to shield him from those who till then had bowed most servilely before him; nay, he who was blamed for his presumption in refusing it to Haman is now praised for his service to the king. Such is man, inconstant as the wind, and not least so at court. But He who rules unseen accomplishes His righteous judgment wherever He sees fit, till the day when He will act immediately and perfectly by the One Whose right it is to the joy and peace of all the earth.

The Eastern Little Horn: 3

So shall it be also to that wicked generation. Here the transgressors shall come to the full, and God allows the Gentile scourge in “a king of fierce countenance and understanding dark sentences,” who shall stand up. “And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power; and he shall.... corrupt the mighty ones, and the people of the saints.” Scripture describes Israel according to their privileges and moral responsibility, even when they are as far as possible from answering to them. “And through his policy also shall he cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he will magnify [himself] in his heart; and by peace (or prosperity) will corrupt many; he will also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand” (vers. 19-25).

This evil agent is not the willful king or Antichrist who is to reign in Palestine in that day. It is another king that from without opposes Antichrist, is no less wicked, and perishes as awfully. He is the same who in the last prophecy of Daniel (11:40-45) is called “the king of the north.” Many no doubt are aware that out of Alexander's broken empire arose the kingdom of Syria which fell to Seleucus Nicator. Of that line Antiochus Epiphanes (Dan. 11:21-32) persecuted the Jews and insulted the God of Israel beyond all others, and sought to destroy the Jews and their religion. Who was raised up as a stay in that day? A great empire? Nothing of the kind; the Maccabees who knew their God and were strong and active. This movement among the Jews, mingled as it was, is described in Dan. 11:32-35; but we need say no more now, as it will come before us later.

The Seventy Weeks: 1

Dan. 9

Let us now turn to the next chapter which contains Times and Seasons with their deeply interesting introduction. Why do we rise here? Because Christ is brought in, and Christ rejected. Notice further that here for the first time in these prophecies is Jerusalem expressly mentioned. There is also the sanctuary, and the One who sanctifies it and is infinitely higher, whatever unbelief may think or say. In order to have such a vision Daniel was again and more than ever on his face. It was a truly remarkable epoch too. Daniel was a student, among the other prophets, of Jeremiah, who is the weeping prophet of Israel. More than anyone else was he the witness of deep suffering, sorrow, and shame, and aware that deeper was coming. The consequence is seen in a whole book of his devoted to “Lamentations.” And Daniel had thorough communion with him, and knew through him that the time was come for “accomplishing the desolations of Jerusalem, even seventy years.” Instead of elation, as the natural impulse would have been in hailing such an auspicious event, he betook himself to humiliation before God. “And I set my face unto the Lord God to seek after prayer and supplications with fasting and sackcloth and ashes; and I prayed unto Jehovah my God, and made confession.” A holy man, he looked beneath the surface of circumstances, so pleasant to the Jew, of returning to his own land. No doubt, the Jew was entitled to have a deeper feeling than others. It was “Immanuel's land,” and one day to be made worthy of the name, as Israel will be of Jehovah's choice. But the realization is inseparable from faith in the Messiah, Who alone will make either land or people what promise intends them to be.

No Christian should envy such a prospect: alas! that one should speak of a feeling so unworthy in a believer's heart. Are we not blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ? Let us rejoice that Israel are yet to be blessed on earth, and to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth.

But Daniel, knowing the moral state of the Jewish captives, poured out his confession in verses 4-19, and found no rest save in God's manifold mercies. He was right. The heart of the remnant was sadly wrong. Nor in fact did Daniel return. As things were, he justly thought that he might as well die in Babylon as in Jerusalem. As we hear later (Dan. 12:13), his hope was in God for the end, and meanwhile it was for him to rest, and stand in his lot at the end of the days. He was waiting, not for Cyrus' proclamation, but for the great trumpet to be blown, that shall gather the perishing in Assyria and the outcasts in Egypt, who shall worship Jehovah in the holy mountain at Jerusalem. Indeed it will be his to hear ere that a greater trumpet at Christ's coming, when “we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in the twinkling of an eye.”

Daniel the prophet did not slur over his own sins, holy as he was, but he also confessed the sins of all Israel. Yet there was but a small part of Israel in Babylon, a little remnant of two tribes. Where were the ten? They are still in the east; and as Psa. 83 calls them, “hidden ones,” to emerge in due time. What nonsense has been talked about them! The American Indians, the Nestorians, the Anglo-Saxons! Nobody as yet knows anything of them; but all the world shall learn at the right moment. This will begin when the Lord has performed His whole work upon mount Zion and upon Jerusalem.

I met Dr. Joseph Wolff many years ago, and a question was raised by a person of learning, how it was that Israel, as compared with the Jews, only came distinctly forward in the middle or third book of Psalms (73.-89). In order to solve the question, during the course of a long conversation, W. was asked if he did not recollect once meeting a family in Central Asia, who claimed to be, not Jews, but Israelites? He had an excellent memory but had forgotten it, though repeatedly related in his Journals and Travels. Their tradition was that, when Cyrus proclaimed liberty to return, some did not avail themselves of it, to escape some terrible evil into which those returning were to fall. Therefore did they prefer to remain dispersed, till Messiah could recall His people triumphantly into the land. It is not far to seek. For as Isaiah long ago had predicted the rejection and sufferings of Messiah through Israel's unbelief (Isa. 1; 53), so it is made known in this very chapter to our prophet; and Zechariah named it more than once (ch. 12:10, 13:6-7). This extreme enormity of sin befell the Jews or two tribes that went up from Babylon. God is always righteous in His dealings, and special sin brought special suffering. Therefore are the Jews to go through the tribulation without parallel at the end of this age. The same people who rejected the true Christ will receive the Anti-Christ. The ten tribes, not having so treated the Messiah, will take no part with Anti-Christ. For the Jews is reserved this last hour of Jacob's trouble in its intensest degree. Then God will bring the ten tribes from their hiding place. Apparently this is what will trouble the last king of the north (Dan. 11), as we shall see later.

But here Daniel brings all the people before God. Is this what you do about Christians? The Pope is busy sending out his emissaries in the vain effort to unite all Christendom. If it could be, what would be the effect? “A hold of every unclean spirit, and a hold of every unclean and hateful bird,” and if any saints could be there, only the more a conglomerate of horrors. More and more do the professors of Christianity deny the spotless humanity of Christ, as others His deity, while we hear of His person divided now as of old. Most prevalent is the revolt against God's judgment of sin, as well as against the divine authority of scripture. These abominations are as rife at least among Romanists as among Protestants, Anglicans, &c. What sort of Christians are such? and what would be the value of their re-union?

The Jesuits of course are committed to this and every other ambitious project of the Papacy; but Babylon is doomed to fall. Strong is the Lord God that judgeth her. For all saints there is revealed “the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto Him.” This is our sure re-union, but it will be under a heavenly banner, and to the one Name, Who is worthy of all glory. In scripture we see that when Israel broke up into two kingdoms, and idolatry was imposed to keep up the breach, the time came for the dispersion of the ten tribes among the idolatrous heathen. In their case no such thing as re-union can be until Christ comes. Is it otherwise with the church? Long has it been broken up through sin and idolatry; never will it be re-united in a holy way; and the deeper the plunge of Christendom is into unbelief and pride and indifference to grace, truth, and holiness, the less desirable is the gathering of such abominations into one. The only way that glorifies God now is to keep Christ's word, and not to deny His name. Pretentiousness is of all things the least becoming in God's sight; as humiliation for all saints is precious to Him.

So Daniel brings “all Israel” (vers. 7, 11, 20) before God—the people as a whole. This was faith and love; for in fact only a remnant of Judah and Benjamin was in Babylon. Let us weigh too the righteous feeling, as well as the faith in God's compassion that pervades His prayer, “We have sinned” (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15). It is a mere cheat if we confess only some of our sins, and perhaps not the greatest. God will have all out in order to forgiveness. And oh! the sin and folly of making confession of our sins to man. Grace alone removes guile and imparts integrity.

When Daniel was humbling himself; and while he yet spoke in prayer, fresh light is given through Gabriel, who told the prophet that he was now come to make him skilful of understanding. It lies on the surface that Daniel was encouraged to consider the matter and understand the vision; and as he was inspired to write it, the Jews had it before them, as we now have had it before us. By faith alone can we understand this scripture or any other.

Marriage Feast of the King's Son

Matt. 22:1-14

THE parable of the guilty husbandmen at the close of Matt. 21 shows the issue of God's testing men on the ground of His own claims and their responsibility to yield Him fruit. It is just the question raised with the Jew and settled by the rejection of their own Messiah, the Son, yet to be avenged when He comes again.

In the parable with which chapter 22. begins the Lord handles a wholly different case. It is therefore, what the last chapter nowhere furnished, a likeness of the kingdom of the heavens; and therein God is manifested in the ways of His grace, not man under His just claims. God no longer requires fruit from man, though He may and does produce fruit in those who receive His grace in Christ. But in the gospel it is no question of demanding fruit from man. He is represented as in sovereign majesty making a marriage-feast for His Son. This means a total change in His ways: not God requiring from men what is due, but His own grace blessing them in honor of His Son. “It is more blessed to give than to receive “; and this not the law but the gospel vindicates for God, Who gave His dear and only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have life eternal.

“The kingdom of the heavens is likened to a king which made a marriage feast for His son; and sent forth his bondmen to call those who had been called to the marriage-feast; and they would not come. Again he sent forth other bondmen, saying, Tell those that have been called, Behold, my dinner I have made ready: mine oxen and my fatlings are slaughtered; and all things [are] ready: come to the marriage, feast. But they slighted [it] and went off, one to his own land, another to his traffic; and the rest, seizing his bondmen, insulted and killed [them]. And the king was wroth and, sending his troops, destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then saith he to his bondmen, The marriage-feast is ready, but those that were called were not worthy. Go therefore unto the outlets of the roads, and, as many as ye shall find, call to the marriage-feast. And those bondmen went out to the roads, and gathered together all as many as they found, both wicked and good; and the marriage-feast was filled with guests. And the king on coming in to behold the guests saw there a man not clothed with a marriage-garment; and he saith unto him, Friend, how earnest thou in here not having a marriage-garment? But he was speechless. Then said the king to the servants, Bind his feet and hands, and take and cast him out into the outer darkness; there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few chosen” (vers. 2-14).

Here too we have an historical unfolding, not of the past under law, but of God's dealings in grace. We begin with the gospel of the kingdom before our Lord's death in verse 3. Next in verse 4 the gospel goes forth on the ground of His finished work. Only then was the urgent message that “all things were ready “; and then, too, the rebellious hostility ripened into insult and bloodshed; as also in due time retribution came on those murderers and their city (vers. 5-7).

But grace must reign and do its wondrous work, whatever the hindrances. Accordingly the offense of the Jew is salvation to the nations, and the loss of the one is the wealth of the others. The Jews but filled up their cup of sorrow, and wrath came on them to the uttermost, as far as the gospel is concerned; and this salvation of God has been sent to the nations, who also will hear, as the apostle added. This luminously follows in our parable (vers. 8-10).

Nevertheless God is not mocked under gospel any more than under law; and contempt of His grace brings an even sorer punishment than violation of His law. The acceptance of God's testimony by faith is and always has been the soul's turning-point from death to life, from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God and His kingdom. And His testimony has ever been to Christ, whatever the measure once, whatever the fullness now. Hopeless effort under law was used to drive to Christ those who were not won by promise. Grace and truth came as a fact through Jesus Christ, Who is both life and righteousness to the believer, as He is the image of the invisible God and declared Him. Christ is all, and in all. This therefore becomes the surest of tests, as it is the fullness of grace.

But the King, when He entered to behold the guests, saw one who had not on a marriage-garment. This was conclusive. The King provided all in His royal bounty; but here was a man who preferred his own clothing. It was no question of anything else. The man's robe might be splendid or sordid. But it was not the marriage-garment. It was therefore a direct offense against the grace which alone could and did provide according to the king's majesty and magnificence. Nothing could justify such wanton scorn of the king's honor and goodness; nothing could excuse the man's preference of his own things, especially on an occasion expressly to honor the King's Son. The man was speechless at the charge. The outer darkness must be his portion: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.

It is not providential judgment like that which befell the city of murderers; it is personal and absolute, away forever from Him Who is love and light, from Him Whose grace was so thoroughly despised. To render this all the more impressive, a single individual is thus specified, though the moral at the close prepares us for its applying to individuals far and wide. “For many are called (i.e., by the gospel), but few chosen.” In result it is but a “little flock “; not because grace was not ample for them all, but because grace is abused and Christ is in so few, though He is all in such as have Him.

Have you then, my reader, received the Christ, Jesus the Lord? If so, “walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and assured in the faith as ye have been taught [in the written word of God], abounding in thanksgiving.” See to it that you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new, renewed into full knowledge according to the image of Him that created him: wherein there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is all things, and in all. Remember that there is no putting on Christ on high, unless you have put Him on now here below. Here we have the joy and duty of confessing Christ; as it will be His to confess us before His Father and before the angels.

If baptism be made the marriage-garment, it is only a less destructive delusion than making it the Lord's incarnation, In the one case the baptized in Christendom would be all elect, if it were not a contradiction in terms; in the other case, all mankind would be. The parable is really subversive of both these dreams, and is meant to show that no mere profession can save, that only the reception of God's grace in Christ will stand in that day.

Salvation by Grace: 2

It was in Jerusalem—the city of solemnities, in the midst of the ancient people of God, of those who had the law and the prophets, where these events occurred. There was not then for Jews a single idol in Jerusalem. I dare say the Roman soldiers, as their manner was, worshipped their standards, and may have had some of their little gods in the castle or elsewhere. Ah possibly you have got some little idols in Montrose. At any rate they are to be found in most places throughout this country. What is worshipping a wafer? That is a little enough god, I am sure. Think of angels, saints, the Virgin, the crucifix, or any relic of that kind! It is of no use saying that people do not worship them. There is a great deal more worshiping of Mary than of the true God in the Roman Catholic body; and it is in vain to tell me that they are not professing Christians. They are; and this makes it truly awful: real idolatry among professing Christians I

I do not wish to allow an unkind thought about them, and I have not one. There is no Roman Catholic in the world I would not serve so far as I could for God's glory, without the cheat of torturing or burning heretics, and calling it an act of faith and God's service. I could not be expected to join them in what I believe to be wrong: for why should one do wrong for any person under the sun? But to do good to them—or even for that matter to a Turk or a Jew—surely that is the business of a Christian man in this world; to magnify the Lord Jesus in well-doing to others, and in bringing the truth to bear upon them. But take care to do so in a loving way, and not so as to hinder the very truth you desire to commend to their consciences. Such was the way the Lord Jesus took with this poor man. For is it not absolutely certain that there is not a single sheep ever brought to God that the Lord Jesus does not personally pursue? does He not go after till He finds it? does He not lay upon His shoulders, and bring it home rejoicing?

Would you like to have the Lord Jesus laying you upon His shoulders, and bringing you home with joy? Why not now—this night? Why not have the blessed Savior your Savior, and know it? You may tell me, Oh, but the man was in such danger! It was no wonder he turned to God. I tell you that if you were crucified, you would not think it a nice time for conversion. You do not know what it is to be in the agonies of the cross. It was one of the most cruel and shameful forms of torture; one reserved for slaves only. But then it was, while the man was suffering such agonies, that the Lord Jesus won his soul to God.

But this also I would point out to you: people of every sort think this is quite an exceptional case. It is altogether a mistake. Granted that there is a grandeur and simplicity about it that exactly suits the cross of the Lord Jesus; but I maintain that the way whereby the man was brought to God is that in which you must be brought to Him: not of course by the outward agony, but by the word of the Lord; by the Holy Ghost applying the word to your conscience, and by your submission to it as the grace of God that bringeth salvation. It is no use to say it has not appeared to you. The grace that bringeth salvation hath appeared to “all men.” It is not meant that all men have seen it. A man may plunge his head into a dark cave and cannot see the sun shine; but the sun shines over the rest of the world for all that. There are men that do not see the sun. It may be that they are blind, and there is such a thing as moral blindness; and above all there may be a willful turning away from God. But still the true light already shines.

The Lord Jesus, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man (or everything). This does not mean that every one will be saved. But every man ought to have that grace presented to his soul. It is true that the church of God has not been faithful; that the servants of the Lord have not done their duty. Even very real Christians are too often content with doing a little now and again, instead of all living only and always for Christ.

The Lord's charge was that the gospel should be preached to the whole creation. Thus nobody should be shut out from the bright light of the gospel—no class so bad that they are excepted. And just as there were these two men on either side of the Lord Jesus, so there are always two classes in the world now—those who believe, and those who refuse. On which side are you? Have you been won to God through hearing the blessed word of Jesus? “He that heareth My word, and believeth Him that sent Me, hath eternal life.” The law of Moses would not suffice. It could not give life. Law could not set free. “He that heareth My word.” Now, this is what one poor robber did, as the other did not. Yet physically both heard. Externally one robber was just as near as the other. And you too have been just as near the gospel. Have you heard with your soul? Have you taken those words as good for you, valid and sufficient for salvation? The converted robber believed the word. He heard the word of Christ, and believed God that sent Him—gave Him credit for truth, gave Him credit for love, in sending the Savior of sinners; and he reaped the blessing.

And look at his testimony. He could give the lie to all the world; for all the world had said that Jesus was a malefactor, and treated Him as such in the most gross and shameless manner. Alas! we do not find that even the two robbers were hurried to death in the way that Jesus was. Then His trial was one of the most scandalous transactions of its kind. They rose early in the morning to do their bad work, and rushed it through as if their very salvation depended upon their injustice to that Blessed One. This was done by the Sanhedrim; the highest council in Israel. But what an awful thing this world is without Christ! Take care that you are not arrayed against Him, and on the side of the devil.

Has Satan insinuated into the heart of any of you to refuse the Savior to-night? This is as great an insult as you can do Him. Now He is seeking to bless you. Now He is appealing to your souls. He wants you to rest upon His precious blood, just as the poor robber did. Oh, beware of turning away from Him! Remember those solemn words of the apostle Paul, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” One of the robbers did, the other did not. Many a one has said he would not like to be with a robber in heaven. Would you prefer to be with the other in hell? This is what it comes to. With one or other of the robbers you must be. Nobody can help that. If you were a king, you could not avoid it: but what folly of men to refuse to be saved on the only ground on which men can be saved—God's absolute sovereign grace in Christ!

But it is not grace without righteousness. Where is the righteousness? It is God's in Christ. In yourselves you are not righteous. I know few in this hall; but I do know this of every one of you, that there is no righteousness here that could stand in the presence of God. Where is it? In Christ Jesus only. Oh! to have the righteousness of God by faith of Christ, to have righteousness fit for the throne of God. That righteousness is ours if we believe in Him, for “God made to be sin for us Him who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Have you, then, got it, or are you content to live without it? Without it you must be judged; and if you are judged, you are lost forever. Do you deserve to be saved? Dare you say so?

There are two things in Scripture—judgment and salvation. The people that are judged are not saved; and the people that are saved are not judged. It is not that they do not tell out all that they have done here below. Every person must do that—saved or lost. Every man must out with what he has done in the body, and out with it to one Man, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Judge, not God the Father. All judgment is committed to the Son. It was the Son who was insulted; it is the Son who is to judge. Men turned upon the Son of God because He became man; but as man He will judge all mankind. All emperors, kings, and commanders—all the mighty men that have ever lived—must bow down before that one Man. So must you; no man so obscure, no man so hidden in the crowd of this world, as to escape. If a man be buried in the deepest abyss of ocean, it must give him up—Hades give up his spirit, and the ocean give up his body. For we must all stand to tell out all our lives to the Savior. But if you have not got Him as Savior, you will meet Him as Judge.

Those who believe have Him now as Savior; and when they tell all out, they will do so to One who loves them with perfect love, to One who shows them the secrets of their heart, to One who explains every difficulty. We shall know then as we are known. We shall assuredly learn, from that wonderful transaction before the throne of the Lord Jesus, the depth of His love, the extent of His goodness towards us, and our own inexcusableness. We shall then see perfectly how nothing but His work could have saved us.

But if you refuse Him now as Savior, then His unsparing judgment will fall upon your guilty heads—spirit, soul, and body. For every man has got all this complex being. It is a mistake to suppose that it is only believers who have got spirits as well as souls. All this is merely the description of a man. The believer has a new man, which is another thing. He has in Christ a new life, a new nature. The spirit, the soul, the body, are characteristics of men, no matter where they are or what they are. And there is the solemnity of it. If man had only a body of flesh and blood, or if he had only an animal soul, we could understand his carelessness; for a merely animal soul will never appear in the resurrection. Precisely, because MAN alone, of all animals on the earth, has got a reasonable soul, a soul that came from the inbreathing of God—therefore it is that he only is to rise, as his spirit returns to God who gave it. Brutes do not rise—man must. But those who are Christ's will rise in all His beauty and glory; and those that are not Christ's must rise to be judged, not merely to give account. The believer will have to give an account, but not as a criminal. A criminal has to give an account no doubt, or at any rate an account is taken of what he has done; and he is judged. The believer is not judged. The words quoted show this, particularly as given in the Revised Version of John 5:24, as many knew it long before, I refer to it now, not that I have a very high opinion of that revision, but it is often right. “He that heareth My word and believeth Him that sent Me hath life eternal, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life.” Our old version had “condemnation;” and many of us used to say that it was not exact, and the Revisers say so too. “He that heareth My word... cometh not into judgment.” How blessed! There would be no sense in judging a man who is already saved. Till a man is saved, he is under judgment; and when he is saved, he is taken out of judgment. Only theologians talk of putting him into the dock again. The whole thought is a mistake. The believer is justified while in this world. Where is the sense of his being judged afterward? Would it not be a denial of his being now saved? The mistake arises from nature always denying grace.

Do you know how it is that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred people are mistaken about the teaching of the Bible? It is because, being not right about the gospel, they are not sound as to the first foundation. Everybody knows that if a foundation is faulty, the building is sure to have cracks in it, and is not to be trusted anywhere. May grace keep one from finding fault; but I do want Christians to understand how it is that they are not more happy. Is it not for the same reason that poor anxious souls are kept, for years perhaps, in misery and doubt? It is for want of seeing the fullness of the grace of God that meets them in our Lord Jesus. Scripture knows no such a thought as that people should wait for weeks, or months, or years before knowing themselves saved. You have only to read the Acts of the Apostles and see men that knew nothing at all before, who were saved the same hour. Look, for instance, at the gaoler at Philippi, or at the Ethiopian treasurer to Queen Candace. It does not matter where you turn, to Jew or Greek, they were through faith blessed at once.

( To be continued, D.V.)

Priesthood of Christ: 7

THE priesthood of Christ is in relation to the trials of those who are His, loved in the world and unto the end. It is for the succor of such when tempted, as He was, when suffering for righteousness' or for His name's sake, when tried in every way in which they can be here below, unless it is because of their sins. There may be, and is, pity even there; and God's grace may mercifully come down to such need, and deal with one who is buffeted for his faults. He knew too well that it would be all over with us if it were not so; but it is not what the Spirit of God treats of here. Now this is of all possible consequence for us to be clear about. For we must never put a strain on scripture. Probably the teaching might, if introduced here, seem more compact to one's mind and wishes, and a shorter road to comfort thus open to the children of God if they looked on the priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ as dealing with our faults and applying itself in grace to sins. Still the path of faith is to read the Bible as God has written it, and the only real power and comfort of the Spirit will be found to accompany subjection to His word.

It will be my business, if the Lord will, when we next assemble for the purpose, to take up the other part of my subject, the provision of grace, not for the weakness of the children of God, nor for their sufferings from the enemy, but when alas! through unguardedness they have been drawn away or slipped into evil, into sin. I shall show that the grace of the Lord Jesus can meet this as every other difficulty. But the sympathy of the Lord could not be with our evil. We can only dwell on this for a moment now.

When we were nothing but sinners, it was not a question of sympathy or of priesthood consequently, but of suffering for sins, as He alone suffered. This was what we wanted, not sympathy for our sins. No right-minded person, no saint of God, could want sympathy with his sins. Suffering for us, the Just for the unjust, blotting them out with the precious blood of Jesus, was the way in which God met that need, and met it conclusively. But they being made now a new creation in Christ, washed not only in blood but also in water by the word (for this is He that came by water and blood, Jesus the Christ, not by water only, but by water and blood), both atoned for and already clean by reason of the word He had spoken to them—being thus on every side and in the fullest sense holy and beloved, then they want and find One that succors in all trials, difficulties, sorrows, and sufferings that befall saints here for His sake.

This is exactly what the Lord is doing for us now, occupied with each believer; for the very point of the blessedness in it is that it is individual. He is not priest for the church: I know no such doctrine in scripture. Nor is it even for an individual viewed as a member of His body, though of course the Christian is such. But if one think of oneself as a member of Christ's body, then is to be seen only what is absolutely perfect, what is truly of the Holy Ghost. But then I am exposed to the enemy in this world; I am passing through a howling wilderness, a pilgrim and a stranger. There is exactly where I want and where I have the grace of Christ's priesthood.

The children of Israel, it will be remembered, when they were journeying through the wilderness, brought out in a humbling but instructive way the presumption of man, though altogether vanity. They thought one was as good as another; for they were all a holy people, and therefore needed no priest given them by God. The consequence was that a plague set in, and the earth opened her mouth, Jehovah's judgment swallowing up those rebels against His authority. But immediately afterward they are taught in the most significant way the all-importance of priesthood. He directs the heads of the families to put a rod for each tribe in the sanctuary. Aaron does the same. When looked at in due time, Aaron's alone buds, blossoms, and bears fruit. That rod of the high priest accordingly becomes the characteristic of the chosen priesthood. There could not but be authority, nor could a saint wish otherwise; for God, not man, must command. But it was not the judicial authority of Moses's rod. It was not a rod marked by judgments executed on wickedness. Such was the well-known rod of Moses, which would have only brought destruction on such a people as the Israelites were; for, after all, how often they were breaking down! For this we find God's wonderful resource, the rod of grace, of priestly grace, the rod of living power—of the life that was after death and that bears fruit on the face of it. By this significant token Jehovah showed that the way to lead such a people through the wilderness would not be by such an act of delivering power as brought them out of Egypt. This did not suffice for Him or them. Thus had they been by mighty hand led into the wilderness, but what could bring them through the wilderness? The grace of priesthood in the figure of the power of an endless life, which bears fruit out of death, as set forth by the wonderful token of it thenceforward laid up in the holiest of all, at least in the desert—Aaron's rod that budded.

So we see in our Lord Jesus, as we read in Heb. 7, set forth in all the precision and fullness of inspired teaching: “He is able also to save to the uttermost those that come unto God by him.” He saves them completely. How could the Son of God fail as priest any more than as Savior, or in any other way whatever? It is not here a question of the redemption of slaves, but of His saving the saints of God, of bringing them safe through in presence of a power opposing itself to God's purpose about them, and from all the consequences of their weakness here below. He is always living to make intercession for them. But they are associated with One who was “holy, harmless, undefiled.” There is no allowance of sin, and least of all by priesthood—no such thought as a company of sinners who have a priest that takes care of them in spite of their sins. Such is not the doctrine of Christ's priesthood. They are holy; for God it is who has begotten them again to a living hope by Christ's resurrection from the dead. They are consequently not born of God only, but sufferers here below while He is on high, where as priest He is always living to make intercession for them.

Undoubtedly, in spite of such great mercy and privileges, they may, through unwatchfulness, sin; and it remains to be shown that they are not left to perish in the folly of an evil way into which they were surprised. We shall see how God meets all this, and that it is in a somewhat different manner, though it be by the same Christ. But it is Christ in a way suited to that need in His wondrous grace. Enough has been now pointed out from Scripture, I trust, to clear the subject of Christ's priesthood for the Christian: this was all that one proposed for the present.

James 1:21-22

CONDUCT is bound to be according to relationship; and this flows from what God our Father has already formed by the acting of His own purpose and mind in giving us birth by the word of truth: a fact which it was the more important to press on saints who were used to take their stand on being sprung from Abraham as their father. They were now taught how much higher and holier was the new descent; and this not only from God but in the most blessed way which gave full place to the Son as well as the Spirit, and had its title-deed indisputable in the written word. So the Lord had Himself laid down to the Jews, “If ye abide in My word, ye are truly My disciples; and ye shall know the truth; and the truth shall make you free.... If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” How little souls, that loudly boast of their liberty, suspect that they are bondmen of sin and thus in Satan's chains! Even the believers, whom Christ has set free, are but a kind of first-fruits with an evil nature in no way set aside as a fact by the new nature which is ours through the word and Spirit of God. In virtue of this we have by grace to judge and refuse every working of the old nature, living on the Living Bread whereof we have eaten, yea, eating His flesh and drinking His blood, and so living not merely by reason, but on account, of Him, as He did when here below on account of the Father. No character of life for purity can compare with that which the word of truth conveys. How different and inferior is the being of blood or of flesh's will or of man's will, which we once sadly knew, as our only experience, and still know to be productive, if allowed, only of evil, even since we were born of God!

But it is not enough, though it be much every way, to be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. The exhortation follows definitely against imminent dangers. “Wherefore, having laid aside every sort of filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls. But be word-doers, and not hearers only, deluding yourselves” (vers. 21, 22).

It is well to take note of the aorist in ver. 21, as compared with the present in ver. 22: in the last a constant continuous call, in the former acts done once for all. Pollution might be, as the apostle tells us in 2 Cor. 7:1, of spirit no less than of flesh, and the more ensnaring because more subtle. But the call is to have once for all put every kind of filthiness away, as also of that rank growth of wickedness which is inherent in fallen Nature. It would be indeed a hopeless call if we had not a new life in Christ; but this every believer possesses, and the Holy Spirit's indwelling to work suitably to Him Who is its source, fullness, and standard. The flesh is still there; but in the cross of Christ it has already received its condemnation in Him Who was the one and efficacious offering for sin (Rom. 8:3). Thus there is no excuse for the believer allowing its evil working in himself or others: God condemned it fully when Christ thus suffered, that we might have even now this immense comfort for faith as a settled thing.

“The word of truth,” which first reached us when under the dominion of the falsehood of sin and Satan, and delivered us through faith in Christ and His mighty work, is spoken of also as “the implanted word” which we are told to receive as an accomplished act. It is in contrast with a merely external rule that could only condemn what was opposed to itself. It works inwardly in that life which the believer has, being perfectly akin to it and congenial with it, as both are of God. Hence there is nothing strange in the call; and the call is to receive it “with meekness,” as becomes those who have already tasted that the Lord is good, and desire to profit more and more. For indeed only that word is “able to save our souls” (compare the end of 1 Peter 1, and the beginning of chap. 2). The God who began so gracious a work does not forget or relinquish His care. He exercises and disciplines our souls, He spares no fault; but He has proved fully in Christ that those whom He loved that were in the world He loved unto the end. Still He works not by rites or forms, but by our faith in His word (compare 1 Peter 1:5). We are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to he revealed in the last time.

But as this exceeding value of God's word is capable of being abused into a school of dogma, and consequently of mere knowledge, the next verse summons us habitually to reduce the word to practice. “But be word-doers, and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.” This is the great business of every day. Our Lord had already enforced His most solemn warning against the same self-delusion. “Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of the heavens; but he that doeth the will of my Father that is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name cast out demons, and in thy name done works of power? And then will I avow unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work lawlessness” (Matt. 7:21-23). The word must not only be heard but produce fruit accordingly. To hear the Son is the urgent call of the Father, but it is to form the new life in obedience; otherwise it is to mock God and delude ourselves. And hence the grave caution here.

The Mystery: Part 1

THE object of the author of this tract is to show that the “mystery” as used in the New Testament Scriptures has reference to God's calling out, during the time of Christ's rejection, a people from both Jews and Gentiles whose position, association, and hope are intimately connected with Christ on high. Of necessity therefore, he rightly condemns the traditional confusion of Old Testament and New Testament saints, which dates the church from the gates of paradise. Nevertheless he himself falls into serious aberration from the truth in regard to this very portion of the subject.

“The Old Testament Saints,” says Dr. B., “are a great burden to Expositors of New Testament Truth” (page 50). So he very kindly undertakes to relieve them of this embarrassment once and for all. While the church forms the body of Christ, we are now told the elect saints of the Old Testament constitute the bride of Christ, the Lamb's wife. He forbears to blame too severely those who have long held the identification of “the Body with the Bride,” owning that “there is certainly some little excuse for its having been so generally entertained” (page 49).

Having duly noted and acknowledged this gracious remark of Dr. B.'s, we proceed to consider the scripture he advances to show that the Bride is the elect of Israel, and not the church which is Christ's body.

On page 49 we read, “The Bride in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea, is Israel, or at any rate the elect of Israel.” This appears fair enough, save that his phrase, “elect of Israel,” has an air of novelty, which amounts to suspicion when it is further explained to be, “those who were partakers of the heavenly calling in Israel.” Dr. B. evidently wishes us to see that the O.T. prophecies concerning the Bride only contemplate a portion of the nation of Israel. He refers to Isa. 54:5-8; 62:4; Jer. 3:14; Hos. 2:16, 17; adding, “These and other passages clearly prophesy that an election of Israel shall be the Bride” (p. 50).

Now before passing on to the development of Dr. B.'s theory, a very slight consideration of the prophecies named will show that they speak of a time when Jehovah will re-assume the character of husband to her who is a widow—when in fact Israel will be brought again into relationship with Himself as an earthly people. There is certainly nothing in the prophecies adduced to indicate that the subjects of them were “partakers of the heavenly calling” (a phrase Dr. B. has appropriated from the New Testament, not the Old, to bolster up his theory). Take his first passage, Isa. 54:5. It says, “Thy Maker is thine husband” truly; but the very same verse gives Him another title, “The God of the whole earth.” What is this but earthly blessing in the millennium? So also in verse 3 of the same chapter, speaking of Israel, “Thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.” We are sure Dr. B., with the regard he continually avows for the congruity of figures, will not seriously connect “desolate cities” with the heavenly calling.

But neither does Isa. 62:4. yield real support. We have there not a celestial but a terrestrial sphere. “Zion” and “Jerusalem” in verse 1 locate the promised blessings, and “righteousness” and “salvation” are for the saints in the “land.” “Thy land shall be married” we read; and therein Israel shall enjoy the corn and the wine (verses 8-9). Does Dr. B. really expect us to credit that these prophecies refer to a heavenly Bride?

We turn now to Jer. 3:14., “I am married unto you.” This chapter treats of the still future restoration of the Jews to Palestine. We are unable to trace the slightest reference to “the partakers of the heavenly calling.” But treacherous Judah and back-sliding Israel repent and come to Jerusalem, the throne of Jehovah. They will come out of the land of the north to the promised land; and all nations even shall be gathered to Jerusalem (verses 17-18). Can there be any doubt that the figure of marriage is here applied to the re-establishment of God's earthly people, and has no sort of reference to the partakers of the heavenly calling?

Hos. 2 is no less conclusive that an earthly people is the subject of the Spirit of prophecy. Earthly judgments first fall upon that guilty nation (verses 9-15); and then Jehovah promises to make a covenant for her with the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven, and to break the bow and the sword, and to make them lie down safely. “And the earth shall bear the corn, and the wine and the oil, and they shall hear Jezreel” (verses 18-23). It is unquestionably pictorial of a scene of earthly blessedness under renewed relationship to Jehovah. The teaching therefore of the four O. T. prophecies to which Dr. B. makes reference is that a time is yet to come when Israel will be the “Bride” of Jehovah; and that time cannot be until the chosen nation is gathered into its own land under the sway of Jehovah and His Anointed.

Turning to Dr. B. we are astounded at the position he takes up. He coolly asserts (for it is really without either scripture or argument to support it) that “the elect Saints of the Old Testament will form the Bride,” which is the “great City, the holy Jerusalem” of Rev. 21:9-27. This, he contends, “is the city for which all those who were partakers of the Heavenly Calling looked” (page 51); and he refers to Heb. 11:13-16.

As a matter of fact, after observing how many folks Dr. B. seeks to set right in his little treatise of rather less than sixty pages, we were scarcely prepared to fall upon such glaring inconsistency in the author himself.

For, observe, he will have it (page 50) that the saints of old who died in faith are those who form the heavenly Bride of the Lamb. But he quotes four prophecies (pp. 49-50) that refer to Israel's restoration to the land under the figure of marriage. And he knows these are yet to be fulfilled, because he tells us that Israel's blindness will come to an end (p. 10). When that is so, there will be the earthly Bride. So that if Dr. B.'s notions have any foundation, there will be two brides—a heavenly and an earthly. And he is found to hold the very thing that he himself condemns on page 49 (viz: that there are two brides), and sets himself to disprove. It has rarely been our lot to come across such an instance of thinly-disguised self-contradiction as this.

The truth is that there are two brides; only the heavenly one is the church, and not the saints who died in Old Testament times, as Dr. B. maintains without adequate support.

There were always, he says, those in Israel who lived “by faith” and “died in faith,” and were “partakers of the heavenly calling.” They looked for a heavenly country where God had prepared for them a city (Heb. 11:13-16). Abraham also looked for a city which hath foundations. Turning now to Rev. 21, we are reminded that the Bride is there introduced under the symbol of a city. Now, exclaims Dr. B. in emphatic capitals, “what are we to understand but that this CITY—which is declared to be the BRIDE, the Lamb's Wife, is the city for which all those who were partakers of the Heavenly Calling looked; and that these elect saints of the Old Testament will form the Bride” (page 51)? We do not, however, understand the same from these scriptures as Dr. B., even with the aid of his capitals. It surely does not follow that because “city” occurs in Hebrews. and in Revelation it necessarily symbolizes the same truth in both places. We had not yet learned that because we read of an “ark in Gen. 6 and Ex. 2 and in Ex. 25 of the ark of the covenant, the ark of bulrushes and Noah's ark were synonymous terms. Indeed we must remind Di. B. that on pages 13-15 he himself has shown that a single word (eeclesia) can be used in several senses. Why, therefore may not the word, “city,” be used to convey two different ideas in two books?

In Heb. 11 the word is used to portray that established and permanent abode in heaven for which the Old Testament saints looked in contrast with their temporary and uncertain residence upon earth. Abraham awaited the time when he should exchange his tent for a city, and so did the other patriarchs. But in Rev. 21 the city symbolizes the saints themselves, just as in Rev. 17., 18. another city, Babylon, sets forth corrupt Christendom in the last days. Here then the Bride is the city: while the Jewish saints hoped to be in a city, that is, a glorious dwelling place on high. But the holy Jerusalem which John sees seems emblematical rather of a seat of government than a habitation.

To be continued (D.V)

Letter of Pope Leo XIII on the Unity of the Church: 1.

Souls may be profited if one subject this document to the test of God's word. It professes to come from an infallible man; and after full consultation with all who could render aid, rather than alone, we must presume. It is on a momentous article of faith, on which, if anywhere, infallibility should not falter. “If they speak not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them.”

1.-THE FOLD.

Let us begin with an all-important question raised in the first sentence. Pope Leo XIII. speaks of “the fold.” It is no slip of the pen. It re-appears with similar emphasis near the middle of his letter. It is reiterated in the final “appeal to sheep not of the fold,” p. lvii. But the Lord Jesus, whom the Pope acknowledges to be “the Chief Pastor of souls,” has ruled otherwise in John 10 He led His own sheep out of “the fold,” the only such enclosure set up by God; and He forms “one flock” in contradistinction, Himself the “one Shepherd,” as indeed is owned. So it is said in Matt. 16:18, they are His church; as in the epistles, the church of God.

“The fold” applied to the Christian body is a vulgar mistake, or, if you wish it, as universally current a tradition as could be produced. What can one think of its adoption by the religious chief over 200 millions of baptized? by one who aspires to gather under his authority a still greater number, who bear the name of the Lord but do not accept his title? Is it not strange to find an infallible claim, not only stumbling on the threshold, but persisting in so palpable an error throughout? For the Pope ignores “the flock,” which the Lord of all instituted, and recalls the sheep to “the fold,” out of which the Lord led them. It is no mere quibble of words, but distinctive truth. For “the fold” out of which the Savior led His own sheep was governed by the law, and fenced by ordinances on pain of cutting off; it had a succession of priests; it provided continual repetition of sacrifices, and boasted of a gorgeous sanctuary, splendid vestments, and captivating music, to say nothing of saints such as were found nowhere else. Yet out of this fold the Lord leads His own sheep; and into such a fold, as far as man could imitate it, does the Pope seek to win the sheep now.

“The flock” which the Good Shepherd forms has quite another character. He had entered by the door into the fold of the sheep, as their Shepherd, the Messiah, with the utmost difference from those who claimed them as theirs. Prophecy and miracle, light and love, made Him plain save to those who, being enemies of God, received Him not. The porter opens the door; the sheep hear His voice, and He calls His own sheep by name, but leads them out. The confession of His person (John 8:58) provoked from the Jews not worship but an effort to stone Him; whilst His work of gracious and divine power (ch. 9.) drew out their agreement that every confessor of Him should be put out of the synagogue. The Jews thus condemned themselves. Jesus was come that those that see not (like the blind confessor) might see, and those that see (like the unbelieving Jewish leaders) might be made blind.

The Lord further sets forth Himself as the new separating and gathering object; no longer as Messiah entering “the fold,” but as “the door of the sheep “—not of the sheep-fold, as some misinterpret.

“I am the door: by me if anyone enter, he shall be saved, and shall go in and go out, and shall find pasture” (ver. 9). In these divine words we learn who and what they are that compose “the flock.” They follow Jesus because they know His voice; and He came that they might have life, and have it more abundantly. He is the object of faith; not “the flock.” “He is the true God and eternal life.” “He that hath the Son hath life.” If any persons on earth could assuredly assert that they were God's people, theirs the fathers, theirs the covenants, theirs the Messiah, it was the Jews. Yet when proved to reject the Lord, as once for serving idols, God gave them up; and Jesus was the warrant for His own sheep to follow Him outside, where they enjoy salvation, liberty, food, and shelter from the enemy, in Him Who laid down His life for the sheep. “And I have other sheep which are not of this fold [namely, Gentile believers]; those also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice [this is the main criterion]; and there shall be one flock, one shepherd” (ver. 16).

Such is “the flock,” not “the fold.” The flock consists alike of the sheep separated from Judaism, which was “this fold,” and of the sheep scattered among the Gentiles that had no fold: these are the “one flock.” He Who is indeed infallible speaks of no “fold” now for His sheep; the Pope does. Can any child of God hesitate which to believe? The sheep hear His voice; an alien will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of aliens: The sheep follow Him, for they know His voice. “We walk by faith, not by sight.” Blandishment is as vain as threats. Ever before, while “the fold” was owned, Jews and Gentiles were rigidly kept apart; now if they hear His voice, they are “one flock.” It is a new thing, where grace reigns; and Christ is all, and in all. What a contrast with the fold of old or any new one His person and work are the guarantee of every spiritual blessing to those that believe on Him.

Is it said in excuse that not only the loose speech prevalent in Christendom but the Vulgate of Jerome misled? Yet Pope Leo is a student of Scripture, they say, and probably familiar with the Greek original of the N.T. He ought therefore to have known and avoided so flagrant a mistake. In the same verse 16 of John 10 is the word (αὐλὴ) rightly translated “fold", the Jewish enclosure. Here the Lord declares that the sheep He had which were not of this fold should, with those He was leading out of the fold, be “one flock” with one Shepherd. No such gathering into one had been hitherto. It was reserved for Christ when rejected by the Jews. As the law was given by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, Who died to gather together in one the scattered children of God (John 11:52).

Oh! how the truth has been forgotten, and “the fold” set up again into which the Pope devotes his “endeavor” to bring back “sheep that have strayed.” It is part of that fatal judaizing against which the great apostle of the Gentiles strenuously labored and fought throughout his blessed course. Therein the apostle Peter grievously failed: a feeble foundation for the church, and for the Roman claim of universal jurisdiction. Why should anyone hide that Peter was untrue at Antioch to the divine vision of Acts 10? He had rightly used the keys of the kingdom to admit the Jews, and afterward Gentiles. He at first had eaten with Gentiles, the sign of fellowship; and then when certain came from James, he was drawing back and separating himself: not vacillation and inconsistency only, but schism and despite of the “one flock, one Shepherd.” And it was the more deplorable cowardice now, because he had confronted the narrow Pharisaic brethren in Jerusalem once (chap. 11.) and again (chap. 15); and all the worse, because he was so honored and influential. But the apostle of the uncircumcision was faithful and resisted him to the face, because he was (not merely “reprehensibilis,” as the Vulgate improperly tones it down, but “condemned". Indeed the apostle writes thus severely, “And the rest of the Jews also were guilty of like dissimulation [or hypocrisy], so that even Barnabas was carried away by their dissimulation. But when I saw that they walk not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before all,” &c.

Has Pope Leo XIII. laid this solemn admonition to heart or those who helped Pope Pius IX. to proclaim papal infallibility? To the believer can there be a plainer instance of the care God has taken in scripture to anticipate and condemn human presumption? Holy Peter broke down where not only his faith as a saint should have kept him firm, but where his apostolic authority compromised the faith of the gospel and the unity of the church. It was a brief but sad slip into “the fold” again; but we read his censure for our warning in God's imperishable word. There is a painfully instructive tale of patristic dishonesty that hangs thereby; but to tell it here would cause too great a divergence from the present question, and so it must now be left.

But there is another fact of immediate bearing, which, if not familiar to all, one might expect so experienced a theologian as the present Pope to know. The correct and only tenable rendering we now discuss is given in copies of the old Latin Gospels, both African (or unrevised) and of the Italic revision. Thus in the God. Vercell. we read “fiet una grex, et unus pastor “; in the God. Veron. (with which here agrees God. Corbei.), “fiet unus grex, et unus pastor “; and in the God. Brix., “fient unus grex et unus pastor “: each independent and differing perceptibly, but all agreeing in the sure and weighty truth of “one flock.” This the Hieronymian Version perverted, the Popes' and Councils and clergy ever since sanctioning it, ignorantly or deliberately, for their return more and more to the Jewish fold; as in fact there is none but that one. The blessed difference of the “one flock, one shepherd” they do not appreciate. It is all one to them no doubt.

Let me add that even the Gothic V. of Ulphilas is correct: why Gabelentz and Loebe have given a misinterpretation in Latin is the more strange, because in their note they rightly convict Schultz of error on this point. It is well-known that the Peschito Syriac gives the just sense, as does the later Philoxenian: so also the Aeth., the Anglo-Sax., the Arabic, the Arm., the Georgian, the Memph., the Sah., and the Sclavonic. Luther translated correctly, as did Tyndale; but Cranmer and the later English wrongly followed the Vulgate, which was natural in Wiclif and the Rhemish. Erasmus in his note cites Valla, who knew that ποιμνὴ is “grex” rather than “ovile “; but he left the error uncorrected in all his five editions. Beza corrects it in his fourth and fifth editions, though wrong in the first three. But there can be no question to those who adhere to the word, either of the truth, or of its importance. In Matt. 26:31, Luke 2:8, and twice in 1 Cor. 9:7, the Vulgate gives “flock,” not “fold” without hesitation, and thus condemns itself in John 10:16, where it is dogmatically of moment.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:11-12

The important fact imparted to us, in the verses immediately preceding, we have seen to be the first establishment of royal power in the Cushite Nimrod; and this by force and fraud, transferred from hunting wild beasts to acquiring dominion over mankind for personal aggrandizement. His city building in Babylonia we have also seen, the earliest development of the kind since the deluge. Nor is any architecture more characteristic of race, as Mr. Ferguson has shown, than the massive monumental style of the sons of Ham.

This is confirmed by the true sense of Mic. 5:6, where “the land of Assyria” is expressly distinguished from “the land of Nimrod,” which last was really the plain of Shinar. They were quite distinct and separated by the Hiddekel or Tigris. In “that land” i.e. Babylonia there were Shemitic and Japhetic elements no less than the Hamitic, which at first was predominant.

It is such an episodical notice as seems to account for the mention in this place of a counter movement on the part of the Shemite Asshur, of whom we read in his due place afterward. A step forward among men naturally finds imitation ere long. And the record of the new policy in the south is followed by that of a similar course in the north as far as the building of cities is concerned, though this may not have been at all contemporary but later than that. Their kindred nature sufficiently explains the mention of both at this point.

“From that land went forth Asshur, and built Nineveh, and Rehoboth-Ir, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah: this is the great city” (vers. 11, 12). It is not intimated that Asshur was driven out by the Hamitic race, but rather is it inferred from the language that the success of Nimrod set the example, and gave the impulse to a like ambition. How completely Noah's authority (for he still lived) was forgotten by all, is evident by all that is revealed. Patriarchal place yielded to men's thoughts and will.

Of these four cities, the first is beyond any just question. Yet it is late in the history of the world when we hear of Nineveh. Then in the days of Jonah it was a “very great city,” according to some of still greater extent than Babylon when the “golden city” rose to its zenith. But human accounts of cities long passed away need to be read with caution, as the chroniclers long after were apt to stray through exaggeration. Still the Biblical intimation of its later existence is of immense extent, vast population, and exceeding splendor. The remains exhumed in our day attest that the words of scripture are here as reliable as everywhere else. Yet we need not conceive anything more when Asshur wrought his work than a little beginning of that which was at length to attain such power and magnificence. This it retained to triumph over the ten tribes of Israel and to menace Judah and David's house, when it received a blow so manifestly divine that it never troubled the holy land again. Ere long it fell never to rise, when God was pleased to bring forward Babylon from a provincial position, though with a king, and sometimes independent, to become the mistress of the world, and the captor of the guilty capital and king and people of the Jews.

Rehoboth-Ir appears to be so specified to distinguish it from Rehoboth the Nahar— “of the river.” This latter (Gen. 36:37; 1 Chron. 1:48) was unmistakably on the river Euphrates; and in fact the name is still found given to two places on the river, one on the western bank, eight miles below the junction of the Khabiir (Rahabeth, Chesney's Euphr. i. 119, ii. 610), the other with an added name (Rahabeth-Malik), which Gen. Chesney does not notice, but it is given in Mr. Layard's Nineveh, a few miles lower on the eastern bank. Rehoboth-Ir was in Assyria proper. Kaplan, the Jewish geographer, identifies Rehoboth of the river with Rahabeth-Malik, but distinguishes it from Rehoboth-Ir, which he believes to have disappeared (see Smith's Diet. of the Bible, iii. 1026, col. 1). As no trace of this city has as yet commended itself to any explorer, it may be worth naming that Jerome, not only in the Vulgate but in his works (Quaest. ad Genesim), gives it as his opinion that it was part of what became Nineveh, meaning “the streets of the city” (i.e. plateas civitatis). This is a mere conjecture, which may be cleared up by better knowledge.

But Calah was too important a city to be so easily hidden. This the Septuagint renders Χαλάχ, and distinguishes from Halah in 2 Kings 17:6; 18:2, and 1 Chron. 5:26, rendered Ἀλαέ Chesney (i. 22, 119) appears to accept Sir H. Rawlinson's identification of Calah with the ruins of Holvvaa” situated near the river Dipitah, and about 130 miles east of Baghdad. If so, it is now Sar. pitli Zohab on the slopes of the Zagros, and in the high road leading from Baghdad to Kirman Shah, vol. ix. 36 of Royal Geogr. Journal (Chesney ii. 25). It seems once to have been the capital of the empire, the residence of Sardanapalus and others, till Sargon built a new capital on the site of what is now called Khorsabad. But it still retained importance till the empire fell.

Resen has been by some identified with the Ῥέσινα of Steph. Byz and Ptol. (Geog. v. 18); this, however, was not in Assyria, but far west. Bochart (Geog. Sac. iv. 28) suggested the Larissa of Xenophon (Anab. iii. 4, §7) which can hardly be doubted to correspond with the remarkable ruins now called Nimrild. Mr. Rawlinson leans to the view that these ruins answer to Calah, and that Resen, therefore, lay between that city and Nineveh, and that its ruins are near the Selaimyeh of modern times; and cuneiform inscriptions at Nimrud give Culach as the Assyrian name of the place. This tends to support the claim of Calah rather than of Resen.

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 9

Chapter 8

No reader of O.T. prophecy can fail to note that the fall of the enemy, threatening the Jews with imminent destruction, coincides with their deliverance, joy, and honor under the Great King. So runs the word from Isaiah and before him to Malachi; and the N. T. so far as it discloses the future of the earth (for its main and peculiar witness is to Christ in heavenly glory) is to the same effect. Here we see the type continued which began in the last chapter. Judgment proceeds.

“On that day did king Ahasuerus give the house of Haman the Jews' enemy to Esther the queen. And Mordecai came before the king; for Esther had told what he [was] unto her. And the king took off his ring, which he had taken from Haman, and gave it unto Mordecai. And Esther set Mordecai over the house of Haman. And Esther spoke yet again before the king, and fell down at his feet, and besought him with tears to put away the mischief of Haman the Agagite, and his device that he had devised against the Jews. Then the king held out to Esther the golden scepter. So Esther arose, and stood before the king; and she said, If it please the king, and if I have found favor before him, and the thing [seem] right before the king, and I [be] pleasing in his eyes, let it be written to reverse the letters devised by Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, which he wrote to destroy the Jews which [are] in all the king's provinces. For how can I endure to see the evil that shall come unto my people? and how can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred? Then the king Ahasuerus said unto Esther the queen and to Mordecai the Jew, Behold, I have given Esther the house of Haman, and him they have hanged upon the gallows, because he stretched his hand against the Jews. Write ye also to the Jews, as it pleaseth you, in the king's name, and seal [it] with the king's ring: for the writing which is written in the king's name, and sealed with the king's ring, may no man reverse, Then were the king's scribes called at that time, in the third month, which [is] the month Sivan, on the three and twentieth [day] thereof; and it was written according to all that Mordecai commanded unto the Jews, and to the satraps, and the governors, and the princes of the provinces which [are] from India unto Ethiopia, a hundred twenty and seven provinces, unto every province according to their writing thereof, and unto every people after their language, and unto the Jews according to their writing and according to their language. And he wrote in the name of king Ahasuerus, and sealed [it] with the king's ring, and sent letters by couriers on horseback, riding on swift steeds that were used in the king's service, bred of the stud: [stating] that the king granted the Jews who were in every city to gather themselves together, and to stand for their life, to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish, all the power of the people and province that would assault them, [their] little ones and women, and [to take] the spoil of them for a prey, upon one day in all the provinces of king Ahasuerus, [namely] upon the thirteenth [day] of the twelfth month, that [is] the month Adar. A copy of the writing, that the decree should be given out in every province, [was] published unto all the peoples, and that the Jews should be ready against that day to avenge themselves on their enemies.

The couriers that rode upon swift steeds that were used in the king's service went out, being hastened and pressed on by the king's commandment. And the decree was given out in Shushan the palace. And Mordecai went forth from the presence of the king in royal apparel of blue and white, and with a great crown of gold, and with a robe of fine linen and purple. And the city of Shushan shouted and was glad. The Jews had light and gladness and joy and honor. And in every province, and in every city, whithersoever the king's commandment and his decree came, the Jews had joy and gladness, a feast and a good day. And many from among the peoples of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews was fallen upon them” (vers. 1-17).

Mordecai no longer abides at the gate of the court, but is brought forward worthily to administer the kingdom here below, after service of the utmost value against treacherous men of blood.

So we read of the twelve called to sit, in an even higher honor when “the regeneration” comes, on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19). What meaning has this to those who see nothing more than the gospel followed by the judgment of the dead and eternity? They ought not to ignore the thousand years' reign, as distinct from the present as from the changeless day which is after the great white throne. It is this intermediate period of blessing which Israel enter after they say, Blessed be he that cometh in the name of Jehovah (Matt. 23). Jerusalem is trodden down by the Gentiles, but only till their times are fulfilled (Luke 21).

In Acts 3:19-21 (cf. Acts 1:6) we have a beautiful anticipation of that day of glory for all things, in contradistinction to the Holy Spirit now come and witnessing in Pentecostal presence. Then only will be the fulfillment of God's holy prophets, when “all Israel shall be saved,” instead of a mere remnant now during the call of the Gentile complement (Rom. 11:25-32). Then will not the Messiah only but the saints from on high judge the world and angels too (1 Cor. 6). Again, 1 Cor. 15:54 furnishes the most instructive synchronism between the coming of the Lord to raise the saints from the dead, and the restoration of Israel nationally yet spiritually to honor and glory in the land of promise (compare Isa. 25-27).

God will gather together in one all things in Christ, the things in the heaven and those on the earth—in Him in whom also we were allotted inheritance (Eph. 1:10-11). For we are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ (Rom. 8, Gal. 4), the Reconciler of all things to Himself, whether earthly or heavenly (Col. 1:20). This is not eternity, but the previous and predicted blessing of the Kingdom, which is again quite in contrast with the walk, while Satan reigns, of faith and suffering under the gospel. Now it is the kingdom and patience in Christ (Rev. 1), but then the world-kingdom of our Lord and His Christ (Rev. 11), the coming age and habitable world to come of Heb. 2 and vi., when the rest of God shall be brought in for earth as well as heaven (Heb. 4), and the Father's will be done on earth as in heaven, the Father's kingdom having come (Matt. 6). If some complain of these distinctions as nice and difficult, let them learn that they are only such to souls fed on the traditions of men, so hindering the discernment of the things that differ, which is essential to genuine progress in revealed truth.

Fig Tree

Matt. 24:32-35

We have the Lord's authority for regarding the fig-tree here as the groundwork for its parable. “Now from the fig-tree learn the parable. When its branch is already become tender, and putteth forth its leaves, ye know that the summer is nigh; even so ye also, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, at the doors” (vers. 32-35).

It is clear that the Lord treats this tree as symbolic of the Jews. So He had done shortly before, and both so graphically that no believer need miss the meaning. Mark gives details, as often beyond others, illustrating His ministry. Seeing a fig-tree (there was but one, as Matthew says), and being hungry, He came and found nothing but leaves. This was decisive, for it was the season of figs, it was too soon for gathering; so that if none were there, the tree must have borne none.

The Lord therefore said unto it, No one eat fruit of thee henceforth forever; and His disciples heard. On the morrow, as they passed by, they saw the fig-tree dried up from the roots; and Peter remarked on it, when the Lord's answer dwelt on the all-importance and the power of faith. There is no obstacle too strong to resist; only the grace that forgives all personal wrongs must accompany the faith of him that serves Christ. And so it has been. Not only have the fruitless Jews, as responsible under the first covenant, lost their religious position, but they are no longer a power. They are scattered and swamped in the sea of peoples.

It was one of the two miracles of the Lord which was not an expression of grace but judicial; and both told the destinies impending on Israel because of their evil and unbelief. The one, as we have seen, was their judgment under legal responsibility as barren after all God's care and claim of fruit. The other was set forth by the destruction of the swine, when the demons expelled from Legion entered and drove the herd into the abyss. So it will be in the latter day when the apostate Jews are given over to uncleanness and energized by the powers of darkness. These were the two exceptions. All the other miracles of the Lord displayed the glory of God and grace toward man.

What then is the parable to be learned from the fig-tree in our chapter? The Lord is opening to the chosen disciples His appearing for the Jews first (Matt. 24:4-44); then (vers. 45-25:30) His dealings with professing Christians; and lastly (25:31-46) His judgment of all the nations or Gentiles.

It will be seen therefore that verses 32-35 concern the Jewish remnant directly, however we may profit by this as by every other scripture. The Jews will be objects of grace once more, and come under the new covenant in that day. Here accordingly the fig-tree falls under no curse. Far from withering away from the roots, Israel, which knew nothing but misery and ruin from trusting its own righteousness, is cast on the Messiah in repentance and faith; and now mercy henceforward flows as a river. But “the many,” the mass, judge themselves unworthy of life eternal and perish with their Antichrist; the godly remnant become the strong nation, and they are “all Israel” that shall be saved. They will have dates which must run their course; and also have successive events which must be accomplished. Times and seasons particularly characterize them.

Here the Lord deigns to give them signs in a way He never did to us of the church who are called to walk by faith, not by sight. So we may observe in the early verses of Matt. 24 and specially in verse 14. Still more emphatic is what follows from verse 15, where Dan. 12 is referred to, and, more than any, verse 11. There is a tribulation without parallel, but no translation to heaven; and the coming of the Son of man is like the lightning. For there is pre-eminently the carcass, whither gather the eagles. Immediately after the tribulation convulsions above and below follow; and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and all the tribes mourn, and they see Him coming to the earth. And His angels gather His elect (who seem here to be of Israel, as in Isa. 65, 66); for over these He will reign in the promised land. The heavenly saints are seen in their own place. Here our Lord treats of Israelitish saints.

The fig-tree is no longer barren; for the Son of man received, and the new covenant with Him, will change all. These are early days; and we hear no more than of the branch tender, and putting forth leaves. The time of fruit will come; but as yet they only know that summer is nigh. “So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, at the doors.” Grace will not fail to work its due effects.

How is it with you, dear reader? Have you learned that you are no better than the barren fig-tree? If you have, it is well. For most deceive themselves and are indifferent. If you know that you have neither fruit nor life, oh! look to Him by faith Who is life and gives it to all that believe. It is ruinous to talk of your privileges. The greatest is that you have the New Testament as well as the Old. But only Jesus, the Son of God, can avail; only His blood cleanses from every sin, when you will have the seal of His Spirit and bear fruit by His grace. “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” Thus will you welcome His coming Who says, “Surely I come quickly,” and you will answer, “Amen, come, Lord Jesus.”

The Seventy Weeks: 2

The prophecy is distinguished by several defined times, more marked than any other vision of scripture. There is no small variety in the character of the prophecies. God gives the very best of every kind; but here we have certain definite times. You may recall what the Lord said in the beginning of His ministry (Mark 1:15), “The time is fulfilled.” What time? Does He not allude to this vision of Daniel? Notoriously, as a matter of fact, “the people were in expectation,” and all men reasoned in their hearts concerning John, whether haply he were the Christ. The Magi in the East might not know the recent prophets; but they had preserved the remembrance of a vision seen of old by a Gentile seer, hired to curse Israel, yet compelled of God to bless. He had said, “I see Him, but not now, I behold Him, but not nigh. There shall come forth a star out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel,” &c. When God gave the star to these gazers, it was enough to send them to Jerusalem. Evidently they had conscience toward God, and when they saw the star they connected it with the ancient prophecy, and set out on their long and arduous journey to pay honor to the one born King of the Jews.

Certain it is that they were in earnest, and the Lord blessed them. Thus not only the Jews but also distant Gentiles were on the watch when the time arrived. It was more especially “fulfilled” when the Lord presented Himself to Israel as the Messiah and began to preach the kingdom of heaven as drawn nigh.

Here are the terms of this prophecy. “Seventy weeks are decreed (or apportioned) upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish transgression and to make an end of sins, ant to make expiation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up vision and prophet, and to anoint the holy of holies (ver. 24).

Here the scope is laid down with precision. The period as a whole regards, not the gospel or the church, or even Israel in general, but the Jews as such: “Seventy weeks are apportioned (or decreed) upon thy people and upon thy holy city.” Nor is this all, but we have this result— “to finish the transgression and to make an end of sins,” &c. This cannot be for the Jews distinctively till they shall say, Blessed be He that cometh in the name of Jehovah. Then will they see the Messiah with the eye of faith. It will only be when the last week has run its course; but this, as will appear shortly, supposes the condemnation of this age, and the beginning of the age to come. No doubt we receive the blessing of the gospel now, while the Jews as a people are wrapped up in unbelief. We who know Christ gone on high after suffering on the cross do not wait for expiation till then; whereas the Jews have it only when the Great Priest comes forth from the heavenly sanctuary by-and-by, as Lev. 16 shows. Then for them will everlasting righteousness be brought in, vision and prophet be sealed up, and the holy of holies anointed; for us who walk by faith, not sight, God foresaw and bestowed “some better thing.” But the Jews will surely have their good portion at the close of the age.

The Seventy Weeks are beyond just question four hundred and ninety years; but we are prepared, not only for sections, but also for an interruption of indefinite length between the last two. This seems clearly conveyed by the language of the prophecy itself in verse 26: “Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the word to restore and to build Jerusalem unto Messiah the Prince are seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. It shall be built again, street and moat, even in troublous times. And after the sixty-two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and its end shall be with an overflow, and unto the end war—the desolations determined” (vers. 25, 26).

The first section of seven weeks means a period of forty-nine years; and this was occupied with the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple as recorded in Ezra and Nehemiah. Then come the sixty-two weeks besides, which bring us down to Messiah expressly. Of course the starting-point from this period of sixty-nine weeks is itself important. It is the commandment to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, of which we have the inspired account in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. There are two commands of the same king. The one was in the seventh year, the other in the twentieth, of Artaxerxes Longimanus. The one more particularly referred to the temple, and the other to the city. Thus a question has arisen, as to which it is well not to speak too confidently. It is, after all, an interval of less than fourteen years. Between the two the epoch must fall. It may help to observe that the beginning of ver. 26 gives a little latitude, as the text says, not “at” but “after the sixty-two weeks” with the first seven. This appears to leave room for the margin; and such care seems to be consistent with God's wisdom. After the sixty-two weeks then, we are told that Messiah would be received? The saddest reverse: “Messiah shall be cut off, and shall have nothing.”

The prophecy, therefore, is remarkable, not only for giving the time with a noteworthy care, but also for that momentous truth: the actual downfall of Judaism in the rejection of Christ. The latter clause is wretchedly mistaken in the Authorized version. The Revised, on the contrary, gives it right. It should not be, “but not for himself,” but “and shall have nothing.” There is no question on the ground of Hebrew grammar. It can mean only “and shall have nothing.” “But not for himself” is wholly unfounded. Shall I tell you how it came in? Because the Authorized Version wanted to make it sound Christian doctrine. But what had this to do with Gabriel's communication to Daniel? The only legitimate sense is “He shall be cut off and shall have nothing.” With His cutting off went the loss of His Messianic rights, His glory as set king on the holy hill of Zion. All that was His in connection with the Jewish people and Jerusalem passed away entirely for the time. And how true is all this? “They shall smite the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek” (Mic. 5:1). Christ has none of the promised glory as Ruler in Israel, though “His goings forth are from of old, from the days of eternity.”

As far as the Jews are concerned in His blessings, He is as if He did not exist. It is blessedly true, as we Christians know, that God raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory of a new kind, altogether outside of prophecy, not David's throne in Zion, but God's throne in heaven. How absurd to confound with this the throne of David! David never reigned in heaven, and Christ does not reign on earth; and that theologians confound the two wholly different things is an error which not only makes their scheme fabulous, but lowers His glory and our hope from heaven to earth. The proper character of Christianity is lost, and Israel are naturally defrauded of their peculiar prospects.

It is not scripture that is wrong, but only men's version and interpretation, made to suit a Judaized Christianity. Our Lord being rejected by the people would and could not reign over a rebellious people. Even when they wanted to force on Him a kingdom on earth, the Lord withdrew to the mountain and would have none of it. He was not to reign over the wicked, the unclean, the unbelieving. Men thought it excellent to have a king that could give them bread without working for it. And such is the socialist craving in another form to-day. Man would provide for the needy out of the means of the thrifty and industrious. Certainly the Jews desired then to make Jesus their king who had proved His power and willingness to feed them freely. There was no repentance any more than faith in that. Why were Jews without bread? Why, servants of the Gentiles? Repentance owns our sins, and faith cannot stop short of remission of sins from the God Who has sent His Son to save. Miracles are a sign to sinners that God concerns Himself compassionately with those who have departed from Him. Only in the Son of God is life, eternal life; and God is giving it in Him to all that believe; and it is He Who bore our sins in His own body on the tree, so that the blessing is complete.

Salvation by Grace: 3

Why should it not be so now? Must there not be some strange barrier in your way? some hindrance of Satan, that keeps genuine souls from entering into peace for months, or even years? And the worst of it is, that when people do enter, they dread lest they should deceive themselves. It is curious enough that in the two hymns we sung tonight I was really embarrassed; because they both take for granted that the Christian must die, that the tongue shall be silent in the grave. Both are assumptions, although the authors of them were excellent persons—John Newton the writer of the one, and W. Cowper of the other. They were both of them, beyond a doubt, true saints of the Lord; but the truth should be dearer than either.

Now just look at the grave departure from Scripture. I ought never to assume, as a Christian, that I am going to die, but rather to be waiting for Christ. One may die, of course, as is perfectly true; but I ought not to speak as if I must die, as both hymns do. I was rather hard put to it to find a hymn I could sing, and just refer to it to show how adulterated the truth is in reference to the question. Do you think people do not lose by it? Of course they do. What is the remedy? The grace and truth of our Lord Jesus Christ as set forth in the gospel. We know people say this is dangerous! The truth of God dangerous! The grace of God dangerous! Just wait for a moment, and you will see how excessively false and evil such a notion is. Nay, it is rebellion against the grace of God, as God has revealed it in His word.

Look again at this man. I have shown the blessed testimony he bore to the Lord Jesus as the Holy One, who had done nothing amiss. Surely He must have been more than man to have done nothing amiss. But then the dying robber does not rest there. He turns to our Lord, and strikingly said, “Remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom” —not exactly “into,” but “in Thy kingdom.” This is a particular point, because our Lord does not go into His kingdom there. He comes in His kingdom from heaven; He receives a kingdom from God and comes back. It is given Him by God before He comes, as is shown in the parable, where it is said that “A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive a kingdom and to return.”

Is it not a marvelous thing that the robber should know the truth better than our authorized translators? They made the mistake of thinking He had come into this kingdom there. The robber knew more about the kingdom than they. He no doubt had heard the Prophets read—had heard of the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, and all His angels with Him; and he asked to be remembered of the Lord. When you think of how the robber had lived up to that time, what a thing it was for him to ask of Christ “Remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom!” That the Lord Jesus in that august moment, when claims of the countless interests of the kingdom over all the earth rested upon Him, should remember the new-born one, the poor converted robber! For him personally to be remembered by the King of kings and Lord of lords at that moment, you would say was a bold request. Yes, but the Lord Jesus loves the boldness that confides in Him. What you have to guard against is just the contrary—the bravado of unbelief. Oh, think of this!

People talk about the presumption of believers. It were wiser to warn them of the presumptuous sin of unbelief. Is it not truly presumptuous to think that they can ever make a title to the skies, or a title to Christ's kingdom comparable with His grace? You never can have so good a title as the robber had unless you have his title. There is but one title good. The title of grace is perfect; and this is Christ—Christ in all His worth—Christ in His perfection—Christ in all the power of His redemption. Is that your title? If so, blessed are you: you have got the same title as the converted robber; you cannot have a better; you may easily have a worse. All else is good for nothing. There are some Christians who consider it the way of wisdom and prudence to mix a little bit of self with grace. The more they do so, the weaker they are, the less happy. And so they deserve; for they dishonor Christ, by marring grace, and darkening the truth.

What a deliverance to have done with self! What self-abandonment to have only grace, and nothing but grace, and all grace! Such was the case with this poor man. He saw he could look in the Lord's face, and say to Him, “Remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom.” And the Lord did not reply, “What! you talk about that. You may think yourself well off to be just the boy borne with, as it were, in heaven.” The Lord will not have one in heaven save like Himself. He will not allow a person there with a single token of shame about him. They are resplendent every one in the beauty and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I remember seeing a curious mistake in a tract by one of our brethren; for you must not suppose we want to maintain that they do not make mistakes. “The Broken Crown” was the point of the tract. But seriously, in heaven there are no broken crowns—nothing of the sort. When saints go with Christ to heaven, they are crowned: no broken crowns are there, nor men in robes that are not the best robes. Nay, the best robe is given here. What is the best robe? Christ. Put on Christ: no robe so good as He. Be true to Christ. It is impossible to have Christ, and not have the best robe. This is the truth of the figure; and the man that had not on the wedding garment was one who dared to come in his own righteousness. So that, when the robber begged the Lord to remember him when He came in His kingdom, he was thoroughly within the just petitions to Christ. He was there, if I may so say, swimming in that blessed sea of love in which he was made to find his true bliss. He was at home there, at ease there, breathing freely there. He was buoyed up and made strong in the grace that is in Jesus Christ; yea, he was as good as preaching from that cross to every creature, and showing what the cross of Christ can do for a poor guilty sinner.

Is this to be your portion now? I call on you not to believe half the gospel, nor to seek and find a little something for your soul. I want you to see that Christ does not give in such fashion at all. It is not His way to give a little now and a little again. The crumbs that fall from His table are turned into richer and still richer blessing. He gives better than the whole loaf of man. He was asked, “Remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom.” What is the answer? It is in accordance with a blessed principle of God, that, whatever faith asks, grace gives yet more. The Lord knew well that the boldness of the man's faith was to be eclipsed by the fullness of God's grace. The grace of God will always be greater than any faith on man's part. The man asked a very great thing—to be remembered when the Lord comes in His kingdom. His heart was filled with assurance that at such a moment Christ would be able to remember him; but the Lord lets him know He will do it and far more. “Verily,” said Jesus unto him, “I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.”

This is surely more than to be remembered in the kingdom. You will not suspect me of running down the kingdom, or of willingness to depreciate the day of the Lord. You know that one loves often and publicly to insist on it, and on its great importance. You will not think, therefore, that slight of it is meant. But this I do say, that, great as may be the glory of the kingdom when our Lord Jesus comes, to be with Christ in Paradise is even more and better. The two blessings go together, and therefore it is not at all a question of setting the one against the other. But there is this difference. The kingdom will be an outward display when the Lord will give five cities to one servant and ten to another. It will be a day of rewards for service, for fidelity, when every laborer will account according to his labor. But to be with Christ in Paradise means the fullness of grace; and beyond doubt, great as is the importance of the kingdom, the privilege of a sinner saved to be with Christ in the presence of God is one that nothing can exceed or equal.

Reflections on Galatians 1:1-10

The opening address is remarkable for its singularity. “Paul an apostle (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father who raised him from the dead), and all the brethren which are with me, unto the churches of Galatia.” He is careful to assert his apostleship and the source of it, the Judaizing teachers of his day invariably calling it in question while seeking to undermine the doctrine of free grace (2 Cor. 11-13). It was an offense to such that Paul had not received his commission from the twelve and from Jerusalem. So petty and narrow is the human mind that it is slow to enter into the breadth of God's thoughts and the divine sovereignty of His action. These men would have had Christianity revolve around Jerusalem as a center, and would have supplemented faith in Christ with circumcision and the ordinances of the law. But God's thoughts are not as men's thoughts. Christianity is no mere branch of Judaism (which had a divinely selected earthly center), but a totally new order of blessing, founded upon the work of Christ, having its seat in heaven, where Christ sits as the glorified Head at the right hand of God.

It was true that Paul had not been called from Jerusalem. He was called to both grace and apostleship near Damascus, and when sent forth to evangelize the Gentile world, it was from Antioch. Thus early did God break in upon successional order. Therefore, while asserting his apostleship, he adds, “not of men, neither by man.” He sets man aside, as either the source or the channel of ministry. The source of all ministry is the risen Christ. “When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. And he gave some apostles,” &c. (Eph. 4). Here there is no room either for official men or the church. The authority of the former is in every case pretended, not real, while the latter has no place, according to scripture, save as a receiver of all the blessing. It is an infringement of the rights of Christ for either to step in between Himself and His servants. Yet how general is the departure from scripture in this very respect! In what religious body in Christendom could ministry be described as “not of men, neither by man?” Many would probably assert that man is not the source of ministry, but can anyone say that man is not the universally recognized channel? Human authority, in one form or another, is looked for on all sides, ere a man can be regarded as a “regular” minister of Christ. Scripture furnishes no warrant whatever for such a notion, though it be ancient. Laborers are responsible to the Lord alone, Who fits, calls, and gives them to the church.

But here we must distinguish between gift and office. Scripture speaks plainly of elders and deacons. Elders were chosen by the apostles, either personally or by delegate, to care for the spiritual state of the saints locally; deacons were nominated by the assembly to undertake the temporal affairs, as caring for widows, &c. Both classes were apostolically appointed. But this was not for the ministry of the word. It was not an absolute requisite for men of either class to be able to labor in word and doctrine. No doubt, where this was, the laborer was worthy of double honor (Acts 14:23; 6:3-6, 1 Tim. 5:17).

But ministry, if Scripture is to be followed, is free, those who have received gifts being responsible to the Lord Jesus to exercise them. Good doctrine, not official appointment, was to be looked for (compare 3 John). When Apollos went to Ephesus, it was not his ordination that was inquired into, but his doctrine; and having approved himself there (after godly help), being “disposed to pass into Achaia, the brethren wrote exhorting the disciples to receive him” (Acts 19). And when at a later date, Paul greatly desired him to go to Corinth, it was not at all his will to go at that time (1 Cor. 16:12). Liberty prevailed all round in apostolic days when the truth was held fast, as the apostle himself records.

Paul was not alone in his earnest protest to the Galatians, He adds, “and all the brethren which are with me.” This was to silence objectors. 2 Cor. 11; 12 shows what base insinuations his opponents could throw out. Therefore he is careful to show that what he wrote was with the fall concurrence of all who were associated with him in the work. He briefly addresses them as “the churches of Galatia.” He does not add, “beloved of God,” as to the Romans, nor “to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus,” as to the Corinthians. It is the shortest possible address, unlike the general style of the affectionate apostle. How could it be otherwise? The souls were trifling with the very foundations of Christianity; what could he say for them? “I stand in doubt of you,” he says farther on. Nothing was more serious, in his judgment, than to turn to the law after confession of faith in Christ, still his heart was towards them. If he was not so expressive as usual, he coup wish most unfeignedly “Grace to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.” This word is specially important, if only because of its constant repetition in the New Testament. But the Galatians could not enjoy either grace or peace while they trafficked with law. These are the precious fruits of the work of Jesus, and for the enjoyment of our souls day by day.

But the apostle adds of our Lord Jesus, “who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world (age), according to the will of God and our Father: to whom be glory forever and ever, Amen.” What more could He give for our sins than Himself, and what else would have availed? He bare the sins of the many, and they are gone, cast into the depths of the sea. But was the putting away of sins the only object of His work? Nay, there is more, “That he might deliver us from this present evil world.” Is it strange that such a word should come in here? By no means. It was needed urgently in Galatia. To follow the law is an aspect of worldliness, however startling it may sound to some. Law was given to correct and restrain flesh, and to direct man viewed as living in the world. But the Christian has died and is risen; so that Paul could say, “Why as though living in the world?” &c. (Col. 2:20). Where this is understood, the heart is proof against legalism, because it enjoys a heavenly Christ as its only object. If the Galatians ever knew this, they were letting it slip.

The apostle expresses his astonishment at their early declension from the truth. “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you in the grace of Christ unto a different gospel; which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.” Theirs was not gradual decay after long years of profession, but a very sudden turning aside. How could they be so fickle? To turn now to law was to turn from God. He had called them by Paul to grace, not law. Time was, when to follow the law was to walk with God. But faith is come, and those who were under the schoolmaster are so no longer. For Gentiles, after profession of faith in Christ, to turn to law, is to turn from God. No wonder the apostle stood in doubt of the Galatians! But he would not admit that it was another gospel. There were no glad tidings different from those preached by him with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. It was a perversion of the gospel of Christ, and the men were troublers, and should bear their judgment.

Paul felt that the foundations were at stake, which made him vehement. “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” Faith working by love can speak strongly at times, when the truth of Christ is involved. The apostle would pronounce anathema upon himself if ever he corrupted the gospel committed to his trust.

But it was possible that these Judaisers might seek to persuade the Galatians that they had not received all the gospel and that what they taught was merely supplementary, and what the apostle would have set before them had he remained long enough. This would be plausible, but it is met, “As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.” Paul had taught them all, and they had received all: all pretended developments were but error. In speaking so strongly, the apostle had Christ before him, not men. “For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.” Paul had not learned the unwholesome principle of our day, that for unity's sake all sorts of error should be tolerated. None could be more careful than he not to unnecessarily wound any, nor could any be more considerate to souls who were slow in their growth in the truth; but when the foundations of Christianity were undermined or attacked, the apostle forgot men, and acted for Christ. An important principle for our souls at the present crisis.

James 1:23-24

Reality is indispensable. It was so of old and always; much more is it now due to God, who has done such great things for us in Christ. Begotten of God with the word of truth, we are called to walk accordingly. The higher or holier the speech, if it go no farther, the more are we self-condemned and inexcusably guilty. Life is given to the believer for exercise in every way pleasing to God.

“Because if any one be a word-hearer, and not a doer, he is like a man considering his natural face in a mirror; for he considered himself and is gone away, and straightway forgot of what sort he was.” (vers. 23, 24).

It is a privilege of no small value to have the word, which is of God; and as it was that which revealed Him in Christ to the soul, so also it was made the means of quickening. It therefore is the appropriate nourishment of the life that was given, as the Holy Spirit used it thus efficaciously. So He does to the end, making us know that the Trinity is no mere idea nor objective dogma, but a living truth in active operation day by day for those who believe. Hence conscience is continually exercised; for we have another nature, not only human but fallen and prone to evil, as previous verses in this chapter fully notice; and we pass through a world which is wholly opposed to God and His glory, having already been tested from the beginning and proving its enmity by crucifying the Lord of glory. Inwardly and outwardly therefore is the most real danger, especially when we take account of a subtle and sleepless power of evil, one who secretly avails himself of every means to compromise the saint and draw him into the dishonor of the Lord.

Nor is there any way more perilous than ensnaring the believers into a merely formal reading of the revealed word. For the conscience may be satisfied that the word is heard, while the heart is unmoved; and thus all becomes powerless. Yet therein God has communicated the most solemn truths, and of the nearest interest to Himself as well as to us; so that reading them there perfunctorily inflicts deep moral loss on the soul, and leads into a hardened state that lays one open to a thousand snares.

Therefore does our epistle urge us to be not hearers of the word only, but doers, comparing him who is a mere hearer to a man considering in a mirror “the face of his birth,” as it literally runs. For, it is added, he considered himself and is gone away, and straightway forgot of what sort he was. A similar warning, we have seen, had the Lord given in the close of what is called the sermon on the mount, as it is indeed not only for all that turn away from what they hear for the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, but expressly for such professors of His name as content themselves with reading or hearing His good word, which is able to make wise unto salvation. Life is not only receptive but energetic; it is holy and works by love, for it is inseparable from the Son of God, Whose words are profitable indeed: “they are spirit, and they are life,” as He has told us. So also had He said, “That which is born of the Spirit, is spirit.” This no external institution, however important, can possibly effect; nothing but a divine person giving the soul to believe the word and Him who made it known.

Thus is the truth kept sure and safe on all sides, without room for superstition or fanaticism. For the Holy Spirit ever employs the word which witnesses to Christ and His work, and thus brings into communion with God; and as one is thus born of God, so does he grow and work practically. Where only the mind is reached or the affections, it is no more than a sight of the natural face in a mirror. There is no abiding self-judgment, no going out after Christ, no delight in God's will intimated in His word. It was seen for a moment but forgotten.

The Mystery: Part 2

In the following page (52) we encounter some extraordinary statements indeed. On the gates of the city Dr. B. finds the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, and in the foundations the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. We should have supposed that the names of all the twelve apostles would have satisfied even a divine of the nineteenth century that the holy city was the church of God. But they are no match for Dr. B.; with one stroke of his pen he cuts off the whole band. We are familiar with wholesale excommunications by arrogant popes; but even they were never bold enough to turn Peter and the eleven en masse out of the church of which they were the honored foundations (Eph. 2).

But Dr. B. is troubled by no squeamish scruples. What can he do with his theory about the Bride if the apostles form part of the body of Christ? With rare effrontery, urged on by overwhelming zeal for the offspring of his imagination, he declares that the twelve apostles are “separated off from the church!” The church is part of the Bridegroom, but the apostles form no part of the bride! There is therefore, according to our author, not the shadow of a shade of a doubt that those who have regarded Peter and John, for instance, as among those whom God set first in the church, have been the unfortunate victims of an egregious delusion!

The fact that the names of the twelve apostles are seen in the foundations of the symbolical city of Rev. 22 receives explanation from the Epistle to the Ephesians (2:19-22). It indicates, in spite of Dr. B.'s reveries, that the apostles had a good deal to do with the church. So far from being outside of it, they are as closely connected with it as a foundation is with the building raised upon it. Saved Jews and Gentiles were and are being built upon a foundation which is not of the apostle Paul to the exclusion of the others, but “of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief corner stone.” This building under the workmanship of the Holy Ghost is growing unto a holy temple in the Lord. In that same word the Ephesian saints, with other believing Jews and Gentiles, are viewed by the apostle as forming God's house upon earth, God dwelling in it by His Spirit.

Here then in this Epistle, which specially treats of the mystery, the body of Christ is presented as a building having the apostles for a foundation, and growing to a temple in the Lord, but is even now God's habitation in the Spirit (cf. 1 Peter 2:5, 6); while in Rev. 21 a building is again presented to us, having foundations in which are the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Now what more simple and unstrained than to see in both places a figure of the church, the body and bride of Christ?

Nay, says the author of the “Mystery,” that cannot be. What are we to do with the promise of Christ to the apostles which has never been abrogated, that they should judge the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19:28) if they form part of the body of Christ (page 52)? But it is puzzling to see how membership of the body of Christ would hinder the apostles from judging the tribes of Israel, any more than it would hinder the Corinthian saints from judging the world (1 Cor. 6:2), or the overcomer in Thyatira from ruling the nations with a rod of iron (Rev. 2:26-27). Will Dr. B. amputate the body still further by cutting off the Corinthian saints and those in Thyatira? The sole justification for his monstrous excision of the apostles is a “comparison of Matt. 19:28 with Rev. 21:14.” Let wise men examine for themselves. What necessary connection is there between the names in the foundations and sitting on twelve thrones?

On page 54 Dr. B. sums up in very decided terms, “What is clear and certain is that the church is the body of Christ Himself, and that the members of the body being in Christ (mystical) are PART OF THE BRIDEGROOM, and cannot possibly, therefore, be the bride herself.”

Now it is hardly conceivable that our author is unaware of the common danger of confusing the sign with the thing signified. He surely knows also that it is a frequent and well-understood practice to compare an object in two perfectly dissimilar ways, for the purpose of illustrating two distinct qualities of that object.

We will give an example of this to make our point quite clear. Let us suppose that an impatient reader, referring to a treatise of inconsequential ideas and vain fancies, alludes to its author as “a goose,” and subsequently as “a mule.” By the first figure he would probably wish to convey the general vacuity of thought characteristic of the writer, and by the second his stubborn persistence in wrong notions. And though the figures might perhaps be more forcible than elegant, they would be perfectly admissible. But Dr. B. would contend that they must refer to two different persons. For, he would say, if a man is a goose how can he be a mule? One is a biped, the other a quadruped. One cackles, but the other kicks; and so on with other dissimilarities. But does he not forget that though a goose cannot be a mule, a man may be both a goose and a mule at the same time, inasmuch as it is quite possible for him to be not only foolish but obstinate as well?

Dr. B. keeps insisting that the body cannot be the bride, when the truth is that it is the church which is figured both as the body and the bride. While it is perfectly true that these figures are allied in character, they are nevertheless used to set forth distinct ideas. The “body” indicates that intimate degree of living unity existing between Christ and His members, and is used particularly of the church during its stay on earth. On the other hand, the foremost thought suggested by the “bride” is that of association. The church is to love and share Christ's glory, reigning with Him. Hence where the professing church is shown as the false bride (Rev. 18), she is seen taking her glory from the kings of the earth with whom she enters into unnatural alliance. But the true bride awaits the heavenly glory of Christ.

We must, however, say a word as to Dr. B.'s treatment of Eph. 5:28, 29, which is another instance of his pitiful trifling with these sacred themes. Here, he says, “the great secret is employed as an argument to the reciprocal duties of husbands and wives. In neither case is it said that the church is the wife or that Christ is the husband. But that as Christ loves His body (the church), so husbands ought to love their bodies (their wives)” (page 54). Now Dr. B. admits in so many words that a man's wife is here spoken of as his body, but where the question is the church as both the body of Christ and the Lamb's wife, he is completely boggled. He simply shuts his eyes, and says the only thing “clear and certain” is that it cannot possibly be.

Now the point in the verses is that a bride is a man's body, that he and his wife are mystically “one flesh.” This was literally true in the case of Adam and Eve; for the rib that God took from Adam He builded into a woman; and God called their name, Adam (Gen. 5:2). And these figures are applied by the apostle (we are not so concerned about “New Testament Expositors”), to Christ and the church. “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:32). So that the passage bases the love of the husband to the wife upon the identity (in figure) of his body and his bride; adding, that so it is with the Lord and the Church.

Dr. B.'s remarks on Matt. 25:1-13 afford another example of his riding a figure to death. The virgins cannot be the bride, because they are her attendant companions! We wonder if he objects in the same way to the Lord's similitudes of the kingdom of the heavens in Matt. 13. Does he say it is “clear and certain” that the great tree cannot be the leaven hid in three measures of meal, any more than the latter can be the same as the treasure, because it is likewise “clear and certain” the treasure was hid in a field and not in the three measures of meal? The Lord, however, likens the kingdom of heaven to all three, however they may differ when compared among themselves. In point of fact, just as the types of scripture cannot be understood until we know the truths they typify, in like manner, paradoxical as it may seem, the language of scripture cannot be correctly interpreted without knowing the underlying thoughts,

This the Lord said to the Jews, “Why do ye not understand my speech? (λαλιὰ) even because ye cannot hear my word” (λόγος) (John 8:43). The case of Nicodemus illustrates the same thing, for he utterly mistook the meaning of the Lord's words (John 3:4).

But why does Dr. B., dwelling upon the nonidentity of the bride and the virgins, her companions, reiterate the ruler's question, “How can these things be?” Is it not best first to ascertain the purpose of the parable? This is supplied in Matt. 25:13, “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour.” Now we can understand attendant virgins slumbering and sleeping; but how incongruous would it have been to represent a bride falling asleep on such an occasion? Do not the “Spirit and the bride say, Come?” (Rev. 22:17.) Beside half of them are shut out, a circumstance quite foreign to the figure of a bride, but faithfully illustrating the fate of the mass of professing Christendom, as we are taught in unfigurative language elsewhere. The ten virgins therefore set forth the mixed company of those who take the place of Christians, while the bride figures the church in glory associated with Christ in His public appearing and reign.

Dr. B. maintains (page 55) that Rebekah does not illustrate the church but the bride, that is, O.T. saints spoken of in Heb. 11. The sole reason given is that the bride (Rebekah) was not to be of “the Canaanites,” and “Gentiles were expressly shut out” in contrast with the church which embodies Jew and Gentile.” But Dr. B. overlooks that amongst those expressly named in the “great cloud of witnesses” (to which he refers in Heb. 11) Rahab is included (verse 31), who was both a Gentile and a Canaanite. We think this fact rather spoils the symmetry of Dr. B.'s argument; and it is undeniable that theories must give way to facts.

The “better thing” (Heb. 11:39, 40) is said by our author to refer to the position of greater glory and honor the body of Christ will have than the bride; whereas it refers to the present blessing of Christianity which God has now provided for us and which we enjoy already, while they had only unfulfilled promises. Nevertheless both they and we shall be perfected together in the first resurrection (compare the use of “better,” in Heb. vii, 19-22; viii. 6; ix. 23),

We have now examined the scriptures that Dr. B. has brought forward to show that the body of Christ is not identical with the heavenly bride of Christ; and we find that not one of them bears him out in his misshapen theory. Being over-occupied with the nature of the metaphors employed, he has missed the truth signified. The “body,” which indicates in a word the nature of present living unity betwixt Christ and the church, is characteristically found in the Epistles; while the “bride” signifying the future association of the church, when perfected and glorified with Christ, is appropriately used in the prophetic visions of the Apocalypse. What is first His body becomes His bride, as in the case of Adam and Eve (Gen. 2), which Eph. 5 authorizes as a picture of Christ and the church.

Until the nuptial day the church awaits with joyous anticipation. “The Spirit and the bride say, Come” (Rev. 22:17). How perverse to suppose that the Holy Ghost is moving the spirits of the departed saints of O.T. days, who are now on high, to cry, Come! The bride here can only refer to the church, which alone is the habitation of the Spirit. Besides it is the saints on earth, not those in the presence of Christ, who say, Come. The fact is Dr. B.'s theory does not accord with the truth as revealed. He has offered us bread, but we find it is a stone.

We propose (D.V.) to examine some further points raised by Dr. B. in this tract.

Letter of Pope Leo XIII on the Unity of the Church: 2. Unity

2—Unity

To attract the stray sheep Pope Leo has “thought it most conducive.... to describe the exemplar and, as it were, the lineaments of the Church. Amongst these the most worthy of our chief consideration is Unity” (p. v). Now in scripture the church has unity, not bare, but of a most distinctive character. It is the unity of God's presence in light and love, of which Christ is the head and center, and the Spirit is the power, where therefore falsehood and evil are, as intolerable, judged by the written word. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. Where this is not realized, the unity becomes the enemy's snare attaching the name of God and binding souls helplessly together to that which sanctions any iniquity and error. Unity, which exalts man and his will under pretense of God's authority, letting in error and allowing evil, is the hateful antithesis of the Spirit's unity, the object of God's wrath and sore judgment, as John predicts for the harlot city of Rev. 17, 18. No wonder then that all votaries of corrupt and spurious unity should both slight openly and secretly dread the last book of holy prophecy.

The truth is thus unworthily ignored, or strangely taken for granted. But even if this were a sound and spiritual judgment, how sad! For nothing is more certain than the fact that “unity” no longer exists among Christians. There was a time when the apostolic exhortation in 1 Cor. 10:32 could apply absolutely and without explanation: “Give none offense [no occasion of stumbling] either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God.” There was no Latin church opposed to the Oriental, each claiming to be Catholic and Apostolic, to say nothing of the Russian patriarchate independent of Constantinople. There were no Jacobites, nor Nestorians; no distinct communities of Abyssinians, of Armenians, and of, Copts. Again, how refuse the Christian name to the multifarious Protestant bodies who date from the Reformation, or to such as the Anglicans who boast of ecclesiastical continuity of a dubious sort for long ages before it? It must not be forgotten that more of the baptized are outside Rome than within it; and if one may at all speak not of mere profession but of real children of God, the preponderance is enormously against Rome. Yet godly and intelligent Protestants have immensely added to the disunion of Christendom. Who can deny it? or is it a light matter?

In apostolic days the church was one. How could it be otherwise if it were, as scripture declares it to be, the body and bride of Christ? It was not only that the individuals who composed it were sons of God with the Holy Spirit given to each, and crying, Abba Father. They were one with Christ. corporately, His body; which relationship created the responsibility of walking as such together on the earth. They were heavenly in title already as belonging to the Heavenly One, before they bear His image at His coming again.. “By one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all given to drink of one Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:13). It was not an invisible light here below; but out of the most discordant elements expressly one, that the world seeing it might believe that the Father sent the Son Who constituted it.

The church therefore was as distinctly separate from the world, as it was Christ's alone, bearing witness, wherever it existed on earth, to its Head in heaven. The Christians formed the “within,” as all who were not, Jews or Gentiles, were the “without.” It was the only divine society here below. Israel of old had been Jehovah's chosen nation. But this place they for the time forfeited. Thereon God visited Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name, called by sovereign grace to incomparably higher privileges, and to heavenly glory as heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. The same cross of Christ which ended Judaism founded God's reconciliation of both Jews and Gentiles that believe in one body, the enmity being slain thereby. Thus through Christ we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. So real and efficacious the presence of the Spirit, that in each locality (as at Corinth) the gathered saints were addressed as “Christ's body” (1 Cor. 12:27); and so are they all together on earth “the church” (1 Cor. 12:28). The unity was universal as well as local. A member of Christ was so equally in Antioch and in Ephesus, in Jerusalem and in Rome, so were apostles and prophets, evangelists, also pastors and teachers. There was one body, and one Spirit.

It is beyond controversy that this visibly and practically maintained unity no longer subsists. The later Epistles are full of warning for Christendom, as the O.T. prophets for Israel. The apostle Paul too in an early one had predicted that “the apostasy” should come before the day of the Lord. Nothing worse was ever said to the Jews. He declared that “the mystery of lawlessness” was already at work even in his active days. It may be held down for the time, but at last would issue in the revelation of the lawless one, the man of sin, whom the Lord Jesus will destroy when He appears. Was not this to write from God sentence of death on Christendom? 2 Thess. 2 intimates with divine certainty, that lawlessness was even then at work, breaking out in heterodoxy and unholiness, in schisms and heresies; that there is no uprooting of it, whatever the Spirit may do to suppress or check it; but that it will, when God's restraint is removed, rise up at last into the most impious defiance of God and the most openly lawless arrogation of His glory, judicially closed by the Lord shining forth in His day.

That the church which Christ builds on the rock, on the confession of His own person and divine glory, will prevail over all the power of Hades, is certain (Matt. 16:18). But this in no way clashes with what scripture attests of ruin for the professing mass. What we now see around us, if we have the least spiritual eyesight, is thus clearly accounted for. God is no more pleased with the state of Christendom than of old with that of Israel (1 Cor. 10). Since the departure of the great apostle grievous wolves came in, not sparing the flock; and from among Christians themselves men rose up speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. Hence the last apostle could only say, “even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last hour” (1 John 2:18): not the triumph of the church, but alas! the spread of anti-Christianism. So far too is Rome from being set out in scripture as the indefeasible guarantee of unity or of aught else, to the saints there above all others is addressed the solemn word for the professing Gentile, “Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but on thee goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off” (Rom. 11:22). If there is a spot on earth perpetually infamous for iniquity, moral, doctrinal, and ecclesiastical, it is Rome, in Popes, Cardinals, priests, people, monks, and nuns: such have been the confessions of many of its own most distinguished adherents. Must I cite Gerson, Baronius, or a crowd of witnesses before and since? “Thou also shalt be cut off.”

Is it meant, as too many think, Protestants as well as Papists, that all is hopeless, even for such as sigh and cry for all the abominations done in Christendom? Is there nothing but Christian work now? Is there no common walk and worship, no longer communion of saints reliable for the believer, or acceptable to God? God forbid that we should doubt Him, defraud our souls, or dishonor the Spirit given to abide with us forever. There is a path and a center for faith in a day of ruin. The name of Jesus is not the ground and pledge of salvation only, bit of unfailing security for those who are gathered to it. And the Holy Spirit is here to make good His unity for all that use diligence to keep it according to the written word in the uniting bond of peace (Eph. 4:3). Those gathered to the Lord's name, even “two or three,” wherever they be, have His promise and sanction as keeping the unity of the Spirit. Were 200 millions gathered otherwise (e.g. to the see of St. Peter), they have no such promise; if 400 millions were re-united otherwise, it would not mend matters, but only make them worse. To be gathered to His name is His own resource for a day of evil, and stumbling blocks, and scattering; and it is an unfailing resource to such as have faith in Him.

Diligently to “keep the unity of the Spirit” is as far as possible from the letter, or spirit of a sect. For a sect falsifies things by being sometimes broader, more commonly narrower, than the church of God. Thus nationalism departs from it by embracing a whole people in principle by sacraments; as dissent forms mere voluntary societies by adhesion to particular views. In both ways God's design is lost sight of and His children err.

But even in a day of confusion and ruin the path of His will is open to the single eye of faith. His word abides forever. It is a solemn duty, not a sect, where Christians turn away from all that hold a form of godliness, but have denied its power (2 Tim. 3). It is a plain call of God not to forsake the assembling of themselves together as members of Christ—the only membership they recognize as of His grace. So it was originally according to His revealed will; and it remains ever true and obligatory. Yet to assume the title of the church of God, for the few who now act on it, would be pride and heartlessness, as virtually denying the many who are scattered here or there in the present state of ruin. But on no other ground should believers act; for only this is obedience, which remains always valid for action as for faith.

Kingdom of Heaven Taken by Force

Q.-Matt. 11:12. What does this mean?

A.-The Baptist was now in prison, and shortly to suffer unto blood. The Christ was more and more despised and rejected of men, especially of man religious after the flesh but not believing God. Hence the path becomes increasingly separate; and faith of the rejected Messiah is more and more in contrast with Jewish order where rights and privileges descend and are perpetuated in a natural way. John the Baptist marks the transition. From his days until now, says our Lord, the kingdom of the heavens is taken by violence, and violent persons seize it. It was no longer a question of swimming with the stream even in Israel and with Messiah present. He was going to act in all-over-coming power another day when He appears in glory (Psa. 110:2-3). Now the believer must in the energy of faith break with natural ties, and rise above hindrances when least expected and most abundant. The kingdom of the heavens is taken by such force as this: only those that can thus resist seize it. As He says later, “If anyone desireth to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever shall desire to save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.” And this He said, when He told the disciples no longer to say to anyone that He was the Messiah (Matt. 16:20). He was now on the road to Jerusalem to suffer from the religious chiefs and to be killed and raised the third day as Son of Man. Thus was Christianity piercing through the clouds, and leaving Judaism to vanish away.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:13-14

LET us now look a little into the family of Mitzraim. “And Mitzraim begot the Ludim and the Anamim and the Lehabim and the Naphtuhim and the Pathrusim and the Casluhim (out of whom came the Philistines) and the Caphtorim” (vers. 13, 14). So it is also in 1 Chron. 1:11, 12.

As there was a Shemite Lud (ver. 22), it is important to distinguish from him, the ancestor of the well-known Lydian race in the west of Asia Minor, those descended from Mitzraim, who spread themselves west of the Nile. They were archers as we learn from Isa. 66:19, and Jer. 46:9, where the African people seem enumerated and so described. It would appear to be the same in Ezek. 27:10, and in 30:4, 5 also. In the Auth. V. of Jer. 46 is given the word “Lydians,” as in Ezek. 30 “Lydia.” This conveys the impression that our translators probably understood the Asiatic people. But there ought not to be a doubt that they were African.

We next hear of the Anamim, of whom nothing more is said in the Bible than in the two genealogical lists. It may perhaps be gathered, from comparison with the names which follow, that they were a race that settled in the Delta of Egypt. But it must be allowed that no reliable trace is known either in the ancient Geographers, or in the monuments hitherto deciphered. Here we have the unfailing record of God, Who alone saw the end from the beginning and has been pleased to communicate to us the truth otherwise unnoticed. The judgment of the habitable earth in a day which approaches will prove that the races are not extinct.

The Lehabim, called also Lubim in 2 Chron. 12:3; 16:8, with the people called Phut, or Put, (if not Pul, as in Isa. 66:19), answer to the ancient Lybians; save indeed that the ordinary usage of Lybia in olden time is vague, and extends far and wide to almost all Africa west of the Nile. The Phut of scripture apparently corresponds with the hieroglyphic bow, or Pet. This is also applied to a people, or rather confederacy of peoples, conquered by Egypt, and called “the Bows,” or “Nine Bows,” Na-Petu, though Brugsch understands simply “the Nine Peoples.” This would seem to connect itself with the Naphtuhim immediately following the Lehabim, who are the same as the Lebu or Rebu of the Egyptian inscriptions, as Mr. R. S. Poole has shown, the Libyans proper. The A. V. renders Phut “the Libyans” in Jer. 49:2 (“handling the shield”) distinguished from the Lydians, or Ludim (“handling and bending the bow”); and in Ezek. 38:5 “Libya,” again marked with other powers by the “shield.” In Nah. 3:9 we see Phut and the Lubim helpers of No-Amon (the god Amon of No, or Thebes of Upper Egypt), the ruins of which, in spite of Cush and Mitzraim, is set by the prophet as a warning to Nineveh. Again, and bearing on what is still future, we are told that when the last king of the north subdues and spoils Egypt, the Lubim and Cush shall be at his steps, though Edom and Moab and the chief of the children of Ammon shall be delivered out of his hands.

What plainer proof can there be to the believer that these races are yet abiding and to take their part in the great catastrophe of the latter day? The reign of Antiochus Epiphanies, directly or indirectly, did not extend beyond Dan. 11:31, 32. That which we have pointed out is after the great break of ver. 35, and expressly supposes the renewal of the two powers of the north and the south, when “the king,” the lawless one, is in “the land” between them “at the time of the end.” Thus that time is as clearly future as sure. Compare Isa. 11:14, which not only confirms the fact of the old cognate but hostile races on the borders of the land, but declares their final subjection to Israel under Messiah “in that day.”

Of the Naphtuhim a little has been already said when speaking of the Lubim. More is given in scripture respecting the next name of Pathrusim. From Isa. 11:11 Pathros as distinguished from Egypt would seem to be the upper part of the land. Ezek. 29:14; 30:13-18 are supposed to point at the Thebais the desolation which the prophet declared should overtake all the land. The chief difficulty is, that Jeremiah speaks of Pathros (44:1) in connection with cities in Lower Egypt, and in a yet more general way later on (ver. 15). But there does not appear in the group anything so decided as to set aside our referring Pathros to the land farther south.

There remain the “Casluhim (out of whom or whence came the Philistines) and the Caphtorim.” These races can hardly be doubted to have occupied the Delta before the Philistine migration to the Shephelah. Some suggest here a transposition; as Deut. 2:23, Jer. 47:4, Amos 9:7, expressly connect the Philistine immigrants with the Caphtorim. Pusey, commenting on the last of these scriptures, inclines to the conclusion, that there were different immigrations of the same tribe into Palestine (as of Danes and Saxons into England, where they all merged into one common name). The first may have been from the Casluhim; the second in time but chief in importance from the Caplitorim; and a third of Kerethim (probably from Crete) in the era of the Judges added but a little to their strength (1 Sam. 30:14-16). Of these last, Cherethites and Pelethites figure as lifeguards of King David, foreigners like the Gittites.

It is plain and certain that the architecture, whether of temples or of palaces, the sculpture and painting, and the various other monuments of Egypt for living or dead bear, like its original language, the marks of extreme antiquity and of high civilization. Idolatry flaunts us everywhere, but as Herren remarks (African Nations, ii. 271, Oxford, Talboys, 1832), “The first idea which presents itself from a view of these monuments must be that Thebes [the No, or No-Amon, of Scripture] was once the capital of a mighty empire, whose boundaries extended far beyond Egypt, which at some distant period comprised a great part of Africa, and an equally large portion of Asia. Her kings are represented as victors and conquerors; and the scene of their glory is not confined to Egypt, but often carried to remote regions. Prisoners of distant nations bow the knee before the conquerors, and count themselves happy if they can obtain their pardon.... This is further confirmed by the many examples which evince the refinement of domestic life, and the degree of luxury to which the people had arrived. The narrow valley of the Nile could not supply all the articles, such as costly garments, perfumes, &c., which we find here represented. An extensive commerce was requisite, not only to obtain all this, but also to produce that opulence, and that interchange of ideas, which constitute its foundation.” Denon (Voy. dans la basse et haute Egypte, 1802), the great French Government work (Description de 1' Egypte, 1811, 1815), Hamilton (Remarks &c. 1809), Belzoni (Narrative &c. 1822), Minutoli (Travels, 1824), and both series of Sir G. Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, are the chief modern authorities.

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 10

Chapter 9:1-19

THERE is no assurance more clearly, frequently, and solemnly given throughout the Prophetic books than the final restoration of Israel to the joy of all the earth and the blessing of all the families of man. But there is no feature of it more characteristic than the execution of judgment on the wicked whatever they may be, especially on their enemies. Herein it stands in the fullest contrast with the church's hope in pure and heavenly grace—to be taken completely on high to join the Lord Jesus and be in the Father's house; just as Christ rose and ascended without the least sign of retribution for the world. The Jews pass through the fires of that day and are purified thereby. The church is simply caught up to be with Christ. We may readily see that the type of the earthly people's deliverance is pursued in what follows, “And in the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, on the thirteenth day thereof, when the king's commandment and his decree drew near to be put in execution, in the day that the enemies of the Jews hoped to have rule over them (whereas it was turned to the contrary, that the Jews had rule over them that hated them), the Jews gathered themselves together in their cities throughout all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, to lay hand on such as sought their hurt. And no man could withstand them; for the fear of them was fallen upon all the peoples. And all the princes of the provinces, and the satraps, and the governors, and they that did the king's business, helped the Jews; because the fear of Mordecai was fallen upon them. For Mordecai was great in the king's house, and his fame went forth throughout all the provinces: for the man Mordecai waxed greater and greater. And the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and with slaughter and destruction, and did what they would unto those that hated them. And in Shushan the fortress the Jews slew and destroyed five hundred men. And Parshandatha, and Dalphon, and Aspatha, and Poratha, and Adalia, and Aridatha, and Parmashta, and Arisai, and Aridai, and Vajezatha, the ten sons of Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Jews' enemy, they slew; but on the spoil they laid not their hand. On that day the number of those that were slain in Shushan the fortress was brought before the king.”

“And the king said unto Esther the queen, The Jews have slain and destroyed five hundred men in Shushan the fortress, and the ten sons of Haman; what then have they done in the rest of the king's provinces! Now what is thy petition? and it shall be granted thee: or what is thy request further? and it shall be done. Then said Esther, If it please the king, let it be granted to the Jews which are in Shushan to do to-morrow also according unto this day's decree, and let Haman's ten sons be hanged upon the gallows. And the king commanded it so to be done; and a decree was given out in Shushan; and they hanged Haman's ten sons. And the Jews that were in Shushan gathered themselves together on the fourteenth day also of the month Adar, and slew three hundred men in Shushan; but on the spoil they laid not their hand,”

“And the other Jews that were in the king's provinces gathered themselves together, and stood for their lives, and had rest from their enemies, and slew of them that hated them seventy and five thousand but on the spoil they laid not their hand. [This was done] on the thirteenth day of the month Adar; and on the fourteenth thereof they rested, and made it a day of feasting and gladness. But the Jews that were in Shushan assembled together on the thirteenth [day] thereof, and on the fourteenth thereof; and on the fifteenth of the same they rested, and made it a day of feasting and gladness. Therefore do the Jews of the villages, that dwell in the unwalled towns, make the fourteenth of the month Adar a day of gladness and feasting, and a good day, and of sending portions one to another” (vers. 1-19).

In the first book of the law God gave the type of Him Who, rejected by His brethren after the flesh, is exalted to administer the kingdom over the Gentiles, preserving His brethren as others also during days of famine, and at length made known to them. Here in the closing book of history in the O.T. we have not only the arch-enemy ignominiously destroyed who sought their destruction but the adversaries of the Jews everywhere put to; the sword. So full is scripture of this mighty change yet to be accomplished, that it would be easy to point out phases of it in perhaps every book of the O.T., and in none more conspicuously than the Psalms, unless it be in the Prophets. But this it may suffice here simply to affirm. The N. T. pledges the same expectation from the first Gospel to the last, the Acts of the Apostles confirming it; the Epistles, while occupied with the heavenly people and their proper hope, in no wise forget the blessed vista for the earth in the day of the Lord; and the Apocalypse crowns the truth for both heaven and earth under Christ the Heir of all things.

Household Servant Faithful or Evil

Matt. 24:45-51

IT is the first part in our Lord's prophecy at Olivet which bears directly on Christian profession. This therefore is wholly distinct from the parable of the fig-tree which refers to Israel, as all the preceding discourse did, and accordingly from ver. 15 occupied with the land and the sanctuary, the sabbath day, and the tribulation without parallel for the Jews, with signs before and after, heed being expressly claimed to Daniel the prophet, and illustration drawn from the deluge in Noah preserved through it, not from Enoch caught up before it.

Here begins that which is so general that it applies wherever the Lord's name is called on, Jewish peculiarities being quite dropt. The Lord takes the place of other objects. His service in His house is without restriction or addition the prominent character. Relationship to Him and His rules exclusively. We shall find in the third and last parable of the series His gifts conferred on His servants according to His sovereign will, with which each is called to trade according to the figure of talents committed for profit. But here it is the supply of His house with food in season.

“Who then is the faithful and wise bondman, whom the lord set over his household to give them food in season? Blessed [is] that bondman whom his lord on coming shall find thus doing. Verily I say to you, that he will set him over all that he hath. But if the evil bondman say in his heart, My lord delayeth [to come], and begin to beat his fellow bondman, and eat and drink with the drunken, the lord of the bondman shall come in a day which he expecteth not, and in an hour which he knoweth not, and shall cut him in two, and appoint his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth” (vers. 45-51).

It is clear that the Lord looks for faithful and prudent stewardship in His absence from him who is entrusted with the charge of His household, and that, when He is come, He will deal with this responsibility. Did the bondman dispense food in due time? Blessed that bondman whom his Lord on coming shall find thus doing! It is His mind and will and grace about His own. Already elsewhere He had assured His own sheep that entering by Him they should be saved, enjoy liberty, and find pasture. It is in the last particular that the bondman is here made responsible; and this would test him. Faith and love alone render any one faithful and wise; they attach the heart to the household through devotedness to the Lord. Loving Him leads out to feeding His sheep and His lambs; as the Lord puts it to Peter, restored and reinstated after his fall: which by grace would only make him more tenderly considerate of others. And him who thus nourishes duly Christ's household He will set at the head of His inheritance by and by, when He returns the Heir of all things. It is only Christianity which is based on the Lord already come and about to return, while His own serve during His absence; and hence the prominence given to this in the third parable.

But solemn beyond expression is the doom of the man who, professing to be his Lord's bondman, arrogates to himself dominion, and is no model to the flock, but lords it as his possession. What can be conceived more opposed to the mind which was in Christ Jesus? He in infinite pity to the lost and to the glory of God the Father emptied Himself, taking a bondman's form, coming though yet in the likeness of men; and found in figure as a man He humbled Himself, becoming obedient as far as death, yea, death of the cross. The evil bondman, oblivious of all and heartlessly inconsistent, seeks a place of power and pride; he courts the world as one who never died to flesh nor was crucified to the world, but begins to beat his fellow bondmen, and eats and drinks with the drunken. There is both ecclesiastical oppression and commerce with the world, even in its self-indulgent dissoluteness.

Such is just the general aspect of Christendom for long ages, as at the present moment. There may be differences of degree here or there. But the picture applies to Catholics and Protestants, nationals and dissenters. They are not separate from the world; nor do they walk in the Spirit, as those that crucified the flesh with its passions and its lusts; they boast in man and his literary elevation and his scientific inventions, like heathen that know not God.

And what does the Lord indicate as the occasion if not cause of so ruinous a departure? “But if the evil bondman say in his heart, My lord delayeth [to come].” No one betrays the evil of his unfaithfulness so much as a faithless professor of Christ. And here the Lord puts His finger on his heart putting off His own coming again as a living practical truth. Abandoning that hope, the heart can soon learn to value and associate with the world, to slight and ill-treat Christ's household.

What is the end? “The lord of that bondman shall come in a day which he expecteth not, and in an hour which he knoweth not, and shall cut him in two, and appoint his portion with the hypocrites; and there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.” God's wrath is revealed from heaven upon all impiety, and unrighteousness of men holding the truth in unrighteousness. The Jew if wicked is worse than the Gentile; the professing Christian if evil is more guilty than either. His portion shall be, not with bondmen only, but with the hypocrites.

How is it with you, my reader? You, most of you, are neither Jews nor heathen; are you not a professing Christian? Do you not then own your evil if you slight the word of God, and especially the gospel? Any one who disregarded Moses' law died without mercy on the strength of two or three witnesses: of how much worse punishment, think you, shall he be judged deserving that trod under foot the Son of God, and esteemed the blood of the covenant whereby he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? But the door of grace is still open. Oh flee for refuge to Him Who is set before you, the only yet sure Savior of the lost. Delay is proverbially dangerous; and nowhere is danger so great as in putting off the word of salvation which God has sent you. For as He was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, when He sent Him into it, so even when Christ was rejected, God made Him Who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made divine righteousness in Him.

The Seventy Weeks: 3

THE vainest of delusions is to talk of man's rights in the presence of Christ's cross, which proclaims nothing but his wrongs. There all mankind stands convicted; and the Jew cannot cast a stone at the Gentile, as he himself had the greater sin. For the Jew took the lead in cutting off the Messiah by the hand of lawless men, as Peter preached to them at Pentecost. The cross of Christ denies the rights, and demonstrates the wrongs, of man. But God thereby wrought atonement and set forth Jesus a mercy seat through faith in His blood, not only for vindication of His passing over of sins that are past in the forbearance of God, but for declaration of His righteousness at this gospel time, in His being just and justifying the believer.

This however is the apostolic doctrine in Rom. 3:25, 26. The prophecy in Dan. 9:26 does not go beyond the sin of Messiah cut off, and its consequence in the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Romans, as well as in the disastrous history of the Jewish people to this day. The cross of Christ accordingly has two sides, the judgment of man, and the grace of God. Man displayed therein his wickedness, the Jew his hatred, to the uttermost; as God thereby is justifying freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, Whom God raised from the dead and set at His own right hand in a glory incomparably higher than David's. Then is the church formed, from Jews and Gentiles, and by the Holy Spirit sent down united to the glorified Head on high as His one body. This was an entirely new thing, which the N. T. makes as plain as possible; but it is wholly distinct from what the prophecy discloses.

The Jew is blotted out meantime, but will as surely reappear as the object of divine dealing in the end of the age, as we see in ver. 27. Israel in the new age will have the first place on earth. She that was cast far off shall be made a strong nation, and the former or first dominion shall come to Zion.

But what was to happen as the judicial consequence of Messiah cut off? “The people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.” And so the Romans did, as the Lord warned in Matt. 22:7, and in Luke 19:42-44. It is not said, that a Roman prince should come, but the people of the coming prince. This prince was not Titus. He no doubt came with his people, his army; but here it is the people of the prince that shall come, the future imperial enemy of God, the Beast or fourth empire of that time revived, not the foe but the avowed friend of the apostate Jew and of the Antichrist reigning over Jerusalem. The people came then, but under another prince, for the destruction of the city and sanctuary; the prince here predicted is not come yet. They came then to destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof was indeed with a flood or overthrow, and even to the end was desolation determined.

The Jews tried to rebuild Jerusalem later, and were almost exterminated by the Emperor Hadrian. Since then what slaughter and persecution in almost every country under the sun! Sad to say, our own forefathers were guilty of selfishly and savagely ill-treating the Jew. Things no doubt are changed now, not because the world compassionates the Jew as God's ancient people suffering for their sins, but rather through a godless respect for the fancied rights of man. But this will fail, when God begins to move on their behalf, as we read in Isa. 18:6 and elsewhere. “And he shall confirm covenant with the many for one week.” Attention is called to the correct rendering, which when pointed out no scholar can fairly question. Who is the “he"? Not a few imagine it is the Lord Jesus. But where is the sense (I do not even ask, the spirituality) of such a view? How could Christ be referred to in “He shall confirm covenant with the many for one week” or seven years? Christ make a covenant as here “with the many” or mass of faithless Jews! for seven years! Short-lived princes may make short covenants with their fellows; but the idea is preposterous of Christ (Who had been “cut off,” and is therefore risen again) making a covenant for seven years! and with had people, as “the many” invariably means in Daniel, is yet more so! Theologians who do not understand the prophets may believe it, as they seem never able to rise above the weakest tradition.

I looked purposely at dear old Trapp, and found him no better than the rest. For he endorses the same delusion. You may perceive how much depends on the right consideration of the article, which is here doubly misrepresented. “Covenant” has got the article without warrant, and “many” has been stripped of it. What corresponds with our “the” is as important a factor in Hebrew as in other languages. To be brief then, let me repeat the true force: “And he shall confirm covenant for one week with the many.” How very different a thing from Christ's confirming the covenant! Are the wicked mass of the Jews the persons with whom the Lord made covenant? The context makes it all plain and sure.

The last person named is the far different and coming prince of the Roman people. He is already familiar to us in chap. 7; the same “little horn” who is to aggrandize himself by the uprooting three of the first horns, and then by his blasphemies he leads the entire empire to its destruction by the Most High, when he shall be given to the burning of fire. He it is that makes a covenant with the wicked Jews at the close, when the last or seventieth week receives its fulfillment. Isaiah seems to refer to this as “a covenant with death,” and “an agreement with hell” or Sheol: totally different from the gospel or even the law. No thoughtful mind should overlook a covenant expressly limited to seven years, any more than that the coming prince of Rome is the last personage named, or than the “many” with whom it is to be made.

Besides, this brief agreement is soon broken. How could it be if grace made it? The Roman prince breaks it. He allows their worship for three and a half years, the first half of the seventieth week; “and in the midst of the week he shall cause sacrifice and oblation to cease.” That is, he puts an end to the Jewish ritual, in order, as we learn explicitly from elsewhere, to bring an image of himself into the holy place, the abomination of desolation, as it is called.

You all perhaps know that “abomination” is the regular term for an idol. And here we read, “And for the wing (or protection) of abominations [is] one that maketh desolate.” I understand the meaning to be, that because of the protection given to abominations, or idols, by the Roman emperor and his ally in Jerusalem (the Antichrist), there shall be a desolator, a power quite opposed to both. He is in fact no other than the one whose career is given in the close of Dan. 8, the “little horn” of the East. He may pretend zeal for God in opposing the Antichrist and the Western chief; but he is just as wicked as they, and will meet with a no less terrible end in due time. This we shall see clearly in the close of Dan. 11. The Antichrist is to reign in the land; and he, too, is to set himself up as God in His temple, as we know from 2 Thess. 2, where the Roman prince sets up his image. This the king of the north resents and opposes. How the Lord deals with each will be shown in the next lecture. Here we are only told that “[there is, or shall be] a desolator, even until the consumption, and what is determined shall be poured upon the desolate.”

The prophecy is by no means obscure. It is only when misapplied that men complain of difficulty. When we seize the Holy Spirit's aim in it, all flows with an easy and onward current. Without His guidance no scripture can be entered into or yield enjoyment and profit. May it be yours to search “the scriptures whether these things be so.”

Salvation by Grace: 4

BLESSED be God, when the kingdom comes, we shall not lose our communion with Christ in Paradise. We shall eat of the tree of life in the Paradise of God; and this will be in the days of the kingdom. We shall be remembered, not one forgotten, when Christ comes in His kingdom, and we shall reign with Him. Yet I say that Christ is Himself more precious than what He gives one, and that to be with Christ is even better than to sit upon a throne in His kingdom. This is all glorious; but to be with Christ, when we remember what Christ is, to be there the object of His love, to be able then perfectly to behold His glory, is a deeper privilege than to be crowned in the kingdom. Yet it was what the thief entered into that day. There was also great force in being there “to-day.” All the thoughts of gradual preparation here, all theory of waiting dimly in another world, every form of purgatory—I do not mean only of a Roman Catholic pattern, for many a Protestant has got a quasi-purgatory of his own—all these things are completely dissipated to the winds. Here was a man in himself black enough to be kept out forever doubtless; none the less was he to be with Christ that day in Paradise, perfectly purged by His blood for the intimate presence of God.

What a comfort this ought to be to any of you who have fears that you are not fit for heaven! For it is meant for you that believe as much as for the penitent on the cross. Have you not Christ too? Are you not resting on grace? is it a different measure to you from what it was to the dying robber? If it be the same way of faith to you as to him, is it not really the same portion with Christ in Paradise? Hence death, when you look at it thus, is no longer to be regarded as an enemy. Assuredly death is the last enemy apart from Christ, is it really so to the man who possesses Christ? To him death is in truth only a servant to open the door, and let him in to be with Christ. Is this an enemy's work? Death is yours who believe, as all things are.

May God then bless His own word. May He bring home the testimony rendered to Christ and Christ's blood to-night; and may you see what a joy it is to wait for Christ to come in His kingdom, and, above all, what it is to have a portion with Christ by faith wholly superior to death, so that if Christ were to come to-morrow you would never die in any sense. For “we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.”

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with archangel's voice, and with trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we the living that remain, shall be caught up together with them in [the] clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” You see then, “we” ought to be expecting Christ, not death. The “we” in that day ought, and the “we” in this day ought, and the “we” in every day ought, to be so. If death comes when we are looking for Christ, that will not at all disappoint us. Death will only be our usher into the presence of the Lord; then instead of waiting for the Lord on earth, you will wait with the Lord in heaven, which is far better. It is a good thing to be waiting for the Lord on the earth; but it is a better thing to be waiting with the Lord in heaven—to come when He comes—to reign when He reigns—but above all to be with Him now, or by and by, and forever, in Paradise. Amen.

James 1:25

APPROACHING the close of this contrast which verse 22 began, we have a phrase of much and weighty import, which lets us into, or at least flows consistently with, the truth here insisted on, especially and expressly in verse 18. The law given by Moses was in no way a law of liberty but of bondage. It forbade and condemned the transgressions to which the flesh was prone. The curb it applied to man's will provoked the old man, and the offense consequently abounded instead of diminishing. The law therefore could not but work out wrath; as it is the strength of sin, not of holiness.

But here the Spirit of God presents, as the gift of God's will and grace, the new nature which characterizes the faithful, the effect of God's giving birth to His own by word of truth. Christ, as we know from elsewhere, is this life, which he has who believes in Him. And this life, as in Him so in His, shows itself in obedience as its primary action. “What shall I do, Lord?” is the ready answer of the quickened soul to the revelation of “I am Jesus of Nazareth.” We are sanctified to obedience no less than to the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. The word of God has His authority over us; and feeling our ignorance and the goodness of His word, we prize and welcome all that He gives to direct our way. And the indwelling Spirit of God, glorifying the Lord Jesus, is our power, now that we confess Him Lord and own Him as the Son of God, resting on His redemption and beholding Him on high.

Hence the word of truth, by which God begot us, is also our divine directory, and is here designated “a perfect law, that of liberty,” exercising faith and effecting obedience by grace. For those that are thus called by the gospel are made conscious of their new and holy relationship to God, as the Spirit of adoption gives them to cry, Abba, Father. Christ was the perfect expression of God, as well as perfect example of man; and He, being our life, as well as righteousness from God and before God, forms us here below accordingly. Begotten by the word, we have a new nature which loves the word as well as God Himself; and thus we in virtue of it wish to do what He wills, as communicated in His word, now fully revealed. “As the living Father sent me, and I live on account of the Father, he too that eateth me shall live on account of me” (John 6:57): how blessed, elevating and mighty the motive. May it be ours who follow Him!

“But he that closely looked into perfect law, that of liberty, and abode close,” as living faith achieves, “being not a quite forgetful hearer but a work-doer, he shall be blessed in his doing” (ver. 25). He has a nature in accord with the word which communicated it to his soul. It is not a law from without that forbids what he likes and demands what is irksome. He knows God's love inwardly, and finds His word enjoins what the life he professes takes pleasure in. He delights in obeying God; and this is just what the word points out, what to do and how to do it, with Christ revealed Whose light shines and Whose love cheers and strengthens him. And thus it is the “law of liberty.” His heart purified by faith not only accepts but rejoices in the will of God—His good and acceptable and perfect will. This we behold in its untainted and unfailing fullness in our Lord Jesus. He that keeps His word, in him verily is the love of God perfected. And as there is no fear in love, so neither is there bondage therein; yet no chains are so mighty as its silken cords. The one obedient is accordingly blessed, not in his end only but in his ways—blessed in his doing. A real and great and vital truth it is, that Christ deigns to be our way by faith in a wilderness world where is no way. Only the eye single to Him can see that way; but God is as faithful in this a in all else to the soul that is true to Christ's word and name.

The Advocacy of Christ: 1

THE distinctive character and object of Christ's priesthood has been already set out. In scripture it stands in relation exclusively to those who by the work of Christ are brought to God. It is therefore in no way an association of the Lord with the world or those of it. Its aspect is not to the wants of the sinner as such, but rather to those of the sanctified, whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren. For God's design by it is not to give a standing, but to sustain and succor those whom grace has already brought nigh to Him by the blood of Jesus. This makes the matter sufficiently plain for the priesthood of Christ. Grace would thereby maintain a holy people according to that nearness which He has already given them; and hence therefore in the Epistle to the Hebrews, as we saw, it is assumed that they have free access to God, a privilege never taken away from the saints.

We are brought to God by Him Who suffered once for saints, by Christ's one offering. This nearness the Christian never loses. We may fail and act with grievous inconsistency; and it is most sorrowful when we do. But for the believer remains access to God (being founded, not on legal conditions, but on Christ's blood), and this too of a kind quite absolute, because its measure is the value which God puts upon the work of His own Son; and it is impossible that God could slight that sacrifice. In virtue of it then He acts in our favor, according not merely to our thoughts but to His estimate of what the Lord Jesus has done for us in His sight. Hence, we who believe being thus brought nigh, its efficacy abides unchanged ever more, as scripture carefully and clearly insists.

It is possible indeed, as we are there warned, that some who have confessed the Lord, and been sanctified too by His blood, might give Him up (Heb. 10). Such is the solemn admonition to those who from among Hebrews had been baptized; and a like danger of course applies to the Gentiles also, as we hear in 1 Cor. 10. Evidently, however, not failure is here in question, but abandoning Christ. It is apostasy, though no doubt the Holy Spirit speaks to check the incipient tendency to turn aside, pointing out the awful result. The renewed man heeds the word of God; whereas the warning is lost on the unconverted man, perhaps only attracted by the novel and intrinsic beauty of the gospel as an intellectual scheme; and so much the more in those days when it was first heard by the Jews so long inured to Rabbinical traditions—dry as their parchment rolls, as Gentiles were to the clashing vanities of Greek philosophy.

We can readily understand what refreshing power was in the facts of the Son of God come in flesh, His life, His death, His resurrection and His ascension—facts as wondrous as the heavenly principles of Christianity, which could not but exercise an immense charm on candid minds as minds. But this of itself never lasts; neither, if alone, does affection touched by the sound of God's mercy, unless it lead to repentance. Nothing abides short of a new nature, when the conscience is reached by God's Holy Spirit, Who brings in a man before God as nothing but a sinner, to find his one resource, remedy, and deliverance in the Lord Jesus. Where this is laid hold of by faith, nearness to God is given by the blood of Christ. And the priesthood of the Lord Jesus is that office of divine grace which is carried on by the Lord risen, living, and interceding for us at the right hand of God; whereby His word is applied to keep us up, and to lead us on, in the face of all trial, difficulty, opposition, and suffering, as well as of our own weakness. This is contemplated and provided for by God in giving us such a Priest as His Son in His presence on high, so that we may see it to be sustaining and seasonable mercy. It is that which perfectly meets and keeps, but keeps us a holy people in the midst of dangers as great as our weakness.

Again, we must never confound infirmities with sins, or call sins infirmities. The essence of sin is self-will, not necessarily transgression of law. Whether there be known law or not, self-will is sin; it is acting without a divine motive; if not against the authority or will of God, it is independence of Him and His word as that which prompts the action. When we do not even seek Him, are we not acting without Him and pleasing ourselves? All this is sin, it matters not how fair our ways may seem in the eyes of men. This is not what the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ was meant to meet, but the need of those who suffer in striving against sin.

When we suffer for His name or for righteousness, when we are tried just because we seek to follow the Lord, we do need His sympathy and comfort. We shrink from trial and cannot but suffer from it, sometimes with mixed feelings. Our blessed Lord ever felt it holily and perfectly. Not an atom of sin was in His sorrow and suffering, and all His path was full of it; for He was the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. So with Christians in their measure. It is quite right that we feel the contrariety of things here to God. We wrong Him and yield to the enemy whenever we seem to make up our minds to the awful state that surrounds us now, as if it were any adequate reflection of God, or of His moral government. For, though He does govern in secret providence, and this most wisely and righteously too, carrying on His will in the face of the subtlest foes and of apparently insuperable difficulties, and in the conflict of circumstances, yet is the actual state of the world as far as can be from a due manifestation of God's government. In the midst of such a condition His own must suffer; for there is our weakness, and a hostile world, and a malignant foe, the accuser of the brethren and the deceiver of the whole world. Here it is that the priesthood of the Lord Jesus applies to us—as a people holy, but feeble and persecuted—who feel what is around, and are tried by it, and suffer through it; but the priesthood of Him, Who is all-competent, is established on high to carry us through in spite of all.

( To be continued).

The Mystery: Part 3

DR. B. informs us that the truth of the mystery, (that is, his explanation of the mystery) “removes another popular tradition—that the church dates from Pentecost! It is only a traditional interpretation on the part of man, and is destitute of any authority, unless it can be proved to be so from the word of God” (page 43). The reason he gives in support of his position is novel enough. It is a mistake, he says, to look for anything about the church in the Acts.

This notion of which the Dr. seems not a little proud crops up here and there throughout the tract. He refuses to allow that the church is referred to in either the Gospels or the Acts. Thus, “In the Gospels and the Acts we have the kingdom rejected In the Epistles we have the interval, but chiefly in its relation to the church” (page 11, and similarly on page 15). The Acts “records the transitional history between the rejection of the kingdom, and the setting up of the church” (page 42). The Acts “is like the Gospels, a historical record of the rejection of the King and the kingdom of Israel (page 43). From an expression on page 44 we hoped Dr. B. only meant to emphasize that the doctrine of the church is confined to the apostles; and that he would be ready to grant that in the Acts we have the history of the founding and practice of the church. His expression is, “We must not read teaching concerning the ‘Mystery’ into the Gospels and Acts” (page 44).

But when he proceeds to expel the twelve apostles from the church (page 52), we know not what to think, except that he really means what his words imply, viz., that the church dates from the close of the Acts. If he does not mean this, then his words are without point or force. It requires but little critical acumen to know that an historical book like the Acts is not the place for unfolding the doctrines. Paul, not Luke, is the exponent of “the mystery.”

Surely, however, Dr. B. knows that Paul wrote several of his Epistles during his missionary travels, which are recounted in the Acts. The two Epistles to the Thessalonians, the two to the Corinthians, that to the Romans and that to the Galatians, were all composed by him before his imprisonment at Rome. And if these Epistles do not reveal the doctrine of the mystery as is done in those to the Ephesians and Colossians, it is because they were written for other purposes. Even these, however, are not without sufficient references to show that the truth was known by the saints.

Rom. 16:25, 26 is one of Dr. B.'s “three important scriptures in which the ‘great' secret is specially and formally revealed” (page 16). This passage, without referring to others, tells us that then, at the time the Epistle was written, which was certainly before the close of the Acts, the mystery was being made known by prophetic writings. And it is Dr. B. himself who says, “amongst the prophetic writings may be included four Epistles, those to the Thessalonians and Corinthians” (page 17).

The fact is, therefore, that Paul (and others, too, receiving it from him) was making known by both voice and pen the doctrine of the mystery long before the period mentioned at the close of the Acts: This Dr. B. with characteristic incoherency allows or admits the possibility of. He is not certain, but he thinks “a special work connected with the mystery was about to be commenced,” (Acts 13:1, page 42).

Now this is unsettling the mind of the saints for no purpose whatever. The trumpet gives forth an uncertain sound, Of what value is it to declare the church did not begin at Pentecost, if he does not know when it began, and even makes such conflicting statements as have been referred to?

We propose to bring forward briefly one or two considerations, which indicate that the day of Pentecost was the birthday of the church, the body and bride of Christ.

In the first place, then, we find throughout the whole of the Acts that there existed a newly formed company of believers who were perfectly distinct and separate from both Jews and Gentiles. This company is called “the assembly of God, which he purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28).

At the very beginning (Acts 2) the assembly or church consisted of the disciples of the Lord Jesus, upon whom the Spirit of God was poured out baptizing them into one body. The same day three thousand souls received Peter's word of testimony and were added to this company already formed (Acts 2:41). And it became a daily event that the Lord was adding together such as should be saved (Acts 2:47).

Thus there was a new society formed altogether apart from the men of Israel whom Peter exhorts to repent (Acts 3). It is true that these believers were as yet drawn solely from the ranks of Jews and proselytes. But they were nevertheless severing connection with the ancient people of God. When Peter and John were dismissed from the presence of the Jewish council, they proceed at once to “their own company” (Acts 4:23). [In Acts 5:11, these saints are expressly called “all the church.” Compare ch. 8:3; 9:31 (especially in the critical text); 11:26; 12:1, 5; 13:1; 14:23, 27; 15:22; 16:5; 18:22; 20:17, 28.] Further additions are made to this company (Acts 5:14); and the number of disciples multiplied (ch. 6:1-7) to the alarm of the Jewish authorities. The persecution comes and those of “the assembly” in Jerusalem are scattered abroad to strange cities. But wherever they are, they remain distinct from their former brethren according to the flesh, so that Saul can go off to Damascus to apprehend them.

Next, Samaritans are received (chap. 8.) and Gentiles (chap. 10). This is all the work of “the twelve"; and then Paul takes up the work (chap. 13.) after the formal admission of the Gentiles. In this we see the wisdom of God. As soon as Gentiles and Jews were brought to meet together in one common assembly, Paul is commissioned to unfold to them the purpose of God in thus bringing them together. In this new relationship national distinction was obliterated, and Jew and Gentile were united to form one mystical “man,” the church of which Christ is Head. This was called the “mystery,” because it had not been before revealed that Jew and Gentile should be made sit together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.

This doctrine the apostle doubtless taught all the believers wherever he went, and not merely the new converts. Dr. B. seems to think that those who believed before the revelation of the mystery did not participate in its blessed truth, not even the twelve apostles. But this notion is only another specimen of his unwarrantable mystification of the mystery. Paul tells us himself that he went up to the apostles at Jerusalem and communicated to them the gospel he was preaching to the Gentiles (Gal. 2:2). They gave him the right hand of fellowship in his work. And when afterward at Antioch Peter would have denied the equality of Jews and Gentiles by withdrawing from eating with the latter, Paul withstood him to the face. Whether he preached the “mystery” or not, the apostle of the circumcision was as much bound to act upon it as any.

It is idle to suppose that Peter, James, and John knew nothing of the “mystery,” because no writings of theirs on the subject remain. It was not committed to them to unfold it, but to Paul. Each apostle had his line of things given him; and in those days every man did his own work, but each of course in co-operation with his fellows.

However, from what is above, it is surely clear that in the Acts there are the plainest indications of the formation of a special assembly of people, composed first of Jewish believers to which Samaritans and Gentiles are added at later stages.

Now what is this company, if not the church? Oh, Dr. B. will say, they are in a transitional state like the disciples in the days of the Lord (pp. 42, 43). Nay, Dr. B.; you have overlooked a most important differentiating fact. In Gospel times the Holy Ghost was not yet given. On the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended to abide. And His habitation is the church (Eph. 2:22). No doctrines (not even that of the “mystery”) ever made the church, any more than the church ever made the doctrines. But the Holy Ghost is the raison d'être of the church. As long as He is here, so long will the church be here.

When He came, it was to unite believers to Christ in glory. Thus the church dates from Pentecost, because of the presence of the Holy Ghost. Ananias and Sapphira are solemn proofs that He was then dwelling in the church (Acts 5:3).

There is the development of the peculiar features of the church as Gentiles are admitted; but this in no degree affects the truth that Pentecost was the date of the inception of the church. To hold otherwise is to dissociate the Holy Ghost from the formation of the church, an historical circumstance which is indicated with notable distinctness in the opening of the Acts; and also to confuse the fact of the establishment of the heavenly relationship of the saints with the revelation of that relationship. Would Dr. B. maintain that no one is a member of the body of Christ, unless he knows the truth of “the mystery?” And yet the sum and substance of his reasoning is to show that the date of the revelation of the mystery must be the date of the formation of the church: a conclusion for which no scriptural warrant can be found.

There are other points of error in the tract, but those already noted will suffice to show that the whole structure of the theory is raised upon an unscriptural basis. We trust, therefore, that Dr. B. will re-consider the whole subject; for we assume from the title of another tract of his, that he agrees with us as to “the importance of accuracy in the study of Holy Scripture.”

W. J. H.

Letter of Pope Leo XIII on the Unity of the Church: 3. Perpetuity

3. Perpetuity

THERE is another truth which the Popes have misconstrued, no less ruinously than unity, to build up their tower of Babel. “This [unity] the divine author impressed on it as a lasting sign of truth and of unconquerable strength” (p. v). They have one and all assumed that the church is to abide on earth conquering and to conquer till time melts into eternity. Not a word in the N. T. warrants such an expectation. Matt. 16:18 speaks of the gates of Hades, which are not in this world. Unquestionably they will prevail against the wicked which Satan brought in, not against His church which Christ built: resurrection will vindicate it, as He was defined Son of God in power thereby. Yet earthly power or glory is assured neither here nor anywhere else; but as the Lord Jesus was once rejected and suffered, so each of His must now deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Him, as He explains at the same time to Peter, sternly rebuked for minding the things of men, not of God. Hence they essay to found it on the promises, psalms, and prophecies which speak of Jerusalem, Zion, and the like in the O. T. But this is wholly unsound and misleading.

Let us weigh the scriptures on which they rely. Here are Pope Leo's words (pp. xiii. xiv.), “That the one Church should embrace all men everywhere and at all times was seen and foretold by Isaias, when looking into the future he saw the appearance of a mountain conspicuous by its all-surpassing altitude, which set forth the image of The house of the Lord—that is, of the Church. And in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of the mountains (Isa. 2:2). But this mountain which towers over all other mountains is one; and the house of the Lord to which all nations shall come to seek the rule of living is also one. And all nations shall flow into it. And many people shall go, and say: Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us His ways, and we will walk in His paths (Ibid ii. 2, 3).”

Now it is vain to quote Fathers in support of an interpretation which is inconsistent with the text, foreign to the prophets universally, and contradicted by all that the N. T. tells us of the church. Beyond doubt the rejected Messiah, the Son of man, was lifted up on the cross, and must be, that (not Jews only but) “whosoever believeth might in Him have life eternal.” “For there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved.” But neither these scriptures nor any others teach that the church embraces the whole race. The very name essentially excludes and forbids such a perversion. “Church” means the “assembly,” the calling out which leaves the rest where they were. The Lord therefore, who had before Him the end from the beginning, calls the “little flock” not to fear (Luke 12); and, when looking on to the day of displayed glory, He contrasts those that are then to be perfected in one with the world, which will thereby know that the Father sent the Son and loved the saints then glorified, even as He loved His Son. For are they not manifested in the same glory? The church is catholic, in contrast with God's previous dealing with one people, as comprehending not all mankind, but “out of” every land and nation. Hence in giving the sentence of the council in Jerusalem on the question of admitting the Gentiles, James refers to Symeon's explanation how God first visited to take “out of Gentiles” a people for His name. And this will be complete “in the consummation of the age” (Matt. 13:40-43), in the time of the harvest, when those gathered out are brought to heaven, and shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

But Isaiah had before him the vision of the new age, when the veil is no longer on Israel's heart, and they see eye to eye, for Jehovah has returned to Zion. Therefore is her light come, and the glory of Jehovah is risen upon her. In this mountain shall Jehovah make unto all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the veil that veileth all the peoples, and the covering that is spread over all the nations. Nor will this be without the solemn judgment of the living, which the living are so apt to forget, though He Himself revealed it, as the apostles repeated, and the O.T. prophets predicted of old: a judgment which will fall on the nations, but severely on the Jews, and yet more so on Christendom, more guilty still as knowing better and no less unbelieving and lawless.

Israel will then be under Messiah and the new covenant; and the inhabitants of the world, when His judgments are in the earth; learn righteousness. Such is the basis, such the circumstances, presupposed in the scene, to which the prophet prefixes a title which ought to preclude misapplication: “The word that Isaiah, son of Amoz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.” The church at that time will have a still more glorious position. For she is the bride, the Lamb's wife, and is symbolized, not by Zion, or Moriah, or Jerusalem, but by the new Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. She had suffered with Christ during her earthly sojourn, instead of faithlessly, like Babylon, seeking present ease and power and glory; therefore will she be glorified together with Him in that day. Jerusalem even then is reigned over. The first dominion comes to Zion; and all the nations shall truly bow to Jehovah's choice and Messiah's seat of earthly rule. But the heavenly Eve of the second Man, the last Adam, has a far higher place and glory, as united to the Head over all, the Heir of the universe. The glorified saints alone shall reign with Christ over the earth.

With this agrees every word of the text. The Lord has not yet taken His great power and reigned, as He will, at the seventh trumpet in the end of the age when the world-kingdom is become His de facto. Then will He reward His servants, and destroy the destroyers of the earth; and the present evil age will yield to the good age that follows when He is come and governs. Then as Zion is His earthly center, so is the mountain of Jehovah's house exalted; and all the nations shall flow thither. The nations are no longer envious, nor is Israel jealous any more. Jehovah Messiah will have wrought in divine attractive mercy as well as in overawing power; and the peoples come up, assured that He (not the church) will teach them of His ways.

The prophet does not say that the gospel as now but that the law shall go forth out of Zion; it is not the Father's word which we know, but Jehovah's word from Jerusalem, No allegorizer is bold enough to deny the literality of Jerusalem here; but this they quit in a moment and interpolate the gospel and the church. But the prophet in ver. 6 goes on to say, “Thou hast cast off thy people, the house of Jacob,” &c. How say this of the church? It is “the kingdom “; and the Great King will judge among the nations, and will reprove many peoples: a wholly different state from the church, wherein is neither Jew nor Gentile, now in training, and sufferings too, in the fellowship of Christ's, for heaven. The time for earth's deliverance and joy and blessing is come. For Jehovah will reign in a way He has never done yet.

Accordingly we are assured that men “shall forge their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning knives: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” So it will be in the age to come. But our Lord has expressly told us that till the end of this age come, “nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.” Thus there is no excuse for the confusion of the theologians. This is not confined to Popery, though there it is extreme and systematized error. It is due to the evil heart of unbelief that loves the world and the things of the world. But the Lord has laid down for Christians that they “are not of the world” as He is not: a principle itself subversive of this evil scheme, which seeks earthly dominion more persistently and unscrupulously than any usurper that ever breathed. But strong is the Lord God that will judge Babylon, and this righteously.

It is not to the church in one single instance, but to Israel (when restored in sovereign mercy, yet also in accomplishment of the promises to the true fathers), that perpetuity is assigned throughout all the O. T. and sealed in the N. T. So Gen. 17 repeatedly assures to Abraham and his seed “an everlasting covenant,” and the land (which decides its literal import) “an everlasting possession “; to Isaac and to Jacob the gift was successively confirmed. But Exodus shows that, while Jehovah remembered His covenant, Israel forgot His free promise and their own weakness, undertaking to obey the law as the condition of their possession. Thus man being what he is, all was certain to be lost. Only through a typical, and therefore temporary, mediator did they pass through the wilderness or enter the land, There (after the fullest patience and the exhaustion of all possible remedial means) ruin came at last under the first, and more under the last, of the four “beasts” or imperial world-powers. But even Lev. 26 which declares the stern chastenings awaiting their sins, lets us know that when their heart is humbled as our Lord taught us to expect—(Matt. 23:39), Jehovah will remember His covenant with their fathers, and remember their land. Jerusalem (said He, Luke 21:24) shall be trodden down by Gentiles—forever? Not so; but only until times of Gentiles be fulfilled. What has all this to do with the church? It has much every way to say to Israel and the future kingdom. Compare Num. 24, 25., and Deut. 32. especially vers. 36-43.

But it is in the Psalms and Prophets that evidence is most abundant, so much so that one need not cite any in particular, unless it be Dan. 2:35, to which allusion is made in the extract from Augustine (p. xix). Now it is absurd to apply to the first advent that judicial act, which effaces not only the Roman empire, but all that remains of its predecessors on the earth. It is He at the second advent alone, who will execute sudden and complete judgment on all hostile powers. Only when utter destruction falls on them, does the stone that smote the image become a great mountain and fill the whole world. It will be the kingdom of God in Christ set up on Zion, when Jehovah makes Judah as His majestic horse in the battle. What can be more decidedly in contrast with the suffering church, the witness of grace and heavenly glory? What more distinctly in keeping with the Lord coming in His kingdom and trampling all His enemies under foot?

Nevertheless theology has habitually confounded these two things; and none more grossly than the Popes, nor any with such evident and interested aim to profit by a deception, which probably deceived themselves. Yet what can be plainer than the wholly different facts when the church was brought in to view at Pentecost? Zion was for the present no better than Aceldama, and Jerusalem doomed to desolation. Instead of all the nations flowing to the mountain of Jehovah's house, the gospel was soon preached everywhere by the scattered Christians and later by the apostles. Instead of judging among the nations from His center of Zion, He executed sentence on Jerusalem by heathen Rome (Matt. 22:7); and instead of nations ever since learning war no more, all history attests, as He predicted, incessant ravages of war. And the day in which we live beholds Christendom, more than ever since the world began, bristling with arms on sea and land, and learning war with a zeal and mutual suspicion beyond all previous zeal. What more infatuated then than the traditional misuse of this vision and of others generally?

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:15-18

THE youngest branch of the Hamitic race now comes before us, already branded with curse (chap. ix. 25), and a bondman of bondmen to his brethren. Yet no doom long seemed more unlikely. They were enterprising beyond any, and no more disposed to tarry at home than the sons of Cush. Who spread themselves abroad as they? Canaan, who naturally gave the general designation, had a more special application to the “lowlanders” of the country. They are carefully pointed out as races which possessed themselves of the land destined for Israel. As the song of Moses so forcibly expresses it (Deut. 32:8), “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel. For Jehovah's portion is his people, Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.”

This is a revelation of the highest importance for God's government of the world. Men willingly forget that the times of the Gentiles are in this quite abnormal. For He has no direct government of the earth, only providential, during their course. The only time when He governed immediately was when Israel afforded its theater. To this end He chose the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as His people, and gave them the land of promise from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates. To Israel He made Himself known as Jehovah, the one living and true God, as He had to their pilgrim fathers as the Almighty God. But through the self-confidence of unbelief they forgot their redemption from Egypt and their preservation in the wilderness up to Sinai, all of grace; and then accepted law as their condition at Sinai, instead of pleading the promise. Hence their history became a history of sin and ruin, checkered by wondrous interventions of mercy, as well as solemn chastisements of their rebellious iniquity, till at length even the house of David led the last remaining tribe of Judah into abominable idolatry, and God delivered them as captives to Babylon, the first of the four “beasts,” or Gentile imperial powers. Finally under the last of these bestial empires (the Roman), the Jewish remnant, which was permitted to return to the land for a fresh trial, rejected their own Messiah and even the gospel founded on His death, which was first sent to them, and wrath has come upon them to the uttermost.

It is in the Jewish people only that we have a kingdom of the earth set up by Jehovah Himself under the direction of His law. But even under its earliest and brightest phase, when David reigned, what failure and presage of downfall! yet not without shadows of abiding righteousness, power, and glory, as often seen in the psalms! And the man of peace, his son, outwardly more magnificent, brought in but plain evidence of ruin, even then come and far more approaching and sure till there was no remedy. Yet was the history full of instruction both of what man was as responsible under God's law, and of God's ways in blessing and punishing according to the principles of His earthly government.

All this was, however, only a witness in the hands of a people prone to evil and departure from Him. But God has in no way abandoned His purpose for the earth. He is using the interval, since His rejection of the Jews because of their rejection of Christ, to call a people out of both Jews and Gentiles, who put on Christ in Whom there is neither, to form a heavenly family in union with Christ, the body of the ascended Head, God's habitation in the Spirit. When this is complete, the Lord Jesus will come and receive us unto Himself and present us in the Father's house. He will also in due time appear executing judgment, not only on the fourth Beast revived and the Antichrist in the land, but on all hostile powers and peoples, delivering a remnant of Jews then righteous, the nucleus of the nation, believing and expectant, blessed and established forever as a blessing to all the families of the earth. Such will Israel be under Messiah and the new covenant, and mercy endure forever, as they will then sing in truth of heart. And the Gentiles will in that day cast away their idols of silver and gold, and everything high and lifted up, and lofty looks and haughtiness of heart, cordially bowing to the kingdom with Zion as its center, and the mountain of Jehovah's house established in the top of the mountains and exalted above the hills. For Messiah will reign, the only perfect judge between the nations, who shall not lift sword nor learn war any more.

Now the races of Canaan occupied that land which Jehovah intended for Israel. Nor was this all. They were conspicuously vile, most of all the cities of the plain, whose wickedness was not to be named. They were therefore cut off by a sudden and manifestly divine infliction. But when the cup of the Amorites was full, and the land became so unclean that Jehovah must visit its iniquity, He was pleased to make Israel the executioner of His vengeance. What could be more righteous in itself? What wiser for His people, its destined heirs? All unnatural evils as well as idolatries (their very religion ever binding on them these abominations) had become their “customs,” from which Israel must be kept. It was no question of cruelty; and it was Israel's fault not to exterminate as completely as Jehovah enjoined; so that the spared did not fail to ensnare and corrupt the chosen people into like infamy.

Of these races we need dwell on no more than the first two. These can be more easily severed, as they only are personal names, the rest Gentilic. “And Canaan begat Zidon [or Sidon] the firstborn, and Heth” (ver. 15). The name of the first means, like Saida its modern appellation, “fishing.” The city was built on the northern slope of a spur projecting into the sea with its citadel behind on the south. The plain was narrower between Lebanon and the sea. But the daughter city of Tire in time outshines it, as the later prophets indicate. In earlier days we hear of “great Zidon” (Joshua 8, 19:28). So even Homer, who repeatedly speaks of it and its people, never named Tire. They were then skilled in manufactures, later celebrated for their marine and as merchants. But they corrupted even Solomon's house by their abominations.

The Hittites were of Heth or Cheth. Their daughters troubled Isaac and Rebecca, though we hear of Abraham friendly with them and others. They like the Jebusites and the Amorites betook themselves to the mountains from the south, and afterward were outside in the valley of the Orontes. So in 1 Kings 10:29 their kings are spoken of with “the Kings of Aram” or Syria; they seem without doubt to be the Khatti of the Egyptian inscriptions, on the western side of the Euphrates. They had however shared in the efforts against Joshua (9, 11.) and suffered accordingly. In Ezek. 16:3, 45, “thy mother was a Hittite” is no more meant literally than “thy father was an Amorite.” They are the prophet's figures of moral reproach.

As for the races mentioned after these, little more is to be said than what lies on the surface of scripture: “And the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite, and the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite, and the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite” (vers. 16-18). The Jebusites held Jerusalem, though defeated by Joshua, but not dispossessed till David. The Amorite was in the mountain land of Judah, but pushed east where on their fall or expulsion the two and a half tribes settled east of the Jordan. The Girgashites disappeared from view. Of the Hivites we have the remarkable tale the Book of Joshua tells, and of its consequences, at least of those in Gibeon; for there were others further north and outside, near whom settled the latter five families, or on the coast, and also in the isle of Aradus.

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 11

Chapter 9:20-32.

THE day comes when the enemies of God and His people shall fall, not by providential means only, but by predicted inflictions of extraordinary and unprecedented character, and finally by the manifest intervention and presence of the Judge Himself. But there will be another immense change antecedent of a spiritual nature. A residue, which in due time will be constituted a strong nation or its nucleus, will be humbled in heart and accept of the punishment of their iniquity, and instead of being as now since Pentecost added together as part of the church of God, will return (as Micah says) “unto the children of Israel.” For the times will have then arrived to form afresh the broken links, and to prove publicly that God has not cast away His people, nor abandoned the land of His promise and oath to the patriarchs, but will fulfill every pledge of blessing to and in them completely and forever. “For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.”

What we have in the book of Esther is no more than the witness of secret providence in the face of the extremest dangers looking onward to that grand public issue, and meanwhile yielding a striking and standing ordinance of Him Who delivers though unseen.

“And Mordecai wrote these things, and sent letters unto all Jews that were in all the provinces of king Ahasuerus, both nigh and far, to enjoin them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar, and the fifteenth day of the same, yearly, as the days wherein the Jews had rest from their enemies, and the month which was turned unto them from sorrow to gladness, and from mourning into a good day: that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor.

“And the Jews undertook to do as they had begun, and as Mordecai had written unto them; because Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had devised against the Jews to destroy them, and had cast Pur, that is, the lot, to consume them, and to destroy them; but when it [or Esther] came before the king, he commanded by letters that his wicked device, which he devised against the Jews, should return upon his own head; and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows. Wherefore they called these days Purim, after the name of Pur. Therefore because of all the words of this letter, and [of that] which they had seen concerning this matter, and that which had come unto them, the Jews ordained and took upon them and upon their seed, and upon all such as joined themselves unto them, so that it should not fail, that they would keep these two days according to the writing thereof, and according to the appointed time thereof, every year; and [that] these days [should be] remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city; and [that] these days of Purim should not fail from among the Jews, nor the memorial of them perish from their seed. And Esther the queen, the daughter of Abihail, and Mordecai the Jew, wrote with all authority to confirm this second letter of Purim. And he sent letters unto all the Jews, to the hundred twenty and seven provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, words of peace and truth, to confirm these days of Purim in their appointed times, according as Mordecai the Jew and Esther the queen had enjoined them, and as they had decreed for themselves and for their seed, [in] the matters of the fastings and their cry. And the commandment of Esther confirmed these matters of Purim; and it was written in the book” (ver. 20-32).

Here again, it will be noticed, the book cleaves to its sincerely impressed character, and not even then is He named Whom ordinarily and naturally it were the highest duty to proclaim. Yet is the utter difference made plain in man's word; for the Talmud lays down that at the feast of Purim a man should drink till he knew not the difference between “Blessed be Mordecai,” and “Cursed be Haman.” “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?” Judaism, and Christendom where Christ is ignored, each sinking into the driest ditch of heathenism, both dare to sanction a reveling carnival where had been a holy feast.

The Scripture of Truth: 1

ONE of our sages, the founder of inductive philosophy, distinguishes between divine prophecies, and such as have been of certain memory and from hidden causes. These were no better than probable conjectures or obscure traditions that many times turn themselves into prophecies. Lord Verulam undoubtedly was a man of profound thought, and (whatever, his sad failure) a great deal wiser than those who now in effect deny divine prophecy altogether, and merely show themselves out as unbelievers. Now unbelief is an insult to God and His word, and not merely so, but along with it goes as the rule ignorance of Christ and of redemption. Everything is shaken thereby; for the moment you begin to cavil at scripture, where is the line to be drawn? It is no better if you question the beginning. You may begin with Genesis; for the same principle is apt to carry the mind in doubt throughout the Bible to Revelation. There is abundant evidence for scripture, more by far than for any books of antiquity; but evidence of an external sort never raises you to faith. Scripture claims to be the written word of God and carries its own evidence as light to the conscience. Unless received on its own divine authority, men do not really believe it savingly. They may readily allow that it has a character intrinsically superior to other so-called sacred books. But this makes it only a question of old Hebrew sages or of those who wrote in Christian times, who were better or abler men.

In the prophecy which now claims our attention we have as nearly as possible the language of history. We have seen the symbolic style in the earlier visions of the book. Chap. 9 is transitional, the weeks being in a measure enigmatic; the rest plain language with figures interspersed, as in all the interpretations. The peculiarity of the eleventh and twelfth chapters, like the ninth, is in leaving symbolic form for the language of every day on historical matters. Thus we have a succession of kings in a double contemporary series, north and south of the holy land, which was beyond controversy God's center on the earth. We must therefore look up or down from that fixed point.

Here we find a striking introduction before we hear of kings of the north and the south. “And now will I show you the truth. Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia.” Cyrus was then the great ruling personage. Darius was in honor only as a sort of complementary king; the conqueror of Babylon put him forward in recognition of the Medes who joined his standard, whatever may have been the exact family tie which bound them together. For scripture is silent, and the facts are by no means cleared by the profane writers of history. As Ctesias says that Cyrus made his own grandfather, the dethroned king of the Medes, a satrap, it is not improbable that he is Darius the Mede of the prophecy. Probable it seems that Astyages' daughter Mandane married Cambyses II., father of Cyrus, whom Herodotus mentions as a Persian noble, the monuments as the king, which appears to have been the fact. However this be, Cyrus was a man of real and widely extended power. Thenceforward scripture proof of the succession appears in Ezra 4.

First we have Ahasuerus, the unworthy son of a great father, here (Ezra 4:6) called Ahasuerus, or Cambyses as he is named in ordinary history. It was not he that disturbed the Jewish remnant, after their restoration, but the usurper who followed him when the Samaritan enemies of Israel appealed to stop the work of re-building the temple and the city. This work Artaxerxes (Smerdis Magus) (ver. 7-23) was the more ready to thwart, as he being a Mede paid no regard to the policy of Cyrus, whose son, Cambyses, did; he would be disposed naturally to reactionary measures. Darius Hystaspis became king on the revolt which set aside the pseudo-Smerdis; and he is the king of Persia who confirmed the decree of Cyrus. See vers. 5, 24, and chaps. 5. and 6. This Darius H. is the third in Dan. 11:2, that is, the third after Cyrus the Great.

“The fourth,” it is said, “shall be far richer than they all.” This proverbially rich king of Persia was Xerxes, who tried to follow his father's enmity to Athens (defeated at Marathon, B.C. 490), and strike the Greeks a death-blow. “And when he is waxed strong through his riches, he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia.” He likewise was defeated at the famous battles of Salamis and Platma, B.C. 480, 479. How exact and terse is the prophet's sketch! “By his strength through his riches.” It was not skill or force of arms, but wealth that mustered the vast hosts of barbarians. But his enormous armies, far greater than those of his father Darius, were unavailing. Luxury had enervated those once hardy warriors. And now also they had overstepped their limits. Whilst they pushed their dominions through Western Asia, God in His providence was with them; but when they sought the sea and Europe, by rushing into Greece, they laid the foundation of that enmity which found its vent in Alexander the Great, who led the Greeks and his own Macedonian forces against the East. The great battles at the Granicus, and at Issus, and at Arbela resulted in the total overthrow of the Persian empire. See how clearly this is set out in a few words in ver. 4: “And a mighty king (Alexander) shall stand up that shall rule with great dominion and do according to his will.” But what about his own dynasty? “And when he shall stand up, his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided toward the four winds of heaven; but not to his posterity, nor according to his dominion wherewith he ruled: for his kingdom shall be plucked up, even for others besides these” (ver. 5). This was all verified to the letter.

Thus are we brought to the desired two out of the four parts of Alexander's kingdom—Syria in the North, Egypt in the South. And a most characteristic sketch it is. Gibbon, the skeptical historian, says in his sneering way that Daniel “is too exact for a prophet,” “The four empires are clearly delineated: the expedition of Xerxes into Greece; the rapid conquest of Persia by Alexander; his untimely death without posterity; the division of his monarchy into four kingdoms, one of which, Egypt, is mentioned by name; then various wars and inter-marriages; the persecution of Antiochus; the profanation of the temple; and the invincible arms of the Romans are described with as much clearness as in the histories of Justin and Diodorus. From such a perfect resemblance the artful infidel would infer that both alike were composed after the event” (G. to Hurd, Works, v. 365).

Certain it is that the Lord does authenticate “Daniel the prophet” to every believer, who finds here in short compass a sketch more simple, consecutive, and correct than in all the historians put together, and with slight exception in the common style of history. This is admittedly a feature unusual in prophecy; and because of this some have rashly yielded to incredulity. Dr. Arnold was thus misled; for no piety can quite undo the poisonous effects of unbelief.

But no Christian can doubt that it is as easy for God to give a consecutive anticipation as a single luminous picture. It is the general way of prophecy, no doubt, to hurry on to the judgment, and the blessing that follows the Lord's intervention at the close, as being of supreme importance. But there was good reason in His eyes to give at this junction an account of the kings, north and south of Palestine, and their mutual struggles and alliances, sometimes sought to be cemented by marriage. We have these movements traced with precision; nothing in history can be more exact. Name if you are able any great writer on that time, who gives facts with as great accuracy, simplicity, and clearness, as this chapter.

Take the following curt summary: verse 5 presents Ptolemy Lagi, one of Alexander's chief captains, in remarkable strength; yet another about to be stronger than he, and to have a great dominion, the first Seleucus surnamed Nicator. In ver. 6 after an indicated space we hear of an endeavor to patch up the jealousy which from earliest days had arisen about the land which lay between these powers, when Ptol. Philadelphus gave his daughter Berenice to Antiochus Theus. But Laodice, the injured first wife, brought all to naught and worse than ever by restoration to the northern king's favor, when she poisoned those from the south as well as her husband and Berenice's son. Vers. 7 and 8 tell us of “a shoot” from Berenice's roots, Ptol. Euergetes, avenging her wrongs, when Sel. Callinicus reigned in the north, and gained great successes over the north, surviving his adversary and returning to his own land (ver. 9). Then in ver. 10 we have the efforts of Sel. Ceraunus and Antiochus the Great against the south, the latter of whom alone recovered Seleucia; so that even Ptol. Philopator, ipert as he was, got enraged (11), and Antiochus after various successes sustained an utter rout at Raphia (12). But no fruit remained to the Egyptian king, especially as he oppressed the Jews; but Ant. waited till he could fall on his infant nephew when the Jews revolted (13, 14), and he took Sidon (15), notwithstanding all Egypt could do to hinder (defeated at Panium), and he visited the land of beauty (16). In ver. 17 we hear of his fair words but foul intrigues through Cleopatra, who thwarted his craft; as in ver. 18 his invasion of the isles of Greece was stopped by a Roman chief in the person of Quinctius the Consul at the Isthmus. Inglorious defeat sealed his stumble and fall (19). The twentieth verse briefly tells us of his son Sel. Philopator, overloaded with tribute, as is here strikingly noticed, who fell through his “exactor,” Heliodorus. From vers. 21 to 32 inclusively follows the account of his brother Antiochus Epiphanes with a detail beyond all before, as being the foe not only of the Jews but of their God, the living God. Demetrius was the true heir. “A person vile” indeed was their supplanter. His deceit was as great against his nephew of Egypt as against his brother. At length “ships of Chittim came against him” (ver. 30), as against his ancestor. The Romans compelled him to retire from Egypt; and he vented his indignation on the Jews; as later on by his order “the abomination that maketh desolate” was set up in the temple through apostates that helped him, though valiant opposition was not wanting.

If one ventured to enter into the details of those successive kings, it would take considerably more space than can be now given. But the last king of the north stands out from all the rest.

The Ten Virgins

Matt. 25:1-13

HERE again we have the mysterious likeness of the kingdom of the heavens while Christ rejected but glorified is hidden on high. Only, as the parable looks onward specially to the future, when the difference between those taught of God and mere professors will be manifested, the word is “Then shall the kingdom of the heavens be made like to ten virgins,” &c. “Then” refers to the execution of judgment on the evil bondman who embodied the collective responsibility of Christendom, as our parable sets out rather the secret of wisdom or the lack of it individually.

“Then shall the kingdom of the heavens be made like to ten virgins, such as, having taken their torches, went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were foolish and five prudent. For the foolish, when they took their torches, took no oil with them; but the prudent took oil in their vessels with their torches. Now while the bridegroom tarried, they all fell heavy and were sleeping. But at midnight a cry is made, Behold, the bridegroom: come ye forth to meet him. Then arose all those virgins and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the prudent, Give us of your oil, for our torches are going out. But the prudent replied, saying, Nay, lest there be not enough for us and you: go rather unto those that sell, and buy for yourselves. And while they went away to buy, the bridegroom came; and those that were ready went with him unto the marriage feast; and the door was shut. But afterward came also the rest of the virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us. But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not. Watch therefore, for ye know not the day nor the hour” (vers. 1-13).

The ten virgins vividly represent the Christian profession. All took their torches and went forth to meet the Bridegroom Who is coming again. But if anyone have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. The unction of the Holy One is indispensable. The possession of this, symbolized by oil, depends on having faith in Christ and His work. The foolish never knew their ruin; they were content with ordinances and rites and their own heed to them. To be born anew, to receive remission of sins through Christ's blood, to be sealed with the Spirit, they were strangers: Jews or heathen might want these things; but they had every privilege in their religion, the Christian religion, and had no cause for alarm: such was their self-deception.

Alas! as with Israel so with Christendom, the forgetfulness of God's work and departure from Him were complete. While waiting for the bridegroom they fell heavy and were sleeping. The true attitude of the Christian was lost; the blessed hope no longer animated any. They ceased to go forth to meet the Bridegroom, and turned in here or there to slumber. Prudent or foolish, all slipped away from the true hope.

But God is faithful, and, when things are darkest, He arouses the sleepers. At midnight is made a cry, Behold the bridegroom. All awake, when even the foolish become uneasy, for they perceive that the prudent have a power which they have not. Torches may burn brightly for a while; but without oil they soon go out. But the believer has the Spirit only for himself; and none can receive that anointing save through God's grace on the faith of the gospel. Hence the appeal of the foolish to the prudent is vain. They must go to Him who sells on the terms of grace, without money and without price. Sinners must have to do with God. The creature cannot avail. The sinner must face his sins before Him, Who points the lost to the Savior Those who are religious after the flesh hate grace and shrink from God's presence. They may be zealous; they are willing to do “some great thing” if bidden; but to stand before Him as nothing but guilty ones, and to be saved of divine grace like the worst by a dead and risen Savior, is repulsive to the old man. They may go their way to buy; but this is all we here learn of these self-deceivers.

Meanwhile the bridegroom came; and those that were ready went in with him to the marriage feast. And the door was shut.

Oh, the horror of finding out the truth too late! In vain then to cry, Lord, Lord, open to us! To such as are refusing a like warning and invitation now, His word then will be, Verily, I say to you, I know you not.

My reader, how would the coming of the Savior find you? Those who really long and watch for the Savior have already heard His voice and found in Him redemption, the forgiveness of their sins, through His blood. Hence they are sealed with the Holy Spirit of God unto the day of redemption. They know Whom they have believed, as the Good Shepherd knows such as hear His voice and follow Him. Do not trust in any institution, even of Christ, or any observance of your own, or any class of men however honored, to fit your souls for God's presence. Nothing but the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses from all sin; but this it does perfectly even now on earth for every believer. And unless you here believe in Him and in the efficacy of His sacrifice for your evil case, flatter not yourselves that He will receive you to Himself or present you to His Father.

But if you are born again and resting on the redemption that is in Christ, you will have the Holy Spirit dwelling in you and strengthening you to render a true witness to Him who is on high and about to return. “This is He that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth.” Your hope will be as real as your faith, and Christ the object of both. You will not doubt His love, but long for His coming to receive you to Himself, having the oil in your vessel, and earnest to call the thirsty, or whoever will, to drink of the water of life freely.

The Fullness of Christ: Part 1

THE glory of Christ is the central truth of the Bible. Anyone could see His humiliation; Pilate and Herod and the unbelieving Jews, the Roman soldiers, all the multitude did. But the sight of His humiliation was nothing without His glory; and when His glory was discerned, it was the humiliation of the Lord Jesus that filled the heart with shame and with abasement. This always deepens in presence of the love which made One so high to stoop so low; and whatever humiliation was seen in the days of our Lord was only the prelude of a deeper humiliation.

“Himself bare our sorrows and took our sicknesses,” says the evangelist Matthew, looking on the wondrous grace of His earthly ministry; and it was true. The quotation, which is from Isaiah, does not refer to the atonement, I admit; but His path was one that led straight to the atonement. The bearing of our sorrows and sicknesses is quite a different thing from the bearing of our sins; but it was the same person in grace. Jehovah-Messiah was of course a divine person; but partaking of Mood and flesh, He took the place of man in weakness. He drew from God the Father as a dependent man for every need that came before Him. It mattered not what it was: a sick body, a disordered soul, a mind filled with all that Satan can infuse of fear and terror and all that is most hateful to God and man; nay, death itself—nothing stood in His ray. Whatever He needed, He drew down from God to meet each case; but He always bore the sorrow on His heart. He never was like those we may see any day who get rid of an importunate beggar with a sixpence. He never did so; but He bent under the weight of every sickness and sorrow He relieved. This is perfection. It was the perfection of His life as a man here below, even in doing miracles. Signs and wonders might be wrought by people that have no communion with God, and no compassion for man. He wrought them in grace peculiar to Himself.

The Lord Jesus was always in an unbroken and of perfect relationship with God and of perfect compassionate pity towards man. Yet He well knew that all this was but preliminary to the great work that lay before Him. And what was that?

His death as the Lamb of God—a work not yet seen in all its effects, and never to be so seen till not only the kingdom—which is a grand display—be established on the earth, but full perfection be reached: the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. No longer will even government be needed—righteousness will dwell in peace, when evil and wretchedness are gone. There will be the full fruit, not only of grace, but of grace reigning through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord, already enjoyed by faith.

Therein is a great ground of confidence for a poor soul that is anxious about its sins. I do not say that the Lord Jesus has taken sin out of the world yet. This may not be quite true; but He is the One who is to do it. There is but One, “the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” Without saying that all is done, He is the Person; and if you ask me where is the work through which that infinite result is to be effected, on which it rests, and in virtue of which it will be done, I answer unhesitatingly, It is the cross. Love could not banish sin. Power could not banish sin according to God. Power might act, but where then love and righteousness? Had the Lord Jesus appeared merely to put away all evil from before Him, what must become of us? Where could sinful souls find refuge? If I am to stand and lift up my head in the presence of God, it must be on the ground of His righteousness. And this is exactly what the Lord Jesus provided on the cross. On the one hand, there was God in His love and holy nature, in His righteousness and majesty; on the other, there was man in all his sin and ruin; and the Lord Jesus comes between both. He goes not from man to God; but He comes from God to man, and God was glorified in His cross about man's sin. “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.”

The Lord Jesus did not produce one atom of love in the heart of God that was not there before; by the atoning work on the cross He removed all hindrance for every soul that bows down and owns his sins, but for none other. No one will receive the blessing of grace without faith and repentance; and it would be no blessing to man or glory to God without it. There must be the work of the Spirit in our hearts to produce self-judgment with confidence in God through that which the Lord Jesus has borne for the sake of sinners. If the heart be unaffected, if conscience be harder than a millstone, how could such a soul give praise to God in heaven?

God is not merely working for heaven, He is raising a testimony for Christ in human hearts on the earth before they go to heaven. The best robe for the prodigal does not mean only in heaven, When heaven comes, will there be an elder son out in the field? No murmuring is heard there—if possible less insult to the Father. Nobody in heaven will act thus. It is here and now, alas! that it is done. But there is where people very often stop. They think the only thing that is now true in the gospel is the Father coming out to kiss the son, the order to take away his rags—to invest him with the best robe, and to put a ring and shoes on him. Would to God that even this were better known! There are many who would lessen the guilt of sin and wrong Christ still. Men are not ashamed of this, and do not see it is deep dishonor to Christ, defrauding Him of His just reward. That which God delights in is to make men righteously happy now and in this world; and this not in the smallest degree because of any merits on the sinner's part, but entirely as the fruit of divine grace in His own Son and His redemptive work. But then the heart must bow to it; and this not only by the faith that receives it from God, but by the repentance that judges self, not one's evil works only, but the nature.

Now the feast is given; the calling of the friends and neighbors together is what follows; but it follows here—not merely in heaven. When in the heavenly city, there will be the tree of life with its twelve manner of fruits, and every month. But what the parable of the prodigal son shows us is a feast begun on earth—God's joy (for it was not merely the prodigal's joy) in having back His erring son safe and sound.

Beloved reader, what meaning has that to you? Has it none? Are you, first of all, in the delivered condition of the prodigal? and, secondly, are you entering into the joy and love of God, which goes out and shares your joy? This is what God looks for now in this world. In heaven, no doubt, we shall have it in perfection; but the Christian man is called to enter into the love of God and joy of God while on the earth. He is not merely a forgiven man. He is not at all a man who is forborne with: this was the case before the death of Christ on the cross. When God was dealing in Old Testament times with His people, He forbore to press the debt; and they were then, as men are now in their natural state, liable to punishment. But then the work of Christ was not done, and God, looking on to it, would not exact the debt. He passed over the sins. There was a prætermission of sins; now there is a remission of sins. Not only does the Lord not judge the sins—they are completely gone.

You can conceive a wise, indulgent creditor who knew that you were greatly tried, but who thought proper to pity you, whatever might have brought about your straitened circumstances. He was merciful to you, and did not press the debt. But is this all the gospel? The gospel goes farther, and says that your sins on believing it are completely gone. Remember too it is only the first step—the threshold of the gospel; and this is what brings me to the next truth which I wish to present to you.

By Calling

“PAUL, a servant of Jesus Christ, an apostle by calling” (Rom. 1:1). Thus did Paul present his credentials to a company of saints whom he had not yet visited and to most of whom he was a stranger. Being especially the apostle of the Gentiles, he felt he had a responsibility towards them and desired some fruit among them, as among others. He had not been used of God to found the assembly in Rome; nor indeed had any other apostle. Unlike Philippi and Corinth, we have no scripture record of the commencement of the work of God in the great metropolis of the West. But Paul knew of the work, for their faith was spoken of throughout the whole world; and for many years had longed to pay them a visit, that he might impart to them some spiritual gift for their establishment.

The way being still hedged up, he wrote them the epistle now before us. He introduces himself as “an apostle by calling” —for so the phrase really means. His apostleship was derived from above without any intermediary of any sort. He had not received appointment from those who were apostles before him, still less had he thrust himself into the solemn position; it was a divine call. All ministry partakes of this character according to scripture. The source of it all is the risen Head in heaven. Having accomplished redemption and broken the power of the enemy, He ascended up on high and gave gifts unto men. He distributes the spoils of His victory among the objects of His favor—the members of His body. He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.

In all this there is no room for man, the work is wholly divine. He who has received a talent is responsible to trade with the same; it is a mark of the evil servant not to do so, or to wait for some other authorization (Matt. 25.). Nowhere in scripture do we find official appointment to preach the word; still less “a church” giving “a call” to a man to become its “minister”. Granted that many human questions and difficulties are avoided by conforming to such ways; but they are a departure from the truth nevertheless. The apostle had to endure a good deal of criticism in the course of his faithful service. The Corinthians sought a proof of Christ speaking in him, and said that he was rude in speech and in bodily presence weak, and that he only desired to make a gain of them. But he held steadily on his way through evil report and good report, setting no value on any human imprimatur, confiding in God. He was an apostle by calling; and this was enough for him.

Those to whom he wrote had experienced a divine call also, though of a different character. We read “to all that be in Rome, beloved of God, saints by calling.” “To be saints” entirely misses the mind of the Spirit. It is no question of what we ought to be in our manner of life, nor of a position or status to be earned; but the place that grace has given once for all to all who believe. Superstition has robbed many of true understanding and enjoyment of the term “saints.” The mass have been long accustomed to think of Matthew, and Paul, as having a place altogether peculiar and which pertain to but few others; and many think of the title merely in connection with certain faithful sons of the church who have been pontifically canonized years after death.

But the word of God is blessedly plain. All who believe, whether apostles or otherwise, are “saints (or holy ones) by calling.” Divine grace has detached us from the world and delivered us from all the guilt and ruin of our former condition, and has set us in holiness in the divine presence according to the value of the work of Christ and the acceptableness of His own blessed person. Nothing can ever alter this. Neither the malice of Satan nor the feebleness and inconsistency of men can affect it for an hour. What unspeakable comfort for our hearts!

Not that this should make us indifferent as to our walk. On the contrary, the more divine grace is known, and the better Christian standing is understood, the more holy and godly will the walk be. The difference is immense between trying to become a saint by earnest painful effort (an impossibility really); and seeking to walk soberly, righteously, and godly, because we know we are saints, beloved of God, established in divine favor. Being holy ones by calling, it behooves us to be holy in practice. As He who has called us is holy, so should we be in all manner of behavior. The new nature which we have received from God should display itself in the power of the Holy Spirit: the old, which faith reckons dead, never can. God looks for fruit in all His own. W.W.F.

Reflections on Galatians 2:1-10

THE apostle proceeds to speak further of his connections with the twelve, and relates his second visit to Jerusalem. “Then fourteen years after, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and took Titus with me also” (ver. 1). The circumstances of this visit are detailed in Acts xv. While Paul and Barnabas were laboring at Antioch, certain men from Jerusalem got in among the brethren, and taught them that, unless they were circumcised after the manner of Moses, they could not be saved. This led to much dissension and disputation, for the apostle would not quietly suffer the foundations of the faith to be thus assailed; but God so ordered it that the question was not settled on the spot. Paul and Barnabas, with other deputies, were dispatched to the Jewish metropolis to discuss the question with the apostles and elders. Thus did God preserve unity all round. He would cause the leaders of the Jewish brethren, resident in the very city from which the trouble emanated, to declare the entire freedom of Gentile believers from the law of Moses.

The discussion is given in Acts xv. where Peter describes the law as a yoke “which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear;” and concludes his speech with the memorable words, “But we believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.” Remark, not “they even as we,” but “we [Jews] as they” (Gentiles), all fleshly distinctions being now obliterated through the cross of Christ.

But if Acts 15. gives us the human and circumstantial side of Paul's journey, our epistle shows the divine side. “I went up by revelation.” It was thus not merely a matter between Paul and the troubled assembly, or between Paul and the twelve; but he was directly sent of the Lord. He now seeks conference with those whom he had rather avoided before. “I communicated to them the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles; but privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run, or had run, in vain” (ver. 2). Here we may see the wisdom of the apostle. He spoke privately to the leaders before the public discussion came on, that it might be manifest that there was no contradiction (whatever difference there might be) in the teaching of those who labored, whether among Jews or Gentiles. He laid before the twelve the gospel which he preached among the Gentiles. Did they judge it defective, as those who had seduced the Galatians? Did they add to him anything? The context shows that they did neither; but rather that they recognized thankfully the grace of God which wrought in him, even though his line was altogether different from their own. When the Spirit is working, there is no room for human pettiness.

Verse 3 should be read as a parenthesis. “But neither Titus who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised.” In this Paul was very bold; yet it was not the boldness of defiance, but of Christian liberty. He took, in the face of all, an uncircumcised Gentile brother into the very center of Judaism; and who that was taught of God (however full of Jewish feeling) could say him nay? Yet the apostle, we know, was always very considerate of Jewish scruples, making himself all things to all men for their blessing, as may be seen in his circumcision of Timothy in Acts 16., and in his instructions in Rom. 14. But Titus, unlike Timothy, was a pure Gentile, and it would have compromised the truth of the gospel to have circumcised him to please brethren among the Jews. Titus was saved as a Gentile, apart altogether from ordinances or works of law. This is brought forward here to show that even in Jerusalem was not required what the Galatians had proved themselves so ready to submit to.

Following upon the parenthesis, the apostle explains more fully the cause of his visit to Jerusalem at that time. “And that because of false brethren unawares brought in; who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage: to whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you” (vers. 4, 5). Thus does he speak of the proceedings at Antioch, of the efforts of the enemy, and of his own earnest resistance of them. How soon did the church fall a prey to evil men through unwatchfulness, when apostolic energy was no more!

Still, as we have seen, even the great apostle of the Gentiles, was not permitted of the Lord to settle this momentous question without reference to Jerusalem; and this for unity's sake: a precious and important principle in the sight of the Lord. But did Paul learn anything in Jerusalem? Was his knowledge of Christianity perfected there among the twelve? “But of these who seemed to be somewhat (whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me: God accepteth no man's person): for they who seemed to be somewhat in conference added nothing to me” (ver. 6). How could the Jewish leaders add anything to Paul? His gospel was beyond theirs, as is plain. He started with Christ's glory, and proclaimed its immense results to all who believe; they testified of One who walked here, who was crucified, and raised again by the power of God. The testimonies were not contradictory, but Paul's was in advance, nevertheless.

Therefore, instead of disagreeing with Paul, or seeking to alter the character of his ministry, as though it were faulty, or not of God, the twelve gave over the work among the Gentiles to Paul and Barnabas, mutually agreeing each to keep to his own line. “But contrariwise, when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter (for he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles): and when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace which was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision” (vers. 8, 9). Whether among Jews or Gentiles, it was God who wrought; and the laborers were but the vessels of His grace. It is happy to observe these brethren, equally called and commissioned of God, recognizing the grace given to each other, even though their line was essentially different, and though they had received no sort of authority from each other.

Peter's place is very clearly defined here—the apostleship of the circumcision. Strange that perverse men should have fastened upon him, of all the twelve, to be the reputed founder and head of the great Gentile assembly of the West; and strange, too, that to this day the delusion should be maintained with all its soul-destroying appurtenances. Scripture speaks of but one apostle in Rome, Paul, not Peter; and that, not to found or head a church (there being an assembly there long before, and no apostle engaged in its foundation), but to be imprisoned and to die.

In giving up the Gentile work to Paul, the twelve expressed one important wish. “Only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do” (ver. 10). The loving compliance of the apostle may be seen in 2 Cor. 8, and 9. The dearth in Judea furnished an occasion for the cementing of divine bonds, Gentile brethren coming forward with affectionate hearts to supply the need of fellow-members of the same body among the circumcision.

James 1:26

CERTAINLY the believer is not said to be blessed for his doing, but in it. The true light already shines; as it did perfectly in Christ when here, so now the Holy Spirit effects this in those begotten of God. He will have reality, now that the day of shadows and forms is past, grace and truth having come through Jesus Christ. If He is not here to maintain all, the Holy Spirit is sent forth and abides for this express purpose to the glory of Christ. No doubt, it is a day of knowing what God has revealed, and He has revealed nothing more fully than Himself in His Son. But it is a day of obedience for the faithful, no less than of life and peace, and of fellowship with the Father and the Son. Knowledge without obedience is a sad and shameful reproach. “If ye know these things,” said the Savior, “happy are ye if ye do them.”

But there is another way in which we may glorify God, or do Him great dishonor; not by our activity, but by our speech. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. As our Lord added, “The good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things; and the wicked man out of the wicked treasure bringeth forth wicked things. But I say unto you, that every idle word which men shall say, they shall render an account of it in judgment-day; for by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned” (Matt. 12:35-37). On scarce anything are men, and even Christians, more distant practically from the mind of God than on the use and in the license claimed for the tongue. On the other hand who does not know the dead and gloomy and resentful silence when the name of the Lord Jesus is brought into any general company? It matters not how reverent be the spirit in which it is uttered, or how apt the application, or how necessary and conclusive for the truth's sake: man cannot forgive it. The name is inopportune, save from a pulpit; it is an offense to the world, high or low, which cast Him out and crucified Him. Notwithstanding the desperate effort to make out that all is changed for so many ages, and that the adornment of the tomb, the picture, or the sculpture, proves the heart's homage in our day, the implacable enmity underneath does not fail to betray itself; and God is not deceived by a vain show. With the heart it is believed unto righteousness, and with mouth confession is made unto salvation. God will have his Son honored as Himself where He was rejected; and those who honor Him by hearing His words and believing Him Who sent Him have life eternal; while those who disbelieve Him must perish, their ways being as bad as their words to His dishonor.

The same principle applies all through. “If anyone thinks he is religious, not bridling his tongue but deceiving his heart, this [man's] religion is vain” (ver. 26). The word “religious” here used refers to the manifestation. It is neither εὐσβὴς, pious or godly; nor is it λατρεύων rendering a religious service or worship to God. It means religious practice outwardly paid. Compare Acts 26:5, Col. 2:18, 23.

Again, the form is hardly “seemeth” but “deemeth,” or “thinketh himself.” It is not what appears to others that is in question, but his thought of himself. Wyclif and the Rhemish are right, following the Vulgate; Tyndale misled Cranmer, the Geneva V. and the Authorized. The very fact that it is not deeds but only the indulgence of speech gives occasion to self-deception. But he who calls on the Lord's name is bound to follow His steps, and not to misrepresent Him, Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; Who, reviled, reviled not again, and, suffering, threatened not. On the contrary as He was fairer than the sons of men, so grace was poured into His lips: therefore God blessed Him forever. But each of us has imperative need to “bridle his tongue “; for we have an old man which was wholly absent from Him. If we do not, the evil of fallen nature finds a ready exit there; which, if we fail to judge, deceives the heart. And this man's religion is as vain, as his is faithful who abides close to the perfect law of liberty.

The Advocacy of Christ: 2

BUT now we have to look at another part of the subject. May we not sin, although we are a holy people? And when “we” is thus used, the family of God is meant—none less or more; that is, all saints are those who now bear the name of the Lord Jesus, and love Him in incorruption; all that call out of a pure heart. And may not such fail? May they not slip through unwatchfulness in such a way as to grieve the Holy Spirit of God? Most assuredly. “In many things we all stumble” This is sin. Call it not infirmity but rather sin. Do not use “failure” in such a way as to imply something between infirmity and sin for what is really sinful. Call things by their true names. Grace emboldens us to be thoroughly truthful and upright, to be honest with God and man, and above all to hold the right and title of God against that nature which (whilst ourselves are held for dead to it), not being treated as utterly evil, has been allowed to work out to God's dishonor.

Should one sin, what is the resource according to scripture? The advocacy of Christ. Therein is just the importance of these two dealings of divine mercy and living grace in our Lord Jesus, now at the right hand of God; for they belong to Him there, and they are both viewed as reaching us here. But they are not the same office; and to confound them is to lose the characteristic power of each of them; and as is always the case when you muddle together truths which are distinct, both are enfeebled if not lost. You may have perhaps a general vague sense of them both, but you have not the precision and full comfort of either. Yet the Lord freely gives us both, as we need both.

In 1 John 2 we find to what the advocacy of the Lord applies, and what it assumes. We are not merely brought into the presence of God, but have communion with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. We have a new life or divine nature, and along with the profession of this previously unknown spiritual being, given us by divine love in and through the Lord Jesus, there is the enjoyed fellowship with the Father and the Son. Evidently when we speak of communion, we have before us that which is very delicate and sensitive exceedingly. For we have only to reflect a moment, and we must see that God the Father could have no communion with sin, or with us in it.

We who understand the gospel know that our being the most wretched of sinners did not hinder God from applying the blood of Christ in all its efficacious power to us. It was for such that His Son shed His blood; nor would there have been sufficient ground for it except for such. The sin-offering of the Lord Jesus supposes our utter vileness and distance from God. But now we are through that one offering not only sanctified but perfected forever. This has been done by His death; and once done, the work forever stands. But it is quite another thing when you speak of communion in the practical sense. Confound these, and you destroy either confidence as to your soul, or enjoyment of God, if not both.

What then is the basis of our communion? It is Christ; but this being so, whatever is not of Him, whatever is of self, whatever is of sin, interrupts the enjoyment of communion. And what restores it when broken? The advocacy of Christ. It is not therefore, observe, the ministration of that which strengthens, consoles, or gives courage to a holy people who are brought into absolute nearness to God, while walking in a world where all is counted to Him and to them, because they are His; for it is not yet in fact under His sway, but rather under that of His enemy. Here it is a question of the practical state of our souls. And this is just as true in its place, and of the greatest possible moment for the saint. For you will find that the persons who merely dwell on such truth as is in the Epistle to the Hebrews, or rather on that part of it which discusses the effect of atonement (as the early part of Romans does our justification), and make this, momentous as it is, to be the sum and substance of Christianity, are apt to be indeed a cold set of people, in danger of becoming formal and dry doctrinally, as well as deficient in sensitiveness of heart and conscience for the glory of God.

The work of Christ is not all. When we rest on it, the priesthood of the Lord Jesus applies to our need day by day. If I am brought into holy nearness with God, Christ's ministration of grace does not fail to act, so as to conciliate my practical condition with my standing by grace in Christ before God, to maintain me here according to such a title of holy access to Him there. But may I not sink to, or even allow, what is positively evil—be betrayed into bad feelings, bad thoughts, bad words, bad ways? It is too true. And what then? Am I to despair because I have sinned after baptism, as a child and saint of God delivered from the guilt and power of sin? Am I to quiet my conscience with the plea that I must sin, as being still in the body and the world? Neither the one nor the other would be according to God.

This let me add, dear brethren: knowledge in itself does not preserve, but rather when alone, it endangers; and the Christian who is most liable yea sure to slip, is he who knows most, but least seeks to walk in dependence on God. No position is more critical. Indeed we may say he who ceases to walk dependently is morally ruined already. What worse therefore than when a vast deal of truth is taken in without the continued exercise of conscience before God? We need that self-judgment continually go on, and this too in the sense of weakness and waiting on God. For as the essence of sin is the desire to be independent, so also that on which godliness turns, and of which it practically consists, is the spirit of constant reference and subjection to God in things small or great. Without waiting on Him, acceptable obedience cannot be; and when that is found, obedience surely follows; and obedience is of the very essence of the walk to which we are called and sanctified. So the apostle Peter says, “Elect, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” That is, we are the chosen of the Father as well as sanctified by the Spirit for the purpose of obeying as Christ obeyed. We have all the comfort of His blood-sprinkling and washing us clean from every spot; and we are sanctified to obey, not slaves like Israel under law, but sons under grace as He obeyed.

( To be continued, D. V.)

Letter of Pope Leo XIII on the Unity of the Church: 4. Faith

4—The Faith

THE flock and its unity we affirm. Human cooperation in all that is a duty on our part by God's will, none but a fanatic can dispute. That the church was originally visible is as certain as that it always ought to have been so; but it is not since early days, being broken up into parties ancient and modern. Self-will has made Christ's body the church invisible. This the faithful are bound to feel and confess as sin, while repudiating all corporate existence or action save on the principle of its divine unity. From its nature and character no section has departed so flagrantly as Romanism, none in such deliberate and active resistance against its Head as the Popes.

Let us now briefly test this self-vaunting system by “the faith.” If we cleave to the teaching of the apostles, Popery is a manifest revolt from it. If it allows that the passages cited for unity from the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Corinthians, as well as the Gospel of John, “need no interpreter,” is it conceivable that what is more vital still, what concerns the basis of man's individual salvation or his perdition, does not “speak clearly?”

First, does Romanism proclaim, as the apostle Peter did, the remission of sins through Christ's name to every one that believes in Him (Acts 10:43)? Does the Pope, or any of his venerable brethren, make known, as the great apostle of the Gentiles did, that through Christ is preached forgiveness of sins—that by Him all that believe are justified from all things (Acts 13:38, 39)? To the cry “What must I do to be saved?” do they answer with Paul and Silas, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (Acts 16:30, 31)? The Council of Trent (Sess. vi. cap. 9) nullifies this, the simple and certain word of truth, the gospel of our salvation; and in Can. ix. it anathematizes any one who says that the ungodly man is justified by faith alone. They are, therefore, false witnesses and adversaries of the faith. They confound justification with practical sanctification, which destroys it. “Non est cola peccatorum remissio sed et sanctificatio” are their words (cap. 7), which betray ignorance of the first message in God's gospel.

Secondly, they have invented an unscriptural, fabulous, purgatory, owing to the same blindness to the efficacy of Christ's sacrifice. For though they allow that His blood meritoriously avails for the justification of the faithful, they hold, save for exceptional men like martyrs, that all others must go into that future prison till they have paid the last farthing. Not only is this flat contradiction of God's testimony to the Savior's work declared not only to sanctify the believer (Heb. 10:14), but to have perfected him in perpetuity (de TO Stnvock); it is distressing defamation of our God and Father, both in character and in conduct toward us. For He is said, even now, to have qualified the faithful for the participation of the inheritance of the saints in light (Col. 1:12); and therefore are they called not only to pray but to give Him thanks. For His love is shed abroad in their hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us; and perfect love casts out fear. This the Tridentine fathers blacken as the vain confidence of heretics, being themselves as far from crying Abba, Father, as they are from enjoying redemption.

Thirdly, even at the start, their doctrine is (Sess. xiv. c. 2) that by baptism putting on Christ we are made wholly a new creature in Him, obtaining full and entire remission of all sins. Now this is to confound baptism with water and baptism with the Spirit. It is no wonder that, when they had lost the truth of the gospel, they exaggerated an institution like baptism. Even so it is evident that they have no confidence in anything really secured and abiding by Christ and His work. Of standing in grace they are in blank ignorance.

Hence, fourthly, they resort to a sacrament of penance to meet sins after baptism, and they urge “contrition” as its condition, that is, not only hatred of the sins but desire to make reparation or atonement for them, proportionate to the crimes it effaces. Now as few could hope to attain such an end, they pretend that God eases the difficulty by giving the keys of the kingdom to the church, and thus opening the gate of heaven to those who, not truly contrite, have only reached “attrition.” Penance, therefore, is a deliberate device of Romanism to give absolution where there is confession without due repentance or contrition. Nor was auricular confession established till the fourth Lateran Council (1215), when Innocent III. had it imposed as an article of faith. For previously, though confession of sins was held to be a duty, it was left open to do so to God alone or to a priest also. The new development was by the usual fiction declared to be the church's faith from the beginning. So they say of all their peculiar dogmas, no matter how recent they be as articles of faith, nor how loudly their highest authorities are known to have once rejected them. More barefaced deceit than in Romanism it were hard to imagine.

Fifthly, may be noticed the strange doctrine of Rome as to the extreme unction. The Greeks are depraved and superstitious enough; but t heir practice approaches far nearer to that of early days among Jewish believers. For if they anoint the sick with oil, it is that the prayer of faith may heal him and the Lord may raise him up. Not so the unhallowed Romish system. In open departure from James 5 the aim is some faint hope of solace for the dying. Remission of sins in baptism suffices not; and no wonder, whatever the strong language employed. Penance again with its satisfaction and absolution has failed, no matter how often repeated. Of another resource we may speak presently, still more their boast during life; but now that death approaches, it too has proved a broken reed. Then the priest is anew called in to administer the viaticum and extreme unction. The Council of Trent (Sess. xiv. c. 2) perverts the scriptural text, though not without prevarication, to the saving of the soul as the Jesuit commentator, Cornelius van der Steen, boldly. Delicta, si que sint adhuc expianda, ac peccati reliquias abstergit. Yet after all this round of appliances, however diligently used throughout life and in the hour of death, the soul at last goes to purgatory and must endure exquisite torments from God. What a contrast with the saving grace of God revealed in His word! How deplorable the ignorance, among Westerns or Orientals, of the unction from the Holy One, whereby even the babes of God's family know and enjoy the grace wherein they stand! For want of it in vain do they wrest the scriptures to inaugurate means of quieting consciences, which need to be and can only be purged by the blood of Christ.

This, sixthly, leads us to another of these unavailing expedients, which is, if possible, even more characteristic of incredulity—masses for the dead as well as the living. Here too is the same fatality of powerlessness to keep from the generally inevitable horrors of purgatory. But the serious feature common to them all is that these lying vanities undermine God's word and supplant the one sacrifice for sins, the offering of Christ's body once for all; which was God's will, that we might be not only sanctified but perfected uninterruptedly. Now no article of Popery is more sacred than that which is professed in the Creed of Pope Pius IV. that in the mass is offered to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead. Necessarily then the simple and complete efficacy of Christ's sacrifice is disbelieved. For if His blood really cleanses from all sin, it is dishonored and in effect denied by supplementary sacrifices. Like the Jews of old, the Romanist now trusts in the repetition of sacrifices; but in this the latter is immeasurably more guilty. For the New Testament is explicit that sacrifice was repeated because of inefficacy, and that Christ's is but one because it makes the conscience perfect. The doctrine and the practice of Rome are in this not erroneous only but infidel and apostate.

There is further evidence of the same fundamental antagonism against the revealed truth. For God's word declares that since Christ's death there is no more offering for sin; whereas the Council of Trent curses all who deny its constant repetition in the Mass. There not only is Christ's one oblation on the cross brought at naught, but a rival is set up pretending to be its continuation. The excuse is made that the Mass is a pure unbloody offering. But this only renders the case worse and more glaring. For if Christ be offered often, the Holy Spirit has ruled that He must suffer often, which is impossible and false; and again, that an unbloody sacrifice cannot avail for remission of sins, because scripture decides that without shedding of blood there is no remission, Heb. 9, 10.

But the fact is, seventhly, that the Romish creed consecrates natural feeling without the least warrant and in the grossest way, against the faith of God's elect in the mediation of the Virgin, of angels, and of saints. Scripture is not plainer in the Ο.Τ. for the unity of God than in the N. T. for “one mediator between God and man” —Christ Jesus, not only man but Son of the Father, Who is God over all blessed forever.

The Epistle to the Hebrews elaborately draws out His perfection, both in sacrificial work and in priestly office, from the glory of His person as Son of God, and Son of man, exalted above all men and angels, and seated on the right hand of the Majesty on high. Highly favored as Mary was in that the Son deigned to be born of her, so that all generations call her blessed, it is merely natural religion, as it is the deepest offense against Him and the word and the glory of God, to claim for her more accessible grace, or a more compassionate heart. He only is the merciful and faithful High Priest. What would it have been to have sought Miriam to interpose with weak and failing Aaron? How much more intolerable to have recourse to Mary with Him that has passed through the heavens, the Son of God! Herein we have known and do know love, because He laid down His life for us—for us, when we were enemies and ungodly. This, neither Mary, nor any saint, ever did for us; nor if they had, would it have availed in the least for us or even for themselves. His death alone was or could be efficacious for our sins. His love is the same now that He is risen, and appears in heaven, interceding for us, before the God of all grace, Whose love to us is as perfect as His own. The Romanist dream does not openly oppose this, which is the certain truth of God, but saps it all effectually. So that Mariolatry and guardian angels and patron saints effectually displace the worship of the Father and the Son to the infinite grief of the Holy Spirit.

But lastly, their hostility to scripture, in order to claim authority for the church both to authenticate and to interpret it, is the plainest defection from the faith. For the church is in no way the truth, but responsible to be its pillar and base. If the Queen sent a letter by the post, just think of the empty conceit of the postmaster or the postman pretending to accredit what solely depends on her majesty's sign-manual, or her command through this or that minister! How incomparably worse for the church, or its rulers, to arrogate the title to pronounce on God's word Every scripture has in itself divine authority, because it is inspired of God; and the church, like every member of it, is bound to receive and obey it accordingly. To set up the church's title to accredit it is blasphemous pride, which is none the better because they profess themselves to believe. Satan deceives them to make that presumptuous claim, in order to exalt the church and enhance its authority over all mankind, alas! to their own sin and ruin, to God's unfailing and predicted vengeance.

By W. KELLY.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:18-20

THE notices of the Canaanite families are more minute, as God considered His people whose duty it was to execute judgment and dispossess them of the promised land. However they might be “spread abroad” or dispersed, and seen to flourish for a while, the curse was on them, from the first on moral grounds, aggravated at last by enormities against God and man which to His eyes called for extermination.

It may be remarked that we do not hear of Perizzites in this genealogical account, though the name occurs in Gen. 13:7; 15:20; 34:30; Ex. 3:8, 17; 23:23; 33:2; 34:11; Deut. 7:1; 20:17; Josh. 3:10; 9:1; 11:3; 12:8; 17:15; 24:11; Judg. 1:4, 5; 3:5; 1 Kings 9:20; Ezra 9:1 Chron. 8:7; and Neh. 9:8. This appears to imply that they were not a distinct race, but rather such as separated from the town-life, to which the Canaanites generally were addicted, and remained villagers; as in the later history of Israel those who were religious separatists were called Pharisees.

“And afterward the families of the Canaanites spread themselves abroad. And the border of the Canaanites was from Zidon, as thou goest toward Gerar, unto Gazah; as thou goest toward Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboiim, unto Lasha. These [are] sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, in their nations” (vers. 18-20).

The border is thus traced from Zidon on the N.W. of Gerar and Gazah on the S.W., and from the four doomed cities of the plain in the S.E. to Lasha (probably Laish or Leshem in the N.E.), though Jerome identifies it with Callirrhoe on the east of the Dead Sea, and Bochart with a city called by the Arabs Lusa in the south of Judah. Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim are specified on which fell fire from heaven in early patriarchal days, as recorded in this book, to their utter destruction: a dealing of Jehovah in His wrath, which was recalled to the warning of Israel from Moses (Deut. 29:23) to Hosea (11:8) and Jeremiah (20:16).

In reviewing the posterity of Ham, this we cannot but see, that none sprang so early into prominence of earthly power and dominion, that none carried forward civilization so rapidly and extensively in primeval times, that no other peoples were so distinguished at first with material grandeur, both in the plain of Shinar and in that remarkable country which lies along the Nile, that is, in both Asia and Africa; and that they were long the sole pioneers of commerce in west and east, north and south. But the true God was absent from their souls; nor this only: they out-ran all other races in their vain thoughts, ungratefully abandoning Him when they knew Him, and their foolish heart was soonest darkened. Professing to be wise they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and quadrupeds and reptiles. Wherefore God gave them up to the lowest defilement and vile affections contrary to nature, and worse than brutish, reprobate. Their very mind had pleasure in evil. Such man became without God, none so audaciously and shamefully as the Canaanites, whose judgment therefore was most righteous save to such as are more or less reprobate.

What an illustration is their history of the words of the apostle on the first man as contrasted with the last Adam! “That was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual.” The book of nature man never did read aright, though he ought; and conscience, the monitor of fallen man, shows him his sins, but of itself never leads to repentance: only God's goodness does, above all revealed in Christ. But the Hamite races were the leaders of the departure from God, and none so flagitiously as the Canaanite.

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 12

Chapter 10

THE book terminates with a beautiful view of the great king whose authority extended over the land and the isles of the sea. In man's hand this is inseparable from a tribute laid on all his subjects, who must of necessity give to him, rather than he to them. Never will, never can, the just balance be reached to God's glory, till He fills the place of the giver manifestly and indisputably, as He assuredly purposes to do and will in Christ the Lord; Who has already proved it for life and redemption eternal, as He will come to display in the kingdom shortly. For the despised Messiah must return as the glorious Son of man in order to make good all promises and fulfill all prophecies.

Here is the foreshadowing when Israel broke down and were dispersed among the Gentiles; as Joseph exalted in Egypt furnished another prefiguration before they went down into that which was to be a land of bondage and oppression. It was not only that Mordecai was advanced to greatness: he was “next to the king and great among the Jews.” How incomparably more will this be verified in Him Whom they once rejected to the uttermost!

“And the king Ahasuerus laid a tribute upon the land and the isles of the sea. And all the acts of his power and of his might, and the full account of the greatness of Mordecai, whereunto the king advanced him, [are] they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia? For Mordecai the Jew [was] next to the king Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews, and accepted of the multitude of his brethren; seeking the good of his people, and speaking peace to all his seed” (vers. 1-3).

It is a beautiful picture of a king great in his power and his might, morally greater in the faithful administration of the premier, who never forgot that he was “Mordecai the Jew,” and, if second to the king, sought neither favorite nor party, but yet “was great among the Jews and accepted by the multitude of his brethren.” It was faith in the Unseen that sustained and guided him. Hence he sought not personal aggrandizement but the good of his people, and spoke peace to all his seed. The day hastens when the Son of man will do for the universe far more and better to the glory of God the Father.

The Scripture of Truth: 2

MANY were bad enough, violent or corrupt. Sons did not mind marrying their sisters or other nearest relations. Some led deplorably abominable lives, and were a curse to their subjects and neighbors, even more than to their enemies. God had said that Egypt was to be a base kingdom, and no ruler of their race was to reign any longer. No wonder that those kings of the south failed; for instead of raising up Egypt to their own fancied superiority as foreigners, they sunk it to the uttermost, naturally turning to most unnatural evils. Such was the race of Ptolemy.

The worst of the Seleucidæ was Antiochus Epiphanes, called by others Epimanes or the madman. This man went far in his endeavors to stamp out not only the Jews but also the Jewish religion. He placed a statue of Zeus Olympius in the most holy place, and did what none but the most profane men would have thought of—put swine's flesh and blood in the sanctuary of God. The consequence is that his history is dwelt on with greater minuteness than anyone's. But the resistance to his aim at the close of his history led to a famous revival amongst the Jews. The Maccabees, as the Jewish heroes were called, resisted his generals, which is what is meant by “arms shall stand on his part” —a sufficiently definite way of describing a general acting for him against the Maccabees. Their history is given among the uninspired books that compose the Apocrypha. These Maccabees were no models of piety or long-suffering; but, as Daniel says, they were strong and “did [exploits].” No phrase could more accurately characterize them (verse 32). “The people that do know their God shall be strong and act.” They were far from possessing the martyr spirit in their ways, such as will be found in the godly remnant by-and-by at the end of the age. Then indeed none but those willing to lose their lives for the truth's sake will be owned by the God of Israel. Their strength will be in their weakness, they themselves ready to suffer—yea, even unto death for Him Who died and, little known by them, is now in glory. It is needless to say that such suffering is a far harder thing, and entails more blessing from God than anything of power displayed in the theater of the world.

Here then we have those that were persecuted by their enemy—Antiochus Epiphanes. “And they that understood (or, are wise) among the people shall instruct many” (ver. 33). The phrase means “the” many. It is to be regretted that the article is not conveyed in English where it stands in the Hebrew. For there are the two varieties: the word “many” sometimes with, and sometimes without, the article. The Revisers have taken no notice of the difference, any more than the A. V. “And they shall fall by the sword, and by the flame, by captivity, and by spoil, [many] days. Now when they shall fall, they shall be holpen with a little help; but many shall cleave to them with flatteries” (vers. 33, 34). So it came to pass that Antipater, the Edomite father of Herod, got in. For the family had not a shadow of right to reign over the Jews. Only he stood with the last unworthy scion of the Maccabees, and through Roman help also slipped into power. But such retributions were allowed in God's providence, in order to the humiliation of His guilty people.

“And [some] of them of understanding shall fall, to try them and to purge, and to make [them] white, [even] to the time of the end; because [it is] yet for the time appointed” (ver. 35). Just here it is where the text itself shows an interruption of the history till we come to “the time appointed” “the time of the end.” Throughout the prophecy will be found a similar break. Even this remarkably successional chapter discloses such an interruption both at the beginning and at the end. The first undeniably occurs at the end of verse 2, after the defeat of Xerxes, and before Alexander the Great. What left room for it is Xerxes stirring up all against the realm of Greece. After a century and a half this entailed the return blow by Alexander. All the intervening history was passed over.

In the same way the Spirit of God has brought us down to the time that follows Antiochus Epiphanes. No notice is here taken of the successive kings that reigned in the north and south; for the next we shall see to be king in the land between the two countries, a king who had not yet come to the throne. After Antiochus Epiphanss we do hear of certain Jews making a bold stand to maintain their law against the apostates, and with trials of all kinds till “the time of the end.” That time is still future; but it shall assuredly come, the great crisis for the Jew, which the wise and prudent ignore, and therefore count all the rest of the chapter “too fabulous for a contemporary historian.” The truth is that it is all future, but will surely be fulfilled in its season. There is a perfect answer in the past history to all we have seen up to ver. 35, but to nothing more.

Yet it is not to be allowed that the words from ver. 36 are indeterminate in the least degree. The only appearance of it (and this is intentional vagueness, if such a phrase be permitted here) is in the words, “until the time of the end.” It already covers an intervening space of something like 2000 years. The blank at any rate occurs there.

(To be continued D.V.).

The Talents

Matt. 25:14-30

THIS is the third of the parables in our Lord's great prophecy, which are distinctively Christian, as compared with the Jewish section (chap. 24:3-44) and the Gentile that concludes all (chap. 25:31-46). All three contemplate an absent Lord, Who is to return, and Whom His own are to expect. The first embodies the professor in one bondman set over the household, either wise or evil. The second is a likeness of the kingdom of the heavens in virgins, five foolish and five wise, who went forth to meet the Bridegroom. All slumbered, but were awakened at mid night. But they only who had the oil in their vessels, the indwelling Spirit, were there to meet Him, and go in with Him to the marriage-feast, This applies not to the future remnant, who are not anointed till Christ appears, but to Christians wholly who are now before them. The third is not such a likeness, being in no way the general state, but refers nevertheless only to Christians, as is certain from applying to the entrusted servants while the Lord went abroad (that is, to heaven), Who meanwhile delivered to His own His goods.

“For [it is] as a man, going abroad, called his bondmen and delivered to them his goods (or, substance). And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability, and went abroad immediately. And he that received the five talents went and traded with them, and made other five talents. Likewise he also that [received] the two gained other two. But he that received the one went away and dug in the earth and hid the money of his lord. Now after a long while the lord of those bondmen cometh and reckoneth with them. And he that received the five talents came up and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst me five talents: see, I gained other five talents (besides them). His lord said to him, Well done, good and faithful bondman; thou wast faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things: enter into the joy of thy lord. And he also that [received] the two talents came up and said, Lord, thou deliveredst me two talents: see, I gained other two talents. His lord said to him, Well done, good and faithful bondman, thou wast faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. And he also that had received the one talent came up and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou didst not sow, and gathering from where thou didst not scatter; and being afraid I went away and hid thy talent in the earth: see, thou hast thine own. And his lord in answer said to him, Wicked and slothful bondman, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather from where I scattered not; thou oughtest then to have put my money to the bankers, and I on coming should have received mine own with interest. Take then from him the talent and give [it] to him that hath the ten talents. For to everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall abound; but from him that hath not, even what he hath shall be taken. And cast out the useless bondman into the outer darkness: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth” (vers. 14-30).

It is plain that the substance which the Lord submitted to His servants for work in His absence means gifts of a spiritual kind. For He delivered to each according to his respective ability. They are distinguished from the ability of each, which was natural, and are suited to it. They are not merely sanctified capacity,” or “theological learning,” but a gift from the Lord adapted to the ability of each as the vessel. With His goods they were to trade, “each ministering it one to another, as good stewards of God's manifold grace; if one speaketh, as oracles of God; if one ministereth, as of strength which God supplieth, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom is the glory and the might unto the ages of the ages. Amen” (1 Peter 4:10, 11). The reception of a gift was the ground of exercising it in dependence on the Giver, and for His glory.

Accordingly, where this loyalty ruled, one made five talents, another two: such is the figure in the parable. Without faith it is impossible to please God; and this is no less true of service, than of walk, as it is of salvation too. But God sets Christ before us everywhere: no creature's authority can become the object in any of them, save to His dishonor and our own sin and hurt. Confidence in the Master's grace was the animating spring of the true laborers. They bowed to His sovereignty Who entrusted as He saw fit; and they will in result enter into His joy. The kindred parable of the Pounds in Luke 19 shows individual responsibility, all starting with the like sum, and each rewarded according to the issues of labor. Both are true and important; but each is distinct.

In either case the third servant wronged the Lord. He regarded Him according to his own hard and wicked heart. He did not believe in His grace, and so sought not His pleasure or glory. Such selfish fear as his excludes love. There was no answer to the Master's trust. On his own showing he was inexcusable in hiding the talent in the earth. “Wicked and slothful bondman,.... thou oughtest to have put my money to the bankers, and I on coming should have received mine own with interest.” To yield to fear was to distrust his Lord; and this is fatal. It is unbelief in His goodness. This servant had no sense of grace. A bad unpurged conscience led him to impute to the Lord what wholly denies and misrepresents Him, Who is full of grace and truth. And his end was according to his heart and his works. The evil he falsely attributed to the Master, which was really his own, finds its place in the outer darkness. It rendered him useless for God. He must be cast where the weeping and the gnashing of teeth shall be. His Master's joy was nothing to him.

How is it with you, my reader? Have you bowed to God's word which declares you to be sinful, ungodly, and without strength? If so, you must need a mighty and a gracious Savior. And God Who pities you has sent in His love His beloved Son—sent Him to die for you, yea, for your sins. Do not presume to think of serving Him till you are brought to God without a spot or stain. Nothing but the blood of Jesus His Son can thus cleanse you: His blood cleanses from all sin. So His word attests, that you may by faith know yourself made whiter than snow. To doubt this is to dishonor both the Father and the Son; as it is to set yourself against the Holy Spirit Who is here to glorify the Savior. Those who would bid you distrust God in such mercy are His enemies. Those who curse the proclamation of this truth pronounce a curse which will fall upon themselves when the Lord judges them.

The Fullness of Christ: Part 2

HE that is the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world, the same is He who baptizes with the Holy Ghost; and it is of importance to see it all. He has gone up to heaven, but His interest in His people is none the less; if possible, He is in a better position to show it. All power, all authority, has been given to Him in heaven and on earth. And what is He doing now? Many things, of which one is here singled out by inspiration, His baptizing with the Holy Spirit.

What is this? Baptism regularly means closing one condition in which you have been, and introducing you into an entirely different one. Such is the meaning of baptism in every case. It represents a closing of the past, and the introduction into a new position. It may only be a given place, and so only an external one. A man might be baptized, and none the better for it as far as regards his soul. This has been the case with thousands—nay, millions. But when a man is baptized even with water only, a solemn responsibility is placed upon him. A baptized person stands in a new and grave position. He is no longer a mere heathen. He is no longer simply a Jew. He confesses the name of the Lord Jesus. For we are supposing that the man adopts it—that he stands to it—that he does not apostatize openly: I am not at all raising any of the controversial questions of the time. I am only speaking of the thing itself, baptism; and I assert that it is not so small a matter as some people imagine, any more than the regular and indispensable means of life, as so many others dream. Christ gives life, not baptism: so to say is false and superstitious. But it does at any rate change one's status; and the baptized person, by the very fact of being baptized as much as says, I own Him Who died and rose again; I own Him Who is the only Savior of sinners; I own Him Who has already accomplished redemption.

Now the baptism of the Holy Ghost is the power that brings us into heavenly privilege, and still goes on in its effect. It is not a question of outward profession, of which baptism with water is the sign. The baptism of the Holy Ghost is a new and divine work. But what does it bring to us? Not merely the remission of sins, which baptism with water represents. The baptism of the Holy Spirit associates livingly with Christ at the right hand of God. For this reason the Spirit comes from heaven. Our Lord, even after He rose from the dead, baptized not then with the Holy Ghost. He said before He went up to heaven— “Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” To whom did He say this? To the disciples. They were not unbelievers: there were only believers then present. But they needed to have wrought another work in them that had not been wrought in one however favored in the whole world. Never since the world began had there been baptism with the Holy Ghost. It is a work that followed Christ's ascension to heaven, uniting us with Himself and one with another.

I call your attention to this, because all great vital truths are founded on facts. They are not ideas only. They are not mere reasonings hammered out of the intellect of man. They are the drawing out of the person of Christ the grand truths that follow from all the great facts about the Lord Jesus. Thus, as you have the work of atonement depending upon His death, and the liberty and brightness of the Christian's life upon His resurrection, so His ascension has to usher in a fresh blessing. I do not say it is the only blessing, but a very great one—that now the Lord Jesus from the right hand of God sends down the Holy Ghost to associate livingly with Himself every soul that believes the gospel. The Son of Man indeed was sealed in His own moral perfectness (John 6:27), as was meet; we, only in virtue of His redemption, Who is gone on high and has sent down the Holy Spirit to seal us.

And what is the result of that? A heavenly character is impressed upon every Christian. “As is the Heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.” We are not earthly men. We were, and indeed worse than that—we were lost men. A Jew at the very best is only an earthly man as such; but a Christian is characteristically not so. He has to learn what is spiritually discerned. He rests upon a Person. Grace to him flows down from that one Man, the head of the new family—the Man Who is in heaven, and Whom all heaven worships; for all the angels of God worship Him. And further, wondrous to say, Christians are not merely born anew and forgiven, not merely justified and children of God, but they are associated with Christ. They are united to Him at the right hand of God.

Suppose the greatest lord in this land were to select some person in this room to be his wife. What would be the result of that relationship? If a young girl became the object of his affections and were married to him, what would be the consequence of that union? Why, for her at once a total change. She enters into all his dignity, and receives a new name from him. There is a new relationship; and if he has possessions without bound, he shares them, as we know, with her. All that is exactly what is true of the Christian. The union of the Christian with Christ is founded on the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus: he is by the power of the Spirit even now united to Christ at the right hand of God.

And so it is that we find the apostle opening out the consequence in chapter 15 of First Corinthians— “As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the Heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the Heavenly” (48, 49). Is it not very striking that the apostle wrote thus to the disorderly Corinthians? Every tyro has a slap at the Corinthians. They were indeed very faulty; but there are few saints now who are not really far below the Corinthians. Yet these were the persons to whom the Holy Ghost addressed these words. Had they been predicated of the choicest saints on earth, one might have said “Oh, yes, these are heavenly men.” It does not, however, rest on personal merit. It is not a question of superior intelligence or of higher endowments spiritually. Of course, there ought to be intelligence, and there ought to be practical spirituality; but we must never forget that the maiden's exaltation to be a duchess, or a princess if you will, does not at all depend upon her deserving it, nor because she had a sweeter character or a prettier face than other people. Perhaps it was not so at all. A far more important thing decides: it depends on the Duke, or Prince; and he was pleased to choose her.

This, I affirm, is what is pre-eminently true of our blessed Savior. We know that all is accomplished according to the sovereign grace of God, and that He looks watchfully that they who are called by His grace should comport themselves suitably to it. It is a question of conforming them according to Christ; and if they do not carry themselves according to the Lord Jesus, you know the Lord has His way of dealing with them. Why did some of the Corinthians die? Why were many of them troubled? Why were many sick? They had walked as men, as Greeks. But were they then heavenly? To be sure they were; and this is the very thing that made their conduct so bad. The more we see of the grace of the Lord, the greater ground for self-condemnation, if we behave ourselves unworthily of the Lord Jesus.

But the first thing is, let us leave room for the grace of Christ. Let us without hesitation rest upon the word of God—the word of His grace, inviting us, encouraging us, removing obstacles out of the way, bringing the full tide of blessing into our souls. Then when we have got the blessing, let us sit in judgment upon our souls, the Holy Ghost being in us a spirit of power, of love, and of sobriety, and bringing us into a new association with Christ at the right hand of God, which stamps us as heavenly. As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall bear the image of the Heavenly. How perfect the description! All see that we do not yet bear the image of the Heavenly. We bear the image of Adam still. Who, then, are heavenly? The title is conferred upon us, although we have got very little to show for it in present appearance. But still there it is: Christ has made us heavenly. He has brought us into that relationship of glory, and will ultimately conform us to the image of Himself, when we shall shine in all the beauty and glory of Christ. As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the Heavenly. So declares God's word.

This, then, is the double work of our Lord Jesus—the mighty work He wrought on the cross, and the mighty work He inaugurated from the right hand of God. Indeed His glory is set forth in other ways, though we are unworthy of all. He is in heaven, but we are on earth, and consequently here exposed to difficulties, dangers, and snares. We require, therefore, a friend on high, and the light of the grace of Christ for all the difficulties. God may employ others; but the true test of any ministry is the bringing of souls to know Christ in a way He was never learned before. If I get fresh glimpses of Christ with renewed confidence in His love; if I have the truth and the grace of the Lord brought before my soul in a manner which I had not previously realized, my soul receives a strength it never yet possessed.

Now, in this way it is that the Spirit of God shows us the immensity of Christ, and that the whole practical power of Christianity lies in His person and work. Every one admits that the great subject in the scripture is Christ, and that the object of faith is Christ; but it is not so generally seen that “Christ is all.” I have endeavored to illustrate that in deed and truth Christ is all. When we are delivered from the burden of our sins; when we are brought into association with Christ by the power of the Holy Ghost, we want a center for our hearts. Man cannot be without a center. Only God is self-sufficient; we are not except in sin; and even where we pretend to be self-sufficient, we always sink low down. Now, man was made to look up, not to look down. A brute looks down, but man does not. Often, however, he only looks up as far as the stars and the sun, and worships them. You must look above them all up to God—not to the sun or to any other objects man has always been ready to deify.

(To be continued D.V.)

Reflections on Galatians 2:11-21

PAUL closes the series of personal incidents in connection with the twelve, by relating Peter's sorrowful declension at Antioch. Instead of being resisted by Peter because of teaching a defective gospel (as some adversaries might have expected), Paul had to withstand him for compromising the truth of the gospel. “But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision” (vers. 11, 12). What a poor thing is man apart from sustaining grace! When Hezekiah was left to himself for a moment, he betrayed his trust, man of faith though he was ordinarily (2 Chr. 32:31). We only see perfection in One: He only has trodden the path unfalteringly and without defect. Where would the church have been if really built on Peter, as many say? At Antioch he completely broke down when the fundamental truth of the gospel was involved. During the early part of his stay there, he enjoyed the fellowship of Gentile brethren, and felt perfectly free to go in and out of their houses, and eat with them. He enjoyed the liberty of grace, and regarded no man as common or unclean. But the fear of man bringeth a snare; and we soon behold the humbling spectacle of the very chiefest of the twelve turning completely aside because of the coming of certain Jewish brethren from Jerusalem. He forgot for the moment the lesson taught him on the housetop at Joppa, and his own statements concerning the Gentiles in the council at Jerusalem (Acts 10; 15); and by withdrawing himself from his brethren of the uncircumcision, he built again the things he had destroyed, making differences where God makes none.

The infection spread. “And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him: insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation” (ver. 13). That the other Jews had eaten and drunk all things in liberty; why, should follow their leader may not be a matter of because some from James had come upon the surprise; but what can we say when we see even scene, should he make a difference, and impose Paul's own fellow-laborer led astray He who had labored with Paul in the gospel, who had joined with him in planting Gentile assemblies in all quarters, and who had labored with such acceptance and blessing in this very assembly—he of all persons should have been proof against such a thing as this. The Spirit describes him elsewhere as “a good man, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith” (Acts 11:24). Paul found much comfort in his fellowship, and they were doubtless divinely mated. But “the son of consolation” was apt to be weak at a crisis, as we see in the matter of John Mark (Acts 15:37). It is a great test for the saints when such men go astray. Satan knows how to beguile the lovely characters, that he may the better accomplish his unworthy ends. The personal qualities of such, their past faithful services, and the place they have won in consequence in the hearts of the saints, all combine to put the unwary off their guard, and thus to ensnare their souls. It is not safe to follow even “a good man,” as many in our own days can sorrowfully testify. In such crises, the eye must be off men, and fixed upon the Lord, in order to arrive at a sound judgment.

But, thanks be to God, there was at least one faithful man at Antioch at that time. Painful as it doubtless was to the apostle, he promptly rebuked Peter publicly. The wounds of a friend are kind. “But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (vers. 14-16). In so simple a matter as refusing to eat at table with brethren of the uncircumcision, Paul saw the truth of the gospel at stake. A straw is sufficient to show the course of a stream, and so the apostle judged. Peter had been living after the manner of the Gentiles, and bondage upon the Gentiles? Paul reminded his Jewish brother of the ground on which they all stood before God. Had they ever found justification by law? Had the law ever done aught for them but condemn them? Had not both Peter and himself believed in Jesus Christ that they might be justified by faith? Had they not both learned that by works of law no flesh shall be justified? Then why deny all this, and put a yoke upon the necks of the disciples that none had yet been able to bear? The apostle then reasons with the Galatians. If they really were under law, they were sinners; for law convicts of sin all who are under it; and in linking together Christ and law, they virtually made Him responsible for such a condition. “But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid” (ver. 17). Probably they had not thought of this. Satan in leading souls astray generally means more than they mean. To get under his power in any way is to have one's susceptibilities blunted, and the vision dimmed.

Moreover to turn back to law, after having left it, is to constitute oneself a transgressor. “For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor” (ver. 18). Nothing can be plainer than this; and the principle is worthy of the deepest consideration in this day. If God brings souls out from under law, it is transgression to return to it in any form; while, on the other hand, if God does not thus deliver, it is transgression to leave it. Let the Galatians solve the question before God. Was He leading them there, or the enemy?

True deliverance from law is by death, as the apostle shows. “For I through the law died to the law that I might live unto God” (ver. 19). Law is a killing power, a ministration of death, and but for divine intervention in grace, it would have been the eternal ruin of all who were under it. But Christ has come, death has come in—His death is ours. The sentence has taken full effect in Him for us—we have died, and that through law. But having thus died through the law, we are necessarily dead to it—it has no further claim, as Rom. 7 fully establishes. The law has nothing to do with dead men. We live unto God, and bring forth fruit, in complete contrast to the former condition, when the motions of sins which were by the law wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. We were then in the flesh; we are now in the Spirit.

Therefore the apostle says, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live: yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (ver. 20). Here we get Christian life in a nutshell. Crucified with Christ, the old life closed with all its appurtenances; a new life possessed—Christ. The life is sustained by faith in its heavenly object, the Son of God. How blessed is this for the Christian! A positive new life implanted in the soul from God, indestructible, eternal, and divine; and its true object set before it. This is put too in the most touching possible way, for the apostle adds, “Who loved me, and gave himself for me.” This draws out the affections, and produces heavenly fruit for God. Who would not be forever adoringly occupied with such an One? What a contrast to mere cold legalism! Yet the heart is ever ready to return there, to its own loss and the Lord's dishonor.

To speak and act thus is not to frustrate divine grace. “I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ died in vain” (ver. 21). The soul must be brought to this. If flesh were at all competent to attain to righteousness by law-keeping, the death of Christ was needless; but if (as was indeed the case) we were altogether without strength, grace (and that alone) can avail before our God. The soul that has learned in any measure its ruin by nature is thankful and content to take its place as an object of abounding grace—grace founded upon the atoning death of the Lord Jesus.

James 1:27

THE verse before us concludes this part of the Epistle. As the preceding one denied the weight or value of practical outward service, where an unbridled tongue betrayed a heart outside God's presence, here we have a sample set forth positively. It is in danger of being overlooked; yet this cannot be because the sight is infrequent in this world of sin and sorrow, of want and bereavement, where gracious sympathy does much to bind up and together wounded hearts. “Who is my neighbor?” said a lawyer who had no care to see one.

“A religious service pure and undefiled before him that is God and Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, to keep himself unspotted from the world” (ver. 27).

Wiclif has it thus— “There is a clene religion and unwemmyd anentis God and the fadir, for to visite pupilles, that is fadirles or modirles, or bothe, and widewes in her tribulation., and for to kepe him silf undefoulid fro this world.” The Wiclifite gives, “A clene relegioun and an vnwemmed anentis god and the fadir, is this, to visite fadirles and modirles children, and widewis in her tribulacioun, and to kepe hym silf vndefoulid fro this world.” “Pure devotion and vndefiled (says Tyndale) before God the father, is this: to vysit the frendlesse and widdowes in their advei site, and to kepe him silfe vnspotted of the worlde.” Cranmer and the Genevese V. follow Tyndale save the latter in the word “religion” for “devotion.” That of Rheims has, “Religion cleane and vnspotted with God and the Father, is this, to visite pupilles and vvidovves in their tribulation; and to keepe him self vnspotted from this world.”

There is often an exaggeration lent to these wholesome words, as if such duties as are here enjoined, or even the first part without the second, constituted the substance of “religion.” The absence of the article here too is not without meaning, especially as it was prefixed to the same word only in the verse before. “The religion,” or the religious service, of the man there described is vain. Here its absence indicates that it is but a part of it, however weighty and becoming. For we have to do with God, not only as the patriarchs knew Him (an Almighty protector in their weakness), nor yet again as the Lord Jehovah of Israel (the moral governor of a people called to do His commandments), but as the Lord Jesus revealed Him, and as He alone perfectly enjoyed the relationship of Father. It is here that we find the richest display of love in the nearest way possible for the creature to know God. And this is quite in keeping with what the Epistle had already explained, the communication of a life to the believer capable of entering into His thoughts and affections, and of obeying His will as being begotten thereby.

It is a service then pure and undefiled before Him who is God. and Father, to look after the fatherless and widows. Compassionate love is thus drawn out. It is indeed in its measure the reflection of God's own character.

So the Lord called him, who would give a dinner or supper, to ask not relatives nor the rich but the poor and wretched, assured of blessing all the more because they could not recompense him; but this too will come in the resurrection of the righteous. Our Epistle pursues its given line of blessing now in the doing or practice.

But the latter clause benevolence cannot imitate; and one finds it generally dropt. Yet is it an exhortation eminently Christian, and essential to spiritual well-being, “to keep himself unspotted from the world.” Never do we hear any word quite as full in the O.T. though at all times God has in His own sought love, and piety, and holiness; and His children have walked in them all, because they walked in faith. It is the Lord Jesus Who has fully brought out what the world is. Its thankless departure from God, its ready forgetfulness of Him and His manifold and persevering goodness, its setting up of grand material objects, like the sun, moon, and stars, its adoption of departed heroes to adore, its degradation in worship by the invention of imaginary beings as bad as themselves, its bowing down to the most ordinary creatures of earth, air, or the waters, even to reptiles, did not constitute its worst guilt. Plato yearned after some superhuman being to come and enlighten and raise up the fallen race. But when the Father sent the Son, and (wondrous condescension!) in the reality of man while most truly God, hatred of good came out as it never did nor could before; and they rejected Him alike in His words and His works. It mattered not that these all were light and love, as He was. But they brought God in Christ's person, the Holy and the True; and man would have none of Him: neither religious man, nor philosophical, nor political; Jew, Greek, Roman, despised and abhorred Him. As it was written beforehand, they hated Him without a cause, even those that had His law; they hated both the Son and the Father.

This is the world; and the great standing-proof is the cross of Christ. Hence our Lord, looking on to it, declared His own not to be of the world, as He is not: not merely that they ought not to be, but that they are not. And the Epistles follow this up, when the Holy Spirit was given, with the utmost care for corresponding ways. Nor is there anything in which Christendom is more false and guilty than in seeking and courting it, and congratulating itself on possessing its countenance and its good things if it has them, or in coveting them when it has not. Popery is flagrant but not alone in this.

Yet there is the plain and holy call of God to every child of His, “to keep himself unspotted from the world.” This cuts very closely indeed; and we do well to suffer the word of exhortation if any can help us to steer clear; for its spirit may enter in subtle ways. But let us look to Him, Who loves us and discerns perfectly, to work in us by His all-searching word, that we may be strengthened to judge it unsparingly, and thus to keep ourselves unspotted from the world.

The Advocacy of Christ: 3

WHEN the soul enters into this, tenderness of conscience will be cherished, distrust of self and watchfulness before God, with a spirit of prayer, which is the simple expression of our dependence on God. But one may be easily unwatchful; then open sin ensues ere long. Therefore says John the apostle, “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not.” This is the word of God to the Christian practically. I speak of His word now, of course, as the ordinary rule of our daily ways. His servant writes, “that ye sin not.”

But then, if all are warned against sin, the Spirit of God fully provides for any one that may stray; not as if evil were coolly looked for, but with guarded terms and careful regard to holiness: “And if any man sin.” He does not say, “If we sin.” How could he say of the family, “If we sin”? Had it been said, “And if we sin,” it would be as good as allowing the thought that all must sin. Never does the Spirit of God say anything of the sort. And if any man—any one” sin,” it is a lamentable alternative to the Spirit of God; but still such a fact may be. It is, alas! in the believer's history what one has to face and feel and humble one's self before God for. “If any man sin, we have an advocate.” He does not merely say “he,” but “we.” How perfect is His word, even in that which to a Grecian would be sure to sound an irregular or peculiar phrase! Can one doubt that they of old criticized John's words, or Paul's, just as much as or more than anything that we poor creatures might write now? This clause would have sounded harsh enough to Attic ears. Yet the men who flatter themselves that they understand writing so well know but little about the divine accuracy of scripture. Let us delight in the perfection of that sentence, and maintain against all corners the perfect accuracy of what the Spirit of God has written there. Not all the world could improve on it; and the very singularity too, which embarrasses them—which they count so strange in the structure of it—seems to be one proof of its perfectness.

An ordinary man of letters, if writing the sentence, might have said, “If any man sin, he has an advocate with the Father;” or if he had intended “we have,” he would have changed it to “If we sin.” But no; the Spirit of God has exactly given the right thing; because by saying “If any one sin,” He makes it a sorrowful individual case. He keeps up the sense that it ought never to be. It is a contingency that may be, and it is always to be regarded as a most painful humiliation for our own souls, the sense of which we ought to maintain undimmed—in no way making light of sin, or treating it as if it were a common thing that we must all do sometimes. We may fall, doubtless; and we should never lose sight of the danger. On the other hand, we have an Advocate with the Father. There He is; and we have Him as Advocate: that is, Christ belongs thus to every Christian. He acts thus in the presence of God. It is the fullness of love which has given Him there to meet this great and distressing need of the soul. But still we have, not merely he has. If it had been said “he has,” this might have given the idea that it was his need that created the office, so to speak, or that it was this which set Christ to work as an advocate. No; He is always there, not simply as Priest with God, but as Advocate with the Father. “And if any man sin, we have an advocate.” He is the common portion of all in the blessed fullness of the grace that takes up the deepest want of any created by sin. And this is exactly what is expressed best by the language of the Holy Ghost in the sentence” If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father.”

Now observe how he goes back to the language of grace. He introduced the coming down of divine love in the person of the Lord Jesus, the Eternal Life which was with the Father before the world was, to spend Himself upon us, to give us what He alone possessed, what was peculiar to Him; for no man, nor angel, had it. Neither Adam, fresh created, nor the archangel, had that eternal life: only the Son of God. “In him was life,” and “he that hath the Son hath life.” Communion with the Father and with the Son was the consequence. “And these things write we unto you, that your joy might be full.” It is not merely a question of peace with God, nor anything which only tends to that end, as we have said, but the great and blessed truth of a communion which flows out of having Christ the Son of God, and eternal life in Him.

Thus, whatever in our conduct may be inconsistent with the action of divine life, Christ, as Advocate, takes up. Nor is the result uncertain. The effect is revealed to us. So absolute is the grace that the apostle says, “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father.” If any uninspired Christian had written such a sentence as this, can one hesitate to affirm, that men would have called it downright antinomianism? I am persuaded that the only thing which shields many a word of the apostles from such a calumny is because most are as yet unprepared openly to speak ill of the Bible. There are men that so much the more do so, and not a few, and they are growing; and in this country, as in others, they lose shame and become bolder. In some neighboring lands, Romanist and Protestant alike, they are practiced in modern forms of the skepticism once rampant here, but abashed till of late; alas! now it spreads, the reaction from ritualism—this the religious, that the profane, enemy of the gospel; and you must be prepared for it and far greater abominations than these.

Many godly people then, but, if godly, not established in grace, are just such as find most difficulty in the fullness of God's provision. Incredulous minds are not troubled in general by such things, being rather glad to fasten on any inspired words which might seem to give them a loophole and excuse for sin; for so it is that they wretchedly pervert the scriptures to their own destruction. I speak now of such as love the Lord, but have never been brought to naught in their own eyes, nor to rest only in the grace of God; and such are apt to be particularly tried by what exceeds their measure.

For instance, take such a word as this, “Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under law, but under grace.” What can they make of it? For their part they had been diligently trained to think, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, or any others, that, saved by grace, they were now put under that very law as a rule to live by. This the apostle declares they are not under; yea more, because they are not under law but under grace, that sin shall not have dominion over them. As it never occurs to them to suspect the prevalent tradition, they are thereby incapable of understanding this scripture. So, lack of appreciating the fullness of redemption hinders souls from attaching any intelligible idea to that great privilege of the Christian— “no more conscience of sins” in Heb. 10:2.

It is the same here again: “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father.” Wondrous way of God, in such a connection to tell us that we have Christ in all righteousness, making good our cause with the Father There is precious assurance of communion in John 14; 15 to such as walk in obedience; but here it is, “If any man sin,” —not if any man adhere to the good and holy and acceptable will of God. “If any man sin,” says the apostle; not even “If he be made sensible of his sins;” nor yet, “If he spread it out, and humble himself for his sins.” It cannot be that the holy and true God could lessen one's moral horror of evil: how comes it then that He should set forth our having an Advocate with the Father, and such an Advocate— “Jesus Christ the righteous”? There is a confessor of Christ who, we will suppose, has fallen into some deed of unrighteousness: what then does he need? “Jesus Christ the righteous;” not the miserable idea of substituting His perfect ways for his own evil ones.

Most precious truth in its own place is the scriptural doctrine of Christ's substitution, the true Azazel, on the cross. Viewed as a sinful man, I have my substitute in Him there, suffering for my sins, not sympathy then. Even He must suffer for them to the uttermost, Just for unjust. God forbid that any one should look for sympathy in his sins! There we have the Substitute. And there, in my sorrow and trial and suffering, I have that blessed Priest Who Himself suffered, and is “able to succor them that are tempted.” But now, after God's grace to me, is found a sad practical contradiction to my place as His child and saint. Here is that with which God can have no fellowship—sin. I have sinned, and in the most bitter sense too, sinning against His grace, because I failed to walk watchfully and humbly in prayer and self-judgment, and so fell to the Lord's dishonor. “If any man sin” —not “he must begin again;” nor “he has lost his blessing;” nor “let him apply afresh to the Savior for life eternal.” Nothing of the sort: “we have an advocate with the Father.”

Thus, it is not the poor thought of comforting us because He was righteous, wherein we were all wrong. This is not God's way; but “we have an advocate with the Father.” It ought to be plain that the Puritan notion of substituting His rights for each wrong of ours would act as a continual destruction of the conscience. No; “we have an advocate with the Father.” We have One that takes up all our business, One that acts for us where we could not, One that enters thoroughly into the case with the Father. Men know what it is to have in court a man of business worthy of all confidence in what they might compromise through many causes, and what would certainly be for them a source of the greatest possible perplexity. Here you, a Christian, are in exceeding trouble through your own fault; and you hate yourself the more, because you know His love against Whom you have sinned. Yet oh the comfort of grace! He tells you of One in Whom you have the fullest trust, Who, knowing all your history, state, and heart, is entirely identified with you, and gives what is more—the perfect certainty that, as He is all-prevailing and righteously so before God, so surely He will extricate you to God's praise, if to your humiliation. This, and no less, is what our Advocate is; and this He is too, not with us, though He does wash us every whit clean, but “with the Father.”

It is not said “with God” in this case, as if it were a question simply of our justification. But is all hope of communion gone after such failure? after having so disgraced His name and our own confession of it? No; “we have an advocate with the Father.” It is for the restoration of the communion that had been interrupted. For though the sin of the believer in his walk may not destroy his nearness to God (his access to God being made good by the sacrifice of Christ on which he rests), it does interrupt the enjoyment of communion with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ; and it is the very Son Himself who does set Himself as Advocate to enter into this otherwise hopeless necessity of the soul. Nothing shall separate from His love.

“We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” How blessed! His advocacy is as perfect to restore the saint's broken communion, as His blood to cleanse the once guilty sinner. But it is not simply the fact that He is my righteousness, which remains most true, unimpaired, and unimpeachable. The evil is dealt with, not spared. Not only does the Father feel that His child has so sinned, though there was grace to have kept right through, but I judge myself. And, in point of fact, this is the way in which the advocacy of Christ works. He is an Advocate with the Father; but then He deals with my soul also. It is not merely an exercise of what He is for me, though this is quite true and important, nor can one be too firm in holding fast one's standing. This abides according to its own perfection through Christ's work; but then it is not His advocacy. So here we have the standing supposed in “Jesus Christ the righteous,” in whom, as the Apostle Paul tells us, we are made God's righteousness. Even as advocate He probes the wound, and in very love to my soul does what makes me feel, more truly and hence acutely, my failure; for He heals me by the Spirit as well as manages my cause with the Father. He is Patron or Advocate no less then the Propitiation for my sins, and this too abides intact. The work is done by which the sins of the believer are effaced. But such riches of grace only cause the soul, where there is living faith, and so divine life, to feel the more anguish and shame for the sin against God; not because one dreads His judgment of ourselves, but just because we know His love so true and faithful, spite of unfaithfulness.

( To be continued, D.V.)

Letter of Pope Leo XIII on the Unity of the Church: 5. Headship

5—Headship

IN scripture the truth is plain. The church of God knows but one Head, even Christ in heaven.(Eph. 1:22; Col. 1:18). Earthly head there is none if we hear God's word. Not only is there no such anomaly as two heads of the one body of Christ; but the invariable teaching of divine revelation is incompatible with such an earthly encumbrance. The principle is as certain as the doctrine. The evident aim is to make the church of God even while on earth a heavenly institution by giving the glorified Christ to it as Head. This accordingly excludes any other. The church, if faithful, accepts on earth shame, rejection, and persecution, as the Lord Jesus did “in the days of his flesh.” “In the world (said He) ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). When the church even seeks, still more when it receives, earthly glory, the world overcomes her, instead of her by faith overcoming the world. She is false to her Head. Latin, Greek, Protestant, makes no difference as to this. As we died with Christ to sin and law, so is it for the Christian to say in truth, Be it not for me to boast save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world. Thus is this great severance laid down by the Holy Spirit. Souls may be and are delivered by grace from this present age; thenceforward they are not of the world as Christ is not.

Hence meddling with the world, or judging its questions, was refused by the Lord peremptorily (Luke 12:13-15). So He departed from those who would make Him a king (John 6:15). He is gone to receive for Himself a kingdom and to return (Luke 19:12); He will receive it from God the Father and return to His earthly people, when they, no longer impenitent but believing, will say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of Jehovah (Matt. 23:39). Yet is He a king, but His kingdom is not of this world: if it were, as He testified to Pilate (John 18:36), His servants would fight, that He should not be delivered to the Jews. It was not from hence, but from heaven. His present work here below is quite another thing—bearing witness to the truth, not governing the world as He will in the day of His appearing (Rev. 11:15). “And every one that is of the truth heareth His voice,” not loving his life but hating it in this world, that he may keep it unto life eternal. For the true Christian path is plain to him whose eye is single. “If one serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there also shall My servant be; if one serve Me, him will my Father honor.” “To him that overcometh will I give to sit with Me in My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father in His throne.” Therefore are we called by God to suffer now while He is on the Father's throne; and we shall reign with Him when He receives His own throne.

The carnal and mercurial Corinthians seem to have been the first to err from the way. “Already are ye filled, already ye are become rich, ye reigned as kings without us, and I would at least ye did reign, that we also might reign with you.” When reigning really comes, all enter on it together with Christ. How touchingly the apostle corrects this worldly minded desire, when he adds, “For I think God set forth us the apostles last of all, as it were doomed to death; for we are made a spectacle unto the world, both to men and angels” (1 Cor. 4). Those whom He put first in the church (1 Cor. 12:28) He displayed last (like prophets before them), as patterns of suffering outwardly. What can be more evident than the place of unworldly affliction God indicates for the Christian here below? In nothing is Christendom more at issue with Christ and His word to us. Paul did not write to shame them (as he well might), but to admonish his beloved children. “I beseech you then,” he says, “be imitators of me.” Only faith does or can follow him in simplicity.

In all Christendom the Popes and their party have been the most grievous offenders, enemies above all of the Christ in minding earthly things, but not even there so audaciously as in claiming dominion over the Christian faith. All are bound to obey Christ the Lord. On what then is supposed to be founded this fable, so obviously not only a stranger to, but utterly inconsistent with, scripture? They cite as their proof-texts, Matt. 16:15-19; Luke 22:31, 32; and John 21:15-17. Can anything more decisively prove themselves ignorant of the scriptures, and of God's grace as well as His power?

Peter, in the face of Jewish unbelief, confessed Jesus to be not alone the Christ or Messiah, but the Son of the living God. The Lord owned it to be not of human nature, but a revelation of His Father to him. And He also said to him (for He was co-equal), “Thou art Peter (stone) and upon this (not stone but) rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” On that believed and confessed truth He would build His church. Peter did not dare to exalt himself thus, but was inspired to teach Him Who is life and fullness. They were stones, Christ the chief corner-stone; and all believers were living stones, like himself deriving life from Him Who is life, though an offense to the unbeliever. The inspired word distinguishes in the strongest way between him who was but a stone, and the rock on which Christ builds His assembly. Romanism confounds it all in order to exalt, not Christ, but Peter. But the context resists this folly. For immediately after, when Peter betrayed his error in setting his will against the Lord's sufferings, he is denounced as a stumbling-block, as well as pronounced Satan, an adversary of God and man. What sort of rock is this for the church?

And you that appeal to Fathers, why do you not hear Athanasius, Augustine, and Jerome who understood the rock to be Christ Himself? Granted that Cyprian and Origen and Tertullian thought it was Peter; but what does this prove but Fathers against Fathers? Sometimes the same one, as Chrysostona, gives both. What is the worth of it all, save to show that the famous saying of Vincent of Lerins fails in practice? Universality, antiquity, and consent do not exist among the Fathers, whatever special pleaders pretend. The dictum was set up only when faith in the word and Spirit of God had long gone down.

Peter's restoration in wondrous grace from the awful sin of repeatedly denying his Master is a monstrous basis for the claim of supremacy. What a manifest witness it affords that they have no real grounds! Peter's faithfulness wholly failed; but the gracious Savior besought for him that his faith should not fail—yea that, when turned back again, he should confirm his brethren. So the Lord is pleased to do continually when a fallen disciple is made to stand. Who but the blind could strain such mercy into a papal throne?

3. So it is with the Lord's reinstatement of Peter after the resurrection, lest the disciples should have been too shocked to own God's grace toward him. Peter certainly felt keenly the threefold allusion to his sin, where these vain men dream only of ecclesiastical power and exalted position. Undoubtedly it was the richest grace on our Lord's part, which would be found sufficient for the self-confident saint who, in the face of solemn warning, fell so soon and so low. And this is made a lever for the grossest ambition!

Now we have the inspired writings of N. T. prophets and apostles. How comes it that, in providing bountifully and unerringly for the church and the Christian, nothing can be produced but such ghosts of so-called tradition, of really patristic confusion? Imagine if you can that Peter was invested with a power which solely belongs to the glorified Head; imagine Christ to vacate His functions, instead of ever living to make them good; imagine the Holy Ghost to have gone back into the heavens whence He came to abide with us and in us forever. How comes it that there is not one sure testimony to it in a single Gospel or Epistle? Yet we have the apostle writing to the saints in Rome, unfolding fundamental truths, and regulating differences which menaced the peace of the church; but not a whisper about Peter, who is said, by one of the most respectable of early fathers, to have with Paul founded the church there. This we know to have been not only absolutely baseless but contrary to scripture. For how could this be, when Paul wrote as one who had never visited Rome, and altogether ignored Peter there, though he salutes more saints there at that time than in any other epistle? It is certain in fact that Paul was there a prisoner, and a martyr; it is probable that Peter may have been carried there to die; but that both founded the church in Rome, or that either was a bishop there, is a fabrication, in the teeth of powerful evidence in scripture against any such ideas of the Fathers.

So again it is fiction (and professing Christians very early began to invent spurious Gospels, Acts, and Revelations, some of which are extant with their detestable heterodoxy) that Peter ever held “the See” of Antioch, which East and West greedily received for their respective aggrandizement. He and Barnabas and Paul were there together. And the occasion was memorable. For the old question was renewed whether God under the gospel does or does not put a difference between Jews and Gentiles that believe. There Peter and Barnabas as sadly failed, as they stood firm in Jerusalem; and Paul declares for permanent and universal warning in his Epistle to the Galatians, that he resisted Peter, and “before all” to the face, because he was condemned. Can anything more completely refute the papal authority, to say nothing of infallibility, they absurdly assume to have been conferred on Peter? His fault was flagrantly inconsistent with God's revelation to him: they would minimize it as a small matter; but the Holy Spirit condemns it solemnly as “walking not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel” —a heinous sin, especially in an apostle so honored.

But there is another fact of the utmost importance as to Peter and his sphere, which the Holy Spirit records in the same fruitful chapter, Gal. 2. The reputed pillars, James, Cephas, and John, gave to Paul and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that these should go to the Gentiles, themselves to the circumcision. They saw that Paul had been entrusted with the gospel of the uncircumcision, even as Peter with that of the circumcision. So God had wrought; and they bowed. And the Epistles of Peter, written not long before his death as the second expressly intimates, fall in with this divinely ordered arrangement. For they are both addressed to the circumcision that believed. Peter left the work among the Gentiles to the far mightier hand of Paul. And God, knowing the pride of man and the corrupting design of Satan, took care that the church in Rome should not be, as in Corinth or Ephesus, founded by any apostle. Men might deceive or be deceived; but scripture has foreclosed any such pretension. Both apostles may have suffered there unto death; but neither one nor other presided there, as neither had to do with founding the assembly there. The traditions about it are as false, as a more ancient one that “the beloved disciple” was not to die (John 21).

The apostles, whatever their spiritual energy, were all of them, and not least Peter and Paul, as far from affecting earthly pomp and power like the Popes, as light and love are from the selfish darkness of the earth. Before the baptism of the Spirit they did indeed often strive which should be accounted greatest: a contention inconceivable, yet up to the last (Luke 22:24), if the Lord had been understood so to invest Peter. But He reproved vanity so opposed to all grace and truth, and contrasted their intended position with kings or even those that exercise authority called benefactors. They were not to be so; but the greater among them was to be as the younger, and the leader as he that serves. The Lord Himself set the same example here below. He could as easily have made them earthly princes, as He left them able to say truthfully, as Peter did, “Silver and gold have I none.” They had incomparably better. They had persevered with Him in His temptations, as He did with them in theirs when He sat at God's right hand, yet working with them (Mark 16:19, 20). And He appointed to them a kingdom (as His Father to Him), that they might sit at His table in His kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel: certainly not now, when called to the fellowship of His sufferings, but in the regeneration when all things shall be restored by His grace to divine order and glory. It is the wickedness of man by the prince of the power of the air to do his utmost to antedate that future kingdom. The papacy thus sets at naught the truth and will of God now, and turns the church into a scheme of vainglorious pride and present exaltation, by deceit and intrigue and cruelty that would disgrace the pagan or infidel world.

Queries and Answers: God to Angels; 2CO 5:3

Q.-Will you explain the statement that “God could not be to angels what He is to man—grace, patience, mercy, love, as shown to sinners?”

O. P.

A.-The first and last of these manifestations here named serve to make all clear. “Grace” means favor, and especially to one altogether undeserving through guilt, which is “love as shown to sinners.” Patience bears with those whose ways are trying; mercy too compassionates the needy. None of these descriptions can properly apply to the elect angels, who alone of course can be thought of. The Word made flesh, the Son of God, come of woman, explains why it is, and above all when we add His glorifying the Father in life, and glorifying God as God by His death for sin and our sins.

Q.-What means 2 Cor. 5:3?

A.-A solemn warning that, though the deniers of the resurrection were all wrong, one may have a risen body, but he destitute of Christ, as all in fact will be who are not born of God. All must be clothed, all must rise; but then will be manifest that not to have Christ is to be found naked. The risen body of the wicked will not cover but reveal that unspeakable loss.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:21

THE races which sprang from Shem come before us in the last place. This is quite independent of the respective ages of Noah's three sons. Ham, we know, is declared to be “the little” one (chap. ix. 24)—generally translated “youngest “; and chronology shows that not Shem but Japheth was the eldest. Accordingly Leeser joins Mendelssohn in the rendering of the A. V. and the margin (not the text) of the R. V. The first place assigned to Shem, in the usual formula of “Shem, Ham, and Japheth,” is due not to the order of birth, but to the spiritual purpose which gave Shem that position (chap. 5: 32, 6:10, 7:13, 9:18, 10:1). When, however, “the generations” are given in detail, Japheth's sons are enumerated first; and a similar order prevails in 1 Chron. 1. If primogeniture here in Japheth had its honor, if precocity in his rising to political place and natural power is recognized in Ham, for Shem was reserved, though named last, the honor Godward. “And to Shem also were [sons] born: he [was] father of all the sons of Eber, brother of Japheth the elder” (ver. 21).

Undoubtedly the manner of Shem's introduction is so peculiar as to arrest attention. He had descendants like the other chiefs derived from Noah. But he is specified, on the one hand as the father of all the sons of Eber, and on the other as the brother of Japheth the elder (or, great one). Of the latter enough has been said; but we may compare chap. xiv. 13, “Abram the Hebrew,” in order to understand better what seems meant. And here the LXX give ὁ περαίτης, “the passer,” as Aquila has ὁ περαίτης. This at least gives a distinctive stamp, where as only tradition does it to Eber personally.

The head of that people, above all distinguished among those who sprang from Shem, passed the Euphrates on his memorable way. As Joshua said to all the people at the close of his service, and a little before his death (24:2, 3, 12, 13), “Your fathers dwelt of old on the other side of the river, Terah the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor; and they served other gods. And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the river, and led him throughout the land of Canaan,” &c. “And now fear Jehovah and serve him in perfectness and in truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the river and in Egypt, and serve Jehovah. And if it seem evil unto you to serve Jehovah, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods whom your fathers that were on the other side of the river served, or the gods of the Amorite in whose land ye dwell.” Scripture thus lays a stress on that fact far beyond what it does to an ancestor who does not stand out from others in the genealogical line, save as the father of Peleg and Joktan. An important event marked Peleg's days; yet it did not concern the chosen people particularly but “the earth” at large.

That Gen. 14:13 connects Abram in the passage of the eastern river, rather than his remote ancestor Eber, seems clear; for this was the regular Gentile name given to God's people by those without, not Israel but Hebrews, as we find from the earliest to later times. And it is intelligible that a tangible fact like that event would be patent and abidingly known.

It is another question whether “all the sons of Eber” can be legitimately connected with any other person than him of whom we read in vers. 24, 25, and chap. 11:14-17, with the corresponding list in 1 Chron. 1. In Num. 24:24 we have the only other reference, I think, which can be connected with it: an early prophecy which looks on to the latter day. For there comes a Star out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel, not merely to out in pieces the corners of Moab but to destroy all the sons of tumult. The great conflict of the future is contemplated, as nothing in the past quite meets all. “And ships shall come from the coasts of Chittim, and afflict Asshur, and afflict Eber; and he also shall come to destruction.” West and East and Israel shall be in collision and suffer; but as the previous word runs, “Israel doeth valiantly, and one out of Jacob shall have dominion.” That Eber is used figuratively for the Jews seems unquestionable; and that they arise to earthly supremacy, when the destroyers of the earth are destroyed and Messiah reigns, is what the prophets declare.

Herein lies the real and superior dignity of Shem. Messiah is to come of his stock; as Canaan was accursed, not Ham wholly, but Canaan; so the living oracle said, “Blessed be Jehovah the God of Shem.” This was not predicted of the elder, but “God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem.” And so it has been. How vast in His providence the spread of that energetic race! Have they not dwelt, too, in the tents of Shem, not as mere conquerors, but, among other ways perhaps, as sharers in that blessing which was shadowed so finely in Israel's “own olive-tree.” Here in due time would be the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the law-giving, and the service, and the promises, and not the fathers merely but the Son, the Messiah with a personal dignity far beyond what Israel has owned—to their own deep loss as yet.

The Offerings of Leviticus: 1.

IT is not without importance to observe that, for all these interesting and instructive types in the early chapters of Leviticus, Jehovah spoke to Moses “out of the tent of meeting.” He had taken His place and dwelt among the children of Israel, as He said in the book of Exodus. It was not grace only, though most fully so; it was on a basis of righteousness. The Passover and the passage of the Red Sea were the types of redemption. The blood of the lamb had sheltered the children of Israel, when the destroyer slew the first-born; and it laid the basis for a deliverance through the waters of death wherein their enemies perished. God henceforth could be their God and dwell among them. Out of that dwelling, the tent of meeting, He can and does speak words of grace and blessing.

But it was not yet eternal redemption. It was still the law, and the law made nothing perfect (Heb. 7:19). It was still the first man; and wherein is he to be accounted of, whose breath is in his nostrils? He was not yet come Who could say, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8). But in due time of Israel as according to flesh came the Christ, Who is over all, God blessed forever, Amen. Born of woman, born under law, Christ came in infinite love to do a work, commensurate with the dignity of His person, in that nature which had sinned against God everywhere and at all times, and only more rebelliously when His law had been given, and every trangression and disobedience received just retribution. That nature in Him was holy, both through Incarnation and through the Spirit of holiness ever after.

All hope therefore for him who believed hung on the Second man, the last Adam. And He not only glorified His Father in the perfect obedience of His life, though tried to the uttermost in a wilderness world, but glorified Him as God in His death for sin. Therefore has God glorified Him now in Himself straightway, before He receives His universal kingdom and appears in glory before the world. In the cross, which was the blind and daring guilt of Jew and Gentile joined by Satan for once against the Holy and the True, God wrought His work for reconciling all that believe in one body, the church; as He will by-and-by bring in salvation for Israel and all nations in the days of the coming kingdom; yea, He will thereby reconcile all things to Himself, be they the things on the earth or the things in the heavens.

Now it is the various aspects of Christ's work which were represented in these types. But we need to remember what the apostle declares, that the law has but “a shadow.” For “the very image” could only be in that work itself in its unapproachable excellence. Here we have such a shadow as God alone could give beforehand in testimony to its many-sided fullness.

First, there are the three offerings to Jehovah of sweet savor, where the whole as the Burnt offering, or a part as of the Meal offering or of the Peace offering, was burnt as a fire-offering to Him on the brazen altar, the point of individual approach (chaps. 1.-3). Then, in chapters 4, 5 and 6:1-7 follow the offerings for sin and trespass. Lastly, the laws of the various offerings are given in the rest of chap. 6. and in chap. 7., which bring out communion where given or withheld.

It may be observed, however, that notable offerings are found elsewhere which are not specified in Leviticus, rich as it is on this theme. Thus “the daily” is rather given in Exodus, as the constant offering, one lamb on the altar in the morning and the other between the two evenings. The acceptance of the camp in the midst of which Jehovah dwelt is presented in a continual Burnt offering; and therefore was most suitably named in the redemption book of the Pentateuch.

On the other hand the Red Heifer is given in full detail only in the fourth book, because it is the special provision for defilements by the way; and this book treats of the wilderness path for God's people. So here only we have the gracious means of a second-month-Passover for such as missed the first through a passing defilement; whereas the Passover was instituted and most copiously laid down in the second book as the sacrificial basis of redemption, which comes out there as nowhere else. Indeed we do not hear of the blood sprinkled on the door-posts—one of its most striking features—save on that first occasion.

What on the other side can be more characteristic of the fifth book than the offering of the first-fruits as in chap. 26? The book, written on the verge of the land after the wilderness journeying was closed, contemplates the people's entering on their inheritance, when the Israelite was to take of the first of all the fruit of the ground which Jehovah their Elohim gave him, put it in a basket, and go to the chosen center where He set His name. To the priest he professed that he was come into the land of Jehovah's gift; and when the priest set the basket before the altar, the Israelite was to say, A Syrian ready to perish was my father who went down into Egypt and there multiplied, and was afflicted to bondage; but Jehovah saw and heard and delivered mightily, and brought into the land flowing with milk and honey. “And now, behold, I have brought the first of the fruits of the ground, which thou, Jehovah, hast given me.” There he set down his basket before Jehovah and worshipped; there he was told to rejoice in all the good which Jehovah his Elohim gave him and his house, and the Levite, and the stranger in his midst. So in union with Christ gone on high, the Christian is entitled to kindred joy in God, that he may the more truly enjoy the good He gives Who with Christ has freely given us all things.

Yet of all the offerings none has such unique value as that of Atonement-day in Lev. 16. There the blood was carried within, and sprinkled upon the mercy-seat and before it. Not the sons of Aaron as at other times, but the High Priest made atonement for the sanctuary and the tent of meeting and the altar, as well as for himself and for his household, and for all the assembly of Israel, substitution having as distinct a place as propitiation. It was access to God in the highest degree that the law admitted, the Holy Spirit thus showing that the way of the holies had not yet been manifested, while as yet the first tabernacle had a standing. Now that Christ has come and died, the veil is rent, and we who believe are made free of the holies. And, the priesthood being changed, there takes place of necessity a change of the law also. For a better hope is now introduced whereby we draw nigh to God. The Father has qualified us for partaking of the portion of the saints in light; and we can approach with boldness to the throne of grace, having a great High Priest Who has passed through the heavens. Israel must wait till the High Priest comes out, when they shall know all their iniquities sent away to a land apart never more to appear.

The Scripture of Truth: 3

IN verse 36 we read, “And the king shall do according to his will.” This is no king of either north or south, but quite another monarch who is called simply “the king.” No other designation was required. Every intelligent Jew would at once know, as every Christian ought to know, who that portentous ruler is. O.T. prophecy prepares us for an awful time that is to befall the nation before the Messiah comes in power and glory. They boast much about their boundless charity to their own people; but how little they enter into what David calls the “kindness of God!” Christians are called by their Savior to love their enemies. I wonder if every Christian here loves his enemies, no matter how unjust they may be? It is just our opportunity of showing that grace makes us to be above spite and evil. Should we be able to sing at midnight in prison, with our feet in the stocks? What can be done with such people? The world finds them invincible. No wonder that they are to reign with Christ by-and-by, seeing that by His grace they now conquer in the irresistible might of weakness. Exploits are all well for Puritans as for Maccabees; but they suit not the Christian. Stonewall Jackson in America and Havelock in India were too like the Maccabees. They had an imperfect idea of the true place of the Christian. They had not learned to bear all, and endure all, not only in passive obedience to their earthly rulers, but in grace to such as shamefully injured them.

Here it is supposed that the readers know there is to be at the time of the reigning in Judea an apostate potentate. Having rejected the True Light, the Jews do not realize that they are the very people to be governed by this self-exalting enemy of God. They would not deny that there will surely arise an audacious and wicked king in the land of Israel; but they forget that they are to be his subjects, accomplices, and victims. So far from being king of the north or of the south, we see here that he is attacked by the then kings of both those lands. He is simply called “the king,” as neither of those powers is ever called. He bears that name, as being then king of the land between the north and the south. The text affords demonstrable proof of this. “The king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself.” This may be no uncommon quality; but he manifests it to an unheard of degree: “He shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god.” What pretension! Did he not then require to eat, drink, and sleep like any other poor creature? Surely this ought to have convinced him how far he must be from God, or even an angel, had he not been blinded by Satan's power. Nay, he shall “speak marvelous things against the God of gods.” Not this only, but we are told that which gives astonishing evidence of long-suffering till judgment come; we are told that he “shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished; for that which is determined shall be done.” What a solemn way of God it is to let one go on in blasphemous pride, that wickedness may fully come out, and its downfall may be all the more just and complete! God is righteous. But what is man? What are the Jews, and particularly then?

How came such a king to reign over Judea? They refused Him that came in His Father's name. They will then receive one that comes in his own name. Here we read what he is and does. “Like king, like people” we may say, as one of the earlier prophets said, “As the people, so the priest.” They will be in that day one evil lump. The difference is only in degree. Lawlessness will have reached its height. “And he will not regard the God of his fathers.” This shows, according to scripture language, he is a Jew. Nobody but a Jew can correctly be described thus: a simple, but incontrovertible proof for such as know the Bible. Where do we find anything like it?

An Englishman who believes may speak of God as his Father; but he cannot talk of “the God of his fathers” except as imitating the phrase of a Jew. This reference of course is to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They are the true fathers whom God chose to be the depositories of promise, on behalf of their seed and land, yet to be verified under Messiah: a most happy time for the world, after its hitherto sinful and sad history. I do not of course speak of the gospel, founded on Christ's cross and calling us as the church to heavenly glory. But there is a bright and blessed time for the earth when Israel shall be truly the people of Jehovah exalted above all nations and a blessing to them. The church will have a glorious place in heaven, and will reign over the earth, but not on it. This is the mistake often made in rendering ver. 10 of Rev. 5. It ought to be not “on” but “over.” ere is an idiom in the construction which bears this out. Why it should have been overlooked by many excellent scholars seems strange; for the usage is plain enough.

Neither shall this king, to take the next characteristic, regard “the desire of women.” The phrase alludes to the well-known expectation that a maiden of Israel would be the mother of Immanuel (Isa. 7). “Nor [will he] regard any god, for he shall magnify himself above all.” So excessive is his lawless self-exalting presumption that prevalent idolatry he repudiates in his self-assertion. Yet he is an idolater after all—this man who pretends to be the Most High God. “In his estate shall he honor the god of forces.” We can readily understand how everything at such a time will turn to the worship of material force. Never has there been such a rage for arming to the teeth as at the present moment. There have been many epochs when a countless host of barbarians has swept over the civilized world, but never a time when such vast armies stood confronting one another, though their own lands groan under the necessary taxation, afraid of breaking the peace, but ready for war if they saw the opportunity to seize the coveted prize.

(To be continued, D.V.)

The Seed Left to Grow

Mark 4:26-29

THIS is a parable peculiar to the Gospel of Mark, and therefore characteristic of the divine design. It is as far as possible from having any analogy to the leaven in Matt. 13, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened. Christ's service is here set out first and last, marking for the kingdom of God the unexpected fact of His seemingly leaving things to take their course between His action at the beginning and that at the end.

“And he said, Thus is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast the seed upon the earth, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring up and grow, how he knoweth not himself. Of itself the earth beareth fruit, first a blade, then an ear, then full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is presented, immediately he despatcheth the sickle, because the harvest is arrived” (vers. 26-29).

Matthew gives a complete view in its seven parables of the varying phases of the kingdom of the heavens, and especially in view of the rejection of the Messiah by the Jews and of its special form, “the mysteries of the kingdom,” while the rejected King is on high, before He returns as the glorified Son of Man in possession of the universal inheritance.

Mark was led to dwell on the Sower, as the fullest expression of the Savior's personal ministry, thwarted for the most part, but fulfilling the purpose of grace in such as have ears to hear. Then he records like Luke the solemn admonition that follows. The lamp was not to be put under “the bushel” or under “the bed,” but to be put on its stand. God's testimony exposes the true character of things, and tests the witness himself; who, if he makes it his own, has more given, and if not, loses what he has. If the lamp was to shine openly, the truth was to be valued personally.

Then Mark alone adds the beautiful comparison of the Lord's relation to the work which has been cited. He would prepare His servants for the trial of faith that awaited them in His absence. He carefully guards against the difficulty which has often been expressed, and sometimes weakly evaded. For those who know Him reject the unworthy thought that He absolutely abandons all care over His work here below, and yet more, that He Who knows all things knows not how it fares with that on which He labored. Our Lord took pains to say that the kingdom is “as if “; not that He did not watch and work diligently, any more than that the husbandman does no more than sow and reap, without intermediate interest or services. These dealings are through other scriptures fully revealed, which the parable assuredly does not in any way contradict.

The aim was, while affirming His personal work as ushering in God's kingdom and His gathering the fruits at the end of the age, to mark emphatically how it should be left while He is on high; but this with fullest confidence that His sowing would come to the just and expected result. We have, therefore, here no thought of seed destroyed by the enemy's power, nor of failure through the flesh, nor of the choking influence of the world, any more than of darnel foisted into the field unawares and spoiling the crop. All goes well, though the great Servant is hidden in God: just “as if a man (after sowing) should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring up and grow, he knows not how.”

Jehovah's messenger had been sent before Messiah's face to prepare His way; but he was imprisoned and slain. Messiah came Himself proclaiming the gospel of God's kingdom, and saying that the time was fulfilled, and the kingdom had drawn nigh. The cross, not the throne, was before Him; and He begins to call servants and to make them fishers of men. For though the unclean spirits obeyed Him, and disease vanished at His touch, even then the men of repute and leading taxed Him with blasphemy, because He forgave sins as God only can. He therefore, knowing all that was to befall Him, provides for the progress of God's work in His rejection unto death, and shows how nothing should hinder its completion.

So, even in Isa. 49:3-6, we have Jehovah saying, “Thou art my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified. But I said, I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength for naught and in vain: nevertheless my judgment is with Jehovah, and my work with my God. And now, saith Jehovah that formed me from the womb to be his servant, that I should bring Jacob again to him (though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorified in the eyes of Jehovah, and God shall be my strength); and he saith, It is a small thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel; I have even given thee for a light of the nations, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.”

Similarly here too nothing shall destroy the gracious purpose of God in Christ; and His humiliation on one side and rejection on the other only give it luster and force. “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.” The apparent frustration for a while secures in the end, and glorifies God and Christ all through. It appears as if He who began and will end had no more to do than the man who, having sown his seed, sleeps and rises, yet the seed springs up and grows, he knows not how. God has so ordered this creation that of itself the earth brings forth fruit in the case supposed, first a blade, then an ear, then full corn in the ear. And so it is spiritually, without visible intervention of His righteous Servant on high.

But when the fruit is presented, He despatches the sickle immediately to reap, since harvest is arrived. It is the contrast of His two advents of personal action, with the unseen advance of what He has sown and what He will reap. On this His own can count without hesitation. God's work, of which Christ is the doer, can fail in nothing to glorify Himself.

Have you, dear reader, a sure part and lot in this work? Are you content with flesh and its glory, though God pronounces it all to be as grass? Oh, receive His living and abiding word, that you may be born again, if you have not received it already! This is the word which in the gospel is preached to you. The Lord Jesus sowed what produced fruit; and this goes on still. It is of faith that it might be according to grace. How welcome should this be to one who knows himself a lost unworthy sinner! The word reveals Christ to you as God's gift; and fruits follow when you receive Him and life in Him. Apart from Him you can do nothing. May grace give you while owning yourself ungodly and powerless without Christ, to receive Him on God's word, that you may go on your way rejoicing!

The Fullness of Christ: Part 3

WE need a center for our hearts. There is an energy in the heart of man, which otherwise denies God or deifies the creature. Man was made by God to rule; an angel was not. You never hear of an angel sitting on the throne or governing. On the contrary, the saints are to judge the angels. So that nothing can be more certain than that man was made to rule. For that reason, with others, we in our weakness require a center to work to: for want of this people injure themselves or dishonor God. If a man has a consciousness of being unfit for it, he sets up another man and trusts to him. It is the same amongst scholars. They set up schools of opinion, of philosophy, of sciences, of languages, according to their tastes or their habits, and they make the school of their choice the practical center, to which they are gathering. All their energies, their labors, are for the promotion of that central aim towards which they work. We also require one—the simplest Christian as much as the greatest; the greatest because he might otherwise set himself up, and the simplest because he feels the want of it. God gives us one, and this is taught in a very remarkable way here.

The first man we read of who officially had disciples was John the Baptist: I do not at all mean that he was wrong. Far from it; but still he is the only mere man in the New Testament, whose disciples God distinctly sanctioned. John had his disciples, and it is evident that he was a man singularly honored (Matt. 11:10, 11). “Again, the next day after John stood, and two of his disciples [having testified to the Lord the day before]; and looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! and the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.” Surely this is very striking. Now there was a Divine center on earth; and John the Baptist, who had disciples strongly attached, so speaks of Jesus that his own disciples leave him to follow Jesus. How rarely we find that. It is not what men like. Even the good are too often jealous if men leave them, but John the Baptist showed the power of God. He manifested a simplicity of faith most seasonable.

No wonder the people took John for a prophet; for God was before Him. What is it that marks the prophet? The man that sees God's mind and makes it known. Other people may make known the truth, may preach the gospel; but the man that puts your conscience in the presence of God is the prophet. So the woman of Samaria, when her conscience was awakened to her sin, said, “Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet.” It is the consciousness of God given to the soul that is the true test of a prophet. And so it was here. John the Baptist so speaks of our Lord that his own disciples turn from him to Jesus. He was right, and they were right. He was right to bear his heart's testimony to the Lord Jesus; and it is remarkable enough that it was not a long effusion that he spoke, but a few words that told. “Behold the Lamb of God!” In the delight of his soul John rendered that testimony to Christ, and the moment that his disciples heard it, they followed Jesus. They heard John, they followed Jesus, and the Lord invited them to remain with Him that day.

Now there is exactly where you find the needed center. One of the two that heard John and followed Jesus was Andrew, who first goes and finds his brother Simon Peter, and tells him, “We have found the Messiah,” and he brought him to Jesus. Jesus is the true center for men on earth.

Not merely a Savior is meant, but also a center to work to. What am I doing, now that I am washed in the blood of Christ, and, what is more, associated with Him in heaven? Am I serving the world? I do not question the duty of carrying on my occupation in a Christian manner. This is all right, and in its own place most important. It is a bad job for any man who has not something to do: such a one is generally in the way. But the Christian that has an occupation by which he lives is called to stick to it, and do it thoroughly. It is my opinion, a Christian man ought to do his work a great deal better than any other; nay, it would be a real shame to him if he did not, because his carelessness could not but bring a stigma on the name of Jesus. Only senseless men run down a man for cleaving to his honest occupation. Let us heed the apostle Paul, that if a man will not work, he ought not to eat.

But in this case, where Christ and the soul are concerned, it is another thing altogether. Have I now a divine center that fills my heart? What I want is not to make money or a name, nor yet that I should accomplish this purpose or that. Farther, it is not the mere service of my country or of my sovereign, or anything of the kind (although, of course, I am bound to honor the Queen); but there is made known, another center to which we work, infinitely higher and more commanding, which does not really end when you have done your work, but which abides beyond all time. The one thing that God wants is, that whatever you do should be to Christ, with a happy heart; no murmuring here, no complaining, nor striking for more wages. The one who helps you to meet and overcome all these aberrations, who puts your heart at rest, is Jesus. There was a time, no doubt, when men set up what they called a city for Jesus—a commonwealth for His name. But this was a kind of religious monomania, for after all the city was only for themselves. There was no reality in it for Christ. It was a mere outburst of fanatical folly. But I am speaking now of simplicity and assiduity in the sight of God, of guidance by His word and Spirit.

Faith is not just to be limited to believing in Jesus for salvation, or subjection to Him as to this duty or that duty. It is more. It is a cleaving to a Living Person as a center that commands my soul in all the work I am set to do. The disciples went to Jesus, and one of them goes and finds another and brings him to Jesus. How was this? Had Christ been only a man, they never would have left John the Baptist. Why should they? They were John the Baptist's disciples, and of all men born of women there had not been a greater than John. Why did they leave him? Because they found the Messiah—One surely to be preferred before him—the Eternal One.

Are you conscious that in all your religious life you refer to the Lord Jesus—that He is really and truly your center? Most people you know go by where they were born or bred, christened or converted, by their country, by their connection, or something of that sort. But these disciples did not. They for the first time in their lives recognized a Man of divine glory and authority Who had absolute claims on their affection and allegiance. I leave that to work in every breast here. Be sure whatever you do, more particularly in religious things, that you have no superior authority to Jesus. Look alone to Him then, whatever dark questions may perplex you, and He will give you light.

That is not all. We are going through a wilderness. We have to pass through a world where there are manifold and subtle snares. We want, therefore, not only a center to work to, but a path to follow. Where shall we find the true path for our souls? Not surely when we get to heaven. There we shall need no way, because all is good and bright there. But where all is wrong, when you are surrounded by enemies of every kind, you want an unerring way. Where shall such a path be found? I answer, in the Savior. The Lord, therefore, in the next place brings out that truth. “The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me.” He Himself is the path, the only true way for the Christian. Whatever comes—whatever difficulties or trials—search and see what the will of the Lord is; and the moment you are subject to His will, you follow Him. He was always doing the will of God, as He reveals the will of God in His word. To obey His word in faith is to follow Himself.

There is another blessing. We are in a world where there are false paths of all kinds, and men are ensnared by them. Some have their tastes here, some have there their predilections or their prejudices. One requires, therefore, to have an object before the soul to keep it right; and what do we find to be the declared object in the end of the chapter? The Son of Man. Remark that He is not spoken of as the Son of God. Just before He is. But He Who is the Son of God is also the Son of Man, and it is as Son of Man that He is brought before us here. “Hereafter (rather, henceforth) ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” Thus the highest angels of God waited upon the humbled Man—the One who came down so low that, while all saints follow Him, none really approaches. Such is the object for the Christian, no matter what he does. If I look at the foundation of my soul, the Lamb of God is this. If I think of the power that lifts to heaven, the Spirit He gives is the power. If I seek for a center to work to, Christ is that center. If I want a path to follow through the intricacies of the world, He and He alone is the One to follow. If I look for an object for my soul, He is the only one God gives me.

Do not treat even Scripture poetry as mere poetry. I grant that even from the poetic point of view nothing is like it, and that all Shakespeare or Milton ever wrote so grandly is poor indeed compared with what is therein. Take even Milton, who had the benefit of using Scripture expressly. He puts all wrong where, if I listen to him, the devil is reigning in a very fine palace. What a vain dream! Satan has never reigned in hell. The devil will be the most miserable object in hell through all eternity. This is not reigning. So evident is it that the effect of the Miltonic picture is to disorder men's minds about the truth. The devil is reigning in this world now and here, not in hell. What is still more important is the erroneous impressions he gives of God and especially of His Son. For Christ is ever the test whether one is taught of God, or only glories in man. I press this for the purpose of securing the truth to settle our souls—to give us true objects as seen in the light of God—to make us firm and constant in His grace and truth, His light shining down upon our every step through this wilderness world. May God in His rich mercy grant that these remarks may help to lead some weary wayfarer out of the darkness of the enemy into the marvelous light of God. Amen.

Reflections on Galatians 3:1-9

THE apostle enters now upon a different mode of dealing with the erring Galatians. In chapters i. he has been mainly occupied with the divine source and character of his ministry, these having been called in question because not received from the twelve. In the various incidents brought forward, we have seen that he was in no way appointed by the Jewish apostles, and that he had not been instructed by them. But we also see that there was no disagreement. They had given him the right hand of fellowship, that he and Barnabas should evangelize the heathen, while they pursued their work among the circumcision. Instead of being opposed and corrected by them, Paul shows that on one occasion he had to be the objector, and this in connection with no less a person than Peter. The twelve and himself were agreed that justification is by faith alone, not by works of law, and that the Gentiles were entirely free from law's obligations, however slow Jewish brethren might be to learn the lesson as regards themselves.

The apostle breaks out, “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you” (ver. 1)? We learn here the particular form the apostle's ministry had taken in those parts. Considerable variety in style is to be remarked in Paul's labors. Among the Thessalonians the Lord's coming was a very prominent theme; among the Athenians, stress was laid upon man's original relation to God as His creature; in Galatia and in Corinth the cross was to the front. It will be noticed that sometimes we read in the New Testament of the blood of Christ, sometimes of the death, and in other places of the cross. This is not in vain. The Spirit has a different line of truth for our souls in each of these varied expressions. The blood is particularly found (though not exclusively) in Hebrews, where the main theme is the atonement and its mighty results; the death of Christ is dwelt upon in Romans as the end of His life below, in which faith finds the end of the old man and all that pertains to him; the cross is before us in Galatians as an emblem of shame. The cross pours contempt on man and all his efforts, and is thus to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness (1 Cor. 1:23).

The apostle wished to press this upon the Galatians, as upon the Corinthians at another time for a different reason. He then puts in contrast the two principles of law and faith—this down to verse 14; and appeals to them as to the ground upon which they had received all their blessings from God. “This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” (ver. 2). Failing people though they were, they had received the gift of the Spirit. It is important to distinguish between “the hearing of faith,” and the reception of the Holy Ghost. A soul hears the gospel of salvation, and believes it; and thus is cleansed, and receives the remission of sins. This precedes the Spirit's seal. It is not denied that all that precedes is His work. This is unquestionable. A man never sorrows for sin, nor bends his ear to the gospel, and certainly never confides in the Lord Jesus for salvation, apart from the gracious work of the Holy Ghost. Such fruit has never been borne by the old man since the world began. The old man is corrupt according to the lusts of deceit, and never produces anything but what is hateful to God. His Spirit must work in conscience and heart, ere there can be aught that is well-pleasing in His sight. But while all this is true, the gift of the Spirit to dwell in the vessel is a totally distinct thing. It is as if a man first built a house, and then took up his abode in it. The Spirit is God's great gift to every Christian, and in this important respect those who believe during this present period of time are signally favored of God. It is because of His infinite delight in the person and work of His beloved Son. When He took His seat on high, the Spirit descended, according to His word to His own ere He suffered.

Some in this day seem to regard the indwelling of the Spirit as a kind of attainment, and speak of it as though only the advanced and spiritual were thus favored. But this is to ignore scripture. What was the practical state of the Corinthians when Paul wrote, “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” (1 Cor. 6:19). Let the whole epistle answer. And where were the Galatians when Paul wrote as in chapter 3.? In every way both the Corinthians and Galatians were going on unsatisfactorily, yet they had received the Spirit. Every saint should earnestly heed the injunction, “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God “; but let none suppose that He is ever withdrawn; for in the very verse last quoted the apostle proceeds to say, “whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30).

The apostle then challenges the Galatians; on what principle had the Spirit been given? There could be but one answer. The sacred oil could not be poured on flesh (Ex. 30:32). Never since time began was such a gift conferred as the reward of human works, though often and regularly as the crown of God's grace under the gospel.

“Are ye so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? Have ye suffered so many things in vain, if it be yet in vain?” (vers. 3, 4). If the works of the flesh never yet brought blessing to any, why should the Galatians turn to them? Were they really prepared to surrender all they had suffered for? Ordinances and legalism do not entail persecution and suffering. The natural man can enter into and appreciate them, and when those who bear the Lord's Name sink to this level, the world and themselves are agreed, and can walk together. How sorrowfully and long has this been true in Christendom! Had the apostle preached circumcision, and blended Judaism generally with the Christianity he taught, he would have been spared much, as he himself says, “then is the offense of the cross ceased.” But against all this he ever resolutely set his face, at all cost to himself, and other faithful men who stood with him.

Another question is now put. “He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” (ver. 5). He it was who had labored among them, and wrought works of power to confirm the word. The gospel is “the ministration of the Spirit,” as also of righteousness; not the law, which on the contrary is a ministration of death and condemnation (2 Cor. 3). Paul preached the gospel to them, not the law; as a result of “the hearing of faith,” they had received the Spirit.

It is well to observe that the apostle distinguishes between the gift of the Spirit, and the working of miracles. They are often spoken of as though they were substantially the same thing. But they are distinct. The Holy Ghost is God's seal upon every believer, quite apart from mighty works, and abides to-day, spite of the church's declension and ruin. Miracles were but accompaniments of His presence, and were vouchsafed in early days in confirmation of the word preached (Heb. 2:4). These have ceased, the necessity for them having passed away—and perhaps one may add the fallen condition of the church not justifying their continuance or revival. But the Spirit remains with the church until the end.

The great point is that all had been wrought on the principle of faith, not works. The apostle now enforces the truth in another way. He brings forward Abraham, the root of circumcision, as also in Rom. 4. On what principle did God account him righteous before Him? “Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted unto him for righteousness” (ver. 6). Even Abraham then, of whom all legalists boasted, knew nothing of works as a ground of blessing! God pronounced him righteous, not only before the law was given, but before circumcision was instituted. This was brought in later as “a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had being yet uncircumcised” (Rom. 4:11). Consequently, if they felt it an honor to range themselves under him, works must be abandoned, and faith take their place. “Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham” (ver. 7). Not “they which are circumcised,” as they seemed to suppose, “but they which are of faith.” Mere fleshly claims God entirely rejects; faith is looked for in all who would stand before Him. This is no new thing with God. He always had purposes of blessing for Gentiles apart from works and ordinances; indeed, He spoke of it to Abraham himself. “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham” (vers. 8, 9).

Thus early did God let out what was in His heart, however humbling to the seed of Abraham according to the flesh. They would have liked to confine blessing within their own circle, doling out to others as they thought well, and in entire subordination to themselves; but God had larger thoughts. Blessing is for all alike, the Gentile may be saved and justified without becoming a Jew, or submitting to ordinances; while those who contend for merely natural descent find themselves excluded altogether, and disowned of God, as we read, “He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly” (Rom. 2:28). The apostle merely speaks here of the ground of blessing, and does not state to the full what present blessing is. Our union with Christ as members of one body must be sought elsewhere; and in this the patriarch has no place; nevertheless he and we are blessed in one common ground before God. This is the point in Galatians: the apostle scarcely goes beyond it in this Epistle.

James 2:1

OUR chapter opens with the distinct confession of Christ; so that we are in advance of the pious but general ground taken before, which, though quite compatible, to say the least, with faith in Him, does not expressly put His name forward, beyond the mention of it that was made in chap. i. 1. We shall see that there is good reason for this new step when it is duly weighed.

“My brethren, do not with respectings of persons have the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, [Lord] of glory” (ver. 1).

The tendency was strong to sever faith from practice, and this quite as much among Jewish professors, this chapter shows, as among Greeks. It is the levity and selfishness of human nature. But the preceding chapter took a distinct and positive step in asserting the blessedness of enduring trial; and yet more, that of His own will God the Father begot the believers by the word of truth. This is incomparably more than holding sound views. It is not orthodoxy alone but a communicated “divine nature” as 2 Peter 1:4 expressly calls it, and as 1 John throughout teaches with fullness and precision.

Here the warning is against the inconsistency of spirit and ways. The case first specified is “in respectings of persons.” For it might occur in many forms and in various degrees. But allowance in any shape is not to be indulged, as being an affront to “the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ,” emphasized as it is here too, by speaking of “the glory” that belongs to Himself.

No soul that believes in Christ can be ignorant of the death-blow He in His entire practice gives to such feelings or conduct. Mary of whom He deigned to be born was a Jewish maiden in the humblest position; so was Joseph the carpenter, His legal father through whose descent He derived His title to the throne of David and Solomon; and this was essential as a perfect claim to Messiahship. For Mary, daughter of Heli, was descended from David's son Nathan who gave no such right. Again, when born, He was laid “in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” So He grew, advancing in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. One lovely episode excepted, He abides in entire obscurity, going down and dwelling with Mary and Joseph, in subjection to them and in despised Nazareth; yet was He King of kings and Lord of lords.

When His public service called Him to speak out, what so uncompromising “Blessed ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled. Blessed ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you, and shall reproach and cast out your name as wicked for the Son of man's sake. Rejoice in that day and leap [for joy]; for, behold, your reward is great in the heavens, for in the same manner did their fathers to the prophets. But woe to you the rich! for ye have received your consolation; woe to you that are filled now! for ye shall hunger. Woe, ye that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep. Woe, when all men speak well of you! for in the same manner did their fathers to the false prophets” (Luke 6:20-26).

To a similar effect might one transcribe our Lord's habitual teaching; and His ways were in unwavering accord with it. He and He alone, when asked, “Who art thou?” could truly answer, “Absolutely (in the principle of My being) that which I also speak to you” (John 8:25). His speech and His conduct—Himself—exactly tallied. He was in every way the truth: not a word to recall, nor a way to question. All was genuine—this always in Him Who was the Holy, the True, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God.

And what shall one say of that mighty work of His which in depth exceeded all that was possible even throughout His days here below? Happily we have the Holy Spirit to pronounce unerringly. He, “subsisting in the form of God, counted it not a thing to be grasped to be on equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking a bondman's form, becoming in likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, yea death of the cross” (Phil. 2:6-8). “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).

Such is “the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, [Lord] of glory.” Can any considerations, can any words, rise up to the simple overwhelming strength of what God thus tells us of Him? Has He not said (Luke 9:23, 26), “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me?” and “whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed when he cometh in his own glory, and of the Father, and of the holy angels?” Again, has He not laid down, “When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, nor thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors; lest haply they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee? But when thou makest a feast, bid the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind; and thou shalt be blessed, because they have it not to recompense thee; for thou shalt be recompensed in the resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:12-14). What more withering of the world's glory than “what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15)? Do we truly believe it? And where was respect of persons then in His sight? It never had a moment's place; nor should it have with us, who believe in Him. His glory may well and forever eclipse every rival—that of the world especially which crucified Him.

The Advocacy of Christ: 4

IT remains that I should seek to show a little how truth stands in the application of Christ's advocacy to the saint. We have seen the main fact, the doctrine, and its relation to the truth of Christ our righteousness and of the propitiation, into which, of course, we need not enter now. It is a subject which is more or less familiar to all here. Let us then endeavor to adhere to the special truth that claims a somewhat fuller illustration just now, that is, Christ's advocacy; and now not only the truth in itself, but in its application to the soul. This too we find in the writings of the same apostle John. It is not doubted that we find the principle elsewhere, but we are indebted to the apostle John for its brightest presentation. Just as Paul lets us best see the priest, and this in connection with our being a sanctified, purged, and perfected people by virtue of the blood of Christ, so here we have the advocacy of the Lord Jesus for those who, having eternal life, are brought into communion with the Father and His Son.

Here let me direct your attention more particularly to the Gospel of John, chap. 13, where it is said of the Lord Jesus, when He was about to depart out of this world unto the Father, that “having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.” What blessed comfort for the needy! He loved them unto the end. Even when He goes out of the world, it is only to work for His own in another way. On the one hand we have the enemy in all the malice of his activity against the Lord Jesus. He had put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray Him. On the other hand, we have the Son of God in all the fullness of divine love to His own, spite of defiling influences, “Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, &c.” Thus it is not only that He goes back to God in all the purity in which He came from Him as God, but also with the glory which the Father had conferred upon Him.

“Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God, he riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself.” He is the servant still. It is the task divine love must take up for such a world as this. Man loves to figure and be somebody for a little while; God humbles Himself, and becomes a man, yea, a bondman, in order to deliver from self and Satan, loving and serving to the end, not merely as now because of wretchedness and sin. It could not be otherwise. It is exactly what Jesus did, and does, and will do. Love serves, and seeks the good of others. We see it not only in the Son, but in the Father Himself also though in another way. “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”

Such is love, but it was displayed above all in the Son. Jesus would intimate what would occupy His heart about us when He should be on high; especially as it would prove no small difficulty for the Jewish mind or any other. Further, it was meant to form the heart and ways of the saints in their mutual relations. He shows them in this significant act that He was still to be their Servant in divine love. His cross would in no way exhaust the ever-flowing and fresh spring, for it was not a question of expiation only; but, if He was going up into glory, He would work so that they might have part with Him, even while they were upon earth, being destined to share that glory into which He was gone, and would come thence for them. Therefore “he took a towel and girded himself, and after that poureth water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet.”

Carefully remember that all through the context it is the washing of water by the word, and not by blood. In no case, so far as this scene typifies, have we propitiation here. The doctrine of the chapter is exclusively grounded on cleansing by water. No doubt the very same Son of God shed His blood for His own; but this was, observe, to wash us from our sins and expiate guilt before God. Here it is the cleansing by water of these when reconciled to God, meeting the failures and sins of saints in their daily walk. “If any man sin;” but it is as saints that the Lord here regards them—as His own; not those that grace seeks and brings to Christ out of the ranks of a rebellious world, but such as were already His own, and loved accordingly. And this was the way in which He would prove His love: He would cleanse them in divine grace when He went up on high. He showed them here what He would do there. He washes the feet of those already bathed—bathed in water, and washed with water. It is the word used at first, then throughout the believer's career. The bathing that He supposes as a ground for washing their feet is water, not blood, although there was blood at first too and of everlasting efficacy. But here water only is meant.

For remember “This is He that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood.” This it is the more important to recall, because it is one of the truths that has well-nigh dropped out of the professing church of God. Whoever met a man yet in the ordinary profession of Christianity that understood well the washing of water by the word? But few indeed have any just idea of it whatever. Some may count this plain speaking; but is there not a cause? At any rate it is quite evident that the truth intended is of no less value for saints. It is the provision of grace against what defiles in our walk. One is far from meaning that the godly persons included in the previous statement have not had some real effect of the truth itself; for we may be quite sure grace has secured that. But I am now speaking of intelligence in the word which rightly applies it, and so avoids utter misconstruction of a really important part of divine truth. Refer it to baptism, and you have absurdity as well as false doctrine; use it as the symbol of new birth, and of the subsequent cleansing by the word for the saints when defiled, and you have truth most needed.

For that which the Lord then and there represented is exactly what the Holy Ghost is carrying on here below in answer to Christ's advocacy on high. For evidently another truth is intimately connected with it, the action of the Holy Ghost now sent down from heaven, and this, we know, grounded upon Christ's ascension. For, having accomplished redemption, He went on high, and is glorified at God's right hand, whence He sent down the Holy Ghost here, Who, in answer to His advocacy with the Father, works in us by the word. Hence therefore is readily seen how it applies to the soul. “If any one sin, we have an advocate with the Father.” Carrying out the purposes of that advocacy, as far as concerns the saints in their need, the Spirit of God brings home the word in power to the conscience and in every detail of our practice day by day.

Let us just refer to a clear instance in another Gospel, which may show that the principle runs through scripture. We have seen that the doctrine and the application are particularly found in John, as bound up with divine life and communion. But now take an instance from the great moralist among the four evangelists, who was inspired to give us his account how Peter fell into a public and scandalous offense, calculated to shake the confidence of all weak believers. For, as he was a weighty man, and a well-known leader, the public fall of such a one denying his own Master in the hour of His greatest need, and this with oaths so solemnly and repeatedly and openly as in Peter's case, could not but necessarily be a tremendous shock to the infant company of the disciples who were then gathering to the name of the Lord Jesus. This being so flagrant a case, and recorded for our admonition, the Spirit of God shows us how it was dealt with by the Lord. First he had been solemnly warned. When boasting of his love, he was told of the fall that was at hand—told of it in presence of his fellows undisguisedly, but also with the most tender desire if peradventure he might only be wise enough to profit by it. Alas! it is part of the state of him who is about to fall that he does not realize his danger.

Here it was Peter's own Master Who told him what impended; and he had confessed before that Jesus was a divine person, for he had owned Him to be the Son of the living God. Nevertheless, our ears are but heavy when we like not to hear, and we do not understand what we do not at the present time feel to be our own need. Unpalatable truths pass over us: what is then said is “a parable,” as we find with the disciples on a previous occasion. Peter therefore had no deep impression left on his soul, no vivid sense of need produced. Indeed such a fall, an aggravated outward evil, is always the effect of inward or secret failure before God. It neither comes alone nor all at once. Before this, Peter's case, though a man singularly fervent and of earnest purpose, had not wanted certain traces of unjudged forwardness and self-confidence. And this it was that furnished the occasion; for the apostle was so sure of himself and of his own courage that, if everybody else denied the Master, it was impossible to his own mind that Peter could. Yet this was the man that denied the Christ of God through fear of a mere servant-girl. So it is: if unbelieving and unwatchful, we fall into the very thing in which we are proudest, and in the way that is most humbling to us.

(To be continued, D.V.)

Letter of Pope Leo XIII on the Unity of the Church: 6. Church as Teacher

6—Does the Church Teach?

THERE is no assumption more widely accepted, not only by Rome but throughout Christendom, than the teaching-authority or magisterium of the church. Nor is it easy to conceive a claim more opposed to every fact and principle of revelation, or more derogatory to the rights of God. Yet it prevails wherever the Catholic idea governs the imagination. That the church teaches this, and denies that, sounds grand and imposing; but all is vague, where we need certainty; and if sifted, it ends in the authority of clergy or the infallibility of the Pope.

God has revealed His mind conclusively on this in 1 Cor. 3 “What then is Paul, and what Apollos? Ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to each; I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything, nor he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one thing; and each shall receive reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow-laborers: God's husbandry, God's building ye are” (vers. 5-9). What can be clearer? God employs gifted men as joint-servants, His journeymen; but the church is the object of their labors. They teach from Him; the church is taught. The apostle not only contrasts the church with the fellow-workmen, but he claims the magisterium for God, Who employed the apostles and all others of His servants for the church's good.

It is nothing at all to the purpose, to cite John 10:37, 38; 15:24, or Matt. 28:18-20, Mark 16:16 any more than John 14:16-17; 15:26, 27; 16:7-13, or Luke 10:16 and John 20:21. No Christian doubts that Christ's words carry divine authority, or that what the apostles taught and wrote is no less authoritative (Mark 16:20, Rom. 1:5). But how is it that darkness so veiled the Encyclical that not one scripture referred to means that the church teaches? that every one means that the church is taught by Him or His servants? The Pope deceived himself. He undertook to prove that the church teaches, which is not even touched by one of his quotations of scripture; all of which at most show that Christ teaches the church, either by His Spirit or through servants sent and qualified of Him to that end. Timothy's committing what he had heard from Paul to faithful men (2 Tim. 2:1, 2) was ministry to teach the church, the reverse of the church teaching.

Thus then the true magisterium is of the Lord Jesus, Who is not dead but risen and ascended.

Only thus and then indeed was He given as Head over all things to the church; and from the right hand of God He continues such gifts as are for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a full grown man, to stature-measure of the fullness of the Christ. The Head continues His functions without fail, and cares not only for duly giving “joints and bands” (Col. 2), but that “all the body,” ministered to and united by their means, shall increase with the increase of God. His love can no more cease than His power: one moment's breach would be as fatal to the church, as the severance of the head from the natural body.

Unbelief as to the Lord's present and continual guardianship of the flock of God as the Great and Chief Shepherd is the root of this presumptuous usurpation. If it be replied that such a heavenly Head can only be apprehended by faith, and that the church, while on earth, needs an earthly supreme ruler, we answer that the reply betrays the enemy's deceit. For we are expressly called to walk by faith, not by sight; and as the heavenly Head makes the church a divine institution, so an earthly head makes the body as earthly as itself. To say that we have two heads, one heavenly and another earthly, is not only a baseless fable added to the truth of scripture, but an elevation of a mortal to share His glory Who is Lord of lords and King of kings, and an impiety on which God will not fail to take vengeance when His day comes.

Is it not strange to hear the champion of church tradition saying, that “every revealed truth without exception must be accepted?” (p. xxiv.) Had he forgotten the Judge of quick and dead ruling that the Jews who set up their authoritative magisterium in His day (and it still abides, much older than Rome's) “made void the word of God on account of their tradition” (Matt. 15:6)? They charged His disciples with transgressing the tradition of the elders; whereas He acquitted His followers of all sin in the matter, and convicted the Jewish leaders of transgressing the commandment of God because of their tradition. Such is the inevitable hypocrisy of those Jews or Christians, who teach as doctrines men's precepts. Assuming God's place, they really fall into the devil's snare.

It is in vain then, as we agree, to speak of zeal to keep the unity of the Spirit, unless we hold “one faith.” How far Romanism is true to “the faith” has been shown in §4. Nor is their flagrant departure surprising; for they have overlaid the holy deposit by their superstitions and profanely fabulous supplements. The true rule of faith is thus hidden from them. God has not left the faithful without the certainty of His mind. As the Lord laid down so solemnly (in the Rich man and Lazarus), “They have Moses and the prophets: let them hear them “; so we can say, We have Christ and the apostles. There is the Christian magisterium. It is not gifts or ministry, however real and precious in their place, but the teaching of the Lord Jesus and of those He inspired to give by the Holy Spirit what they could not bear before redemption.

Hence says an inspired man behind none, If any one think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write to you are the Lord's commandment (1 Cor. 14:37); and another later says for all, We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby we know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error (1 John 4:6). None but the inspired are entitled so to speak. They therefore to us speak permanently in what the Holy Spirit empowered them to write. If we hear them, we are blessed. Woe to all that hear not them Such are of the world and not of God.

What says Popery here? That Christ and the apostles could not safely give God's mind and will, without a living judge of controversy now to make their sense clear! Did God and His servants need the Pope and his vassals to do what they failed to do? Such is the arrogance of Romanist unbelief that confronts us habitually. Therefore do they enlarge, like Donatists and other heretics of old, on the obscurity of scripture. Do they not show their hostility to it by forbidding a Romanist to read even their own version without a permission in writing from his parish priest or his confessor on pain of being refused absolution? So any one can see in the last Session of the Council of Trent (rule iv).

But their irreverent enmity to scripture goes farther still. For to embarrass the Protestant and to exalt what they call the church (in reality their own Romish sect), they take infidel ground and deny the authority of the scriptures without the sanction of the church. You cannot, say they, know them to be God's word unless the church declares them so. But this, far from being true, is blasphemous. The O.T. derived no authority from Israel, but gave divine authority to all their institutions, rites, and statutes; while it convicted them of continual transgression in violating the law. Just so it is the N.T. which reveals the Lord's building His church, His order, gifts of ministry, worship, and will generally. In both Testaments it is God's word, which will judge man, instead of sanctioning Christendom's sin in pretending to judge what is of God. Israel transmitted the O.T., as Christendom the New as well as Old. And the Jew, of the two, was more faithful than Romanism and other sects; for they dared to add books, which their own favorite father, St. Jerome, confessed to be uncanonical, the Apocrypha, which books are not in Hebrew.

On their own showing Romanists are thereby seduced from God's authority to man's. They believe not God but the church; their principle makes the church's word surer than God's. Now our Lord and Savior took all pains to teach that faith is in God's word because He communicates it; those only believing in His name when they saw signs, He did not trust (John 2). To receive His testimony is to set to one's seal that God is true. This alone is divine faith, and has His authority commanding the soul. To believe His word because of the church is to believe the church, not God. So the Lord said, Verily, verily, he that heareth My word and believeth Him that sent Me hath life eternal (John 5). Thus it is the saints agree in the faith. They each and all believe God's word. Nowhere in scripture is there such a human faith as believing what the church believes.

On the face of the N.T. neither Jews nor Gentiles believed in the authority of the church. The Jews of Beræa, were even commended for searching the O.T. scriptures when the apostle Paul preached the gospel. The heathen heard what was no less inspired in the gospel; so that Dr. Milner in his End of Controversy had to own exceptional grace on their part who could know nothing of the church. But this lets out the real ignorance of the Romanists generally: they rest on saving ordinances administered by their priests, and not on that grace which alone saves any soul through the faith of Christ.

Further, it is plain to all that the great bulk of the N.T. Epistles is expressly addressed to all the faithful (in one case, with the bishops and deacons). The Holy Spirit therefore confided in the spiritual capacity of every believer, in open contrast with Romanism. In his first Epistle Paul adjured them that this letter of his be read to all the holy brethren. In his last he, in view of the perilous times of the last days, directed to scripture as the main safeguard, and to every scripture as God-inspired and profitable. Doubtless we need the Holy Spirit's grace against our own thoughts; but this gift every true Christian has. Error too has come far more from the clever and learned than from the simple believer. Rome's antagonism to God at all points is too evident.

Before the church began, the Lord in John 5 laid down in order the various testimonies which made the Jews inexcusable: (1) John the Baptist's witness, (2) the Son's works, (3) the Father's voice, and (4) the scriptures. Beyond dispute the Lord attaches the utmost weight to what was written. “For if ye believed Moses, ye would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?” Scripture has the character of a standard beyond all that was unwritten. It is only in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians that we hear of doctrines that were taught, not written. No such thought appears in the later Epistles. God took care to give His mind in a sure and permanent form. To impress into service such a text as this shows the lack even of appearances. The church does not teach, but is taught. The Lord's servants teach. Theirs is the ministerium, His the Magisterium.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:22

THE immediate descendants of Shem are next enumerated, it would seem in the order of birth, as Arpachshad, the progenitor of the chosen line, stands in the third place, neither first nor last, either of which might be done as elsewhere for special reasons.

“The sons of Shem, Elam, and Asshur, and Arpachshad, and Lud, and Aram” (ver. 22).

Elam, the first apparently in natural order, gave his name to that part of Khusistan, which the Greeks and Romans called Elymais, which had of old Shushan for its capital, of which we hear so much in the book of Esther (1:2, 5; 2:3, 5, 8; 15; 4:16; 8:14, 15; 9:11, 15, 18; as also in Neh. 1:1). There has been no little debate among men of learning on the precise locality, some contending (as Dean Vincent, Anc. Comm. i. 439) for Shuster on the Pasitigris or Kuran, others for Susan a good deal to the east of Shuster. But Mr. Loftus, following Sir W. F. Williams, appears to have set the question at rest in favor of Shush (to the northwest of Shuster), where only an immense mound of ruins remains of the once magnificent fortress and palace of the Persian monarchs, possessed before that by the king of Babylon, as Dan. 8:2 attests. There it was that the prophet saw the vision of the Persian ram, and the Greek or Macedonian he-goat, though some will have it that the prophet was only there in vision. It is known that Nabopolassar, father of Nebuchadnezzar, seized the land of Elam or Susiana, which succumbed afterward to Cyrus; and Susa or Shushan became the regular residence of the Persian monarch for a part of the year. There is no reason to doubt that the excavations made in our day lay bare the plan, with certain remains of “the palaces,” indicating a structure, with its dependent buildings, which occupied a square of 1,000. feet each way, in a massive style of architecture with fluted columns, and those in the outer groups with bases like an inverted lily (which Shushan means).

In the days of Abraham we bear of Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, with his three allies coming 2,000 miles to punish his vassal kings in the vale of Siddim: a plain proof of early power, though signally chastised by the father of the faithful. It seems that subsequently the Hamites, who earlier still rose to power in the east as well as south-west, gave the name of Cissim to this district, as Herodotus (v. 49) and Strabo let us know. They were Cossaei, and Cushites.

But it is of importance to mention that Elam joined the Medes to overthrow Babylon, as we see predicted in Isa. 21:2, the latter a Japhetic race, as the former was of Shem. In Jerusalem's day yet to come Elam will figure with its confederates against Jerusalem. For the mysterious succession here, as in Isa. 14, not applying to the past, looks on to the future, when the last Shebna shall give way to the anti-typical Eliakim, (Whom God hath appointed). Yet we know also from the assured word of prophecy, that however ravaged in the past (Ezek. 32:24, 25, and Jer. 49:34-38), Elam will have its captivity brought again in the latter days according to Jer. 49:39.

On Asshur there is the less motive for dilating, as every reader of scriptural history knows how splendid a part their race played in the comparatively early history of the world, when the struggle for predominance seemed to lie between Assyria and Egypt. Of this we find authentic accounts in the O. T. especially when both came into collision, the Assyrian especially, with the chosen people in its decay through idolatry, sweeping away the kingdom of Israel, and menacing that of Judah. But the awful check given to Sennacherib in the height of his scornful pride soon proved no real opportunity to Egypt; for Babylon that joined in destroying Nineveh was destined of God to be the head of power, as all know according to God's word. Here again shall mercy triumph over judgment; and Isa. 19 is express that in the day of Messianic power and glory Israel shall be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth. We need not speak of Israel, but may say that this was never the case with Egypt and with Assyria in the past. Both wrought innumerable evils for man; both sinned shamelessly against God. But what cannot, will not, mercy work on God's part, even for the enemies of His guilty and chastised people? What a monument will not the trio be “in that day”!

Of Arpachshad we may say still less; for he leads directly down to the time of promise, about which the O.T is almost wholly occupied.

Lud is the next son of Shem; and there is the more need of care, as there was another race of similar name which had its seat in Africa, the first named of the Mizraim or Egyptian peoples, of whom we have spoken (Gen. 10:13). There was thus Ludim of Ham, as well as of Shun. Josephus (Ant. i. § 4) was justified in stating that the latter race settled in Asia Minor, the Lydians. Herodotus (i. 7) says indeed that the Maeones or early dwellers in the far from definite land called Lydia, for its extent changed greatly from time to time, afterward adopted the name of Lydians, being in fact as he thought the same people. But this was a mistake. Even Strabo (xii. xiv.) recognizes on ancient testimony, that they were distinct races, as Niebuhr (Hist. of Rome, i. 32) and others in modern times are convinced. The Maeones were the early Japhetic settlers whom the Shemitic Lydians conquered. Indeed that careful historian, Dionysius (i. 30), notices that the Lydians had nothing in common with their Pelasgian predecessors. It can hardly be doubted that Jer. 46:9 and Ezek. 27:10; 30:5, refer to the African race, perhaps Isa. 66:19, though this be not so certain. But they join in the great catastrophe of “that day.” Of Aram we shall speak in considering ver. 23.

The Offerings of Leviticus: 2. Burnt Offering

Lev. 1:1-9

LET it be noticed that chaps. 1.-3. are one utterance of Jehovah. They are the three offerings of a sweet odor to Him, though differing in other respects. They are the positive side of Christ as a fire offering, a savor of rest to Jehovah. They are not for inadvertent sin against any of His commandments, or for guilt where His name and ritual may enter, or for reparation in His holy things, or in neighborly wrongs. The first were God's appointed ground and means of approach to Him Who had come down to dwell in their midst, but in His sanctuary, the tent of meeting for His people. From chap. 4. to 6:7, are sin and guilt offerings to remove hindrances or restore interrupted communion with Him Who on the day of atonement established the title of His people to draw near Him.

The most important of the sweet savor gifts or presentations was the Burnt Offering. With this the olah or holocaust, Jehovah began.

“And Jehovah called unto Moses and spoke to him out of the tent of meeting, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them, When a man of you presenteth an offering to Jehovah, ye shall present your offering of the cattle, of the herd and of the flock. If his offering [be] a burnt offering of the herd, he shall present it a male, perfect; at the entrance of the tent of meeting he shall present it for his acceptance before Jehovah. And he shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him to atone for him. And he shall slay the bullock before Jehovah; and Aaron's sons, the priests, shall present the blood and sprinkle the blood round about on the altar that [is at] the entrance of the tent of meeting. And he shall flay the burnt offering and cut it up into its pieces. 7And the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire on the altar, and lay wood in order on the fire; and Aaron's sons, the priests shall lay the parts, the head, and the fat, in order on the wood that [is] on the fire which [is] on the altar. But its inwards and its legs shall he wash in water; and the priest shall burn all on the altar, a burnt offering, a fire-offering of sweet odor to Jehovah.”

Had there been no sin in man, or death through it, we could scarce conceive of a burnt offering. Yet it is an offering neither for sin nor for guilt, but God glorified where sin was by a victim, the blood of which covered it from God's eyes, as the fire consumed it and brought out nothing but sweet savor. The steer, which the offerer brought near as an offering, presented in type the perfectness of Christ in giving Himself up to death in love and for the glory of God, unreservedly surrendering His life yet in obedience, the plainest contrast with Adam forfeiting his by disobedience. It was for the offerer's acceptance, and it made atonement for him; which could not be without death and the shedding of blood, and the fire-testing of divine judgment which consumed all with no other consequence than a savor of rest to Him.

A sinful man can approach God on this ground only. It foreshadowed Christ, Who through the Spirit eternal offered Himself spotless to God; or as He said beforehand, Therefore doth the Father love Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it up again. No one taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again: this commandment I received of My Father. So in Heb. 10 quoting Psa. 40, He says, Lo! I am come to do Thy will, O God. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. He came thus to replace what the first man wrought in wronging God, by His perfect giving Himself up to death and judgment that God might be glorified in Him, now man, and thus clothe with His own acceptance those who believed in Him. Now the Son of man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. Great as was Adam's sin, infinitely greater is the Second man's obedience unto death; and who can sum up the immense and countless results in blessing for faith now, as forever and for the universe when power will act publicly to God's glory!

It was not the priest's part but the offerer's to present the victim at the entrance of the tent of meeting, or at the brazen altar (ver. 3). It was be too, who laid his hand on the head of the burnt offering (ver. 4). This signified identification by grace with the offering. The acceptance of the holocaust was transferred to the offerer. As the Son emptied Himself to become not man only but a bondman, and, when so found, humbled Himself in obedience as far as death on a cross, God answered, not by reconciling and forgiving only but, by setting man in His person and through His work in His glory. Only none share the blessedness but those who believe, certainly not such as despise Himself and God's call by unbelief. After the animal was slain, the proper priestly work began in sprinkling the blood round about on the altar (ver. 5); as it was theirs to put fire on and lay wood to feed it (vers. 7, 8). The washing in water accomplished for the offering inwardly and outwardly the purity which was intrinsically true only of Christ. And this went up to God under His absolutely searching judgment an odor of rest (ver. 9). It has been justly remarked that the word for “burn” here, not in the offerings for sin or trespass, is the same as for burning the incense: a striking if minute proof of their essential difference, though both coalesce in setting forth fully the wondrous death of Christ.

The Scripture of Truth: 4

Such is the strained condition west and east. Not only is it the fact, but the very powers which thus arm excessively are confessedly perplexed and most anxious under the ever-increasing burden, which they necessarily incur on all sides through these bloated armaments. It is the unwitting preparation for the changes and conflicts which precede the great day when the self-exalting king in the Holy Land is worshipped, yet worships “the god of fortresses.” People do not worship what they do not prize or covet. The most audacious in pride knows his own nothingness and bows down to some unworthy superstition. Such a secret but enslaving power is unbelief. The willful one that sets up in Jerusalem and the temple may so far remind us of Napoleon, who, however inordinate in his vanity, unscrupulous in conscience of heart, the ground of their engrafted fables? Isa. 11 clearly reveals him, and his end at that time: “With the breath of his lips shall he (Messiah) slay the wicked (one).” This is the man. The text is referred to and applied by the apostle in 2 Thess. 2:8, “And then shall the lawless one be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the appearing of his coming.” The king is the same person who is designated “the wicked” in our version of Isa. 11 and “the lawless one” in the R. V. of 2 Thess. 2. It is a single individual, and “lawless” more precisely describes him than “wicked.” He is the man who defies all law, all authority of whatever sort, every object of reverence, every heathen god, yea the true God, in order to set up himself above all. Not merely does he trample upon law and gospel, but on God Himself, and his image he sets up in the temple of God. As he reigns over the Jews, it is natural that for this he should choose the holy place in Jerusalem. “The prince that shall come,” or Roman emperor in the coming day, of whom you were hearing in chap. 9. is not referred to in this passage. But the prince of Rome in the latter day is to support the lawless king of the Jews, as its chief had the guilt of gratifying the Jews in crucifying the true King. The Roman prince or emperor of that day will be a strong ally of the Antichrist that reigns over “the land.” Rome will then have got clear of the Popes; but instead of being better, it also will rush to perdition. The Roman emperor with his satellite kings will have turned upon Babylon, consumed her flesh, and destroyed her with fire.

Here evidently the Protestant school are at fault; for they cannot deny that it is absurd to suppose the Pope would lead his vassals to destroy Babylon, whether as “city” or as “whore.” Yet it is certain that the Beast and his horns are to do so. This is intelligible and plain when we believe that the Beast is the revived Roman empire, to which even the most corrupt religious power is obnoxious. The Beast in Rome is as willful as the king in Palestine, and will not brook the harlot's interference. Babylon is therefore destroyed by him and his horns. The Beast is the coming Roman prince. The empire will be reconstituted, as surely as anything, little as politicians expect it; and insatiable in his ambition, worshipped his own star. The anti-Messiah will worship the god of fortresses.

“Thus shall he do in the most strongholds with a strange god, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory, and he shall cause them to rule over the many, and shall divide the land for gain” (39). There again we see the unmistakable marks of a Jewish king in the land. We recognize in “the many” the technical word for the mass of the Jews; as “the land” in Daniel can legitimately be no other than Palestine.

“And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him; and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships” (40). Can there be more positive proof sought that “the king” in these verses is quite distinct from the two contending lines hitherto described? Here it is beyond doubt that on the contrary the kings of the north and of the south attack him. How could he be the same as either of the assailing parties?

But there is a yet more important series of details to point out now, about which there have been often great disputes in the minds of Christians, simply because they have looked at the wrong time and place. The Spirit of God says a little more here about this lawless king. We learn that the king of the south appears to be the first in opposing him. This is resented by the king of the north who comes down with still greater resources, indeed, as it is said, “like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships.” From this point to the end of the chapter the account is of the king of the north. Impossible to ask fuller proof that it is no longer the willful king in the land, but the king of the north that is described henceforth, ravaging but destroyed beyond help, as in the end of chap. 8.

One may be asked why “the king” should be dropped here without telling what becomes of him. Great pains had been taken elsewhere to mark him out as devoted to destruction when the Lord shines from heaven at His appearing. Of course one does not heed the disgusting fiction, with which the Talmud speaks of Armillus. But the Jews, apart from traditions, were aware they will have to do before Messiah comes with a terrific and lawless chief in the land. Whence did they get and Dan. 7:8, lets us know somewhat of the progress to supreme power of a king with a small beginning, before whom three of the first horns were rooted up. It is not for any man to say which these are to be: least of all should we prophesy, who simply believe the prophets. Setting up to prophesy is a great sin, unless you are a prophet in the inspired sense. But it is a shame for a Christian not to believe those whom such a man as king Agrippa durst not say he disbelieved.

Here, however, we have divine ground to know that the “little horn” of the west is at first to be a small power among the other ten; and that he only becomes great by destroying three of his contemporary powers. He becomes at last not only the possessor of these three kingdoms but the suzerain of all the rest. This is the form in which he becomes emperor of the western powers. It is not a profitable even if a hopeful inquiry, to conjecture the special power which thus from little becomes so ominously great. How sad for Italy if the bad pre-eminence is to be hers! But in that verse in the progress as clearly as the facts can make it is the future, as far as God has revealed in His wisdom. There will be, it would seem from Rev. 13, a sea of confusion for the powers, out of which the Roman empire will reappear.

In that day will be the startling new policy of the latter day, when the western powers will no longer be, as now, striving after a balance one against another. We are sufficiently familiar with the balance of power that has ruled in Europe for many hundreds of years, some trying to unite with others in order to hinder predominance. By-and-by that will be abandoned. God will allow Satan to have his own way for a short time; and all authority and power will be at the back of this chief, the emperor of Rome. At that time he is allowed to dictate to the whole of them. He wields the forces of all the western powers, among the rest, sad to say, of Great Britain. This country once came under that empire. When that empire will be restored, all the divided kingdoms will have their share in the awful catastrophe.

When the Roman prince shall go to support the Jewish king, against the king of the north, they must march at his bidding. It will be, in effect, with the Lamb that they have to fight, as Rev. 17 and 19 make plain. The king of the north is the leader of the north-eastern powers, though there appears to be another behind, which (Gog) is still greater than he, that comes up afterward to his own destruction. The king of the north is so angry at the king of the south meddling with Jerusalem, that he leaves his campaign unfinished to punish the land of Egypt and its supporters. Half of Jerusalem shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city, as we have it stated in Zech. 14:2. It is expressly the coming of Jehovah's day when all nations gather against Jerusalem to battle. But there are very distinct events which occur within the compass of “that day.” “For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.” A third part in all the land had been spoken of in the previous chap. (xiii. 9), as brought through the fire, refined as silver and tried as gold; who call on Jehovah and are heard. He will say, Thou art My people; and they shall say, Jehovah is my God. Thus while we find extreme trouble, no less clear is the work of God in a remnant.

(To be continued, D.V.).

Baptism of the Holy Ghost

THIS is an expression very frequently heard at the present time; but often used, alas! with a painful lack of divine intelligence. Some will tell us that they have recently experienced it as a kind of second blessing; others are crying to God constantly, both individually and collectively, for it, both for themselves and for the church at large. But what saith the scripture? The baptism of the Spirit is first mentioned by John the Baptist in Matt. 3:11, 12. “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear, he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire: whose fan is in his hand and he will thoroughly purge his floor and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” John's work was of a highly important character. He was Jehovah's messenger, sent before His face (for it was no less a person than Jehovah Who was coming into the world) to prepare His ways. He declaimed sternly against the moral state of Israel and called for repentance and submission. Israel was not in a fit condition to receive the One that was coming. Though their national hopes were centered in Him, they were not ready for Him, and in spite of the Baptist's testimony, they discerned Him not, but refused Him and cast Him out to their own ruin. Therefore is God doing a work of another character in the world. The kingdom stands over, awaiting Israel's repentance and acknowledgment of Messiah; and God is gathering out those who are to be the heavenly joint-heirs with Jesus, baptizing them by one Spirit into one body, as the apostle speaks.

In John's Gospel the Baptist speaks of the twofold work of the Lord Jesus; He is the Lamb of God, the taker away of the sin of the world, and the Baptizer with the Holy Ghost. As to the first, he said, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). It is not that He was doing it when John spoke: the word is characteristic—He is the taker away. The work in virtue of which sin shall be entirely removed was accomplished at Calvary; but sin still remains in the world, consequently the verse in its full application looks onward to the new heavens and the new earth, wherein righteousness will dwell. But the second work of the Lord Jesus is especially before us just now. “John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, the same is he which baptiseth with the Holy Ghost” (John 1:32, 33). The Lord Jesus was Himself sealed with the Spirit as man below; risen and in glory He is the Baptizer with the Holy Ghost.

That this was not accomplished until He was glorified is plain from Acts 1:5; 11:16. In the risen state, alluding to John's words, He said, “Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence” (Acts 1:5). John added, “and with fire,” but this the Lord omits, as having no fulfillment yet. Fire is an emblem of divine judgment, as the forerunner himself explained; and Christ is the divinely appointed administrator of it. Israel is “His floor,” and at His return He will purge it, dealing with the apostate mass of the nation—the chaff to be burnt with unquenchable fire, and blessing the remnant—the wheat for the garner. It is a serious mistake that the baptism of fire is in any way going on now. It is judgment pure and simple, but this is the day of grace. It has often been observed that when the Lord read in the synagogue (Isa. 61), He broke off in the middle of the second verse “the acceptable year of the Lord,” leaving the words “and the day of vengeance of our God,” for a day yet to come (Luke 4:18-19). Some may have found difficulty in the fact that the Spirit's descent was accompanied by tongues of fire. There is a great contrast between the form of a dove as in the case of the Lord Jesus, and tongues of fire resting upon the disciples. The form was suited to the character of the recipients and to the character of the testimony they were to bear. The Lord's testimony was marked by grace. He came not to condemn the world, did not cry out and shout, nor break the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax. Of such unassuming patient grace the dove was the suited emblem. The work of the disciples was of a very solemn, though blessed character. They charged sin home upon men, the word of God by their means, judging everything before it, while conveying eternal blessing to every soul who believed the gospel. They were to be witnesses—hence “tongues"; the testimony was to branch out to the Gentiles—therefore “cloven “; they were of “fire” for the reason stated. But this was in no way the baptism of fire as careful investigation of the passages will show.

The baptism of the Spirit was accomplished on the day of Pentecost. According to the promise of the Lord Jesus He came from the Father to abide in and with the saints forever. He came to form a new thing in the earth—the church, the body of Christ. There was no such thing until the Lord took His seat on high and the Spirit descended. An earthly people were called and blessed temporally, but union with Christ in glory was quite unknown. By the Spirit's descent the waiting disciples became what they were not before. Previously they were believers with Jewish hopes, after His coming, they were members of Christ's body, made one with Him, the glorified Head, by the baptism of the Holy Ghost. I do not say that they understood it all at first; indeed it is plain they did not. The truth of the one body—the mystery—was not declared until Paul was raised up; but the body existed from the day of Pentecost. It was for Paul to write, “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free; and have all been made to drink one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:12, 13). What a place for the Christian! Accepted in His acceptance, loved with the love wherewith the Father loves Him, blessed with His blessings. The saints were baptized with the Holy Ghost from the first and thus became the church, the body of Christ; and this is never repeated. Every fresh believer is brought to share in the blessing by the reception of the Spirit consequent on faith in the Gospel. Baptism in water introduces into the outward place of profession (true or false); the baptism of the Spirit brings the believer into the unity of Christ's body, with all its privileges and blessings. How deplorably has all this been overlooked and slighted. The church has forgotten her true relationship with Christ and has lapsed into the world. True, the Lord in His mercy has drawn attention in these last days to precious truths long buried and ignored; but how many, even now, are in the dark as to it all, and cry to Him for what He has already given—the Spirit from above!

That the church needs afresh to avail herself of the Spirit's presence and power we fully believe; but that the church needs a fresh baptism of the Spirit, as many say, is darkness and error as to one of the most vital truths of the present dispensation.

W. W. F.

The Two Debtors

Luke 7:41-43

AMONG the beauties of this beautiful story is the fact that no name is given to make known who the sinful woman was, now plainly renewed by grace through faith. Many have thought her to be Mary of Magdala. But she first appears only in the chapter following, with a terrible history quite different from the woman “that was a sinner.” Others yet more strangely have fancied Mary of Bethany had once sunk into that infamy, because she too at the close anointed the Lord—with marked difference from this. Luke was inspired to leave in the shade, not the trophy of grace, but her name, whose previous life had been so shameful.

Why should any wish to know what the Lord hid? It is enough to hear what she had been; best of all that He who knew and felt all according to God, pleaded the cause of grace, as it was never pleaded before, pronounced her forgiveness, and sent her away in peace. Whether she had heard the Lord before, or only heard of Him, she came in faith. This drew her to the Lord. This made her brave the Pharisee's scorn. This bent the eyes of her heart on the Savior only, raising her above all fear of the company. The grace of God in Jesus so filled and transported her soul that at all cost she went to pour her precious unguent on His feet washed by her tears, wiped by her tresses, and covered with her kisses. She came behind as He lay at meat in Simon's house, and thus told her love, and devotedness of that heart, once so debased, now repentant and purified by faith. Not a word did she say with her lips; but the Lord Who knew the hearts of all men appreciated every feeling and every act of a new-born soul entranced with the moral glory of Christ while bowing to light and love of God rising above her many sins. Simon too saw enough to manifest his utter distance from God and alienation from His goodness; he judged as a natural man, confiding in his own righteousness, and condemning the Lord from all that passed yet more than the woman that stood at His feet behind weeping. He had gone so far as to have Him at his house, and felt assured that He could be no prophet who allowed such a woman to touch Him.

The Lord answered the Pharisee's unuttered thought, and showed Himself not only a prophet of God, but God of the prophets, come in the lowliest humiliation not to judge the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. Only, he that believeth on Him is not judged; but he that believeth not hath been already judged, because he hath not believed on the name of the Only-begotten Son of God. The Lord put the case. “A certain creditor had two debtors: one owed five hundred denaries, and the other fifty. As they had nothing to pay, he forgave them both. Which of these then will love him most?” On Simon's supposition, “He to whom he forgave most,” He said, “Thou hast rightly judged,” and contrasted the woman's deep, fervent, and humble affection with the Pharisee's scant courtesy, which told the tale sufficiently of those two hearts.

“And turning to the woman, he said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house: thou gavest me no water for my feet; but she wetted my feet with her tears, and wiped them with her tresses. Thou gavest me no kiss; but she, since I entered, ceased not kissing my feet over. With oil thou didst not anoint my head; but she with unguent anointed my feet” (vers. 44-46).

Simeon had in the temple said of Him as a babe that He was set for the fall and rising up of many in Israel, and for a sign spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts should be revealed. But there was more here. Jesus revealed God's heart, of which the Pharisee proved unconsciously that he knew nothing. The woman had learned it. His goodness had penetrated her; and her sense of it expressed itself in her profound reverence to the Lord Jesus. There she had met God; there God made Himself known to her as God of all grace. It was not dogma, but a divine person of infinite love Who attracted, filled, and fixed her heart. All her way and bearing testified to her self-judgment, to her faith, and to her love (for she loved much); as Simon's conduct demonstrated, in Jesus slighted and grace misjudged, that he knew not God. But she knew Him, or rather was known of Him.

“Wherefore, I say to thee, her many sins are forgiven. For she loved much; but he to whom little is forgiven loveth little.” Simon had unwittingly sentenced himself. Impossible to know God in Christ without discovering His goodness and our own shameful endless badness. “And he said to her, Thy sins are forgiven.” O reader, have you heard His voice? This is your need; and this is His grace. May you too believe! Are there those who resent such love to the guilty on God's part? Who resist the Savior, not knowing that they fight against God to their own ruin? How did He meet this, for well He knew it? “And He said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee: go in peace.” May it be your portion.

Reflections on Galatians 3:10-14

THE apostle continues his contrast of the two principles—law and faith. Faith brings into blessing, the father of circumcision being witness; law only curses and condemns all who have to do with it. This is at this point very solemnly shown. “For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (chap. 3:10). None can escape the keen edge of this—all who are under the law are under a curse. Notice that the apostle does not say, “as many as break the law,” but “as many as are of the works of the law.” It is taken for granted that those who undertake to fulfill its obligations utterly fail: consequently as many as go on that principle are in this solemn state before God. The quotation here is from Deut. 27 and is very striking. There Moses instructs the people that they were to set up and plaster great stones when they had gone over Jordan, and write upon them all the words of the law, setting them up in mount Ebal. There we get that six tribes, Simeon, etc., were to stand upon mount Gerizim to bless the people, and six tribes upon mount Ebal to curse. The Levites were then to say with a loud voice unto all the men of Israel, “Cursed,” etc. But where are the blessings? Not to be found in the chapter at all. Many have sought to get over the difficulty by blending chapter 28. with 27.; but this is confusion. The following chapter proceeds on a different ground altogether, and speaks merely of governmental blessings and curses of a temporal character. The two portions are entirely distinct. Why then are the blessings from mount Gerizim not named? Because God well knew they would never be wanted. Persons under the law are necessarily under the curse, so complete is the ruin and depravity of flesh.

What a solemn position for the Galatians to place themselves in, after having believed in Christ Some may say, Yes, but they were believers and therefore could take up the law and yet be exempt from the curse. But this is false reasoning. The law cannot be taken as men think proper. The law takes us, if we have aught to say to it at all. It does not ask a man whether he is converted or not, it is not in its nature so to do; it takes the man as it finds him, and says, ‘Do this and live,' with the solemn alternative of death and condemnation if there be failure. Therefore how serious for believers to place themselves in such a position! It is neither our means of justification before God, nor any means of sanctification. We were made dead to it by the body of Christ, and have therefore passed out of the sphere where it applies.

Moreover, law and faith cannot be blended, being entirely different principles. “But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for the just shall live by faith. And the law is not of faith: but the man that doeth them shall live in them” (vers. 11, 12). Here we are carried back to Habakkuk (chap. ii. 4). The prophet in his sorrow over the ruin of His people, and the (to him) mysterious dealings of Jehovah in not hastening deliverance, was told that “the just shall live by his faith.” The word is used three times in the New Testament, and each, time for a different purpose. If Rom. 1. be consulted, it will be seen that the emphasis is on “just “; in Heb. 10 on the word “live “; in Gal. 3 on “faith.” The law does not speak thus, but in a precisely opposite way—the man that doeth shall live. How vain then to try and mix the two principles! and yet this is done from one end of Christendom to the other. It is the exception to find souls that are not under law in one way or another. So little has the Epistle to the Galatians been heeded!

But the apostle could write with a grateful heart, “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (ver. 13).

Notice carefully the “us.” This is important in many of his Epistles. He and his Jewish fellow-believers had been under law, but had been brought out from hence by the Lord Jesus. The Galatians had never had to do with it, being Gentiles. Consequently they were not included in the “us.” The same thing may be observed in chap. 4. “Even as we, when we were children, were in bondage.” This means Jewish believers. As to Gentiles, “when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods.”

This would not be true of Jews. Thus are both distinguished as to their former state. Look also at Col. 2:9, “blotting out the hand-writing of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.” He does not include the Colossians in this statement, but shows the former condition of Jewish saints, and the deliverance through the work of Christ.

What inexpressible grace that Christ should take upon Him the curse of a broken law! Himself the beloved One of the Father, holy and without blemish in all His ways, yet going to such unutterable depths that souls might be delivered and blessed! The marvelous result is that the blessing of Abraham comes upon all who believe, whether Gentile or Jew. All were similarly needy and afar from God; the work of Christ is the foundation of blessing for all. “That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (ver. 14). Thus, as faith alone was the principle of blessing for Abraham, nothing else brings blessing to any. But the highest favors are bestowed where faith is, not the least being the gift of the Holy Ghost.

In the first fourteen verses of this chapter, the apostle has established very plainly two things: (1) that law never yet brought into blessing any who have been under it; (2) that the Holy Spirit was never given in connection with it.

Letter on Pastor White's 'Saints' Rest and Rapture - When?'

Dear M. C.,

Our Lord presented His coming again to the disciples in John 14:2, 3, as their proper hope. Of neither signs nor events antecedent does He say one word. He is coming to receive them to Himself and take them to the Father's home. The aim of Mr. W.'s paper is to set aside such constant expectation, which he mixes up with His presence to judge the living. By merging both in one, there is only confusion.

From 1 Thess. 1:9, 10, it is clear that the saints from their conversion lived waiting for the Lord's personal coming to take them on high to be with Himself. This was the result of the apostle's preaching the gospel unto them. “Ye turned from idols to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, even Jesus.” It is no less evident from chap. iv. that they were disappointed when some of their number had fallen asleep before that coming. Hence the apostle instructs them as to this by a fresh revelation. The Lord when He comes, would first raise from the dead those whom He had put to sleep, and next change the saints alive at that time, in order that they might all ascend together, to meet Him in the air, and be forever with Him. Hence God will bring them all along with the Lord when He appears in His day of glory.

The saints did not require to be told as to the “times and seasons “; for they already knew that “the day of the Lord would come as a thief” upon the wicked. But it surely would not overtake the saints as a thief; for they were not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore they were to watch and be sober—not looking for events as the Jews will to indicate the day, but for Himself as the hope of their hearts, Who would come and have them with Himself before the day. They knew His love and had faith in His word already.

In 2 Thess. 1, 2. the apostle affords further light on “the day of the Lord.” He exposes the false report that he had said or written, that the day had set in (or was present). He implies clearly enough that before the day would be the gathering of the glorified to the Lord; as he had already told them in his first epistle (4:13-18). For he implores them by the joyful hope of the blessed reunion not to be alarmed about that day of darkness and terror. In fact, their presence on earth was the proof that He had not come; still less was He yet present. They were confused about it all, as people are now.

So he writes in 2 Thess. 1:7, “to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and them that obey not the gospel,” the enemies of God and of His children. Now the saints were in trouble from these enemies; but then they would be in rest and come with Him when He is avenged on their troublers. As His retinue, the saints would then be with Rim, and like Him; and therefore they must have been called up previously to be with Him, as other scriptures testify. “When Christ, our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also be manifested with Him in glory” (Col. 3:4).

“The day” is the time of their manifestation with Him according to 1 John 3:1-4, “When He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” Rev. 19:11-14 is the same appearing; and the saints come with the Lord for the judgment of His enemies. This is what the apostle speaks of in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, as “the day of the Lord.”

Before “the day” great events must take place; but not a word implies their happening before He comes to receive the saints to Himself. Thus, while the apostle tells us that the “mystery of iniquity doth already work,” he says that the falling away or apostasy must come first, and next that the Man of Sin must be revealed. It is this last which introduces the day by the Lord's appearing to his destruction by the Spirit of His mouth, and to the downfall of every other evil.

There is One that hindered the revelation of the “Man of Sin,” or lawless one. He did not hinder the working of the mystery of lawlessness, for that was already at work. Thus we hear of “One that now letteth, until He be out of the way; and then shall the lawless one be revealed.”

Who can this mighty hinderer be, but the Holy Spirit? He is now forming the heavenly body the church; and when His special work in this is completed, the saints will be called away to meet the Lord in the air. Then the ground is clear for the falling away or the apostasy, and for its issues, the manifestation of the lawless one. Thus also the presence on earth of the church, in which the Holy Spirit dwells, indicates His presence Who suffers not the manifestation of the Man of Sin. Clearly the day of the Lord cannot come till the evil is manifested which the Lord is to judge, not exactly “at His coming,” but at His “appearing” or “display,” which are phrases equivalent to His “day.”

His coming is our proximate hope and expectation; and such it ought ever to have been from the first. The apostle could say, “We who are alive and remain shall not anticipate them who are asleep” (1 Thess. 4:15). Prophecy predicts no events to be looked for before the Lord's coming for His saints. The apostle says, “we who are alive,” as though he himself might be with the living saints, changed and caught up. So he was inspired to write. It was no mistake on his part, but only of unbelieving critics. Such language was expressly to maintain constant waiting. We ought to be now as the apostle was then.

What a sanctifying and glorious object for believers is the Lord's coming for them when thus held in simplicity! May nothing arise before our eyes to dim the bright and blessed hope! It is easy to judaize it, and lose its power. Error was early.

Yours affectionately in Him,

G. R.

James 2:2-4

RESPECT of persons is the instinct of self, and the reflex of the world; but it denies Christ in practice, and the reality of that intimate relationship which grace has formed between all that are His. The inspired writer singles out a particular case which he had probably witnessed, though put here hypothetically.

“For if there come into your meeting (lit. synagogue) a man gold-ringed in splendid clothing, and there come in also a poor one in vile clothing; and ye look upon him that weareth the splendid clothing, and say, Sit thou here well (or, in a good place); and ye say to the poor one, Stand thou there, or sit under my footstool, did you not make a difference among yourselves and become judges of evil thoughts” (ver. 2-4)?

One can easily understand “synagogue” used by the writer to those addressed, not literally, but as applied by a ready transition to a Christian company. It is therefore here rendered “meeting” as perhaps the nearest analogue. No one could be surprised at so worldly a spirit in a literal synagogue; it was a grief if it passed to a Christian congregation. What was less congruous with Christ than a gold-ringed man in splendid clothing? Never was He bedizened save in the bitter mockery of those about to crucify Him. Yet could He have called in a moment all the wealth and grandeur of the world around Him, had it been seasonable either for Himself or for those that represent Him here below. On high He is crowned with glory and honor, as they will be at His coming. But faith recognizes the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that, though He was rich, for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich. Now, however, is the time to follow Him on earth, indifferent to all that flesh counts desirable, and counting all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord.

Suffering for righteousness' sake, yet more for Christ's sake, ought to be precious in our eyes as Christians; and we might appropriately honor such as have won a good degree in any spiritual way. But to slight one for the garb that bespeaks his penury, and to honor another because of his gorgeous raiment attesting his wealth, is a two-fold contradiction of Christ. Even the law taught far higher principles than those that the Jews had fallen into, and that govern the Gentiles who know not God. For in the days of law it was touching to read the solicitude of God for the poor and afflicted, and the earnestness with which He urges on His people to consider them. But how much more deeply His compassion was shown in Him Who was His image! And forgetfulness of His example was serious in the eyes of James for those who owe all to His grace, Himself the Lord of glory.

Not that the scripture warrants the spirit of disrespect to the noble or the exalted. Render, says the apostle Paul, to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute [is due]; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor; even as every soul is called to be subject to the higher authorities, being set up by God in His providence, a terror not to a good work but to an evil one. Thus is the Christian relation to the powers that be in the outside world. But love is due to one another among all who bear the Lord's name, and tender compassion to such as are in danger of snare through their trials and poverty. Contempt to the poor Christian is as far from the mind that was in Christ as can be conceived.

Hence we see, before this uncomely offense is touched, how this Epistle in the very first chapter exhorted brethren to count it all joy when they fell into varied temptations; which to unbelievers are nothing but sorrow and disappointment to be got rid of by all means possible. Hence the brother of low degree was to glory in his elevation, and the rich in his humiliation, because as the flower of grass he was to pass away. More than this he who endures temptation (he declares from God) is blessed; for it is not only that grace works moral profit now, but, having here been proved, he shall receive the crown of life promised of the Lord to those that love Him. If we endure, we shall also reign with Him, as assuredly as if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him. The cross of Christ is correlative to heavenly glory; and so here His glory precedes this rebuke to the worldly spirit that despised the poor and cringed to the rich, unworthy anywhere, most of all where those showed it who professed the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, [the Lord] of glory.

Dr. Whitby and others labor to explain this of judicial assemblies which the Jews held in their synagogues; and they infer the probability that this was transferred by the converted Israelites to their meetings. This of course reduces the rebuke to partiality in case of trials between a poor man and a rich, instead of seeing that we have here a great principle universally applicable, and all the more necessary when ease and wealth and luxury began to flow in among professing Christians. So too Doddridge follows Beza in his lowering of ver. 4 (“judices male ratiocinantes”), as he also makes the opening words to mean, “and distinguish not in yourselves” according to the different characters of these two men, but only regard their outward appearance, “you even become judges who reason ill.” What is really intended is an evil moral state, out of all sympathy with our Lord, in making a difference among themselves, and becoming judges of evil thoughts, i.e., characterized by having evil thoughts, instead of weighing and feeling as in the light of God and His love by faith. It was a worldly mind.

The Advocacy of Christ: 5

BUT look at the merciful ways of the Lord Jesus; for this it is of all things we want most to see—not Peter's fall, but Christ's fullness of grace. Before it He had said (Luke 22:31), “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.” Satan demanded to have the disciples to sift them in general as wheat; and the Lord said to Simon individually, “But I (emphatically) have prayed for thee,” not merely “for you.” Ah! did not Peter need it? How sweet soon would be the proof of such interest and deep concern on the Lord's part about himself under such circumstances, as if there had not. been another to care for, and all His love were concentrated on the one on the point of such grievous dishonor of His name. “I have entreated for thee, that thy faith fail not quite. And thou, when thou hast turned again, strengthen thy brethren.” The word rendered “converted” means the turning to God, whether it be conversion originally, or the turning back when one has departed from Him. The latter is of course what is meant here. It is what we commonly call “restoration” of soul rather than what people in general understand by “conversion.” The word is suitable to either. “Thou, when once thou hast turned again, strengthen thy brethren.”

But the point I would now press and clear is the grace of the Lord that could so provide for a wanderer, and that would give the certainty of it to the soul in such an hour of distress and humiliation. That flesh and hypocrisy might take advantage is true; but such grace is needed and shown. How comforting is the truth of God! Observe that this rich grace does not appear in answer to a penitent cry. Not for a moment does one doubt that the Lord hears and answers such; but there was in the case before us a reason for speaking otherwise, and, to my mind, of no small importance. If one had only the consolation of the word of the Lord, and of His appearing on our behalf when we begin to repent of any sins and judge ourselves before God, one might perhaps think it was one's own repentance, or prayers, that drew out His grace and awakened His care. And such is the thought of many a soul around us. It is exactly where people ordinarily find themselves in Christendom. That is, they make out that a man's conversion, as well as his restoration, is in answer to his prayer, a substitution throughout of human merit for grace. Where is Christ in such a scheme? It is semi-Pelagianism.

It is not so scripture speaks. There God ever takes the first place. It was God that began the good work when the soul sought Him not; as here it is the Lord evidently that entreated even before Peter fell, not the failing man after it, though of course he did pray and weep bitterly. But the stress is thrown on the prayers of Christ, not of, Peter, however men may reason. “If any one sin,” we have—not shall have when he repents “ If any one sin, we have an advocate with the Father.” It is the settled possession that Christians always have. Sin is inexcusable always in a, saint; but if one should be guilty, “we have an advocate with the Father.”

His advocacy brings us to repentance. It is not our repentance that makes Him our advocate, but His grace which puts all in effectual activity.

Have you seized the truth? Thus, as grace “it is at the beginning, so is it throughout every step of the way. The spring is mercy all through. Far I am from implying there is no righteousness; for indeed without it not anything else were good. Without the full maintenance of God's character and ways, all must be wrong; but this we have in Christ Himself, Who is our life, “Jesus Christ the righteous.” And besides, as we know, the fullest account has been taken of all that we were. “And He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.” It may not be in precisely the same way as for the believer; but still He died for all. The blood is on the mercy-seat, and this is not limited to the people of God merely, but embraces the largest outlook over God's creation, so that the gospel can go out righteously in His grace to all commanding “all everywhere to repent” no doubt, but appealing in love, persuading and warning souls far and wide that they may be saved.

It appears to me then, that we have the subject distinct thus far in God's word. We are born of water and of the Spirit. It is that action of the Holy Ghost by the word of God, carrying out the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which first of all the soul is set apart to God. Hence we read that He saved us “by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost.” There we find what is clearly from the starting-point of the Christian's career. For “God chose us from the beginning to salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.” So also Christ “loved the church, and gave himself up for it, that he might sanctify it, cleansing it with the washing of water by the word.” The disciples were clean through the word Jesus spoke to them; certainly not in baptism, a heathen idea, leading to antinomianism and self-deception, and bound up with sacerdotalism, but by the Spirit through the word of God.

The truth too is often taught without the figure, as where we read in James 1, that we are “begotten by the word of truth.” It is the same principle in 1 Peter 1: “We are born again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible,” which is true from the very first.

The same distinction is maintained in the symbolic action of John 13, to which I have already referred. He that is washed “(or bathed) needeth not save to wash his feet.” “Bathed” also is in the water of the word. It is not in blood, but in water still. Only this is when a man is first converted, or set apart unto God. He is bathed, as it were all over. Afterward, when there is a particular case of failure, the word is applied by the Spirit to convict us of that failure, and to humble us for it in self-judgment. So we see in Luke 22:61, that the Lord turned and looked upon Peter when he fell. “And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.” It was the washing of water by the word. The words of Jesus were recalled in all their life and power to his soul. “And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.”

There is another remark, too, that I have to add as to this. We come to further details in the practical application to this particular instance. The work was not completely done when Peter went out and wept bitterly. This was right and seasonable; it was of God; but it was not complete. And therefore we find that the Lord Jesus afterward deals with the inmost soul of this very Peter. As far as the apostles were concerned, His first interview was with Peter, with him alone. But even after this we learn what must be to make the work complete, and this not judicially, but in the perfection of His love. “Simon, son of Jonas,” said He, “lovest thou me more than these?” Simon protests He knew that he dearly loved Him. The Lord repeats the question of his love, and the third, time takes up his claim of special attachment; on which Peter was grieved that He said the third time, Dost thou love me dearly? Well he might feel; for it became evident that his threefold denial was before the Lord's eye, and its root also. And now Peter gets to see how it came to pass. Not but that he had wept over it, and felt already his great sin and the Lord's great grace; but had he thoroughly judged himself?

( To be continued, D.V.)

Letter of Pope Leo XIII on the Unity of the Church: 7. Church or Assembly

7. The Church or Assembly, Christ’s Body

TALK as men may of “possessing the supreme authority,” “the primacy,” it is a fleshly ambition, uniformly reproved by our Lord Himself even in the apostles. What is it in their pretended succession, of men that call themselves apostles and are not so, but lie? He, Who on the holy mount was displayed for a moment in the glory of His coming kingdom as Son of man, and owned by the Father as His beloved Son, laid before the disciples the then strange words, The Son of man is about to be delivered into men's hands. Even then arose the unworthy dispute who should be greatest, which the Lord met by setting a child by Him, and saying, Whosoever shall receive this little child in My name receiveth Me, and whosoever receiveth Me receiveth Him that sent Me. For he that is least among you all, he is great.

How evident that the Lord expressly puts down by anticipation all such self-seeking as the Pope claims in virtue of Peter! The Lord looks for self-renunciation. So, when James and John, like Elijah, asked for fire from heaven to consume the Samaritans who did not receive the Master, He turned and rebuked them. Even the Seventy He corrects in their joy over the demons subjected through His name: their becoming joy should be that their names were written in heaven, in divine grace, not in miraculous power. Their place was to watch for His coming, and meanwhile to work as His bondmen in His love. Let them beware of the servant that said in his heart, My lord delays to come, and began to beat the men-servants and the maid-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken. He utterly reversed for His followers the world's order, and taught the guest to put himself in the last place; that, when the host comes, he may say, Friend, go up higher. Hence Peter, when Cornelius fell at his feet in homage, raised him up, saying, Stand up; I myself also am a man. What a contrast with those who falsely arrogate the fisherman's chair, and require their venerable brethren, cardinals and all, to kiss their toe as they sit on the high altar of St. Peter's! who instead of being subject to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake as Peter commands, instead of honoring the king in his place, abuse the alleged see of Peter to kick the royal crown in the plenitude of presumption, or to humble an erring and haughty emperor to the dust with a haughtiness more aspiring than his own! Such is not the mind of heaven but from beneath, not of Christ but of Satan, and all the worse because veiled under the hollow hypocrisy of calling oneself “servant of the servants of God.” Has the Pope, or the papal system, ever accepted these revealed truths? If so, their practice wholly contradicts them. What is this morally?

But let us briefly turn from the unworldly lowliness which the Lord enjoined for “the fitting and devout worship of God,” which it is said “must be also” (p. xxxi.), “as well as salutary laws and discipline.” Let us try Romanist worship by the written standard of God's assembly in public edification, the Lord's supper, and discipline. The inspired directions are laid down in 1 Cor. 5, 11, 12, 14. Not one of these is found according to revealed truth, though the Encyclical says, “All these must be found in the Church.” Undoubtedly they ought to be, yet who can deny the total departure of Popery from every one of them?

1. We have the constitution of the church clearly shown us in 1 Cor. 12 The irregularities at Corinth drew out the apostle's instructions so much the more fully. Its unity depends on the presence of the Holy Spirit sent forth at Pentecost. He acts in it through its members to the glory of the Lord Jesus. God set the members each one in the body, as it pleased Him; if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. This is so true that the apostle tells the assembly in Corinth, Ye are Christ's body and members in particular. And God set some in the church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, &c. It is true that “faith alone cannot compass so great, excellent, and important an end” as is proposed in that divine society the church.

But the Encyclical Letter of the Pope overlooks the power and presence of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. He it is Who baptized all into one body, however dissimilar the constituents. Jews or Greeks that believed, they are now one body, of which Christ in heaven is the Head, the sole head known to scripture. As there is one Head living and glorified, so are they now in the Spirit's power but one body. Faith and life had been before; but not unity till the Holy Spirit personally came so to constitute. This is Christ's body. It was true in principle locally, for it is Christ's body as far as it was then manifested in Corinth; but the very next verse looks at it in fact as a whole on earth. For apostles, prophets, teachers, &c., were not of course in the Corinthian assembly, but in the assembly of God in its entirety here below. This Protestantism ignores or denies; while Popery perverts it into a corporation of men, not even born of God but nominally formed by ordinances, in order to constitute a quasi-spiritual kingdom as worldly as ever was set up by human will, and more wicked than any because of covering their ambitious corruption with the Lord's name.

2. This then makes evident the divine character of the one body, God's assembly or church. In chap. 14. (after the beautiful episode on charity or love, the great desideratum to the right working of every member of the body) we have the divinely intended action in the assembly, and the guard against its dangers. It may be said that miraculous powers, tongues, healings, &c. are now no longer manifested. Granted, and for wise reason. But is the Holy Spirit gone? If so, there is no more one body. If however He be still here, and abide forever in and with Christians (John 14), does He not work by the manifestations of His gracious power? Are there not divinely given and qualified teachers? Are there not pastors and teachers as well as evangelists (Eph. 4) till the last member is formed and the body absolutely complete? Surely it would be base unbelief to doubt the love and care of the ascended Head. It is His grace, and He cannot fail in all that is needed for the perfecting of the saints, unto ministerial work, unto building up His own body. Shame on the Christians who do not believe this!

Instead of these gifts of His grace, the Pope looks to the aspiring chiefs of man's invention, Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops in a sense altogether foreign to the revealed word, and other “ordinaries” as extraordinary to the apostles Paul and Peter and all the rest, as the one who glories in his shame of pretending to be the Vicar of Christ, jure divino. Not one of them acts, or even professes to act, on the principle of 1 Cor. 12 or according to the regulated practice of 1 Cor. 14. They have every one and everywhere departed from these revealed truths; as if the Holy Spirit had gone back, and Christ's one body, the assembly, had ceased its functions on earth. Is any Christian bold enough to deny the fact or its guilt? Granted that Protestantism never knew these truths, and is also guilty in this. Not only Romanism, but what called itself the Catholic system had slipped away from the revealed truth of the church, long before papal pretensions began. Yet 1 Cor. 14 shows us the true and sanctioned action of the assembly by its members in speaking to edification and exhortation and consolation. It forbids men speaking in a tongue not understood or interpreted, and commands women to keep silence in the assemblies. It comprehends also prayers and singing and praise and thanksgiving.

The discipline of scripture in its most solemn form is on the self-same principle. Our Lord anticipated it in Matt. 18 A trespass was to call out grace bent on delivering one's brother from wrong. The one wronged was to go after the man who had wronged him! if he heard, he was gained! This was not law or power or authority, but love. If he did not hear, one or two more were to be taken: surely he would not resist such earnest love! But if he would not listen, could he hold out against the assembly in the place? Alas this was possible. But if so, “let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the tax-gatherer.” The Lord solemnly declared that whatsoever they should bind on earth should be bound in heaven, and whatsoever they loosed on earth should be loosed in heaven. Heaven would validate what His disciples decided, even if ever so few gathered to His name. If Peter personally had this solemn privilege, but is no longer here to exercise it, the Lord charges it on those gathered to His name, were they but two or three in the darkest day. This is the true succession.

In 1 Cor. 5 the apostle reproves the Corinthians for their lack of spiritual feeling about deplorable evil in their midst. If they were not yet instructed how to act, where was their sensibility as saints? where their grief that such wickedness should be where the Lord was confessed? Why did they not humble themselves and pray for the offender's removal? In the name of the Lord Jesus the apostle not only calls on the entire assembly to put out from them the wicked person, but joins himself in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver him such as he was to Satan for destruction of the flesh that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. For, as Christ our Passover was sacrificed, we have to celebrate the feast with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. It is a manifest instruction drawn from the Jewish feast of unleavened bread for seven days after the Paschal lamb was eaten. So is the Christian assembly, under the efficacy of Christ's blood, bound to purge away corruption; as they were an unleavened lump, they must not tolerate leaven. And as this applies to practice, Gal. 5:9 applies the same principle to fundamental doctrine.

Will anyone be hardy enough to say that there is the least resemblance between Roman discipline and what the Lord enjoined or the apostle Paul? Think of the anathemas of the Papal Bulls. Never have human ears heard such bitter or varied curses. Can anything be more in contrast with scripture? Even in delivering the grievously wicked person to Satan, the declared aim of the apostle was that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. In no case is it the assembly acting responsibly in the Lord's name, without which the discipline is invalid. It is the same with restoration. When the offender was overwhelmed with sorrow, the apostle would only forgive when the assembly had forgiven. But as the evil-doer had fully judged himself, and the assembly had proved itself clear in the matter, he urges them to confirm love to the repentant, as he had before pressed them to clear the Lord's name of such sin unjudged. The revealed will of the Lord for the church is as plain as that Popery of all sects in Christendom is the farthest from Him. Confessing the doctrine of the Trinity and Christ's person, it corrupts almost all else, and not least the church, its worship, action, and discipline. This is the society which denounces others to damnation and cries up itself to heaven so loudly!

5. “The Lord's Supper” as laid down in 1 Con 11. has hardly a trait in common with the Mass; but it is not needful to enter into details now, as it may be examined later.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:23

ARAM is the last of the sons of Shem. His name was generally given to the high table-land northeast of Palestine, though applied also more widely in combination with other terms, as will presently be pointed out. In the A.V., following the Septuagint and the Vulgate, “Syria” represents that general use. In the largest sense it comprehended not only the watershed of the Jordan and the country north, west, and east, but that which stretched to the Tigris, with Armenia on the north down to Arabia on the south. In the S.E. quarter it is designated Aram-Naharaim, that is, Syria of the two rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, translated “Mesopotamia” in Gen. 24:10, Deut. 23:4, Judg. 3:8, 10. After 1 Chron. 19:6, we have no longer that name, as the country so named passed under the dominion first of Assyria, and last of Babylon where it attained its supreme place. In early days it was the country where Nahor and his family had a city after leaving Ur (the modern Musheir) of the Chaldees or Kasdim, a Cushite race.

The classic name of Syria was probably a mere abbreviation of Assyria, or Asshur, another name really, though akin, being alike Shemitic. But even Homer (Il. ii. 783) and Hesiod (Theog. 304) know only the name Ἄριμοι, unless Ἔρεμβοὶ also refers to the same (Οd. iv. 84); so does Pindar in the fragment cited by BOckh (iii. 618) who corrects Fv to Eli, as in Homer. As Virgil (Aen. ix. 716) speaks of Inarime Jovis imperiis imposita Typhöeo, the scholars are anxious to relieve the learned Latin, to say nothing of Ovid, Lucan, Sil. Ital., &c., from the imputation of a blunder in the words and transferring the scene from Asia to the volcanic regions of Italy and Sicily. But it is sure enough that Ovid does err in distinguishing Inarime from Pithacusae which were the same island, of late called Ischia. Heyne has written a learned note on the matter in his second Exc. on Aen. ix. (iii. 374-6, Lond. 1793).

At least five districts of Aram are referred to in scripture. (1) Aram-Dammesek or the Syria of Damascus appears in 2 Sam. 8:5, 6; 1 Chron. 18:5, 6. (2) Aram-Zobah, or Zobah only, to the N.E. of Damascus we find in 1 Sam. 14:47; 2 Sam. 8:3; 10:6, 8; 1 Chron. 18 xix. (3) Arambeth-Rehob, or Rehob only, occurs in 2 Sam. 10:6, 8. (4) Aram-Maachah, or Maachah only is mentioned in 2 Sam. 10:6; 1 Chron. 19:6. And Geshur in Syria or Aram we hear of in 2 Sam. 15:8, bordering with Maachah on Argob (Dent. 3:14, Josh. 13:11, &c.). These small kingdoms of Aram seem gradually to have merged in that which is first named; as Damascus grew itself in importance. But (5) Aram-Naharaim, or Padan—more correctly Paddan-Aram (called also Padan in Gen. 28:7), the plowed land of Aram became the most celebrated by far, familiar to us from the days of Jacob. To this Hosea alludes as the field or open country of Syria (12:12) almost wholly an immense plain, nearly 700 miles long and from 20 to 250 miles broad.

The north district is mountainous, where a chain (called Mons Masius of old) connects the ancient Amanus on the west with the Niphates in the east. Then about the middle the Sinjar hills cross, running nearly east and west from Mosul or thereabout to Rakkeh or near it. “This district,” says Prof. Rawlinson, “is always charming; but the remainder of the region varies greatly according to circumstances. In early spring a tender and luxuriant herbage covers the whole plain, while flowers of the most brilliant hues spring up in rapid succession, imparting their color to the landscape, which changes from day to day. As the summer draws on, the verdure recedes towards the streams and mountains. Vast tracts of arid plain, yellow, parched, and sapless, fill the intermediate space, which ultimately becomes a bare and uninhabitable desert. In the Sinjar, and in the mountain-tract to the north, springs of water are tolerably abundant, and corn, vines, and figs, are cultivated by a stationary population; but the greater part of the region is only suited to the nomadic hordes, which in spring spread themselves far and wide over the vast flats, so utilizing the early verdure, and in summer and autumn gather along the banks of the two main streams and their affluents, where a delicious shade and a rich pasture may be found during the greatest heats. Such is the present character of the region. It is thought, however, that by a careful water system, by deriving channels from the great streams or their affluents, by storing the superfluous spring-rains in tanks, by digging wells and establishing kanáts, or subterraneous aqueducts, the whole territory might be brought under cultivation, and rendered capable of sustaining a permanent population. That some such system was established in early times by the Assyrian monarchs seems to be certain from the fact that the whole level country on both sides of the Sinjar is covered with mounds marking the sites of cities, which wherever opened have presented appearances similar to those found on the site of Nineveh. If even the more northern portion of the Mesopotamian region is thus capable of being redeemed from its present character of a desert, still more easily might the southern division be reclaimed and converted into a garden. Between the 35th and 34th parallels, the character of the Mesopotamian plain suddenly alters. Above, it is a plain of a certain elevation above the courses of the Tigris and Euphrates, which are separated from it by low limestone ranges; below, it is a mere alluvium almost level with the rivers, which frequently overflow large portions of it. Consequently from the point indicated, canalization becomes easy. A skilful management of the two rivers would readily convey abundance of the life-giving fluid to every portion of the Mesopotamian tract below the 34th parallel. And the innumerable lines of embankment, marking the course of ancient canals, sufficiently indicate that in the flourishing period of Babylonia a network of artificial channels covered the country.”

It was in that region that the tower of Babel was reared (Gen. 10). It was there Nimrod made “the beginning of his kingdom” (Ibid.). Thence came the four kings to put down the rebellion of the five kings of the south Jordan (Gen. 14). Thence Chushan-Rishathaim reduced Israel to his over-lordship for eight years, soon after Joshua's death till Caleb's nephew, Othniel, broke it down; and David conquered the Syrians everywhere. Assyria then by degrees reached its highest ascendancy to the ruin of Israel, till Babylon rose in God's way on the overthrow of Nineveh, to world-power and swept away Judah, itself succumbing to Cyrus, and Medo-Persian supremacy followed.

“And the sons of Aram,. Uz and Hul and Gether and Mash” (ver. 23). The first of them gave his name to the sandy soil south-east of Palestine, in the north of Arabia Deserta, and west of the Euphrates. We hear in Job 1 who lived there, of the raids of the Sabeans and the Chaldeans.

Hul seems to have gone farther north. His name we may trace in And-el-Huleh, and Bahr-elHuleh, south of this district, the waters of Merom, or the lake Semechonitis as Josephus calls it, though he connects Hul with Armenia.

Gether may have lent his name to Gadara, rather than Geshur, as Kalisch thinks.

Mash would seem, as Bochart supposes (Phaleg ii. 11) to be represented geographically by the classical Mons Masius, the mountainous range which runs north of Mesopotamia between the great rivers, Euphrates and Hiddekel or Tigris. In 1 Chron. 1:17 Mesech is the name, but not the one joined with Kedar, which was Japhetic. In the same genealogy these four sons of Aram are classed directly with the sons of Shem, including Aram, a compendious style not uncommon in such lists, for which verse 4 prepares the reader. The discrepancy is merely apparent.

The Offerings of Leviticus: 3.

THE BURNT OFFERING.-Lev. 1:10-13.

IT is observable that not only in the holocaust but in all the offerings of sweet savor, variety within prescribed limits was left to the offerer. In the sin-offerings it was not so: the offering was fixed by the ordinance of Jehovah, save that a slight degree of license was permitted to one of the people of the land (chap. 4.). Where sin was not the urgent question, grace exercised the heart which gave according to its means. And special consideration was had of the poor that they should not be debarred from an offering which rose up to God acceptably, the shadow of the infinite excellency which He was in due time to provide as well as find, in the Son giving Himself to death for His glory. For it was to meet Him from the place and race where sin reigned by death, and this could only be in such a sacrifice as presented Christ in His death of entire and acceptable self-surrender.

Two things were thus made evident, and each of them most precious. If the several forms of the offering represent the differing degrees of faith in the offerers, as we may suppose, Jehovah as truly accepted the least measure of the burnt-offering, as the greatest; His eye beheld the same perfect sacrifice in all. The acceptance of the offerer did not vary, because the offering did that typified Christ. The offering of Christ's body was one and the same perfect value for all that are His.

“And if his offering be of the flock, of the sheep, or of the goats, for a burnt-offering, he shall present it a male perfect. And he shall slay it on the side of the altar northward before Jehovah; and Aaron's sons the priests shall sprinkle its blood on the altar round about. And he shall cut it into its pieces, and its head, and its fat. And the priest shall lay them in order on the wood that is on the fire on the altar; but the inwards and the legs shall be washed with water. And the priest shall present all and burn on the altar; it is a burnt-offering, a fire-offering of sweet savor to Jehovah” (vers. 10-13).

But faith, be it ever so real, is not equally simple or strong in those that believe. And our estimate of Christ is as our faith. It varies in the saints, as their faith does. Happy they who rest on God's estimate of Him and His work.

Where this is the childlike yet unwavering conviction by the word and Spirit of God, rest and liberty, and the deepest enjoyment follow. We know, as the apostle Peter wrote, that we were redeemed, not with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ as a lamb without blemish and without spot, fore-known as He was before the world's foundation, but manifested at the end of the times for our sakes, that through Him believe in God Who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory that our faith and hope should be in God. Scripture is clear and conclusive, as the apostle Paul preached without reserve, that in (or, in virtue of) Christ every believer is justified from all things from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses.

But feebleness of faith has its effect nevertheless in proportionately impairing the soul's present happiness and power. How many saints, instead of looking for peace outside themselves in Christ and His work for them, occupy themselves with searching within for signs of the Spirit's work in them as born anew! Peace is thus an impossibility; for it was only made by the blood of Christ's cross. Thus only have we peace with God as justified by faith. Where one sees new birth on the contrary the Spirit gives one to see and abhor, not only past sins, but this evil and willful nature, the old man, which gave them being.

No doubt the Christian is called to prove himself, and thus to partake of the Lord's supper; and if we scrutinized ourselves, instead of walking carelessly, we should not fall under His faithful discipline, that we may not be condemned with the world. But peace with God by the faith of Christ, is intended to strengthen salutary self-judgment, which in itself, if thorough, could only produce misery or despair. For it would then rest on the mistaken basis of our state, and therefore must fluctuate as we see fruits of the Spirit or the lack of them. The more upright in this case, the less could we be satisfied with what we find, and should be therefore exposed to any illusive nostrum which ministered self-complacency under the name of holiness.

It is obvious in the second and third alternatives that there is no such declaration of acceptance before Jehovah, and of atonement made for the offerer as in vers. 3 and 4. The rest is pretty much the same. Faith in every case is blessed; but the fully known result is according to the fuller estimate of Christ and His work.

Brief Thoughts on the Separation of the Nazarite: 1

WE have here, in type, the separation of Christ, and of those that are in Him, from the world unto God. That we might thus be set apart by His separation, He commenced it afresh in resurrection through His offering for sin.

The sanctification of the Nazarite did not go beyond the purifying of the flesh. It was in this, like the other shadows of the law, ceremonial, and not that which purgeth the conscience. But as the sanctuary made with hands was the pattern of heaven itself so did the carnal Nazarite set forth Him Who was always, thoroughly, intrinsically separate from sinners, and unto the Lord. From His mother's womb, Christ was really that which the Nazarite outwardly prefigured— “that holy thing” (Luke 1:35). As a child, He was the same. The grace of God was upon Him (Luke 2). Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business? He alone could say in its full force: “My flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is; to see thy power and thy glory so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary” (Psa. 63). Again, as in Psa. 84: “My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.” Besides other and higher glory of His person, Christ was the blessed man who never walked in the counsel of the ungodly nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the scornful. Other blessed men there are whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. (Psa. 32). But Christ was the one blessed man who, regarded as made of a woman, made under the law, had no transgressions to be forgiven, nor sins to be covered, but His delight was in the law of the Lord, and in His law did He meditate day and night. In this, then, He stood alone, truly and totally separate unto the Lord, wholly apart from the world for God. Here below, in the flesh, He was the pure and holy Nazarite, blessed in Himself. All others were sinners. If these were blessed, they were blessed exclusively through Him: and this was by death and resurrection.

But if, in the flesh, He stood thus alone, in resurrection Christ is the first born among many brethren. This is another condition and most precious it is to us.

Now, let us consider in what the separation consisted.

First, “He shall separate himself from wine and strong drink; and shall drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of strong drink; neither shall he drink any liquor of grapes, nor eat moist grapes or dried. All the days of his separation shall he eat nothing that is made of the vine tree, from the kernels even to the husk” (Verses 3, 4).

Wine maketh merry; it maketh glad the heart of man. But Christ had not one feeling in common with a world estranged from God. He could love and pity, but kept aloof from all earthly joy and gladness. To Him in Whom God was well pleased, nothing here below yielded enjoyment. He needed not that any should testify of man; for He knew what was in man (John 3). If men would come and take Him by force to make Him a King, He departs into a mountain Himself alone (John 6). If His unbelieving brethren would have Him to show Himself to the world, He says, My time is not yet come (John 7). This blessed Nazarite walked as God's heavenly stranger through the world; and the more He knew the fullness of joy in Jehovah's presence, and the more He detected and stood aloof from the spurious pleasures of men, the more did He feel the wretchedness, and sin, and sorrow, of all around Him. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handy work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge; but man hath no ears, no voice for God. Could this gladden the heart of the Nazarite? Looking up to heaven, He sighed (Mark 7:34).

Secondly, “All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor come upon his head; until the days be fulfilled, in the which he separateth himself unto the Lord; he shall be holy, and shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow” (ver. 5).

The head and beard are referred to in scripture as the seat of glory and strength. Thus, in Psa. 133, “it is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard;” and, therefore it was that the priests, in the case of the death even of near kindred, were forbidden to make baldness upon their head, or to shave off the corner of their beard (Lev. 21). These tokens of humiliation did not become those who enjoyed special access to God. On the other hand, he who typifies the defiled and defiling outcast from God and His people, the leper, even in the days of his cleansing, had to “shave all his hair off his head, and his beard and his eyebrows, even all his hair he shall shave off” (Lev. 14). Sin has utterly tainted that which otherwise would be comely. But the Nazarite is typical of Christ in His separation as a man unto God, and He was without blemish and without spot, and all that sprang up in that Holy One was lovely and acceptable to God. Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man (Luke 3). His meat was to do the will of Him that sent Him, and to finish His work (John 4). Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God, He could say throughout; even as at the termination of His earthly career, He told the Father, I have glorified Thee on the earth; I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do. To have cut off the beauteous locks of the untainted Nazarite, would have been to have cut off the feelings, interests, thoughts, affections, purposes and acts of Christ, which were all fragrant and precious in the sight of God.

Thirdly, “All the days that he separateth himself unto the Lord he shall come at no dead body. He shall not make himself unclean for his father, or for his mother, for his brother, or for his sister when they die: because the consecration of his God is upon his head. All the days of his separation he is holy unto the Lord” (ver. 6-8).

Christ is life and the prince of life, as Satan is he who hath the power of death. And when one, bidden to follow Him, said, Lord suffer me first to go and bury my father, Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead; but go thou and preach the kingdom of God (Luke 9). This world will care for its own things, but Christ and His people are for the living and true God—for Him only. So truly was this verified in Christ, that even death itself He accepts as having to do with God and God with Him. It is not Judas, nor the Jews, nor the Romans, nor Satan, that His eye is upon; but “the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” (John 18).

(To be continued, D.V.)

The Scripture of Truth: 5

IT is the Assyrian or King of the north who acts as the overflowing scourge from without, and at first is successful against the willful king and the apostate mass of the Jews. But God shields the righteous remnant. While the king of the north goes down to deal with the king of the south, the Lord appears to the destruction of the wicked king, now reinforced by the beast from the west and his kings and their armies, which is described in chap. 19. of the Revelation. But it is omitted in our chap. 11. of Daniel, in order to pursue the conflicts of the north and the south about the land and its chief, and then to give the return of the king of the north into the land to find his dismal end, as the others had before.

“And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him [the willful king]; and the king of the north shall come against him [the same] like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass through. He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many [countries] shall be overthrown. But these shall be delivered out of his hand, Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon” (vers. 40, 41). Beyond question he is not king of the glorious land, because he enters it as an enemy. Demonstrably it is the king of the north, and not the willful king who is here before us. “He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries; and the land of Egypt shall not escape” (ver. 42). This proves he cannot be the king of the south, because he attacks Egypt and spoils it. “But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt; and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps” (ver. 43). The conquered are compelled to fight under his banner. “But tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him,” that is, out of his own country. I have little doubt that the tidings are about the movement of the ten tribes, in whom God is working to return from these parts to the land of their fathers. They were transplanted by the king of Assyria of old. And now the last holder of that power is on the alert to oppose their return. Much may be found in Isa. 10 which looks onward to the Assyrian in what Daniel calls “the last end of the indignation.” Sennacherib was but a type.

The dealings of God with the ten tribes come out in a very remarkable way, as we may read in Hos. 2 and Ezek. 20. It appears that God is to bring them through the wilderness again; where they are purified by a process of spiritual discipline through which the Lord will put them in those days.

Certain it is that tidings trouble the Assyrian out of the north and east, and he hurries back to Palestine. “And he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many.” Already the proud powers of the west had gathered there for their doom, but this he does not consider if he knew it. Men are easily blinded by their passions; and there will also be the special delusion of Satan. The Lord shining from heaven will have destroyed Anti-Christ or the willful king of the land, as he also destroys the beast solemnly, slaying the kings and their armies that came up to support him. The emperor of the west and his ally in the holy land are both cast alive into the lake of fire, called in the Revelation “the beast” and “the false prophet,” for this king in the land pretends to be a prophet as well as to be Messiah and God. Those at the head of the western powers as well as their armies that follow them are slain on the spot, to be judged another day when raised.

After this comes up the king of the north at the head of a vast force. Then shall the Lord go forth at the head of His people “as in the day of battle.” So we find it stated in Zech. 14:3. Before that it was the Lord coming from heaven that dealt with the beast and the false prophet. Now He will have taken up His people Israel. It is the rod of His power from out of Zion, as Psa. 110 expresses it, dealing with the head of a great country, who comes to the same end as the beast and the false prophet before him. This is described in the end of Isa. 30 For the king also [not “yea"] it is prepared, that is, for “the king” in the land as well as for the Assyrian. You will see that from the beginning of the 36 ver. of Dan. 11, it is entirely a future time that is referred to. Never has been anything like it; but God here reveals that it must be.

(To be continued, D.V.).

The Samaritan and His Neighbour

Luke 10:30-37

This parable is the Lord's answer to the lawyer's question. And who is my neighbor? A conscience not at ease finds difficulties; the heart that is animated by love answers at once, because it finds none. Every sorrow or need makes an appeal to it, and never in vain. Flesh under law being self-occupied, has neither room nor time for others.

“A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho; and he fell among robbers, who, having stripped and beaten him, departed, leaving him half dead. And by coincidence a certain priest was going down by that way; and on seeing him passed on the other side. And likewise also a Levite, when he came to the place and saw, passed on the other side. But a certain Samaritan on journey came to him, and when he saw him was moved with compassion, and came up and bound his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and setting him on his own beast he brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow he took out and gave two denaries to the inn-keeper, and said to him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou shalt spend more, I at my coming back will repay thee. Which of these three, seemeth to thee to have been neighbor of him that fell among the robbers? And he said, He that showed him mercy. And Jesus said to him, Go and do thou likewise” (vers. 30-37).

Grace and truth in Christ changed all. It was not only from earth to heaven now acting on souls who believed, but love that raised above our own things, imitating God, as the Apostle puts it, like dear children, Christ Himself the motive and power no less than pattern.

Man's sad lot is graphically shown in him who was going down from the place of religious privilege and pride to that of the curse, and fell in with robbers who took his all and beat him, leaving him half dead. Earthly priesthood, and earthly ministry, wholly failed. Only the despised One availed; and none was more despised or hated than a Samaritan, unless it were the One Who exceeds all comparisons. He on His errand of love, far from passing by and shutting up His inmost feelings of compassion, came up and bandaged the wounds, pouring on soothing and cleansing grace, dismounted to raise up the wretched one now comforted, and took him under His care. Doubtless it is the Lord's congenial sketch of practical grace for the lawyer's help; but it is the shadow of His own path day by day, and far indeed from exhausting or even describing what was deepest in His work.

Nor is His love satisfied with thoughtful beneficence for the present; He charges himself with the future in terms all the more striking, because the figure is homely. How full and transcendent is the love which is not bounded by ties of flesh or obligations of earthly duty, but flows from a divine and eternal spring from within, and only finds objects of need without to act on, no person too repulsive, no need beyond the resources of grace. “And on the morrow He took out and gave two denaries to the inn-keeper, and said to him, Take care of him, and whatever thou shalt spend more, I at my coming back will repay thee.” Yes, His provision while absent is adequate, whatever the unbelief may think of it as of Him; and when He returns, what repayment where He is trusted! What forfeits, where He is scorned! Even the lawyer could not but feel the appeal, and own the superiority of that mercy which the Lord depicted and exemplified. If he ever did in like manner, it must have been through the faith that received the Savior and realized the truth and love of God in Him.

God Himself is now acting on such love, though shown in a way infinitely more profound in giving His own Son up to compassionate, save, and bless the powerless and ungodly. It is no question of a claim but of ruin in man and of grace in Himself: only the work of Christ makes it righteous in God, and us righteous in Christ. Such is the efficacy of His death on the cross.

How does it affect you, dear reader? It finds you a lost and rebellious sinner. Such you have been really, whoever you are and whatever you may have seemed to yourself or other men. You may have sought and provided a religious veil; but it is of no more value in God's eye than the web the spider weaves. Their webs, says the prophet, shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works; their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands. For none are prouder or more bitter than natural men under a veil of religion. The way of peace they know not, and there is no judgment in their goings. They have made their paths crooked: whoso goeth therein knoweth not peace.

All depends for efficacy on Christ alone. He it is Who brings God to man and man to God; but it is vain for me or you or any that hear the gospel unless we believe on Him. This is to submit to the righteousness of God, Who is ever found in His grace, by him who truly owns his sins in the faith of Christ. Oh, fellow sinner, dare to be thorough in confessing what you have done and are at the feet of Jesus Who never rejects one that comes confiding in the call of God. It is what God delights in; it is to vindicate Him and honor His dishonored Son, the all-worthy One, in the face of every foe, and of all our own sins and unbelief. Do not drop this call to your soul. You cannot pretend that you do not need the Savior; or that you are now pleasing God Who summons you to believe in Him. Turn to Him therefore at once, and confess your guilt and evil, but doubt not His grace. Look not away till you rest on Him and His precious blood which cleanses from every sin.

Jesus in the Midst: 1

IT is always deeply affecting to examine the closing chapters of the gospels, to ponder the sufferings, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus. Nothing tends more to draw out our affection, and bow our hearts in adoration before Him. He loved us and gave Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor, putting away, in that supreme moment, all our sins righteously from before God. John 20 shows Him as risen. Death could not hold Him in its grasp. His work was done, death was annulled, God was glorified—the answer for Him being resurrection on the third day with a view to glory at the Father's right hand.

After giving us the details of His rising, the Spirit presents us in John's Gospel with four striking and instructive pictures; first, we have Him showing Himself again to the then believing Jewish remnant in the person of Mary, leading their hearts away from earthly hopes into relationship with Himself to the Father in the place to which he was going; secondly we see Him manifesting Himself to the assembled disciples, picturing the Christian assembly as gathered around Himself; thirdly, He makes Himself known to Thomas, removing all his doubts, in token of what He will yet do for Thomas's nation in a day yet to come; and finally at the sea of Tiberias, in the remarkable draft of fishes, a millennial picture is furnished of the ingathering of the Gentile nations for blessing.

It is the second of these pictures that I desire to draw attention to at this time. “Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut, where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and said unto them—Peace be unto you” (ver. 19). Here we have set forth in a remarkable manner the Christian assembly. But let not the reader misunderstand. However strikingly the assembled disciples, with the Lord in their midst, speak to us of the church, they were not the church of God at that time. The church had no existence as such, until Jesus was glorified and the Holy Ghost descended on the day of Pentecost. And even then the saved had no knowledge of it. Not until the apostle Paul was raised up, as one born out of due time, was the mystery of God unfolded. Therefore though these disciples in John 20 became the church of God, indeed its first members, they were not yet this in the day of which we speak. Still their position and privilege, especially the presence of the Lord in the midst, foreshadowed it in a very expressive way.

The Spirit is careful to tell us that it was the first day of the week when Jesus thus came and stood in the midst. The Lord thus puts His sanction, as it were, upon the assembly of His saints on that day. And what day more suitable? Of old it was the seventh day—the Sabbath—that was set apart for the worship of God. Let some suppose that the difference is but slight, but verbal, between the seventh day and the first. The difference is fundamentally important. The seventh day came in as the end of man's week of work; it was made an integral part of the law of Sinai, with solemn consequences attached to the breach of it. But the first of the week does not speak to us of man's work at all, but of a totally new order of things, brought in by God, founded upon the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. It speaks to us of flesh set aside as worthless, of redemption accomplished, of righteousness completed, of a new creation, where all things are of God. Hence, Christians meet together on that day with triumph in their souls, to remember the Lord and to show forth His death, in the breaking of bread until He come.

It is quite the fashion to confound the two days, as if they were substantially the same, but the difference is immense. The one is Judaism and the other is Christianity. Alas! the return to Judaism with its worldly elements and feast days and sabbaths came in very early. One has only to read the Epistles to the Romans and to the Galatians to see how earnestly the apostle resisted the working of this leaven. But as the heavenly calling faded more and more from the minds of men, bearing the Lord's name, and the sense of divine grace too, Judaism made rapid strides, with the result that, to the mass, even in this day, the Christianity of the scriptures sounds strange doctrine in their ears.

Well, the Lord thus came into the midst of His own, on the first day of the week, the very day of His resurrection. If the Acts of the apostles and the Epistles be studied, it will be seen that this became the formal meeting-day of the assembly of God, whatever other opportunities they may have had of meeting together for mutual edification and blessing. In Acts 20:7 we read, “Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, etc.” This was the custom. They were not together to hear Paul, even though he was to leave them finally on the morrow, but to break bread. This scripture is even more forcible when rightly read: “When we came together.” It was thus not a merely local custom at Troas, but the understood habit of the church of God in that day. It was on this day then that the Lord took His place in the midst of His own. What joy to them! Can we wonder that we read, “Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord.” Is not His blessed presence heaven to our souls? What would the glory itself be apart from Christ? Suppose it were possible for us to be introduced even there and find no Christ, would it satisfy our hearts? Nay, better a hovel with Christ, than the very glory itself without Him. The renewed heart finds delight in Christ alone; our souls thrive in His blessed presence.

( To be continued, D.V.)

Reflections on Galatians 3:15-20

Now another subject is treated—the relation of the law to the promises of God. Law having come in, is it the true ground of blessing, to the setting aside of the promises made of old to Abraham? No one could question that the Gentiles have an interest in the promises, at least in those to which the apostle here refers, “Brethren, I speak after the manner of men; though it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth or addeth thereto” (ver. 15). Such is the apostle's simple method of dealing with the matter. Would God do less than man? Even man holds to a confirmed covenant. When once the document is signed and sealed, the matter is closed, it cannot be set aside or added to. “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say, that the covenant that was confirmed before of God to Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect” (vers. 16-17).

It is of moment to understand the particular promises to which the apostle here alludes. It is beyond question that some of the promises refer solely to the natural seed, but these are not before us in this place. The apostle is speaking of those which involve blessing for Gentiles. In Gen. 12 God said to Abraham, “in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” None can limit such a word as this. It shows how the heart of God went out to all even in earliest times, and that blessing for Gentiles was ever before His mind. But on what ground? Certainly not that of law, to which the foolish Galatians were vainly turning; for the law had no existence when God thus expressed Himself to the father of the faithful. The promise was unconditional, and depends on God alone for fulfillment. It was not drawn forth by anything in man, nor even in Abraham individually; it flowed solely from the grace of His heart.

Moreover He confirmed the word many years after, and who can annul a confirmed covenant? Observe carefully the occasion of its confirmation. It is found in Gen. 22. There we see Abraham offering up his only begotten son, and receiving him again from the dead (in figure); expressive type of the dead and risen Christ. This being all accomplished, the angel of Jehovah called to him out of heaven and said, “By myself have I sworn, saith Jehovah in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” This must not be mixed up with the word in the previous verse. There Abraham is told that his seed should be multiplied as the stars of heaven, and as the sand upon the seashore, and that they should possess the gate of their enemies. This clearly refers to Israel and includes no blessing for the Gentiles, but rather the reverse. This will be fully realized in a day yet to come, when Israel shall be led in triumph over all their foes, and all shall be subdued under them. But this is not what the apostle is reasoning upon in Galatians. His mind is fixed upon the precious word, “In thy seen shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” The seed here, he argues, is singular, not plural—it is Christ. What minute attention we should pay to scripture, if so much depends on a single letter! “He saith not, And to seeds, as of many, but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.” The omissions of the Spirit of God are as instructive as His words, to such as have eyes to see, and ears to hear.

The substance of the argument is this; that the promise concerning Gentile blessing was altogether unconditional on God's part, and that it is settled and sure in Christ dead and risen. Consequently, the law, which was given of God at Sinai four hundred and thirty years later, cannot disannul it, “For if the inheritance be of law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise” (ver.18). The two principles are opposed in nature and character. If the inheritance is on the principle of works, it becomes a matter of debt, not of promise at all; whereas it is clear that God gave it to the patriarch by promise. If blessing really is through law then the promises of God are expunged. Man can never merit them.

Thus were the Galatians carried back to the beginning of things, that they might see the unreasonableness of the position they were taking up. Why turn to something given four centuries later than the original promise? Why rest their blessing on such precarious ground? Especially as they ought to know that law had never brought blessing to Israel: their scattered and servile condition being a standing warning to all. On the ground of law nothing is certain, such is the condition of man; but when God comes in, in the wonderful grace of His heart, the soul that rests in Him, as helpless and needy, finds everything sure and stable; the righteous ground being the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

Another question arises out of this. If law cannot bring souls into blessing, if it really only ruins all who place themselves under it, why was it given? A serious question surely. “Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgression, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made: and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator” (ver. 19). The apostle always jealously vindicates the law, while contending for the liberty of the believer in Jesus. In Rom. 3:31, he is careful to show that the principle of faith does not nullify the law, but that rather it is established, all its righteous sentence having been endured by Christ for us. In Rom. 7:7, he shows that the law is not sin, that we turned away from it, but that it is holy and just and good. Here the same care may be observed. The law was God's perfect rule for man; but man is corrupt and bad, and therefore it can only condemn and curse him. It was added because, or for the sake of, transgressions. It makes manifest man's true state. Sin was in the world before the law was given, consequently none can impiously assert that law made man a sinner. It came by the way, as it were, after the promise and before the fulfillment of it, to demonstrate man's real state in the sight of God. Yet so blind are men as to their true condition, that they have taken up that which was intended to make plain their ruin, and have endeavored to attain to righteousness and life by means of it. It is long since Paul wrote his Epistles to the Romans and to the Galatians, but the illusion is not dispelled to this hour.

Law cannot justify, nor can it sanctify. It is God's plumb-line making manifest man's crookedness: His mirror showing up his vileness.

The promised Seed has come, Christ has died and is risen; why turn back to law? Why abandon a sure ground for one so unsafe and uncertain?

The apostle adds some interesting remarks here, as to the giving of the law. “It was ordained through angels.” Stephen says, “who have received the law by the disposition of angels” (Acts 7:53). God did not act immediately on the solemn day of Sinai. There were angels, and there was a mediator—Moses. What a contrast to Christianity!

Through Christ's work, believers are brought to God, cleansed from all their sins, set down in His blessed presence in cloudless favor. We are loved by the Father with the same love wherewith He loves His Son, and are pronounced clean every whit, meet for the inheritance of the saints in the light. Nothing of this could be known and enjoyed under law. God spoke out of the thick darkness, His people quaked and trembled at the foot of the fiery mount; and angels and a mediator were between them and Himself.

The principle of promise does not need a mediator in this sense, there being but one party engaged; hence we read, “Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one” (ver. 20). The unity of God was the great fundamental truth that Israel was responsible to confess before the nations around, who had all departed into idolatry (Deut. 6:4). Thus God will make good His unconditional promises. Man may fail, but He never. We do not need a Moses and a host of angels between our souls and such a God.

The Advocacy of Christ: 6

IT is not a question therefore of merely judging the particular offense. Never do we reach the bottom of that which has misled us if we but look at the outward act. What exposed one to it? And what was it that exposed Peter? He thought he loved the Lord better than anybody; he could go where the others could not; he could trust himself who loved Him so truly: never should he deny the Messiah. Peter was satisfied that he loved Jesus more than all, and could face prison, death, anything for His sake. The Lord thus brought to light the root of his failure. There, without one harsh word, without even an ostensible reference to the threefold denial, without the smallest needless exposure to others, the root was laid bare and dealt with; and Simon Peter was perfectly restored, and the Lord now could commit His sheep and His lambs to his tending and feeding. “When thou art restored, strengthen thy brethren.” He was converted (restored) now, and had the promise in the end, when nature's strength should wither, that he should follow Himself even to the death of the cross. Nor is it only in the New Testament that we find this truth. We have there, of course, the doctrine and the application, and such a special instance as I have just cited; but I now go farther, and affirm that it is a principle which is no less true of the Old Testament, though it is only the New Testament which gives us to understand it clearly. The water of separation which the law enjoined on the children of Israel—what did it mean? Water was mingled with the ashes of a heifer that was wholly burned, skin and all, even what was most offensive. The whole was reduced to ashes, being one of the few sacrifices where this was done completely; and why? For the very important reason of vividly expressing in a figure the consuming judgment of God. In no sacrifice was this more fully carried out than in the burning of the red heifer. The ashes (for that was the point) were kept mixed with running water, and the Israelite, if defiled, was ordered to be sprinkled with this as a water of separation. There were two sprinklings; the first on the third day, and the second on the seventh day if the defiled one had been sprinkled on the third. The meaning I take to be that he was sprinkled on the third day, not the first, because one does not show a due sense of sin by being over quick to get through it. You have seen a child who, directly she has been guilty of a fault, readily tells you how sorry she is. But the same child will fall into the fault again no less quickly. Would you not rather see a child that showed more shame, and remained for a while under the feeling of it, than one so very hasty to ask pardon, and then forgetting the sin the very next moment? Alas! we are but naughty children ourselves, and sometimes we have behaved as ill to God our Father.

The only wise God provided this institute for the people passing through the wilderness; for, remark, it appears only in Numbers, the book of the wilderness journey. And there it was, and is, wanted. It contemplates the people, not in Egypt, nor in Canaan, but on their march through the wilderness. Accordingly the Israelite was called to abide under the sense of his uncleanness; he must bear the feeling of defilement till the third day. There must be no haste. The man who was unclean must abandon life to the pain of it for two days, and only on the third day, when there was a full witness (“in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established") is he sprinkled. Such I believe to be the force of the third day here. It has nothing to do with resurrection. It signifies, it would seem, an adequate testimony to his having been unclean; and it is when he feels it before God, and abides under it thus, that the seventh day sprinkling takes effect and the man is clean. Thus it is the reverse of trying to escape and have done with it, as a man would like to do; just as Saul, when he said, “I have sinned,” and then forgot all. Here the unclean was not sprinkled till the third day, and then afterward on the seventh. The one case gives us sin in the presence of grace, as the other grace in the presence of sin. Thus all defilement was now judged and gone. The once defiled Israelite is now fully cleansed. Grace triumphs.

How great, then, the grace of our Lord, Who, while making the fullest provision in case of sin nevertheless in no case makes light of it; even in the very provision for restoring, grace turns all to holy account. Thus is the soul made to feel its sin as it never did before, not the particular act simply, but that which exposed to it, so that one may be profited and strengthened as well as humbled, in a way and degree which had not been the previous experience. Thus, too, where sin abounded, grace yet more, giving a better state to the Lord's praise alone, which could not be if there were no more than the open evil act seen; for we may be as liable to fall again, if not more so. What riches of grace thus meet us! Assuredly it does meet us in the particular act that disgraces and pains us: only according to both Old and New Testament it does not stop there, but would go to the root of the matter, that the defiled might judge self in its roots, and the soul gather strength for itself, minister grace to others, and God be glorified in all things by Jesus Christ our Lord.

May we, then rejoice in the Lord, and rejoice always. May we know how to hold every particle of His truth, in the confidence of His grace. May we look to it, that all the grace and truth we know in Him be used to maintain and vindicate the revealed will and word of God, that it may deal with our own souls as with others, that we may be partakers of His holiness.

James 2:5-7

NOR is it only that fawning on rich persons, even when believers are gathered together, is inconsistent with faith in Him Who in His grace became poor though Lord of glory. It is opposed to the law, and still more to the gospel and Christianity. It denies in effect relationship with Him as a secondary thing to the circumstances of the day and the lowest distinction in the world; and it is as far as possible from God's mind, as His word shows and Christ impressively interpreted and livingly endorsed it. “The poor have the gospel preached to them.” What were they that received it in His eyes? To the pungent contrast already given we have an earnest appeal added.

“Hear, my beloved brethren; did not God choose the poor as to the world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those that love Him? But ye dishonored the poor [man]. Do not the rich oppress you, and they drag you before tribunals? Do not they blaspheme the worthy name that was called on you” (vers. 5-7)?

Attention is drawn first to the plain and characteristic fact everywhere manifest in the church that not only is the gospel preached to the poor, but that the poor are those who as a class are chosen by God. So the apostle strongly set before the ease-loving intellectual Corinthians who liked to be on good terms with the world to the Lord's dishonor and their own loss and danger. How little they had read aright the word of the cross which is to those that perish foolishness, but to the saved God's power! For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and set aside the intelligence of the intelligent. Here it is the still more debased assumption of the rich. But in any case the foolishness of God, as they count Christ crucified, is wiser than men, and the weakness of God in the same cross is stronger than men. “For behold your calling, brethren, that [there are] not many wise according to flesh, not many mighty, not many high-born. But God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put to shame the wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the strong things; and the ignoble things of the world and the despised God chose, and things that are not, that he might bring to naught the things that are; so that no flesh should boast before God” (1 Cor. 1:26-29).

The humble estate of the poor is by grace made their decided advantage when they are called. For there is no bondage more imperious than that which “society” imposes on its votaries, nothing more at issue with the Lord of all Who judged it root and branch by being outside it all and ignoring its pretensions, and pursuing His path of holy goodness to all in unswerving obedience. This the poor believer sees, rich in faith, and escapes the will of his class to rise in the world by religious means as by every other way. His insight may not be profound or extensive, but he accepts with joy the gospel which elevates him spiritually, and he seeks no other now, looking onward confidently for the kingdom not of this world, which He Whose it is promised to those that love Him.

The poor “of this world” of Tyndale, Cranmer, Geneva, and the Auth. V. supposes a text which extant MSS. do not warrant, unless it be the exaggerated rendering of the article, without the demonstrative pronoun. This “of the world,” has considerable support of both uncials and cursives, as well as ancient versions, &c., and is the text of Griesbach, Matthaei (both edd.) and Scholz. They were probably misled by the Vulgate, followed by Wiclif who preceded them, and by the Rhemish that came after them, “in this world,” which has one cursive (29) to this effect with the venerable Bede. “In the world” has the support of three junior MSS. (27, 43, 64). The true reading adopted by the latest critics is that of the most ancient and best uncials, though neglected by the ancient versions save the later or Philoxenian Syriac. It is τῷ κόσμῶ, and appears to be the dative of reference, i.e. poor in respect of, or as to, the world, a not uncommon usage.

It may be remarked that “rich in faith” is the simple contrast by grace with their lowly circumstances here below, and qualifies them as a class without any question of different measure of comparison individually. Faith made them all rich if they had nothing otherwise; and faith as well as love would honor them accordingly now, as God surely will and before the universe in due time. Christ gave their confidence in Him, and love to Him. His promise encourages and strengthens them along the road.

In open opposition is the haughty contempt which wealth naturally engenders. How strange and deplorable that the rich as a class should be of any account in Christian eyes? What is “the poor” man (whether in the case described in vers. 2-4 or in any other) but dishonored by their unbelieving self-complacency? More unjust and selfish still is their attitude and habit. “Do not the rich oppress you? and [is it not] they [that] drag you into courts of justice? Do not they blaspheme the excellent name that was called on you?” As a class, and so it is our Epistle speaks, they were hostile to the name of the Lord, which was everything to the poor that believed and confessed Him; as they were heartless toward themselves whose poverty exposed them to all manner of evil surmise and detraction, and so to persecution.

In riches the enemy has a ready means of keeping up the spirit of the world against Christ and His poor. But what is here aimed at is the guilty tendency on the part of any Christian, and especially the poor to honor “the unrighteous mammon,” and those who have nothing else to boast. Friendship with the world is enmity with God. Scripture is dead against coveting their goods, or yet more wronging themselves. Neither this Epistle nor any other countenances leveling. Faith gives the only exaltation of value in the spiritual realm; and this the church surely is, or it is worse than nothing, even salt that has lost its savor, and proper neither for land nor for dung. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

Letter of Pope Leo XIII on the Unity of the Church: 8. Was Peter Christ's Viceregent?

IT remains to notice the main pretexts, foundation it is too much to say, for the airy palace of the Roman Pontiff, his claim of universal monarchy in spiritual things continually encroaching on the sovereignties of the earth, and striving directly or indirectly to dictate to all. It is as unsubstantial as his own sedia gestatoria, with its flabelli of peacock's feathers, sustained on nothing but an arm of flesh, with an ambition as vaulting as that of the prince of darkness.

The alleged evidence of scripture is mere perversion, even as to Peter to say nothing of the Popes, who assume but cannot prove the smallest connection with that apostle. “The supreme authority,” so far from being vested in Peter, the risen Lord declares was given to Himself, all authority in heaven and on earth. Confiding in Him therefore, Who is no longer dead but alive again for evermore, His servants were to go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them unto the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever He enjoined them. “And lo! I am with you all the days until the consummation of the age.” He never “appointed Peter to be the head of the Church” (p. xxxvi.). Where? one text would suffice; not one even approaches it.

As unfounded is the statement which follows that He also determined the authority should be inherited by his successors. What has Matt. 16:18 to do with this? “Thou art Peter (a stone); and upon this rock I will build My church.” It was a new and wondrous privilege to be claimed for Himself with a name derived from Him; but the apostle Peter takes care to predict the same yet more strongly (“living stone”) of all the believers in Christ addressed in his First Epistle (2:5). It was a high personal honor that Simon was so named by the Lord on the first day Andrew brought his brother to Him; and it was again more emphatically confirmed on his confession of the Messiah's personal and eternal glory. But the blessed apostle, far from seeking self-aggrandizement and exclusive title, rejoiced to own those who are Christ's as “living stones” no less than himself. And the fiery ecclesiastic, Cyril of Alexandria, whom the Pope cites in the same page, is no more reliable in his exegesis than is the piety that inflamed the fierce populace to tear in pieces Theon's daughter, Hypatia, τὴν φιλόσοφον, pace Cave. It is false that upon him our Lord was about to found His Church. A stone is far from being the rock, which rock was Christ, and Christ confessed in the divine glory of His person.

It is true that the Lord on the same occasion gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom of the heavens; the kingdom now in mystery of the earth-rejected King on high before He returns in power and glory as the Son of man. And Peter used them to throw its gates open to Jewish believers in Acts 2, and to Gentile in Acts 10. The work was then and thus done. It was a personal privilege, which admits of neither repetition nor still less of continuous descent. It remains accomplished, and the Popes could not undo it if they would. Peter was given to fill this charge.

There was another solemn charge conferred. “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on the earth shall be bound in the heavens; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on the earth shall be loosed in the heavens.” Undoubtedly Peter had used this authority, as we read in Acts 5 and 8., but it was administrative in the Spirit, and as far as possible from Kingly or Imperial, the earthly-minded vain dream of sacerdotal ambition, and expressly tied to the apostle by the Father's sovereign choice and also by the Son's authority. Chrysostom was guilty of inexcusable exaggeration and error in saying that the Lord gave to a mortal man all power in heaven, because what is done here in His name and service is ratified there. This is made so much the more manifest in Matt. 18:18-20, where the self-same ratification on high is assured to the local assembly on earth, were there but two or three to pray or decide as gathered to the Lord's name.

Luke 22:31, 32, and John 21:15-17 are misapplied in puerile levity to eke out of them a monarchy over the church. The one was to assure the self-confident disciple of His Master's grace in restoring him, even to his service in strengthening others so much the more afterward; the other was His loving goodness in going to the root of Peter's fall, and as He knew his love in the face of his deep and public failure, which all others might have doubted, committing to his shepherd care His sheep and lambs, the dearest objects of His own love for whom He died. The sheep were the Jewish believers, not those outside the old fold, which we know did not fall within the official care of Peter but of Paul (Gal. 2); and so Peter wrote both his Epistles to the saints of the circumcision. But in no case was there exclusive prerogative, still less did it approach the royal type, on earth. There was no Prince of apostles, let the Fathers speak as they may. The risen Christ alone has the keys of death and hades; He only has the key of David (Rev. 1; 3). Neither Peter nor Paul ever claimed such a place, which belongs solely to the Conqueror of death and Satan, to Him Who is the Holy, the True. But whatever of spiritual power and authority either of those most honored apostles received from the Lord, not a word of God teaches or implies its devolution on a successor. Both wrote in view of their death and of growing evil in the Christian profession, and both direct to God and the word of His grace as the provision and security for perilous times (Acts 20:2, 29-32 Tim. 3, 2 Peter 1:12-15; 2 and iii.). Not a whisper about the Roman Pontiffs, about which men began to boast as Christendom fell from the wisdom that is from above into earthly and natural policy where is envying and strife, and consequently confusion and every vile deed.—

The Pope quotes (41) from Basil's Hom. de Poenitentia, “He (Christ) is a priest, and makes priests. He is a rock, and constitutes a rock.”

The latter statement is baseless and at issue with all revealed truth. As Christ alone is the Head of the church, so He only is the rock. Controversialists may prattle about the Syriac or Aramaic they imagine our Lord to have used. Of this neither we nor they have a right to speak; but none can deny that the sole revelation given expressly distinguishes a stone from the rock. And it is inconceivable that any language beneath the sky should be unable to mark the difference of ideas so distinct, as it is corrupting the faith to level down the Lord in order to raise Peter to the same height.

The former statement is true. The true great High-priest is Christ, and He makes priests. But the apostles Paul, Peter, and John, uniformly teach the truth which Romanism (and not Romanism only) denies and seeks to destroy, that He constitutes every believer now a priest with greater privilege, not merely than Aaron's sons but than Aaron himself. For as Heb. 10 insists on the one completed offering of Christ, whereby He has perfected us uninterruptedly, the same chapter from ver. 19 is as definite that we have title and boldness to enter into the holies in virtue of the blood of Jesus through the rent vail, and are exhorted to approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, instead of the anxiety which could not but fill Aaron when he approached once a year. And if it be said that now there is a royal as well as holy priesthood, we agree cordially that so Peter calls not presbyters or bishops, but the Christian brotherhood in chap. ii. of his First Epistle, vers. 5, 9; the sole priesthood, besides Christ's, which the N.T. sanctions. Ministry in the word and rule are given to a few for the good of the many; but all saints are by the gospel declared to be brought to God, nigh by the blood of Jesus; and therein lies the chief privilege of a priest. So John represents the believers breaking forth at the name of Jesus in Rev. 1:5, 6, owning not His love only, nor His having washed us from our sins in His blood, but also His having made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father. If it be replied that this is solely by faith, the answer is that so is every Christian blessing, but this too as really as any other.

And here is just Rome's unbelief to its ruin. As the Jewish branches were broken off through unbelief, so the apostle solemnly cautioned the saints in Rome, that Christendom stands in the olive-tree of faith. This is its responsibility, as it was Israel's of old; and therefore the call not to be high-minded but to fear. Who but themselves can deny the high-mindedness of the Papacy and of Romanism in general? No doubt there is infatuated pride in the” Greek church and in other remains of the old ecclesiastical bodies; but Babylon's sins have exceeded all others, heaped or glued together up to heaven, as Rev. 18:5 so graphically puts it for God to remember her unrighteousnesses.

Separate State and the Resurrection

WHEN we have learned a truth, even in power from God, such is the narrowness of the human mind, that we are in serious danger of making it a shut-door against other truths, and thus of stopping short of the largeness of God's thoughts. Indeed, the more important a truth, the greater is the peril of its becoming all-absorbing. “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, (blessed, divine remedy!) whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” “When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth.”

Thus, when Jesus, after speaking of the many mansions in His Father's house, and of going there to prepare a place for His own, said: “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also,” it is clear that He did not mean death, nor the end of the world, nor the destruction of Jerusalem. He who was going away promised to come again: if it was a real, personal departure of Jesus, it was to be as real and personal a return, not to reign over them in their place, but to take them to His place, that He and they might be there together. Right, therefore, it is, that our hearts should feel that our going to Him is a thing very distinct from His coming to receive us unto Himself in such sort as this.

Again, our souls may have drunk somewhat into the triumphant strain of the apostle when he cries” “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” Hades is not our joy, but He Who has won the victory—He that liveth and was dead, and behold He is alive for evermore, and hath its keys! It is true that the Christian can say all is his, life or death; still, death is. not, and ought not to be, the object of his affections. Christ is the Bridegroom; not Christ known after the flesh, for henceforth know we no man thus; we know Him, the risen Man, the Lord from heaven. And by the energy of the Holy Ghost, knowing Him risen, we long for that which will but speak His worth, His power, His glory—above all, His love. We long for His coming and for the resurrection—the resurrection of them that are Christ's at His coming. Happiness, no doubt, it is to be rid of this clog and burden, this body of sin and death—happiness far deeper is the assurance that we depart to be with Christ; but, led of the Spirit, we long for His triumph, for His joy. Our death and consequent separate state, however to us “far better,” through His grace, far from being His triumph, is rather the last effect of the power of His adversary. No! it is when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: death is swallowed up in victory.

Nevertheless, let none depreciate the blessed portion of those who, absent from the body, are present with the Lord. When the word of truth in its fullness and simplicity is respected, this may not be touched. To the dying thief, who prayed the Lord to remember him when He should come in His kingdom, Jesus said: “Verily, I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in paradise;” that is, He proffers something beyond and better than he asked, something which, to the renewed mind, is more prized than any outward governmental display, however glorious—the joy of being with Christ Himself, and that very day too, without waiting for His coming in His kingdom. I do not mean, nor believe, that, in the kingdom, the element of the presence and companionship of Christ will be wanting, nor can it be supposed that we shall be less able to appreciate this blessed association, when that which is perfect is come. Surely not. Yet, strictly, it is not what constitutes the character of the kingdom, for it existed, as we have seen, before the kingdom, and it will continue after the kingdom shall have been delivered up. But when one has felt even a little of the affections of Christ, it needs few words to show that no conferred honor, no recompense, however bright (and God forbid that we should disparage the recompense of such a Lord!), can approach the joy of being near Him, and with Him, and, blessed be God, forever!

The saints, then, which sleep in Jesus (or rather who were put to sleep by Jesus, τοὺς κοιμηθέντας διὰ τόυ Ἰησοῦ 1 Thess. 4:14), death shall not be able to separate from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So Stephen, stoned, calls and says, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit;” and Paul could say, “to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” “For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better.” There was not, and could not be, a doubt, whether to choose death or resurrection. The hesitation was about “living in the flesh,” not about resurrection, which was incomparably more blessed than either to live or to die: “if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection from the dead.” To abide in the flesh might be more needful for others; but as far as the servant of Christ, individually, is concerned, to depart and to be with Christ is far better (Phil. 1). Nevertheless, the third chapter of this same epistle declares that we have another and sweeter hope. We look for the Savior from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ; Who, instead of giving to our spirits only the joy of being with Him, shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself. And the Apostle, in 2 Cor. 5, speaking of Christian position and judgment as to these things, utters our confidence and willingness to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord, though, even here, he shows that there is another thing closer to the heart. “We groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven. . . For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed (i.e. death and the separate state,) but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life: “the result and complement of the resurrection of Christ.” If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies because of His spirit that dwelleth in you.” “Ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” —Rom. 8:11-23.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:24

THE most important line of all Shem's stock, in its remote and even in its approaching consequences, through moral and divine associations, is the briefest in this genealogy; and this must now be noticed.

“And Arphaxad (Arpachshad) begot Shelah (Shelach) and Shelah begot Eber (Ebher)” (ver 24). Arphaxad was Shem's eldest son, born two years after the deluge.

It is to be observed that the inspiring Spirit led Moses to change his manner at this point, introducing Arphaxad and his family as a sort of fresh start. The same style is adopted also in 1 Chron. 1. It is no longer as before, “And the sons of—.” As in evil a new departure was made for Cush and his descendants, so here for good where Arphaxad comes before us. Yet for the present little is said of the latter, unlike Nimrod who shot into immediate prominence, not content to be a mighty hunter before Jehovah, but thereon and after began to be mighty on the earth. Good is of rare occurrence here below and of slow growth, always excepting the One Who manifested its perfection, and all the more because He would not be designated by that which He claimed for God alone, unless indeed there was faith to see and own God in Him.

Josephus states in his Antiq. i. 6, 4 (ed. Hudson i. 19, 20) that Arphaxad gave his name to the Chaldeans. But this is erroneous. For the Chaldim, as they are called in scripture, or Kaldi as they called themselves, were a Cushite race, not Shemitic, and their tongue is said to have closely resembled the Galla or ancient language of the Aethiopians. This appears to have been retained as a learned tongue for erudite and religious purposes at least; and we may see reference to it in Dan. 1:4, even when the Shemitic type of language had superseded it for ordinary or civil usage as shown in the inscriptions of that region both Assyrian and Babylonian. The predominance of Nabopolassar and of Nebuchadnezzar his son gave the Chaldeans their established supremacy over the various races in Babylon; so that what was an old and special tribe at first got to be the more extensive designation of that conquering people, as well as to mark a peculiar class of learned and scientific religionists, &c., astrologers as we see in Dan. 2 of whom the prophet was constituted chief or “master” (4:9; 5:11).

Nevertheless it is very possible that Arphaxad may be traced in the name of the region called Ἀρῥαπαχῖτις mentioned twice by Cl. Ptolemy (Geog. ed. Wilberg, 387) in his account of Assyria, and in the city Ἄρραπα in the list with which that first chap. of book vi. closes. So Bochart concludes in his Geog. Sacr. ii. 4. This region, south of Armenia, was the early home of the Shemites, as afterward Asshur prevailed there. But there also the Cushites were strong in early days, and a Japhetic element was not wanting in self-assertion. But the Shemites unlike the others were ever disposed to stay at home, which made the subsequent crossing the more remarkable in the progenitor of the Hebrews at the call of God.

Of Salah or Salach little can be said with certainty, because the Bible is silent. He was the father of Eber in the direct line of the chosen patriarch Abram, the depositary of promise. The name signifies shoot or extension, but to regard it therefore as fictitious ought to be too absurd for the credulity of rationalism. It is known that a place with a similar name in the north of Mesopotamia occurs in Syrian writings; to which Knobel refers in his well-known book.

Of Eber a little more may be said when verse 25 is examined. It is the more necessary to distinguish the true form, because in Luke 3:35 it is confounded with the different name of “Heber,” which is shared by no less than half-a-dozen persons wholly distinct (14n). The latter reappears in the name of Hebron, the well-known city of Judah, as ancient as Damascus and rather older than Zoan, or Tanis as the Greeks called it, in Egypt. Scripture expressly intimates this (Num. 13:22).

The Offerings of Leviticus: 4. Burnt Offering

Lev. 1:14-17

THE least form of this offering is mentioned naturally in the last place. How gracious of God not only to accept it as distinctly as the greatest, but to give the offerers the express assurance that so it was!

“And if his offering to Jehovah be a burnt-offering of fowls, then he shall present his offering of turtle-doves or of young pigeons. And the priest shall bring it near to the altar, and wring [or, pinch] off its head, and burn it on the altar; and its blood shall be drained [or, pressed] out at the side of the altar. And he shall take away its crop with its feathers [or, refuse] and cast it beside the altar on the east into the place of the ashes; and he shall split it at its wings, [but] not divide [it] asunder; and the priest shall burn it on the altar on the wood that is on the fire: it is a burnt-offering, a fire-offering of sweet savor to Jehovah” (vers. 14-17).

Jehovah would give the poorest of His people the means of presenting to Himself the shadow of what was most precious in Christ's offering of Himself to God. For among the ordinary sacrifices the burnt-offering had an unequaled place. All the others were partaken of more or less by man; the meal-offering was largely for the use of the priests; of course also the peace-offering, which pre-eminently expressed the privilege of fellowship; and even of the sin-offering or of the trespass-offering, unless in the special form when the Mood was put within the veil, every male among the priests was enjoined to eat in a holy place, as they ate of the meal-offering. But in no case did a soul of man, not even the high priest, eat of the burnt-offering. It was offered to God, assuredly on behalf of His people for their acceptance, but only to God.

But if the offering of turtle-doves or of young pigeons, as truly brought before the eyes of Jehovah the efficacious death of His Son as that of the bullock or of the sheep, it is the more remarkable that part, not of the larger, but of the smallest burnt-offering, was thrown away. It was to be split, not divided; but the offerer was to take away the crop with the feathers, or, refuse, and cast it beside the altar on the east into the place of the ashes.

Thus there is a marked falling short of the complete idea of the burnt-offering where all rose up to God as a savor of rest. Poverty of faith has its effect now at any rate. Christ is the same perfect Savior of all that are His. The acceptance of each is according to all that God appreciated in Him and His work. All have been and are not only sanctified as a settled fact through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all, but He has thereby perfected the sanctified without even a break, not forever merely but continuously. Their standing is secured uninterruptedly.

How is it then that feebleness of faith works? It fails to give adequate glory to God. It detracts from the soul's fullness of enjoyment of Christ and His work. Part of the fowls was “cast away,” and “into the place of the ashes.” Weak faith does not undo the perfecting of the saints before God. The acceptance which Christ's work confers on the believer abides untouched. God sees all that are His according to Christ, His standard; but the weaker the faith, the more the believer mingles the sense of drawback because of his failures with the blessedness to which the Holy Spirit bears His testimony. Hence the distinctness of what the burnt-offering means is impaired, In the soul's apprehension it is made to approach an offering for sin. Of God glorified in Christ's death, and ourselves identified with Christ thereby, such an one enters into little if at all. One is content then to look at no more than His bearing our sins in His own body on the tree: in itself a most necessary blessing, but assuredly short of appropriating the distinctive truth of the burnt-offering.

Deterioration as well as difference of degree appears in others of these types as may be shown in due time. This tends to confirm the thought here. But, however this may be judged, the fact is certain among believers; and the result of not entering into the various aspects and relations of Christ's sacrifice is that souls lose not a little in clear and bright perception of the truth, and of their own blessing consequently. Hence the importance of heeding every divine intimation of the revealed mind of Christ, that we may thus grow in and by the knowledge of God.

Brief Thoughts on the Separation of the Nazarite: 2

Num. 6

No type ever reaches up to, much less can it exhaust, the glory of the Lord. Hence we constantly find a point where Christ personally is rather the contrast than the object pictured. Aaron was the high priest taken from among men, but Jesus was the Son of God. The one with the blood of bulls and goats offered once every year for himself and for the errors of the people; “but Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:11, 12). So Christ, as we know, was incapable of defilement: the death of man or of Israel in the scene which surrounded Him, did not and could not affect Him, Who, if he were the Nazarite, was infinitely more. None could take His life from Him. If He laid it down, it was purely and entirely the spontaneous act of His grace, though even then He will not swerve from the will of the Father. “have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.”

Blessed be His name! He did lay down His life for the sheep. For it was the will of God that we should be separated by that true Nazarite unto God Himself, and Christ came to effect His will of sanctifying us, and this could only be by the offering up of the body of Christ once for all. For, as Jesus had said, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” And Christ would not abide alone as God's Nazarite, but, having died, and thus removed our defilement and death by His own death for us, He is beyond the region of the dead; and there too are we brought, as risen with Him. The dead corn of wheat has produced much fruit. Risen with Him, great is the company of the Nazarites now.

It is wondrous, yet most certain, that He Who knew no sin was made sin for us. Never was Christ's consecration of Himself more holy than when the spotless Victim was wreathed and filleted with our sins, which He verily owned, and bore, and suffered. for, according to the judgment and wrath of God. Perfectly without sin, He alone could be a sacrifice for us; perfectly made sin for us, He alone could blot out our sins by the sacrifice of Himself. But now the work is finished, and He has taken His seat at God's right hand, “for by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified” (Heb. 10:14). Do we think of our need of a sin-offering? The answer is, Christ was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5). Do we think, further, of the need of a burnt-offering? The answer is again, Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor (Eph. 5:2).

Accordingly, all our Nazariteship flows from, and is in unison with, this original source. Whatever professes to be holiness, or is accredited as such, that is not based upon the crucifixion of the flesh and is not carried on in resurrection-life, is not true Christian holiness. It may be indeed a fair show in the flesh, but it is virtually a denial of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Once, beyond doubt, when God owned a worldly sanctuary, He owned a fleshly holiness, which rose no higher than mere outward restrictions. For the world and the flesh, however clearly known to Him, had not yet proved themselves to be irremediably evil. But now He owns neither the one nor the other. The cross of Christ was the end of both to those who see as God sees; and Christ is risen and seated at His right hand in the heavenly places, and His power to usward who believe is according to the working of that mighty power which wrought in thus exalting Christ. A man as such, may be wise, mighty or noble (1 Cor. 1); he may be possessed of a thousand natural advantages; he may be even religious in the flesh to a high degree (Gal. 4-6). Earthly things are these, though they may be called earthly blessings; and the Holy Ghost designates those who mind them as enemies, not exactly of Christ, but of the cross of Christ (Phil. 3). Men may court such earthly things, they may boast of them, and lean upon them; but shall we, shall Christians? Shall we not rather, as true Nazarites, count those things which were gain, loss for Christ? Shall we not seek yet more to know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death, if by any means we might attain unto the resurrection from among the dead? It is as dead and risen with Christ that we are Nazarites, not by subjection to ordinances, such as Touch not, taste not, handle not. Whatever is unworthy of such dead and risen men is not meet for us. Therefore, brethren, beloved of God, let us set our minds on things above, not on things on the earth. Even while we are here below, we are one with Him above: our life is hid with Him in God. And so really and inseparably are we identified, that when He shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory. Meanwhile, therefore, let us mortify our members which are upon the earth.

Thus then, sin and death having entered, the death of Christ could alone meet our defilement; and hence He resumes His Nazariteship in resurrection.

And it is in resurrection that He associates believers with Himself, as His brethren in the truest sense. “Touch me not,” said Jesus to Mary Magdalene, “for I am not yet ascended to my Father, but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.” Such is the gracious provision hinted at in the type: “And if any man die very suddenly by him, and he hath defiled the head of his consecration; then he shall shave his head in the day of his cleansing, on the seventh day shall he shave it. And on the eighth day he shall bring two turtles, or two young pigeons, to the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation: and the priest shall offer the one for a sin-offering, and the other for a burnt-offering, and make an atonement for him, for that he sinned by the dead, and shall hallow his head that same day. And he shall consecrate unto Jehovah the days of his separation, and shall bring a lamb of the first year for a trespass-offering: but the days that were before shall be lost, because his separation was defiled” (vers. 9-12).

“The eighth day” (ver. 10) is the introduction, the first day, of a new week; and so we find the Nazarite commencing, as it were, his separation over again. If sinners are to be separated to God, it can only be by death—the death of Christ. By His resurrection, He began in power the new creation. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (2 Cor. 5:17). The total accomplishment may not be until the new heavens and new earth (Rev. 21:5); but faith looks at Christ, and can speak this language even now. Our separation is maintained in His separation, as to our life; and separation in our walk must be from walking according to the life we have in Him. “If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit.” To walk as men—not merely as bad men, but as men, after a human way—is beneath those who are Christ's (1 Cor 3.). Wherefore, says the apostle elsewhere (Col. 2), if ye are dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, &c. In truth, they were dead, and they were risen too, risen with Christ, and therefore are called to seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.

The Scripture of Truth: 6

“AND at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people [the Jews without doubt]; and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation, even to that same time; and at that time thy people shall be delivered” (ver. 1).

But notoriously since the time of the Babylonish captivity, no matter what trouble may have come upon them (and how many and varied their trials!) they have never been delivered. Nebuchadnezzar's blows were heavy, and at length he carried them into captivity. Still more severe was it when Titus the Roman destroyed the city and sanctuary, and sold or scattered over all the western world in particular those whom he was weary of slaying. From another authority we have the retributive fact that Titus crucified the Jews (who had crucified their own Messiah), until there was not wood left capable of torturing another Jew. Then indeed they became the dispersed of Judah to the four corners of the earth. They attempted a stand in the days of Hadrian the Roman emperor and again they were slaughtered without mercy, instead of being delivered. And so it has been since. But it remains to be verified in their last and sorest tribulation, “At that time thy people shall be delivered.” Can there be a doubt to any believer that Daniel reveals a deliverance never yet accomplished? Not, it is true, for the mass but for the godly remnant, “thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.” This is assuredly before them. There may be only a little remnant left; but “the little one shall become a thousand, and the small one a strong nation: I, Jehovah, will hasten it in its time,” according to the words of Isaiah. The word of God ought to silence all difficulties. It is only the righteous who will then be delivered. But it is a deliverance by publicly displayed power in the earth, and in no way by the gospel, when the mass of the Jews shall be destroyed, only those delivered, who are then under the holy banner of God's Messiah. At that time, as God says by Isaiah; “Thy people also shall be all righteous; they shall inherit the land forever.” Is this not Israel?

But we have more of detail here. The Jews in the land are the persons spoken about hitherto; but what about their brethren that were away and lost to their knowledge. Here we have a striking description of them—and an end put to that anomalous state. “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to ever lasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” It appears that up to that time their resurrection as a nation had not taken place. From the days of Hosea, and Isaiah, the figure of death had been used, and their rising again promised. So we find it elaborately in Ezek. 37. Many have applied this to the literal resurrection of the body, but when viewed in its connection, it will be found to be only a figure of Israel re-appearing after a long slumber of death. In Ezekiel we hear of the valley filled with dry bones, and of the graves being opened, with other metaphors. It is the same truth as here; not the literal dead raised, but Israel coming up again and standing on their feet, an exceeding great army, whom Jehovah brings into the land of Israel. How could all this describe men rising from the dead? God will bring them out of their utter inaction and impenetrable obscurity.

“And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever.” Those who learn of God, and such as labor for God, shall not lose their reward. They shall shine as the stars, instead of changing like the moon. But it is “the many,” or wicked Jews, that are here intended, who are not really turned to righteousness. So that the true fact is, “they that instruct the mass in righteousness"; and they are rewarded for their fidelity, whatever the result may be.

In conclusion let it be observed, that it was the eleventh verse of this chapter our Lord referred to in Matt. 24:15: not 11:31 which had long before been accomplished, but a future act of similar kind which will bring down divine judgment signally, “And from the time that the continual [or daily sacrifice] shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand, two hundred, and ninety days.". The days here are, I believe, so many literal days. Three times and a half, or one thousand, two hundred, and sixty days, had been spoken of in ver. 7, and in chap. 7:25, as occupied with the evil wrought by the Beast or Roman Prince. To this thirty days are here added. The Lord draws particular attention to the facts as calling for understanding on the part of the reader. It is not the Roman siege already accomplished according to Luke 21 as far as ver. 24, though the times of the Gentiles are not yet exhausted. From ver. 25 all is future. And the final siege will divide into two parts. The first shows us the king of the north partially successful. The second is marked by utter destruction; and no wonder. For the Lord will have taken His place at the head of His people, and sends the rod of His power out of Zion. “Blessed is he that waiteth and cometh to the thousand, three hundred, and five and thirty days” (ver. 12).

This is blessing on the earth; but at the same time there is better still. For those saints like Daniel that have fallen asleep are not forgotten in that great day. “But go thou thy way till the end be; for thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.” Daniel, like all the dead that are Christ's, will then obtain “a better resurrection.” “He hath swallowed up death” forever. Christ's victory is ours for the heavens, as His victory triumphs over Israel's enemies for the earth.

The Importunate Appeal at Midnight

Luke 11:5-13

THE Holy Spirit at this point in the Gospel of Luke brings together, as is His manner frequently, two things which may have been by no means near historically, to illustrate a great moral truth. The value of the divine word, and of prayer. The one closes chap. 10., the other opens chap. 11.

Of His own will God the Father begot us with the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures (James 1:18). So Peter in his First Epistle (chap. 1:22) speaks of our having purified our souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, being born again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, by the word of God which liveth and abideth forever. “And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.” Wherefore as newborn babes, we are exhorted, laying aside evil of word, deed, and spirit, to desire the sincere milk of the word that we may grow thereby unto salvation, the salvation ready to be revealed at Christ's appearing. The same word of God that quickened us who believe, nourishes, strengthens, and guards our souls. Paul teaches the same truth.

Faith is by hearing and hearing by the word of God (Rom. 10:17). “In Christ Jesus I have begotten you by the gospel” (1 Cor. 1), not by baptism, for he had baptized very few, but by the gospel which they received of him and he preached to them. It was the word which corrected their faults and restored their souls, as we see in 2 Corinthians For Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, to a sure and glorious end. Nor is John a whit less explicit; for he shows us the disciples already clean because of the word Christ had spoken to them (chap. xv.). They are sanctified through the truth, which the word is (chap. 17.).

But when we have received the word as Mary did in the love of it, and at the feet of Jesus, we none the less but the more need prayer to walk worthily of God, Who called us to His kingdom and glory. And so we find the Lord, as He is seen continually in prayer, teaching His disciples to pray. For the life we receive in Him, as it is of God, so lives in dependence on Him habitually and in obedience of His will made known in His word. Man, as our Lord cited to the tempter, shall not live by bread alone but by every word of God. My meat, said He to the disciples, is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work; and again, As the living Father sent Me and I live (not merely “by” but) on account of the Father; so he that eateth Me, as every true Christian does, even he shall live on account of Me. Christ thus becomes the believer's object and motive. None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live to the Lord; and whether we die, we die to the Lord: whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord's (Rom. 14). And He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live to themselves, but to Him Who died for them and rose again (2 Cor. 5).

Hence the great apostle lays down that every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God, and prayer (1 Tim. 4:4, 5). The word here used goes, no doubt, beyond the ordinary word for prayer and implies that intercourse which is now open to us with God by redemption, and encourages us in all intercession because of the access we have into the grace wherein we stand. But it is thoroughly prayer to God in a way that is as full as it is free which His love sanctions, now that His righteousness is manifested, the word expressing what comes from Him, as prayer what goes up to Him, in the life of faith.

On the details of the prayer here given, and yet more fully in the Gospel of Matthew, we need say little beyond noticing the efforts of unbelief to assimilate them. Each is perfect for the purpose of God where they are given, the shorter one for Gentile instruction no less than the longer for believers of the circumcision. The petition for the earth is here omitted, as also about that power of evil which the Jew must know peculiarly to mark the time which precedes their deliverance and blessing at the end.

But what a stimulus the Lord here adds! “And he said to them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go to him at midnight, and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him? And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot rise and give thee. I say to you, though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth” (verses 5-8).

Truly the Savior needed not that any should testify of man; for He knew what was in man. As really man as Adam, He was always and perfectly above all the taint of fallen humanity, “the born holy Thing.” Not only He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth, but in Him, it could be and is said absolutely, is no sin. And He knew what is in God, for God He was and is forever. He was thoroughly aware of man's reluctance to draw near to God, and his indisposition to expect good from God. Man is not a giver himself, least of all does he feel that God gives continually and abundantly in the natural sphere of man's wants. But that God should give His best, the Son of His love, to deliver him from evil and from judgment, to blot out his sins, to give him life eternal, so exceeds all that is in his own heart and all that his conscience justly needs, that he cannot, will not, believe it, even though God has sent the most complete and solemn testimony in the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ His Son. He is averse to the glad tidings, because it makes nothing of man, everything of God's own goodness in Christ. If it were only a rite or an institution of mysterious efficacy by man and for man, this he could understand; something done for him if not by himself by another, this he could trust, especially if many others accepted the same way. But to own himself only evil, God alone good, most and best of all in giving His Only-begotten that he might live and have Him as propitiation for his sins, this indeed is God's love beyond creature thought, yet the very love we are called to believe in the gospel.

In early days a great persecutor had it revealed to and in him, as he was given to see the glorified Lord and to hear the words of His mouth. What was the immediate effect? “Behold, he prayeth.” And so it ever is. Faith in Him leads into new relationships and creates new wants; while the old man is still there, though judicially condemned in the cross and calling for vigilant self-judgment in the practice of every hour here below. But the believer not only was justified by faith and has peace through our Lord Jesus Christ; through Him he possesses access by faith into this grace wherein we stand. No doubt he is called to praise and give thanks continually, but to pray in his weakness and exposure to a world of evil and a sleepless subtle foe. As prayer is due to our God and Father, so is it most necessary for His children. And the Lord illustrates it even from man, evil as he is, and though appealing at midnight, when difficulties were greatest. Yet then, where the want was urgent, and without any resource to meet it, a mere man does not fail to rise and give, not for friendship alas! but because of importunity. How much more should the believer count on God! “Ask and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened. For every one that asketh receiveth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” God giveth to all life and breath and all things; it is His nature.

Relationship only adds to this. “If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if [he ask] a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? or if he shall ask an egg, will he give him a scorpion?” An enemy might, but God is the truest of friends, a Father as none else approaches. “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall the Father who [is] of heaven give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him” (vers. 11-13)?

The Lord has in view His own in their new wants and awaiting their special privilege. The Spirit, though ever working in the family of faith, was to be given, as the Son was already; the Son for sinners, the Spirit to saints. The disciples were awaiting the promise of the Father and received the Spirit at Pentecost, when Peter laid down the terms, “Repent, and be baptized each of you on the name of Jesus Christ for remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). No wonder that they continued steadfastly, as in other holy functions, so “in prayers,” fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

Jesus in the Midst: 2

THE presence of Jesus in the midst of His saints is as real to-day, though He is glorified in heaven. We still have His word, “Where two or three are gathered together in (unto) My name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20). What a resource in a day of feebleness and failure! He has not changed towards His own. Though we look back, with humbled and bowed hearts, upon some eighteen hundred years of deepest failure, He is as true as ever to those who in simplicity of faith look up to Him. What a comfort Whatever else we have not, we have Christ. Is He enough? Is it gift, wealth or influence, that we seek, or is it really Christ? I often think that the Lord had in view such a day as this when He spoke of two or three. There were no twos or threes in the first days of the church; all that believed were together. Men speaking perverse things had not arisen, nor had grievous wolves come into the flock to scatter and devour. But how changed is the condition of things now! Yet His word holds good to the very end. “Where two or three are gathered together unto My name, there am I in the midst of them.”

What all our souls need, is a deeper realization of His presence. It would correct many things that we have to groan over before Him. Would saints arrive late on the first day of the week if there was a just sense that the Lord is there? To whom are we gathered? Whom do we go to meet? Dare I keep Him waiting Who deigns to come into the midst of His gathered saints? Further, when together, what holy calm would prevail if His presence were duly realized! Nothing like haste or eagerness, and certainly no display of flesh would grieve us if all hearts realized sufficiently the simple, yet vital, fact that the Lord is there. It would enter into everything, affecting our dress, our words, our whole behavior. The Lord give us to exercise our hearts before Him.

Observe the place of separation of these disciples. They were shut in; the world—the murderous, Christ-rejecting world—was shut out. True there were special circumstances at that moment, but the principle abides. What has the church to do with the world? Where do we read of all the parish joining with the saints in “public worship?” Indeed, where is such an idea as “public worship” (or what is meant by the term) to be found in the word of God? We are called to bear testimony to the world, we are to preach the gospel to it, and warn men to flee from the wrath to come; but worship with the world! Far be the thought. In John 13:1 we read of “His own which were in the world.” If we belong to the circle called “His own,” of necessity we do not belong to the other “the world.” The two are distinct and opposite in nature and character.

The Lord's first words to His disciples were, “Peace be unto you.” How precious after the work which He had accomplished He had just returned from the battle, the enemy was overthrown, the work was done, divine justice was satisfied. Therefore He returns to those for whom He suffered, and announces the grand and blessed result. Not only so, but “when he had so said, he showed unto them his hands and his side.” As if to say, “See how peace was made.” He made it by the blood of His cross. Naught else would have availed.

When John saw the Lamb in glory, it was “a Lamb as it had been slain.” The marks of Calvary will never be effaced from His holy person, though it is not true to say as Wesley, “Five bleeding wounds He bears.” Whenever we gaze upon Him there (and shall we ever take our eyes off Him?), our hearts will be reminded of what it cost Him to redeem us to God.

But we have more in John 20 “Then said Jesus to them again, “Peace be unto you; as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” Is this needless repetition? Nay, there is no such thing in scripture. The Lord is giving a commission in this verse, and in connection with it, says the second time, “Peace.” He would have His own serve Him with the enjoyment of “peace” in their souls. How can one serve Him truly otherwise? What inward holy calm it gives to have the settled assurance that peace has been made and that it is ours; and further to have His peace keeping the heart and mind! The circumstances of service and testimony are often discouraging, and there is at times a tendency to give up; but His word comes in, “Peace be unto you,” and the heart rests and is sustained.

The commission is blessed, yet solemn. As really as the Father sent the Son, the Son has sent His own unto the world. What a position for us! Taken out of the world, given to the Son, then sent into it to act for Him. The Son was here to make God known, and to bear witness to the truth; the same place is ours in measure. In reality it is a privilege to be allowed to spend a few years here before being taken to heaven. When first He called us to the knowledge of Himself, His purpose was to place us in the Father's house; and He could have done it there and then had it suited Him. But He has chosen to leave us here for a season, but it is to act for Him. We cannot bear testimony in heaven. All such service must be rendered here, and the more difficult and trying it is—the more suffering and reproach it brings—the more will it draw forth His approval and reward in the day that is at hand.

“And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” This passage may present serious difficulty to some. It was not yet the gift of the Holy Ghost as a divine person to dwell within them—for that they must wait until Jesus was glorified. We read in Acts 1:5, “ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence,” words uttered subsequently to those before us. To understand the Lord's action aright, we must go back to a similar one in Gen. 2 There we have the Lord God first forming the man's body of the dust of the ground, then breathing into his nostrils the breath of life. In this, man is distinguished from the beast. Here the Lord, risen from the dead, after having accomplished redemption, breathes His own risen life by the Holy Ghost into His beloved disciples. They were unquestionably converted men before; the Lord gives them now to participate with Himself in life more abundantly. It is of the utmost moment to seize that the life which is ours in Christ, is a risen life. What has judgment to do with it? What has law to say to it? It is victorious, and beyond the reach of the enemy. The difference between the Spirit as life, and His personal indwelling may be seen in Rom. 8. In vers. 1-11 it is not so much His personal presence as that He is the Spirit of life, instilling Himself into all our thoughts and ways, and giving character to the life that we now live below; in vers. 12-27 He is viewed rather as a distinct person dwelling within, bearing witness with our spirit, sympathizing with us in our groans and sorrows, and Himself making intercession for us according to God.

(To be continued, D.V.)

Reflections on Galatians 3:21-29

ANOTHER difficulty is now gone into and settled by the apostle. If law, instead of helping man to attain to righteousness, only brings out transgression, is it against the promises of God? “Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid. For if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by law” (ver. 21). Life was set before those who were under the law, as ver. 12 shows; but it must be attained to by human righteousness. But the law was weak through the flesh. Flesh is so utterly antagonistic to God that it will not walk in His ways. Its whole course is marked by self-will and sin. Hence the law could not give life. It could only condemn and slay law-breakers. Therefore righteousness is not on the principle of law for any. “But the scripture hath concluded (or shut up) all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe” (ver. 22). Jew and Gentile were alike sinners before God, the one breaking the known commands of God; the other giving loose rein to his passions and lusts, All are brought in guilty, the matter being gone into fully in Rom. 1-3 But now the promise is accomplished to all who believe. The Jew has no exclusive claims certainly, being in the same prison-house as the Gentiles, as it were, through guilt. Grace makes the promise good to all believers, whoever they may be; righteousness is imputed on the principle of faith in Jesus Christ.

Now before Christ came to accomplish this great work on behalf of man that all who believe in Him risen and glorified might be justified, believers, especially among the Jews were kept shut up in the school-house of the law. “But before faith came, we were kept under law, shut up unto the faith which should afterward be revealed” (ver. 23). They were waiting really until God brought in His better thing. Meanwhile they were kept under restraint and in separation from the heathen around them by the possession of the law. “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster” (vers. 24, 25). All this should appeal powerfully to the Galatians. Those who believed before their day had been under the hand of the legal pedagogue; Christianity having come they had been set free. And were Gentiles going after that which even Jews had left as suited only to an infantine condition? What utter misunderstanding of the mind of God! What serious surrender of the surpassingly excellent place that belongs to the Christian!

“For ye are all children (sons) of God by faith in Christ Jesus” (ver. 26). What an immensely superior place and relationship to that of an infant under law! Notice again in this place, the apostle's use of the pronouns: “We were kept under the law,” “the law was our schoolmaster.” He refers to himself and to his fellow Jewish saints, and does not include the brethren of the uncircumcision to whom he was writing. But when he speaks of privilege and blessing, these are as much for the believing Greek as for the Jew, hence he says “Ye.” We are called to have part with Christ, to enter into His relationship with the Father, the power of which is made good in our souls by the Holy Ghost.

Baptism is here brought in, being a sign of our having part thus with the dead and risen Christ. “For as many of you as have been baptized unto Christ have put on Christ” (ver. 27). It is not implied that some had not been baptized. No such idea must be inferred from this passage. In early days, when love was fresh and warm, and the commands of the Lord were more exactly obeyed, those who were used of God in the gospel of His Son baptized forthwith those who believed, or saw to the matter, that it was done by other approved men. J. N. D.'s reading may be preferred in this place, “for ye, as many as have been baptized unto Christ, etc.” The apostle means the whole body of those to whom he was writing. He shows them by the well-known ordinance of baptism, that they had part with Christ, as a rebuke to their hankering after a bygone state of things—the bondage of law.

In Christ all fleshly distinctions disappear. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (ver. 28). All these differences pertain, to the old creation. All are brought into equal blessing and privilege in the risen Christ. It is a question of our place and portion in Him. Let us be careful to confine the passage thus. Ere this, it has been used to set aside or slight the relationships of life; and it has been brought forward as justifying the woman in taking the man's place in the services of God. But this is to utterly pervert the plain words of the apostle. All the relationships of life are sanctioned by God in Christianity as previously, and are all regulated in the Epistles of the New Testament. And it must not be forgotten that the woman's place was ordered and settled before the fall, and has not been touched by it, save that bitterness and sorrow have come in, as solemn results.

Here, however, we are considering, not our relative places on earth, but our position now before God in Christ. We have His place, through grace. “And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise” (ver. 29). The apostle has been reasoning earlier that Christ is the true seed of Abraham. Here He brings us into the same place. We share it. All that is true of Him, as the risen and accepted Man is true of every one that believes. He has given us His standing and portion, and we are to inherit all things with Him in the coming day. Let us not lose sight of it, nor look to the things behind, as the Galatians to their hurt and sorrow.

James 2:8-9

IT is characteristic of this Epistle to employ the expression “royal law “; nor is it the only peculiar phrase that fell to it with striking propriety. We have already “the perfect law of liberty” in chap. 1:25, and we have “law of liberty” again in chap. 2:12.

“If however ye fulfill law royal according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well; but if ye have respect to persons, ye work sin, being convicted by the law as transgressors” (vers. 8, 9).

This is admirable. The feeble saints of the circumcision, most of them poor, had so forgotten early fervor of faith, as to cringe before the wealthy, and this even in their assemblies if a rich man entered therein. Yet were they not rich in faith, the poorest of them? Were they not heirs of the kingdom which He who chose them promised to those that love Him? What inconsistency to give themselves the air of valuing a little money, of closing the eye of faith to their own hopes of glory, though the least recollection of the Lord of glory dispelled those natural thoughts and brought back the promise which detects the false glitter of the world as it is.

The third book of Moses had from early days asserted that great moral principle as far as Israel were concerned; but where was the heart to prize it? where the nature capable of carrying it out unswervingly? Certainly it is not in the mind of the flesh, which is enmity against God and is no better really for man. “Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love.” Nothing more true or trenchant. The fullness and the manifestation of it is in Christ, sent into the world that we might live through Him. This we cannot do till we receive Him from God, believing on His name. Then we live, and live to God; for he that believeth on Him hath life eternal. There is no other way. “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself; he that believeth not God hath made him a liar, because he believeth not the witness that God gave of his Son. And this is the witness that God gave us life eternal, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”

The believer then alone has this life, and loves according to Christ, Who, when challenged, gave the first place to loving God, but also pressed in the next place loving one's neighbor. Here in this world of need and misery even the law-teacher had not obeyed it, and asked, Who is my neighbor? To the Lord it was all plain enough. He came in love to seek and save the lost at all cost to Himself. Now that He is on high, His love is active in His own, and in them only. For as the apostle shows in Rom. 8 those that are in Christ walk according to the Spirit, not according to the flesh which is lawless and selfish, the very opposite of love or of any other good. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus it is that freed the believer from the law of sin and death. Sin is no longer a law, the power of death was broken by Christ risen from among the dead; and He is our life. Such is one reason (ver. 2) why there is no condemnation for those in Christ. God cannot condemn that life which is now ours in Him. But then what of our evil nature, the flesh? The second (ver. 3) meets this. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in likeness of flesh of sin, and for sin (i.e. as a sin-offering) condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law, its righteous import, might be fulfilled in us who walk not after flesh but after Spirit. For it is only the believer who has the new life and the efficacy of Christ's death in annulling his evil nature that walks according to the Spirit, loving God supremely and loving man so as to suffer or even die for his good.

It is not that James brings out what was left for the apostle of uncircumcision. But he does Characterize this grand moral claim of God as regards the neighbor as a “royal law.” Before it respect to persons is sentenced to death. The command to love one's neighbor towers above any transient or artificial distinctions among men. Who or what are the rich to wish it set aside in their favor? And what mean any rich in faith among the poor by ignoring it? It is a royal law, says our Epistle. Those who fix the eyes of their heart on our Lord Jesus, will not fail to fulfill it. It were a sad descent to look away from Him in glory as He is to the gold-ringed man of wealth.

Even Jacob before the Lord Jesus came did better when brought into the presence of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. He was not dazzled, any more than he petitioned for his family. But “Jacob blessed Pharaoh.” “And without all contradiction,” says Heb. 7:7, “the less is blessed of the better.” May the poorest of the saints be strengthened to cherish undimmed the consciousness of his blessedness and the hope of the glory where the Lord is, and whither he himself is bound!

Respect of persons is a violation of love and a transgression of the law that insists on love, as is added in the verse that follows. If a believer be poor, there is no ground in this why he should pander to worldliness, despise his poor brethren, puff up the wealthy, and dishonor the Lord of glory Who has shown us the clear contrary. “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” Weigh Phil. 2:5-9. As our Epistle declares, to have respect of persons is to work sin and to be convicted by the law as transgressors; as the Epistle says, Love worketh no ill to the neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

On the Millennium: 1

HAVING examined fully Bp. Hall's “Revelation unrevealed,” let me now test Dr. Chr. Wordsworth's Two Lectures. But it is important to remark that the term “Millennium” tends to narrow unduly the scriptural evidence. Rev. 20 is undoubtedly the ground for defining the time. This, however important in its place (and it is just the place for it), is quite subordinate. The doctrine of a displayed kingdom, which the Lord Jesus is to establish in power and glory over all the earth and all the nations, with Israel and hence Jerusalem as His center here below, is revealed in the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets; it reappears in the Gospels, and is dogmatically laid down in the Epistles, which assure us who now believe of “some better thing.”

For we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies with Christ (Eph. 1) already exalted there at God's right hand. But this only helps those who search the scriptures, to the quite distinct truth of the first dominion, the kingdom, coming to the daughter of Zion, as Micah says with a crowd of others, when the Judge of Israel is no longer rejected by her as now, but owned as Lord in His eternal majesty. The proofs will be given abundantly from the Bible throughout. How long this kingdom will last is defined in Rev. 20; but the general truth has the amplest evidence.

The doctrine imputed to those who assuredly believe in the Millennium, p. 2, is stated incorrectly. “The first resurrection” includes the general mass of the risen saints, as given in the opening clause of Rev. 20:4, “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given to them.” These were the armies which were in heaven and followed the Faithful and True when He comes forth to execute judgment (chap. 19:11-16), clad in white pure fine linen or byssus, expressly explained in ver. 8 as the righteousnesses of saints (cf. 17:14). They were already risen and glorified like their Master. Not so the two classes that follow which were till now in the disembodied state. Therefore we read at this point, “and the souls of those beheaded on account of the testimony of Jesus and on account of the word of God “: a description exactly answering to the early martyrs of the Apocalyptic prophecy (chap. 6:9), who cried for vindication, and to whom it was said, “that they should rest yet for a time (i.e. in the separate condition) till both their fellow-servants and their brethren, who were about to be killed as they, should be fulfilled” (ver. 11). Here accordingly, and connected especially with these sufferers, we find the later martyrs of the prophecy, “and those who [with a different construction to mark the distinct classes] did not homage to the beast nor to his image, and received not the mark on their forehead and hand,” of whom we read in chaps. 13., 14„ 15.

As to all this the late Bp. was as unenlightened as Bps. Andrewes and Hall, or the ancient expositors who misled them. Neither Andreas nor Arethas, nor Primasius nor Bede, any more than Origen or Eusebius, Augustine or Jerome, understood the scope of the. Revelation or the prophetic word in general. Nor did the Reformers any better, Luther, &c., Calvin, &c., nor the Anglicans, nor the Presbyterians of Great Britain. The early ecclesiastical writers, whose remains we have, betray rapid and grave departure from the truth. In no subject do they manifest it more than touching the heavenly associations of the Christian and the church. They claim the Jewish hope after a mystical sort. Hence they deny that restoration of Israel to their land under the Messiah and the new covenant, which remains for the Jew in God's mercy, quite distinct from the far more glorious things reserved for us who anticipate them.

Again, risen saints do not reign “on earth,” as the old Chiliasts taught (Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, Tertullian and Lactantius, &c.), but over it: an error which exposed them both to much mistake on their own part, and to attacks of men like Dionysius of Alexandria and others who followed in his wake. Further, what deplorable ignorance to speak of Satan gathering the nations to battle, “in order to war with Christ and His church?” What is written in chap. 20:9 is the very different statement that “they went up on the breadth of the earth, and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city.” That is, the post-millennial insurrection from all quarters of the earth under Satan is to be directed against the saints, who will flock to the land that surrounds Jerusalem, and form an immense “camp” round “the beloved city;” for then indeed is Zion Hephzibah and the land Beulah. The church is not in question. It is an earthly scene. From chap. 12. Satan has no place in heaven.

Further, Rev. 20 does not reveal “the universal judgment,” but expressly the judgment of the wicked dead, small and great, raised for this purpose, set before the great White Throne, and consigned to the lake of fire which is the second death, in contrast with the righteous who shared the first resurrection and reign with Christ, more than a thousand years before that judgment. Here, Dr. W., with the theologians ancient and modern, is directly at issue with the uniform doctrine of scripture, which never teaches such a judgment, but denies it for those who believe. What can be plainer than our Lord's own words in John 5:24? No doubt the A.V. disguises this fundamental truth of the gospel: for it confounds κρίσις with κατάκριμα, and hence insinuates that the believer may come into κρίσιν or “judgment,” though to be saved from “condemnation.” But this is to mis-interpret scripture according to tradition, not to receive it from God as he revealed the truth. Even the R.V. leaves such an error without a plea.

The entire context makes the truth so plain that there is no excuse for unbelief. For the Lord shows that, founded on His person, the Son of God and Son of man, are two functions. As Son of God He gives life; as Son of man all judgment is given to Him. The veil of flesh gave occasion for man to disbelieve and dishonor Him. It is therefore as Son of man He will judge those who do not believe in Him, the Son of God. He who hears Christ's word and believes Him that sent Him has life eternal and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. For it is now an hour when the dead hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. But the unbeliever who dishonors the Son by denying His glory, and consequently does not receive life in Him cannot escape the judgment which the Father has given to Him, that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. This the believer does now, and therefore has life instead of coming into judgment. He hears His word and receives God's testimony to Him Who is the true God and eternal life. Judgment is to secure the honor of the Son in those who despise and reject Him now; whereas the believer, having life eternal, lives to honor Him henceforth and forever. They were not to wonder at this; for an hour is coming (in distinction from that which “now is”) in which all that are in the tombs (it is the body therefore) shall hear His voice and shall go forth: those that produced good, unto a resurrection of life; those that did evil, unto a resurrection of judgment. Thus, if we hear Christ's word, we know that there is no universal judgment, but, as certainly as divine truth can make it, two contrasted resurrections: the one of life for the body on behalf of those who, having life eternal in their souls, produced good things; the other of judgment, because, having refused the Son of God now Who is life, they did only evil things of their own corrupt nature. Their judgment is indeed just, as the salvation of the believer is of grace which fails not.

With the doctrine in the Gospel of John the Revelation entirely harmonizes. For in chap. 20 we have quite clearly a resurrection of life for those who were blessed and holy, and just as plainly a resurrection for the wicked over whom the second death has power. And the Son of man is He Who, as He gave life to the saints, will judge the wicked who had no part in the first resurrection, as they existed only to dishonor Him and do those evil works which come up in that solemn and everlasting judgment.

We shall all be placed before the judgment-seat of God; and each of us shall give an account concerning himself to God (Rom. 14). We must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ, that each may receive the things [done] by the body, according to what he did, whether good or evil (2 Cor. 5). Not a word in either scripture teaches that it will be at the same epoch, a mistake drawn from not seeing that the judgment of all the nations is of living men on the earth when the Son of man shall appear in His glory (Matt. 25). But these inspired declarations on the one hand carefully avoid weakening the blessed assurance that the believer is by grace exempted from judgment, which Christ bore for him on the cross that he might not bear it; while on the other there will be a complete manifestation of ourselves and of all done in the body, which takes the awful form of judgment for him who rejected Christ and His cross. Each shall give account of himself to God; but the unbeliever must suffer for his sins, because he despised the Son of God and His propitiation which alone annuls them before God.

It is really a question of honoring the Son and hearing His word, and of faith in His work as well as His person. He who receives the truth in its simplicity and fullness as God revealed it avoids the traditional error of a promiscuous or Universal Judgment; which is real heterodoxy as to the gospel, mixes up believers and unbelievers in a way abhorrent to the truth, and plunges souls into doubts and anxieties so that they are often constrained in unbelief to ask, Am I His, or am I not? Dr. W. raised the question as to Rev. 20, with too much confidence in himself and in other men; but it goes far deeper, and the true answer proves how little that able, learned, and pious man, entered into the truth of the gospel itself. But we may see a good deal more before having done with his pamphlet, of which we here notice not quite a page.

The First of the Week: Part 1

It is hardly a matter of surprise (though always of sorrow to the devout mind), in this day of general rebellion against divine authority, to meet with attempts to abrogate the special claims of the first day of the week, and even to find those attempts made upon grounds alleged to be scriptural. Of such a character is the tract named below.

The author seeks to show that there is no more authority for observing the first than any other day of the week. He rightly repudiates the first day being in any sense the sabbath; but he nevertheless falls into an exceedingly grave error in. the opposite direction. He considers one day out of seven a far too insignificant proportion for the Lord. With a show of zealous ultra-spirituality, he declares he will not be satisfied unless every one of the seven be counted a Lord's day. This contention, as another has remarked, results in the very impotent conclusion that not one of the seven becomes a Lord's day. Instead of leveling up the six days to the first, the first is leveled down to the six; and the Lord is robbed of that to which He has set His name.

The aim of the tract therefore is decidedly mischievous, inasmuch as it tends to destroy the character of what is due to Christ from His saints. And it is the consideration of this fact that has induced us to notice it. It is no question of balancing proofs for the validity of certain human opinions, but whether it is written that the first of the week is appropriated by the Lord Jesus in a special way or not. And if He has, in any manner that has seemed good to Him, reserved this day unto Himself, we are undeniably under the most sacred obligation to respect that claim.

And before penning any of the remarks that may follow, we desire to make it clear to our readers that they are not the outcome of controversy between two persons of different persuasions. Half the circumference of the globe lies between us. Who C. W. may be, whether he is alive, and Whether he will see these lines, are questions that the present writer cannot answer; nor do they affect the subject at the head of this paper. The point at issue is not C. W. but C. W.'s tract. We hope therefore that anything that may be said against his notion may not be construed as an uncharitable remark against C. W. His arguments are only referred to because they may be used by some, and may, possibly, be difficulties to others.

To proceed to the consideration of the subject. It will be found that the first day of the week is as characteristic of Christianity as the sabbath was of Judaism; so that this is no case of making “trifles seem the marrow of salvation.” The day selected in each of the two instances stands as one of the strong points of distinction, nay, of contrast, between the systems of law and of grace. Their relative positions in regard to the other days of the week are highly significant of this diversity of character.

In the Mosaic economy, the day of rest was made to succeed the six days of toil. Jehovah in promulgating the law on Mount Sinai commanded, “Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy, six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it” (Ex. 20:8-11).

It is not overlooked that there are earlier references to a hebdomadal division of time, and also to the seventh day as the sabbath. But only when incorporated with the “ten words,” did it possess the nature of a legal obligation, so that to break the sabbath, by gathering sticks, for instance, was punishable by death. It was the sabbath of Jehovah Elohim, and it was to be hallowed to His worship and service.

It was to be a sabbath of rest to them. While it is true that its holy character was enforced by divine authority, it remains that its peculiar feature was that it was a day of rest. In contrast with their labors of the six days, they were to do no manner of work on the seventh.

Now if one word more than another is characteristic of the ancient economy, it is the word, “Do.” “The man that doeth these things shall live in them.” It was therefore the man that labored for six days that rested the seventh. Had he for six days loved the Lord his God with his whole being, and his neighbor as himself, he could then, in a worthy manner, remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. But alas! in this as in every other commandment Israel failed. They estranged their hearts from Jehovah. They did, their own pleasure on His holy day, and thus profaned His sabbaths. So that we find throughout the prophets that the Lord brings a continual charge against His people for breaking His sabbaths. They proved themselves unable to discharge their responsibility God-ward in the due observance of this day. Being unholy for six days, it became impossible to keep holy the seventh.

But beside being an integral part of the system inaugurated at Mount Sinai, which resulted, not in man's blessing and salvation, but in making his offense to abound (Rom. 5:20), the sabbath is specifically declared to be a particular sign of God's covenant with His people. It became a broad distinctive mark between them and every other nation. Other nations might, in varying degrees, recognize the great moral landmarks of abstinence from murder and lust, &c., as specified on the tables of stone. But the sabbath was an abiding sign that Jehovah had separated that people unto Himself; other nations not observing it as it was laid upon them to do. Hence Jehovah says to the sons of Israel, without at all mentioning the other nine commandments, “Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep; for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that ye may know that I am Jehovah that doth sanctify you.” It was to be a perpetual covenant, a sign forever (Ex. 31:12-17). This sign-character of the sabbaths is long after referred to by Ezekiel the priest when Israel is charged with polluting them, and thus walking in the ways of the nations (Ezek. 20:12, 13).

Without giving further proofs, as might easily be done, it will surely be allowed that the sabbath was one of the distinctive features of the Jewish religion, as indeed it will be in a future day when Israel is restored (Ezek. 45:17; 46:3). In like manner we hope to show that the first of the week is characteristic of Christianity.

( To be continued, D.V.)

In the Beginning

Q.-Gen. 1:1. “In the beginning.” Is it the same word used by our Lord in regard to the devil in John 8:44?

J. C., Clydesvale, Hamilton, N.B.

A.-Not so. The phrase with which Genesis opens is the beginning of creation, and hence of time, though not yet in relation to man and his environment as from ver. 3 and onwards. “The days” are accordingly literal, as the context forbids any sense but the historical. Poetry or allegory is out of the question here. It is all a plain and sure statement of fact, where man's ignorance can only form hypotheses, more or less defective and short of the truth. Phraseology however is not everything; for the same phrase occurs in John 1:1 where it imports a still grander truth, the personal subsistence of the Word, Who was with God and was God, in the depths of eternity. Go back, as one might in the boundless existence of Godhead, there was no moment when the Word was not with God. That this is the meaning is certain from the third verse of this Gospel, where creation is absolutely and exclusively described and attributed to the Word. Consequently John 1:3 coalesces with Gen. 1:1, and its verses 1 and 2 precede creation, setting out the co-existence of the Word with God, while Himself God before He began the mighty work of creation. The same truth appears most precisely in Col. 1, one grieves to say, enfeebled in the R. V. though they could not destroy it. The enemy shows his malice in detracting from the Deity of the Son all he can as God sustains it sedulously throughout scripture.

But John 8:44 supposes neither the measureless depths of eternity nor the commencement of creation, when vast periods preceded the time of man's earth. It means in time, though before man was formed. “From the beginning” is pointedly distinct from “in the beginning” either in its highest application to the being of the Word or in its use to convey the entrance of creative energy. The devil was not always, but an angel that, inflated or lifted up with pride, fell. He had no standing in the truth and became a murderer as well as a liar, its father (cf. 1 Tim. 3). Thenceforward (άπ' ἀρχῆς from a beginning of this dark and baneful kind) he was a murderer. His hatred was against man, and especially in enmity to God against Him Who deigned to become man for God's glory and to deliver man. See also 1 John 3. Clearly it is impossible to make ἀπ' ἀρχῆς mean from all eternity, which would deny the devil to be a creature and simply that God made him originally a devil, instead of his being an angel like others that kept not their own original state (Jude 6).

Notice

The Future of Europe; Politically and Religiously in the Light of Holy Scripture, Byalfred H. Burton. London: S. W. Partridge & Co. 6D

The author needs no apology. The hour calls for such testimony; for thousands who should sound the trumpet are only lulling souls asleep. There are sober and plain truths set out as to Babylon and the Beast, whereon many believers have indefinite thoughts. We therefore commend it as good and useful.

Published

London:

Published

Published T. Weston, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row

Published EXETER: Gospel Depot, &c., 42, High Street. Printed by T. CHEVERTON, 100 City

Published

Published Road, E C

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:25

The verse which here claims our attention brings before us incidentally another of the great facts in those early days of man's renewed history, as we have had the characteristic account of monarchy begun in the Cushite Nimrod.

“And to Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan” (ver. 25).

In verse 21 a notable mark was set upon Eber, when his forefather was introduced in the unusual terms of “father of all the children, or sons, of Eber,” though several generations after, not Arphaxad's, nor Salah's, but Eber's. So contrariwise, though not so strikingly perhaps, Ham had to bear the shame of being designated “father of Canaan” (chap. ix. 18). Thus does God call us on the one hand to heed him who inherited the curse and was the instrument of the enemy in striving to hinder Israel in due time taking possession of the promised land; and on the other to learn the interest He took in giving us to look onward to those who stood in the first line of the heirs of Shem's blessing; for “blessed be Jehovah the God of Shem.” One cannot safely run on so fast as the excellent Matthew Henry, in saying “Eber himself, we may suppose, was a man eminent for religion in a time of general apostasy, and a great example of piety to his family; and the holy tongue being commonly called from him the Hebrew, it is probable that he retained it in his family, in the confusion of Babel, as a special token of God's favor to him; and from him the professors of religion were called the children of Eber. Now, when the inspired penman would give them an honorable title, he calls him (Shem) the father of the Hebrews; though, when Moses wrote this, they were a poor despised people, bond-slaves in Egypt, yet being God's people it was an honor to a man to be akin to them.” It is wise to say less, and surer to believe what is written than to suppose with ancients or moderns. Goodness, he adds, is true greatness; but in the case before us we may be content with ascribing both in the highest degree to the Blesser without being too confident sponsors for the blessed. The Lord teaches us to be jealous on that head for God, rather than for man as weak and poor as he is aspiring.

Of Eber we have two sons: Peleg, which means division, the first named, and Joktan his brother. In connection with the former a new and important fact is noted as to the earth and its future history. In the days of Peleg the earth was divided. Such is the meaning of Peleg's name; for as the rule the names then given to men were significant. The scattering of which we have the divine account, its moral reason and its chastening, in the next chapter (11) was historically previous; but our chapter 10 pursues its aim and gives the origin of the nations, everyone after his tongue, apart from time. But as we had (verses 8-11) in Nimrod the assumption of power and the spread of dominion from Babel the beginning of his kingdom, so here we have in Peleg's days the earth divided. Here we are not told of human pride and power, nor yet of Jehovah's scattering men abroad through confounding their language, and their consequent inability to understand one another's speech. The division of the earth after that in the days of Peleg appears to have been done peaceably. But it is a fact which has subsisted ever, whatever the emigration of peoples through stress of circumstances or desire of bettering their lot.

Of Joktan we leave the details till we consider the verses that follow.

The Offerings of Leviticus: 5. The Oblation

Lev. 2:1-3

The flour or kindred offering accompanied the burnt-offering closely. They were of a common character in this that they were never offered to clear a soul from sin; yet the burnt-offering was to make atonement, which the flour-offering was not, but consequent on it, The burnt-offering therefore was of a living thing put to death; whereas the flour-offering was always of a vegetable nature and therefore there was no question of blood. There was equally the searching fire of divine judgment to bring out the odor of rest, no less than in the burnt-offering.

“And when any one [a soul] presents an oblation (or, gift) to Jehovah, his offering shall be of fine flour; and he shall pour oil upon it, and put frankincense thereon. And he shall bring it to Aaron's sons the priests; and he shall take there-out his handful of the flour thereof, and of the oil thereof, with all the frankincense thereof; and the priest shall burn the memorial thereof on the altar, a fire-offering of sweet odor to Jehovah. And the remainder of the oblation shall be Aaron's and his sons': [it is] most holy of Jehovah's fire-offerings” (vers. 1-3).

What could more distinctively and emphatically set forth the Lord, not in His sacrificial death, but in the entire devotedness of His life? The one was as pure and holy as the other. Indeed, while the ox or the sheep must be a male without blemish for the burnt-offering, the oblation is expressly “most holy” of the fire-offerings of Jehovah. And so we read of our Lord Jesus only that He was “the holy thing that should be born” (Luke 1:35). Qf none others are, or could be, said such words, not even of John the Baptist, who was filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb. In Jesus was no sin. Even in “taking part of the same” with the children (Heb. 2:14), He was to be called Son of God, which He was in His own eternal title. Of Him only it could not be said without blasphemy, as of every other child of Adam, “I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.” He and He alone as born here below was absolutely untainted, the Holy One of God; and this He preserved in the power of the Holy Spirit all through and presented as an oblation to God.

Man's mind, we may be assured, would have put the Minchah or oblation before the Olah or burnt-offering, as the order of what we may call history would render natural. But scripture in an unlooked for way gives us divine wisdom, to which faith implicitly bows and thus appropriates the truth: we grow, as the apostle says in Col. 1, by the true knowledge of God. It was when man was fallen that these figures of Christ and His work came in, and therefore the need of the burnt-offering in the first place when Jehovah was making known to His people the resources of His grace in Christ, as well as the primary truth of Himself glorified as to His nature to the uttermost. This given, the oblation beautifully follows. The Son of man in Whom God was glorified by His death, glorified the Father on the earth and finished the work which He had given Him to do.

All was in the same perfection, His activities as a living man, and His suffering in self-surrender without limit, both in obedience unswerving. But, as we see in chap. i., death was as essential and manifest in the burnt-offering, as here it is no less conspicuously absent. He was the obedient One, tried and proved every day, in the midst of the little passing circumstances of each moment, as well as in the great temptations of the wilderness. Jesus, and Jesus alone, was always “the same “: yesterday, and to-day, and forever, as it made no difference as to His personal glory, so none more as to His flawless obedience in every detail. Was there an approach to this in any saint that ever breathed? We need not speak of Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, blessed men as they were. Take John and Peter and Paul, walking as none other ever did in the power of the Spirit. Yet the scriptures which make their holy and devoted service plain, do not hide from us the profitable lesson of their failure, and on critical occasions too. Christ never had a word or deed to recall, never even a look or feeling to judge. He could say to His enemies, “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” without a reply, but not without the vilest of reproaches and vituperations. He walked without a waver in the Spirit, never on the ground of rights, but in obedience. His food was to do the will of Him that sent Him and to finish His work. And this He did perfectly, an offering to God for a sweet-smelling savor; and this in entire rejection by man, most of all by the ancient people—His own people.

This was what the oblation typified: the fine flour, oil poured on it, and frankincense added (ver. 1). The fine flour was an apt symbol of His humanity sinless and in harmony with God. Oil is the known figure of the power of the Spirit, not His cleansing agency which man's impurity demands, but His energy in contrast with the willfulness of sinful and selfish man. And frankincense represents that fragrance which God the Father alone, and perfectly, appreciated in His Son a Man on earth, the object ineffable of His delight. The sweet odor might “fill the house “; but it was burnt to God as His. All the frankincense therefore went with the handful which the offering priest burnt on the altar to God (ver. 2). The fire, which tried as nothing else can, only brought out of the fire-offering a savor of rest to Jehovah.

The remnant of the oblation was Aaron's and his sons' (ver. 3). In this was marked difference from the burnt-offering. There as the rule all was consumed and went up to God acceptably and for the offerer's acceptance. Here a handful only was burnt, but all the frankincense. The rest was for the great High Priest and the priestly family; the Christian body. For no truth in the N. T. is plainer than this. And is not Christ the food of all that are His? Does not John 6 prove this, and much more than this type imports? “Most holy” was it, but not therefore kept from but given to Christ and His own to enjoy. And so it is that those who have the entrance into the holies find in Christ Himself, and Christ here below as shown in the Gospels, their living priestly food. But it is in this as with other things that what all have in title, only those in fact enjoy who have faith in it and by the Spirit walk in that faith.

Brief Thoughts on the Separation of the Nazarite: 3

Num. 6

Separation unto the Lord is now connected with separation from the vine of earthly stimulants and joys, and it will continue until Jesus exercises His rights directly as the Lord of all here below. For “this [is] the law of the Nazarite, when the days of his separation are fulfilled: he shall be brought unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation: and he shall offer his offering unto Jehovah, one he lamb of the first year without blemish for a burnt-offering, and one ewe lamb of the first year without blemish for a sin-offering, and one ram without blemish for peace-offerings, and a basket of unleavened bread, cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, and wafers of unleavened bread anointed with oil, and their meat-offering, and their drink-offerings. And the priest shall bring [them] before Jehovah, and shall offer his sin-offering, and his burnt-offering: and he shall offer the ram [for] a sacrifice of peace-offerings unto Jehovah, with the basket of unleavened bread: the priest shall offer also his meat-offering, and his drink-offering. And the Nazarite shall shave the head of his separation [at] the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and shall take the hair of the head of his separation, and put [it] in the fire which [is] under the sacrifice of the peace-offerings. And the priest shall take the sodden shoulder of the ram, and one unleavened cake out of the basket, and one unleavened wafer, and shall put [them] upon the hands of the Nazarite, after [the hair of] his separation is shaven: and the priest shall wave them [for] a wave-offering before Jehovah: this [is] holy for the priest, with the wave-breast and heave-shoulder: and after that the Nazarite may drink wine” (vers. 13-20). The Lord will no longer refuse to be a King, and retire alone on high to intercede as Priest; but, actually invested with dominion and glory, and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations and languages, should serve Him, He will come again, and He will bring to rein with Him those whom. He now separates from the world, as cleansed through His blood and risen with Him. The days of separation are fulfilled..... and after that the Nazarite may drink wine. Then will be the fulfillment of the millennial psalms in all their meaning: “Jehovah reigneth, let the earth rejoice.” In that day, truth is no longer fallen in the streets, for it shall spring out of the earth, and the Father's will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Until then the blessing is deliverance, not only from sin but from this present evil world. If I have learned the cross, I have learned that thereby the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world (Gal. 1-6). Now, that which stamps the world, as the world, is ignorance of the Father. “O righteous Father,” says the Lord, “the world hath not known thee, but I have known thee.” He and the world had no fellowship; neither have His disciples, for, just before, He had thus spoken of them to His Father: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” It is not they ought not to be, but they are not. Men may reason plausibly; but to hear any excuses for, or exhortations to, union with the world, is to listen not to the good Shepherd's voice, but to the deceits of the enemy. And is it not enough that Satan should accuse the brethren, and deceive the whole world? Ought brethren also to be deceived by that old serpent?

Our place for the present, our only true place, is separation from the world in every shape. “For their sakes,” said our Master in His ever-memorable prayer for us, “I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth;” for our separation is through the knowledge of Christ in His separation. As He is, so are we in this world. We know Him where He is, that we may know ourselves as there in Him also. This is sanctification through the truth, resulting from Christ's sanctification of Himself.

By-and-by the saints shall judge the world (1 Cor. 6:2). Meanwhile, an apostle says: “What have I to do to judge them also that are without?” (The powers that be should do that.) “Do not ye judge them that are within?” (1 Cor. 5). Such is the province of the church, now at least. And preaching the gospel to the world, so far from being fellowship with it, is rather to gather people. out of it, These then say; “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the wicked one.” They are separated unto God, and should preserve their Nazariteship intact until the kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, when the world shall know that the Father sent the Son, and loved us as the Son was loved.

Psalm 2 & 8

In these psalms we have varied glories of the Lord Jesus brought before us. In Psa. 2 He is presented as God's King yet to be established on His holy hill of Zion, and as the Son of God owned as such on earth; in Psa. 8 it is the Son of Man, for Whom God intends universal dominion, and Who will make His name excellent in all the earth. God's thoughts and plans find no response in the heart of man. Christ is the center of God's thoughts, He seeks the glory of Christ in all that He does, whether in creation, redemption or government; but to all this the natural man is utterly a stranger. He cannot get beyond himself and the earth he moves in, which he would fain hold in his own possession for the gratification of his own desires, ignoring altogether the divine glory and the rights of Christ.

Hence we find the opposition of men when God's intentions are made known. The Spirit asks, “Why do the heathen rage and the peoples imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against Jehovah and against His anointed, saying: Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us” (Psa. 2:1-3). This confederacy in opposition was seen when the Son of God came into the world the first time. He was born King and was entitled to dominion over the house of Jacob and to the ends of the earth; but Jew and Gentile were of one mind to cast Him out. “We have no king but Caesar,” said the Jews. “We will not have this man to reign over us” was the subsequent message. The distressed assembly reminded God of this psalm in their remarkable outpouring of heart in Acts 4:23-31. “For of a truth against Thy holy Servant Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Tiered and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together.” How solemn! Pilate and Herod, who had been at enmity, could bury their hatred, and be at one over the rejection of the Son of God; and the Jews, who ordinarily spoke with contempt of the Gentiles as “the uncircumcised” could unite with them in heaping insult and ignominy on Christ. “For dogs (Gentiles) have compassed me; the assembly of the wicked (Jews) have enclosed me” (Psa. 22:16). Satan is well able to bring about unity for the accomplishment of his dreadful purposes.

But the second psalm has not yet received its complete fulfillment. God will bring His First-begotten into the world again. The day is approaching when the true Joash will be brought out of the Sanctuary where now He is hidden (2 Kings 11) He will assert His kingly rights, for He is the “Prince of the kings of the earth” (Rev. 1:5). But what is the answer on man's part? When the seventh trumpet is blown, which brings Him in, while there is worship and the acknowledgment of His title in heaven, there is fury on earth. “Now is come the world-kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He shall reign forever and ever. And the nations were angry” (Rev. 11:15-18). Look also at Rev. 19, when heaven is opened and the King of kings comes forth, the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies are shown gathered together to make war against Him. What a daring creature is man! So impotent, yet so bold!

Things are rapidly working up to this. Never were men more avowed in their hostility to God and His Christ, never more determined to throw off all divine restraint. Light has been given, favors have been conferred, but all are despised and forgotten (I speak now of the world at large, not of the saints), and man would eject God from His own universe. Confederacy is the order of the day, and when the suited moment arrives, Satan will be prepared with a man to head it, and the height of iniquity will be reached.

But vain man opposes to his own ruin. God notes his puny efforts and smiles at them all. “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh the Lord shall have them in derision” (ver. 4). This is man's day, and too often he does not scruple to laugh and deride, but soon the tables will be reversed.

Righteousness suffers and iniquity is exalted; but the day is not far distant when the reverse will be the case. “Then will he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure” (ver. 5). Now He speaks to men in His grace and sends them the gospel of His Son, then His attitude will be entirely changed.

Man effects nothing by his foolish opposition, but his own ruin. Jehovah proclaims, “Yet have I set my king on my holy hill of Zion” (ver. 6). Who can keep Him from His rights when the moment comes for Him to take them? Of all this however we see nothing yet. But faith sees the once humbled One at the right hand of God crowned with glory and honor and is assured that all will be done in its time (Heb. 2). Jehovah loves to say “My King.” He is the antitype of David, the man after God's own heart, whom He selected to feed His people, in contrast with Saul, who was the choice of the people when they had rejected Jehovah as their king. God has a king in store and will show Him in His time and take everything out of the hand of the usurper and give it to Him Whose right it is.

Next, Messiah speaks, and here we learn more concerning Him. He is not only King but Son. “I will declare the decree: Jehovah hath said unto me, Thou art my son; this day have I begotten thee” (ver. 7). This is one of the scriptures quoted by the Spirit in Heb. 1 to establish the deity of Christ. As born in time He is proclaimed Son (compare Luke 1:35). Some have thought this to refer to resurrection because of the way in which the passage is used in Acts 13:33, but this is a mistake. If Acts 13 be examined carefully, it will be seen that resurrection is dealt with in ver. 34 not 33. The word “again” should be omitted. “Raised up” in this place has the same significance as in Acts 3:22-26; Rom. 9:17. Indeed we use the term in this way frequently in every day conversation.

With what delight does Jehovah own the One Whom men despised and rejected, as His Son. Heaven and earth are at variance about the Son of God. Solemn thought! What a pathway is ours in view of it! But earth will be made to own His title, for every knee shall yet bow and every tongue confess Him Lord (Phil. 2). The day is not far distant, though not yet, when Jehovah will say, “Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel” (vers. 8, 9). At present, He does not ask for the world, but for those whom the Father has given Him out of it (John 17:9). When He does thus ask, He will take forcible possession in judgment. Strange that the idea should ever have been entertained of all the world being blessed by gospel means. All scripture is consistent. Old Testament and New unite to show that enemies will be put down by power, not attracted and won by love, in order that He may inherit all that is His by right.

Resistance is useless. The Spirit therefore comes forward with gracious counsel. Kings and judges are exhorted to bow before Him, ere the evil day comes. “Be wise therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve Jehovah with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him” (vers. 10-12). How is the exhortation heeded? Rev. 19 will show. When the King of kings and Lord of lords comes out of heaven with armies, all the power of the world is gathered together against Him. Judgment follows. The leaders, the beast and the false prophet, are cast alive into the lake of fire, and their hosts are destroyed, by the sword of His mouth. Blessing might have been theirs, had they put their trust in the Son, but having given themselves up to Satan and listened to his lie in preference to God's truth, they are led on thus to their destruction.

Psa. 8 presents a different picture. It is not God's King, God's Son, established in Zion; but the Son of man in possession of universal dominion, causing the name of Jehovah to be excellent in all the earth. This is a wider thing than that which we have been considering. We find these glories connected in the New Testament. Look at John 1. Nathanael confessed the Lord according to His twofold glory in Psa. 2 “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.” He was convinced and therefore he owned the Lord's title. Thereupon the Lord promised him something yet fuller, “Verily, verily I say unto you, Henceforth ye shall see the heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” This in its fullness looks onward to the millennial day. Nathanael, having learned and owned the Lord's Messianic glory, should be led on further and be shown greater things still.

Look also at John 11:12. We first see Him as the life-giving Son of God raising Lazarus from the dead; next, we find Him riding into Jerusalem and the multitude crying, “Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.” This again is Psa. 2. But almost immediately we hear Him saying when He knew the Greeks were inquiring after Him, “The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified.” This is Psa. 8. The Gentile inquiry brought it, as it were, before His mind. It was an earnest of what will be in full measure presently. But this caused Him to speak of the cross. Ere this universal glory could be His, He must as the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die. He takes all up as the Risen One and therefore is able to share it all with us, for whom He died and rose again.

Psa. 8 is not accomplished yet. It cannot yet be said, “O Jehovah our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth.” On the contrary, His name is dishonored, and His word called in question and despised. But soon this ancient word of the Spirit will be made good in all places of His dominion.

It is not a mere earthly glory that is before us here, but the glorified Son of man set at the head of all things above and below. Hence we read, “who hast set thy glory above the heavens.” Those who understand are the weak things of the world, which God has ever chosen to set at naught the things that are mighty. “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings had thou ordained strength, because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger” (ver. 2).

This Psalm is quoted three times in the New Testament; in Heb. 2:6 to show that it is as man He is exalted, in 1 Cor. 15:27 to establish that it is as risen, and in Eph. 1:22 where the church is introduced as participating with Him, He the Head over all things, and it the fullness of Him Who filleth all in all.

Blasphemy of God's Power in Christ

Luke 11:14-26

The casting out of unclean spirits or demons has a great place in the synoptic Gospels, and most justly. It fell to the fourth Gospel rather to set out the positiveness of life eternal in Christ and of the Holy Spirit to be sent in His name on His departure. In the Gospel of Mark it is the first miracle recorded, and it often reappears and with no little detail. Our Gospel begins His ministry characteristically with His words of grace to man, and if His own would not hear, to the Gentile; for grace is sovereign. But the special power of Satan over man (never so manifest as when Jesus was here) immediately follows, as we may readily see the prominent place it has also in Matthew's Gospel.

But Christ's power in expelling demons drew out man's hatred and blasphemy. “Through Beelzebub, the prince of the demons, he casteth out demons,” said some; as others tempting sought from Him a sign out of heaven. The folly and wickedness of such an imputation the Lord proved at once. Not only would Satan be at war with himself, but their own sons who cast out demons reproved them. Yet in their case it was rare, in His constant and unfailing, the witness that, if the display of God's kingdom in power and glory is not yet, that kingdom had come upon them in His person. Alas! the old sentence was renewed only more stringently: their heart grown fat, their ears heavy, their eyes closed as asleep, lest they should be converted, and healed of God.

Thereon the Lord states first the case of God's gracious power in Him, next the consequence of unbelief in them.

“When the strong one in arms keepeth his own court, his goods are in peace; but when the stronger than he cometh upon and conquereth him, he taketh away his panoply on which he relied and divideth his spoils” (vers. 21,22).

This the Lord was then doing before all eyes in the land. The acceptable year of Jehovah was manifest, not yet to all the world, but in Him Who in the wilderness had vanquished Satan in simple obedience and by the written word. This is the moral power of the Spirit in man; and the Lord was the blessed witness of it in perfection. This was followed by the powers of the age to come, manifestations then of that energy which will wholly deliver the coming age from the enemy. Long had the strong exercised his baneful, blasting influence, long were his goods in peace. Now the stronger than he was come and had conquered him. His power was broken before the Seed of the woman; he could no longer retain his possessions. Demons, were they a legion, were cast out. Blind saw, lame walked, lepers were cleansed, deaf heard, dumb spoke, and dead were raised.

It is true that the devil was not yet crushed, and had departed from Him but for a season. He had sought in vain to draw Him out of the path of obedience; he would return to kill Him in it. But this would only turn to a greater victory for God and man, not merely over “his goods” in the present, but in the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world. The question of guilt and evil in the face of judgment and eternity would then be solved as it now is in the precious blood and death and resurrection of Him Who sits at God's right hand in glory.

Still the victory already gained was great, and the ground of confidence for all that would follow in its time, and the wondrous way of God in the cross. If, as Luke says, some from among the crowd, blasphemed; if, as Matthew says, the Pharisees did, and, as Mark says, the scribes, all together show that the Jews did high and low, religious and learned emphatically, to their common and utter ruin. But the Lord points out the crisis for faith. When the worst unbelief works, it is just the moment for bold openness of faith. “He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth” (ver. 23). With this standard the believer too wins the victory. The middle way here is a delusion. Christ alone is worthy of all trust. Neutrality here is fatal. To be with Him is imperative; to gather save with Him is scattering, however fair man's promise or the appearance for the moment.

How is it with you, my reader? “I am (said He) the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.” “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath life eternal.” Dread then above all things not to be with Him. If you are not with Him, you are against Him. Any or every other companion fails to be a security: Christ alone is so.

And He is the True God and eternal life, so gathering with Him alone stands, and is acceptable to God. All that embraces or seeks the world bears on itself the brand of the enemy, and is in no way of the Father. Nay more, there is no gathering of saints that pleases God, unless Christ be the test and the center. And the claim of infallibility for any man but Him Who is God is most daring sin against God, and a most manifest antichrist, denying the Father and the Son, however secure such think themselves.

What then is the consequence? “When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he goeth through dry places seeking rest; and finding none he saith, I will return to my house whence I came out. And having come he findeth it swept and adorned. Then he goeth his way and taketh seven other spirits worse than himself; and entering in they dwell there; and the last of that man [is] worse than the first” (vers. 24-26).

It is the falling away, the apostasy followed by the man of sin. The unclean spirit of idolatry among the Jews was the precursor and moral cause of the captivity in Babylon. Since then the Jews have been generally free of that evil, conspicuously so after the Maccabees prevailed. But they no less peremptorily rejected Jesus the Messiah. They were against Him, and, instead of gathering, scattered and were scattered as never before nor so long. And they are still “empty,” as Matthew says, empty of the power of God. What avails then to be swept and adorned? The old unclean idolatrous spirit will surely return, with the sevenfold power of the enemy; and how awful the end for the many! A remnant who will then be with Jesus will be graciously owned as His own, and they with Him will be the center for the gathered peoples of the earth.

In Luke the Holy Spirit does not confine its bearing to “that generation,” but widens it to “man.” And the end of the individuals and the nations of Christendom will be no better. For God is not mocked. They have not continued in God's goodness and must also be cut off. They are largely idolatrous already, and this will grow to greater ungodliness, to the apostasy and the man of sin for them as for the unbelieving Jews.

Oh! then receive Christ, and the love of the truth that you may be saved, while the door stands open and God calls you to believe in His Son.

Jesus in the Midst: 3

The Lord's words which follow should be carefully weighed, “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” How grievously misunderstood and even perverted these few words have been! The claim has long been that they confer authority on a priestly class to absolve their fellows from the eternal consequences of their sins. But let it be distinctly understood that there is no such thing as a priestly class in Christianity. There was in Israel, but redemption was not then accomplished, and the people of God could not go into His presence within the sanctuary for themselves. But is this the state of things since the death and resurrection of Christ? Surely not; else, what has the blessed One accomplished? The veil is rent, all who believe are constituted priests of God—a holy priesthood—all may draw near on the ground of the blood once shed. Moreover we have a great High Priest in the presence of God for us. Thus the assertion of a priestly class now is a denial of Christianity, and puts souls under bondage, in darkness, and at a distance from God. We cannot speak or write too strongly as to all this in the present day. Masses who profess Christ's name are giving themselves up to this and worse: preferring bondage, darkness and distance, to the liberty wherewith Christ makes free and the blessed nearness to God in the light which is the true and inalienable portion of all who believe.

Had the Lord intended any sort of official privilege or authority we should at least read “when the apostles were assembled.” There might then have been a show of warrant for the assumption, but the Lord is wiser than men. He well knew of the boast of apostolic succession, and would leave no loophole for such a figment in the verse before us. Hence we read not “when the apostles,” but “when the disciples were assembled,” which latter term includes all who believe, whether apostles or otherwise. And it may be remarked, in passing, that the title “apostle” does not occur at all in John's Gospel.

Doubtless there are many who are sure what the verse does not mean, who could not tell what it does mean if taxed about it. Let us weigh the matter carefully in the Lord's presence. The assembled disciples with Jesus in the midst we have already seen to be a picture of the Christian assembly. Here, therefore, we have Him giving to them authority of an administrative character for the exercise of reception or discipline within their own limits. His words in this place have substantially the same meaning as those in Matt. 16 and xviii. In the former chapter He addresses Peter on the basis of his glorious confession of Himself as the Christ, the Son of the living God, on which rock His church should be built, and says, “I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (chap. 16:19). This has no reference to eternal consequences. The Lord does not speak of the keys of heaven, as if Peter or any of his pretended successors were to have power to exclude souls from heavenly blessing at will; but He speaks of an earthly administration which we find the apostle duly exercising in the Acts. At Pentecost he opened the kingdom to the Jews, and three thousand entered; in the house of Cornelius he opened it to Gentiles, and many availed themselves through grace. This was also loosing, as, on the other hand, the cases of Ananias and Simon furnish solemn examples of binding.

But there is nothing said of successional power, unless the Lord's word in Matt. 18 be so viewed. There the Lord speaks of the assembly, a gathered company who can be told of a brother's fault, and says, “Verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” This is immediately connected with His own presence in the midst of the two or three gathered together unto His Name (vers. 18-20). Consequently, the only form in which the authority granted to Peter is handed down is that which the Lord has undoubtedly granted to His gathered saints, however few and feeble. Therefore when a person is received from the world, the assembly “remits” or “looses.” If one is put away from amongst the saints, the assembly “retains” or “binds,” and this on the authority of His word, and His presence in the midst. The Epistles to the Corinthians furnish us with an illustration. In the first letter, the apostle calls upon the assembly to put away from among themselves the wicked person.

The man was put forth, his sin being bound upon him. The discipline succeeded, hence we find Paul writing later, “Sufficient to such a man is this punishment which [was inflicted] of the many. So that contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive and comfort [him], lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow” (1 Cor. 5; 2 Cor. 2:6, 7). In receiving him back the assembly administratively remitted his sins. The assembly is responsible to guard the Lord's honor. If evil intrudes itself, it is bound to deal with it when known, in the fear of the Lord, or it forfeits all claim to be regarded as God's church. There are three things, however, which should be borne in mind on such solemn occasions; (1) the honor of the Lord, (2) the purity of the assembly, and (3) the blessing of the offender. If the first be lost sight of, all that is done, however right in itself, is on very low ground; if the second, the consciences of all lose the moral profit which should be reaped from the sorrowful circumstances, and if the third be not kept in view, our hearts are apt to become hard and careless with regard to those of the Lord's own who are beguiled of the enemy.

Truly to be in the assembly of God is an inestimable privilege; but solemn responsibilities attach to the place. The Lord enable us all to understand them better. W. W. F.

James 2:10-12

There is hardly a fact more characteristic of the natural man than condemning another for the evil to which one is not addicted, while extenuating one's own sins by every excuse possible as a peccadillo. Truly man is not only fallen, but his nature is utterly unjust, and God is in none of his thoughts.

One may plead the universal failure of mankind, and the inconsistency of the faithful. But Christ puts all such apologies to the rout, and shows us Man on earth in Whom was no sin and no guile in His mouth, now in glory, the Lord of glory. He, not Adam, nor Israel, is the standard here below as well as in heaven. Who can stand beside Him as He was, or be with Him as He is?

Here, however, it is the law which is used to crush self-righteousness; and the law, being of God, cannot but be inflexible and resents all the evasions of men. “For whoever shall keep the law as a whole but shall offend in one [point] is become guilty of all. For he that said, Thou shalt not commit adultery, said also, Thou shalt not kill. And if thou commit not adultery but killest, thou art become a transgressor of law. So speak, and so act, as about to be judged by a law of liberty” (vers. 10-12). Were there true obedience, one claim of God would be as binding as another, violence as hateful to us as corruption. To offend in one point violates God's authority and brings us under the guilt of breaking all. The appeal reminds us of the apostle's reasoning in Rom. 2:17-29, where the Jew is convicted of folly in resting on law and boasting in God and teaching others as babes while failing to teach himself, and dishonoring God by the transgression of the law in which he professedly gloried. All attempt for sinful man (and a Jew made no difference) to acquire righteousness by the law, and stand on any such ground before God, is but fatal ignorance of self as well as of God. By deeds of law shall no flesh be justified in His sight.

On the other hand the believer in the Lord Jesus is begotten by His word of truth. It is not only an operation on conscience and heart; but a new nature is imparted, which is of God, as indeed those who thus believe are declared to be born of God, and His children. As the life of the Spirit is by the word of truth, so it is formed, and nourished, developed and exercised in that word, which has for him who is thus begotten a character of holy freedom in entire contrast with the action of the law on the natural man. In this case it is an instrument of bondage, because the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good; whereas the mind of the flesh, the natural man, is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be; only self-will is the law of its being.

The law therefore, when truly applied, discovers to the sinner his essential alienation and can give no quarter but condemn and kill. It is no better in those born of God than in any other, as the latter half of Rom. 7 elaborately shows. Flesh does not change into spirit. That which is born of the flesh is flesh.

But as the word was used in God's will to beget the believer by the impartation of a nature akin to Himself and His word, so it remains valid and intended for the need and admonition, refreshment, direction, and strengthening of the new life all through. This it is which is called a “law of liberty.” Its authority was recognized by the soul in hearing Christ's word and passing from death unto life. Then ensued repentance toward God as truly as faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ: self was judged as evil, grace and truth in Christ became most welcome. Then the word which communicated the knowledge of such a blessing is valued and confided in, to guide the soul through the mazes of a world departed from, and to lay bare the devices of the enemy to ensnare along the way. Light divine surrounds one's going. It is accordingly a “law of liberty” which we love; as indeed we now know the God Who gave it us first and last as our best and truest Friend, proved and manifested in the Lord Jesus.

It is of much interest to observe how the apostle Paul shows in Rom. 8:3, 4 the way in which he contrasts with the law that worketh wrath and slew him that sought thus to establish his standing, what he calls “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ,” which was characterized by emancipation, not bondage, and issued in a life of obedience pleasing to God. Each inspired writer has his points of difference; both agree in testifying to a similar blessed result.

A FEW WORDS ON THE DIMBLEBY SYSTEM OF PROPHETIC DATES, CHIEFLY

The Dimbleby System of Prophetic Dates: 1

I have hitherto hesitated to write on the scheme diligently and confidently urged by Mr. J. B. Dimbleby. He is earnest in confessing his faith in the prophetic word, and consequently in looking for the coming and kingdom of our Lord and Savior. In this it would give one pleasure rather to strengthen him, than even seem to be adverse. But as he has certainly erred in ways of moment, which involve him, like some dead and living, in misleading others and perhaps to his own stumbling ere long, it is no breach, but rather an exercise, of charity to give simple and solid grounds of dissent.

Take the overthrow of the Turkish power as the first example, with which he begins the late issue of “The New Era at Hand” (11th ed. now before me), on the inside of the title-page telling us of about 5000 “testimonials” received, one of the latest of which he gives, though it is in the most extreme and irreverent rhodomontade of our Yankee friends. Passing over this or the like, let us come to God's word and the facts. “We are also told in Dan. 7:25, that the little horn (evidently the Mohammedan power by the facts of history) was to have saints given into his hands for a time, times, and a half, which is the other 1260 years. We have only to put them together—

Babylon... continued 90 years from 3376 1/2 to 3466 1/2

Medo-Persians do. 200 years from 3466 1/2 to 3666 1/2.

Grecians...do. 304 years from 3666 1/2 to 3970 1/2.

Romans ... do. 666 years from 3970 1/2 to 4636 1/2.

Total 1260 Jerusalem taken by

Saracens,... in 4636 1/2.

Mohammedan period 1260 from 4636 1/2 to 5896 1/2,

our... 1898 1/2.

2520 years.”

The apparent simplicity of the result has deceived not only Mr. D. but his friends. Scripture truth is another thing, which faith alone discovers by subjection to the written word. Now the word in this case leaves no room, for Mohammedanism in Dan. 7. For the vision speaks of “four great beasts” (not five as Mr. D. imagines), the last of which is the Roman, out of which arise ten horns, and another after them, diverse and subduing them, whose haughty words lead to a divine destruction of Gentile empire, in contrast with the providential transition of the previous Beasts. How possibly intercalate the Ottoman Porte? It is the same Roman power which played its part in crucifying the Lord of glory when He first appeared, which will rise up against Him when He appears from heaven the second time, the glorified Son of man.

It will be objected that the Roman Beast has ceased to be; but here Rev. 17:8 supplies added light of the utmost importance, and informs us how perfectly the difficulty is removed, and explains why that Beast should have a place so unique. “The beast which thou sawest was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss, and go into destruction: and they who dwell on the earth, whose names are not written in the book of life from the foundation of flit world, shall wonder, seeing the beast, that it was, and is not, and shall be present” (I give the acknowledged critical correction). This is confirmed by ver. 11, as well as by Rev. 13:3.

The mystery of the Roman Beast is thus solved. That empire which once was, and now is not, must yet be, clothed with a hellish character beyond what it ever knew before. It is the Beast of seven heads, and ten horns, and so characterized to the close, which excludes Mohammedanism or any other power. The last leader of this empire, of whom Daniel speaks, is a little horn at first, before whom three of the first horns were uprooted, who blasphemes the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the high places, and think to change times and laws. He meddles with God's rights as asserted among His ancient people. It is these “times and laws” which are said to be given into his hand; for the indignation was not yet ended against Israel. The mistake is common that “the saints” are given into the hands of this wicked prince. He is said to make war with the saints (ver. 21) and to prevail against them. But this is a very different thing. God permits tribulation and persecution; but He never gives His own into the enemy's hand. His sheep are in His own hand; and He never leaves—no, never forsakes them, even if He allows their death in a terrible form. The passage is important; because it shows the last Roman emperor in his lawlessness putting down the worship of the Jews when seeking to set it up again in that day. Whatever the towering will on his part, God does not interpose to hinder yet, till they are truly penitent and own the Lord Jesus. Hence their orderly services according to the set times are given into his hands for a short time. This is confirmed by the true sense of Dan. 9:27; but we need say no more now, as this will come up again in its place.

And the nature of the case goes far to confirm the short space of three years and a half, as against the assumption of 1260 years. For it is a question not of the duration of an empire, but of the excessive outburst of the last chief of the Roman empire, when revived, to show its character under the power of Satan at the end of the age, and bring upon that empire generally, as well as its guilty leader, the long threatened bolt of divine judgment beyond all previous example. Now 31 years, 42 months, or 1260 days, are very readily understood of the most awful instrument of the enemy's blasphemous uprising against God. To conceive anything so extreme allowed to go on for 1260 years is a hard saying. I am aware of the Protestant system which applies it in that protracted period to the papacy. This Mr. D. justly rejects; but his own idea of Mohammedanism is still less tenable; for outwardly, the Roman pontiff did substitute himself gradually into a sort of continuation of quasi-imperial power after the extinction of the last petty civil claimant at Rome. But Mohammedanism is absolutely foreign to Dan. 7. Enough is said to disprove any reference but to the Roman empire in Daniel's fourth Beast, and to point out the sure and invaluable supplement in Rev. 17, which also shuts out the Turk.

This is quite confirmed by Nebuchadnezzar's vision (chap. 2), where we have the same Roman empire, superseded by God's kingdom introduced by the little Stone: four empires of man, not five, succeeded by Christ in power and glory. Mohammedanism is not here either.

(To be continued, D.V.)

On the Millennium: 2

Nobody among the many writers on prophecy who have passed before me, ancient or modern, regards the Apocalypse as absolutely continuous chronologically. On the other hand no writer of worth denies that there is continuity in the main. This is quite independent of the view taken of chap. 20 though of course it falls under the general plan. Assumption or theory cannot decide such a question but internal evidence. There are here, as in other books of the kind, landmarks given by the inspiring Spirit which no one can slight without loss. Inattention to its structure has made vain the attempt of many, of old as at this day, to elucidate its bearing as a whole yet more than in detail.

The co-ordinate hypothesis (p. 3), for instance, is evidently and utterly inapplicable to the two marked series which run through the prophecy in what may be called its first part, chaps. 6-11. Within themselves the Seals and the Trumpets, as well as the Vials or Bowls in the second part of the book which begins with chap.12., bear the seal of consecutiveness on their face. What can be more absurd than to doubt, in a carefully numbered sequence, that the first is before the second, the second before the third, and so on, not in revelation only but in accomplishment? Some have been hardy enough to even question this relative order which is so natural and manifest; but their reasons are as baseless as their scheme refutes itself. The only semblance of difficulty perhaps is in the Seals; but even there, how untenable is the denial! It is the Bishop's assumption (page 4), with many another pre-millennial as well as post-millennial.

Upon the Epistles to the seven Churches in Asia he first of all argues; but what is said there proves nothing but limited acquaintance with the subject, and an illogical character of mind. “They [the Ancient Expositors] did not imagine that the Epistles to the Asiatic churches, in the second and third chapters of the Apocalypse, are to be limited to those seven churches; but, in their opinion, they are to be applied by a figurative expansion to the Christian churches of every age and country” (pp. 3, 4). This is transparently another question, distinct from the proper visions of things to come, in the book. But even here the order is not insignificant. Can anything be less reasonable than to displace their relative position; or to deny that, prophetically applied, Ephesus is the first and Laodicea the last? Their “figurative expansion” perfectly consists with their order, whether historical or prophetic.

It was mere fancy to say that “the period of the seven Seals in the sixth chapter [it is really in the opening of chap. viii.] extends from Christ's Advent to the end of the time.” What has “silence in heaven for about half-an-hour” to do with eternity? Take it literally or allegorically, the seventh Seal can mean nothing of the sort. Probably it was the sixth Seal which ran in the good bishop's head, as with the “Ancient Expositors” whom he follows, though it is well to say plainly that no exposition of the book is known for several centuries. From none of the more distinguished Fathers have we an extant commentary; any which exist in Greek or Latin are of exceedingly little value.

Those who did write and remain seem to have led Dr. W. into the strange interpretation that the First Seal applies to Christ's Advent, and the Seventh to the end of time. Every part of that scheme is erroneous. The true scriptural figure of our Lord's work at His first Advent is “the Sower going forth to sow “; three fourths of the seed failing, and even of the fourth which bore fruit, but a third arriving at perfection. How could a result so checkered and short answer to the archer on a white horse and a crown given him, who went forth “conquering and to conquer?” No room is left in such a symbol for “the apostasy” and “the man of sin,” which the apostle declares must be before the day when the Lord appears in glory. Again, there is a manifest analogy between the four horses of the earlier Seals. What more irreverent than to regard the Lord as one of God's inflictions on the guilty world? or the first of them His victory in the gospel, followed by heterogeneous matters?

The Seals run connectedly as the dealings of God with man after “the things that are,” or the church state. Then the Lamb opens the book that reveals the measures God takes with the rebellious to put Christ in possession of His promised inheritance. On this view all is plain enough and consistent; whereas the extant early comments are as unintelligent as those of such as can only read now through their discolored spectacles. Tradition is hardly better than the poor stuff of rationalists. The world, not the church, is the object of the judgment set forth by the four horses. How preposterous to look for the gospel in the white horse or any other! Never is spiritual work set forth by a war-horse of any color, however apt a figure for aggressive power in good or evil.

Hence, as is well-known some who are the antipodes of the late Bp. of Lincoln strive to see in the first Seal Christ's second Advent in judgment! Abstractly this is less extraordinary than applying it to the gospel of grace. For in that day (Rev. 19) He will come forth from the opened heavens, the Faithful aid True, on a white horse, with (not a mere chaplet, but) many diadems upon His head, clothed with a garment dipped in blood, and followed by the armies in heaven on white horses. How different from the first Seal! Instead of a bow, even out of His mouth goes a sharp two-edged sword to smite the nations, as He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. The points in contrast make the desired identification impossible.

What then is the force? The first Seal really imports a time of conquest by prestige. The bow is enough. There is no carnage. It will be more truly than for Julius Caesar, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” The second or red horse is characteristically a time that follows of bloodshed, and probably of civil war: peace taken from the earth, “and that they should slay one another,” and hence a great sword is given, but in no way the sharp two-edged sword that proceeds out of His mouth in symbol, Who speaks and it is done. The third is the black of scarcity, which presses on the necessaries rather than on the luxuries of life. The fourth is the pale horse of Death, and Hades following, when God's “sore plagues” accumulate over the fourth part of the earth. But a salient part of the truth revealed is their sequence in this order and no other; which is upset by making the first Seal last, or coincident with the last.

As usual in the septenaries of the Revelation, the first four have a common bond, which the remaining three do not share, though they too are connected, each following in due order as the Seals were broken successively. When the Lamb opened the fifth Seal, the prophet saw, not another horse and its rider, but the souls of martyrs for God's word and their testimony “underneath the altar,” i.e. as if offered in sacrifice for the truth; approved of God now, but awaiting, for the time of public vindication, the completion of a further band of brethren who should be killed as they were.

Then is the sixth Seal, when not only a great earthquake ensues, but the governmental powers, sun, moon, and stars, are convulsed, and the stablest institutions are smitten, and small and great of men are filled with dread of the Lamb's wrath. They say in their alarm that His great day is come. God does not say so, but reveals that such is the thought and language of their fear: two very different things which many ancients and moderns confound in their shortsightedness. For how could the seventh Seal follow, if the sixth were really the end of man's day, and the great day actually come? It is not so: an immensely important and awful sequel of apostate lawlessness plays its subsequent part, as the Revelation shows plainly, whether people understand or not; for all do not hear who have ears.

When the seventh Seal was opened (chap 8.), there took place in heaven silence for about half-an-hour; and the seven angels that stood before God have seven Trumpets given them, while the high priest (viewed angelically, for under this series we have angels throughout) intercedes in answer to the prayers of all saints, but herewith the loud tokens of deepening judgment, which falls on the third part of the earth, as in the Trumpet series on the western or Roman earth. These accordingly do go down to the close, and the mystery of God is then finished, not before. The seventh Trumpet really announces the world-kingdom of our Lord and His Christ as come, while the seventh Seal only ushers in the seven Trumpets after a brief pause. The seven Vials or Bowls on the other hand are made to indicate a special character of judgment before the end comes, in keeping with what we may call the second volume of the Apocalypse. Hence there is necessarily a slight retrogression in their case.

But there is another feature of moment not only to notice but to understand. In each of these three septenaries occurs at the same point a parenthesis, not in the regular course of Seals, Trumpets, and Vials, but apart yet connected with each series. It is uniformly inserted before the seventh takes its course. Thus Rev. 7 is the parenthesis before the seventh Seal is opened; as Rev. 10; 11:14 before the seventh Trumpet is blown; and Rev. 16:13-16 before the seventh Vial or Bowl is poured out. It is therefore unfounded to suppose any lack of symmetry or of order in the book.

Heavenly glory was already revealed for the elders in chaps. 4., 5. But chap. 7, however glorious, does not describe this. There are two scenes in that anticipative parenthesis. One deals with the twelve tribes of Israel, out of whom God lets us not forget that a measured number is sealed for security from the storm of judgment anticipated even after the sixth seal. The other gives us to see the blessed ways of grace which will have a countless crowd out of every nation and tribe, and peoples and tongues, who come “out of the great tribulation” which is before the age ends. These are to be before the throne of God, and to serve Him in His temple with the Lamb as their Shepherd. It is a pretty strong draft on credulity to confound either with the crowned and enthroned elders who really set forth in symbol the heavenly redeemed. Why not too distinguish the sealed Israelites from the palm-bearing Gentiles, who are both to enjoy the blessedness of the kingdom, when the Father's will shall be done on earth as now in heaven, and all be administered above and below by the Lord Jesus to the glory of God?

Far is one from saying that there are no difficulties, for such as we are, in contemplating so boundless a scene. Certainly the prejudices, natural even more to Christendom as it is, hinder spiritual intelligence of the inspired word. But let believers own that the fault is in themselves, never in the scriptures which reflect alike the grace and the truth of God, Who, knowing all perfectly, has deigned to reveal to us the things to come. Let us recognize that what is written is the communication of the Lord; “if any be ignorant, let him be ignorant.” There is His word for us. It did not come out from a party; nor did it come to a party only, but to all the children of God. Let us not through unbelief be defrauded, nor defraud others, of so interesting and important a part of His gift and of our heritage.

(To be continued, D.V.).

The First of the Week: Part 2

In the preceding paper it was shown that the sabbath was made a characteristic feature of the legal system established at Sinai. It is not thereby implied that it was then first instituted; for scripture is explicit that the seventh day was sanctified by God from the creation, being the day on which He rested from all His work which He had made (Gen. 2:1-3).

Traces of a division of time into periods of seven days appear in the history of the deluge (Gen. 7:4, 10; 8:10, 12). These are sufficient to indicate that the knowledge of the seventh day, was handed down from the beginning. So we also find that in Ex. 16, before the promulgation of the law, Jehovah marked the seventh day from the others, in that no manna descended on that day, a double quantity being given on the sixth. The seventh day was to be the rest of the holy sabbath, and every man was to abide in his place.

The day is there regarded as a known institution, not then sanctified for the first time. And in its character as a day of rest which is specially insisted on (Ex. 16), it corresponds with that which distinguished the seventh day historically at the first (Gen. 2), and which indeed is ever its inseparable character, as doctrinally stated in Heb. 4.

But we find in Ex. 16 that this day, so carefully guarded by Jehovah, was dishonored by some of the people, who, ignoring the word of the Lord, went out as usual to gather manna. Consequently, the observance of the sabbath was immediately afterward embodied in the ten words of the law, and fenced about with its curse upon the breaker. It became also, as we have already seen, the sign of the covenant relationship of the people of Israel with God (Ex. 31:13). That which was connected in its origin with a sinless creation was subsequently made the mark of God's earthly people, though as a matter of fact they never entered into His rest (Psa. 95:11; Heb. 4:3). The reason they did not enter in was their sin of unbelief and hardness of heart. For where sin and its effects are, there can be no sabbath.

Therefore it is not till the Lord Jesus, as Jehovah's Anointed one, undertakes the judgment and extirpation of sin from the world that the sabbath in its essential character will be kept. Then in the millennium, the land of Israel shall enjoy her sabbaths, as saith the prophet.

Let it therefore be allowed that the sabbath is connected by way of distinction with God's earthly people. We will now examine the New Testament with a view of learning in what light the first of the week and the sabbath are to be regarded.

The point of our inquiry then is to be whether or not the first of the week is brought into special prominence by the facts and teaching given by Christ and His apostles. We at once find that it is so distinguished by a fact of transcendent import, inasmuch as upon the first of the week the Lord Jesus rose from the dead.

When we reflect ever so slightly upon the immense significance of the resurrection of Christ, we shall be driven to conclude that the great importance of the event must stamp a character upon the day by which it becomes unique. The Lord's resurrection is by the apostle (1 Cor. 15) made the chief basis on which he rests his comprehensive arguments in demonstration, not alone of the truth of resurrection generally, but also of our present deliverance from sins. “If Christ be not raised,” the apostle says to the Corinthian saints, “your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17).

It was plainly the very substratum on which the edifice of the Christian faith was reared. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus is the prominent feature of the preaching of the apostles as narrated in the Acts. Nor is it difficult to see why it should be so. For was it not the great act by which the accomplishment of the work of the atonement was divinely attested? He Who was “crucified through weakness” yet liveth by the power of God (2 Cor. 13:4). He Who was delivered for our offenses was raised again for our justification (Rom. 4:25). It spake aloud therefore to the believer as the guarantee of all that is given him in the gospel. Nor was its voice less distinct to the unbeliever, being the assurance that God gives unto all that He will judge the habitable world by the Man, Christ Jesus (Acts 17:31).

Besides, this day of supreme eventfulness was, in point of fact, the inauguration of a new era. The Jews ate their passover and observed their sabbath with the greater unctuousness as they remembered that the body of Jesus of Nazareth was lying in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, watched by a guard of Roman soldiers. Resurrection was furthest from their expectations. So it seems to have been from those of the disciples even. It was indeed so far removed from their hopes as godly Jews that the One Whom they believed to be the Messiah of Israel should terminate His earthly career in disaster and apparent failure, that they appear to have abandoned themselves to despair. Two of them we know had such little faith in the resurrection that they were going to Emmaus in an utterly forlorn and downcast mood, even after they heard from certain women that they had seen a vision of angels, who told them Jesus was alive (Luke 24:23).

But when they lifted up their eyes at the breaking of the bread, and beheld the Risen Jesus in the Stranger Who had drawn out their hearts till they burned within them, they became like new men. Their heaviness and sorrow vanished. They immediately retraced their steps to Jerusalem in exuberant joy.

These two men do but form in themselves an illustration of what is grandly true in a universal aspect. The resurrection changed entirely the color of man's history. It stands between the guilt of man and the grace of God. It is the terminus ad quem of the record of man's hostility against God, culminating as it does in the highest pinnacle of human enormity—the crucifixion of Christ; and, on the other hand, it is the terminus a quo of the magnificent outflow of divine grace and righteousness to the guilty Jew and debased Gentile alike.

Now it was on the first of the week that the resurrection of the Lord Jesus took place. Has this fact no significance? Apparently none whatever in the eyes of C. W.; for we cannot discover a single reference to the event in his tract. And yet we might well ask ourselves, If the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt was worthy of being memorialized throughout all their generations, how much more the day of the Lord's resurrection!

But we also learn that He not only rose from the dead but that most of His recorded appearances to His disciples took place on that day of the week. First, the Lord appeared to Mary Magdalene (Mark 16:9); then to her again with the other Mary (Matt. 28:1, 9); to Cleopas and his companion on the way to Emmaus (Luke 24:15); to Peter alone (Luke 24:34); to the disciples gathered together (John 20:19). These all learned on the first of the week the joyful news of the Master's resurrection: Individually and collectively, the fact was, on that day, impressed upon them with all its gladsome associations.

It was also when the disciples were gathered together on that memorable day that the Lord, appearing in their midst, breathed upon them and imparted the Holy Ghost as the Spirit of life. This was a direct consequence of His own resurrection and a fulfillment of His promise that they should have life more abundantly (John 10:10).

Moreover, He then commissioned them as His earthly representatives: “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained” (John 20:23). The Lord did not wait until the day of His ascension to do this; but duly installed them thus on the first of the week.

But C. W. might say, “Yes, but all this happened on the actual day on which the Lord rose. What reference or application has it to every first day of the week?” In reply we point to the verses that succeed those just referred to in John 20.

Thomas Didymus was not present when Jesus first came. And we find that on the succeeding first of the week (the seventh, or sabbath, day is passed over in silence) the disciples are similarly gathered together, Thomas now being with them, stubborn in his refusal to believe until he saw for himself. The other disciples had told him, apparently at once (John 20:25); but Thomas remained a whole week in unbelief until he was privileged to see the Lord.

But on the first, again they are together and Thomas with them. Does it not show they expected to see the Lord on that day? Else why were they together as before and Thomas as well? Nor were they disappointed: the Lord appeared, and Thomas believed.

From this we gather two important facts. (1) The disciples had reason to believe that the Lord would appear on the second “first of the week” as He had done on the first; hence they gathered together with Thomas. (2) This was not mere imagination on the part of the disciples, for the Lord honors their expectations and appears among them, thus sanctioning by His own presence the prominence they gave to this day.

(To be continued, D.V.)

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:26

The name of Eber's second son was, as we have seen, Joktan, “small,” as distinguished from Peleg whose name, “division,” marked as an epoch the more peaceful dividing of the earth, after the judgment of God necessitated the dispersion of mankind. There is no substantial reason to limit the “division” to the family of Eber himself, when the younger branch migrated into southern Arabia, the elder remaining in Mesopotamia. Had this mere family split been referred to, the younger son would more naturally have borne its name, not the elder who abode where he was. Besides, how can an event so ordinary meet the large terms employed— “in his days was the earth divided?” The Chaldee paraphrase on 1 Chron. 1:19 suggests that Joktan derived his name from the diminution of human life at that time. Certain it is that then longevity sunk one half, judging by the recorded years of Peleg (xi. 18, 19) and of those that succeeded, diminishing by degrees to its ordinary range.

Joktan appears on abundant evidence of varied kinds to answer to the Arabic Kachttin. “Of them [the Beni Sad], and of the Kahtan Arabs,...., Masoudy says in his work entitled ‘The Golden Meadows,' that they are the only remnants of the primitive tribes of Arabia. Most of the other tribes, etc. But the two tribes above mentioned, the Beni Sad and Kahtan, are famed in the most remote antiquity, when Arabian history, for the greater part, is covered with complete darkness” (Burckhardt's Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys, 2. 47, 48, London, 1831). We shall see that the traces of his thirteen sons are almost all plain enough also. This had been doubted by some who conceived it to be a Jewish tradition adopted later by Mohammedan writers. Why should any one doubt that the κατανὶται of Cl. Ptolemy (Geog. 6:7) are the Beni Kachtan, or Kahtanys? In Pliny (6:28) and Strabo (16.) they seem spoken of as Catabani, and καταβανεὶς, by an inversion not uncommon among Greeks and Latins. Dionysius Perieg. speaks of the same tribe under a name very slightly changed, of which no account appears in Smith's Dict. of G. and R. Geography. Modern research however has not only vindicated the fact, but explained probably why the change of the name was effected. Of his numerous sons we glance at the four named in the verse before us.

“And Joktan begat Almodad and Sheleph and Hazarmaveth and Serah” (ver. 26).

The first enumerated corresponds with Mudád, or, as the word admits the article, El-Mudád. Bochart in his Phaleg (2:16) long ago connected the name with the αλλονμαιῶται of Cl. Ptolemy (6:7, § 24) who held a central position in Yemen or Arabia Felix. There seems no sufficient ground to heed Gesenius' idea that the name is a variant from Almoram, so as to trace it in the tribe called Morad living in a mountainous region of the same country near Zabid.

Next comes Sheleph or Shaleph. This name has been without reasonable doubt identified with the district of Sulaf or Salif in southern Arabia. The elder Niebuhr gives it as Sitlfie (in his map Selfia) (Descr. 215). More recently Dr. Osiander gives an account of the tribe Shelif or Shulaf, as Yakoot in the Moajam and other Arabic authorities which complete the geographical traces. Indeed Ptolemy (6:7) had of old told us of the Σαλαπηνοὶ or Αλαπηνοί as the Greeks called the people. Here is therefore proof in this case still clearer than in some. Mr. C. Forster (Geog. of Arabia) in both his vols. labors to identify the modern Meteyr tribe with the Salapeni or sons of Σαλέθ as their chief is called by the 70. They were close allies of the Beni Kachtan against the Kedarite BeniCharb or Carbani.

Hazarmaveth plainly answers to the district east of the modern Yemen, called by the Arabs Hadramawt (court of death), also in the south of Arabia, situated on the Indian Sea, and, if unhealthy, no less famous for its rich spices. One of its ports was Zafari, the Sephar of which we read later in this chapter. Here again there is satisfactory evidence that the third in the list of Joktan's sons furnished the name, rendered Σαρμώθ by the 70 and Asarmoeh in the Vulgate.

Jerah or Yerach “the moon” is the fourth, which Michaelis in his Spicileg. ii. 60 finds in the “low land of the moon,” or in the “mount of the moon,” both of which were near Hadramitwt. It is needless and against all probability to follow Bοchart's notion of the Alilaei dwelling near the Red Sea. Mr. E. S. Poole (Smith's Diet. of the Bible, 1. 264) traces the name in a fortress (and probably an old town) mentioned as belonging to the district of the Nijjad, which is in Mareb at the extremity of the Yemen. Indeed Arab tradition, as we may see in Golius (sub voce) is in nothing ancient more unanimous than in styling this son of Joktan “Father of Yemen” (Abu Yemen). His name appears in the LXX. as Ἰαπάχ, and as Jare in the Vulgate. The Arab name may be represented by Jesbit or Serha, giving the “h” its guttural pronunciation of “ch.” C. Ptol. speaks of the Νῆσος Ἰεπάχων on the Arabian gulf, and of the Ἱεπάχων κώμη on a river near the Persian gulf, which appear to point to the same family, wide as they might be apart. Mr. Forster brings many other names under the same reference modified by slight changes of name and sound; just as Ptolemy's river Lar on the east coast seems no other than the Zar of the present day, which the Latin geographers confirm who translate it Flumen Canis—Dog, which the Arabic means. The great region of Karje, he argues, derives its name from Jerah according to an anagram quite common in their proper names.

The Offerings of Leviticus: 6. Varieties of the Meal Offering

Lev. 2:4-10

THE opening verses present the broad character of the minchah meal-offering, as distinguished from the Olah or burnt-offering. There was the fullest testing by fire, but not shedding or sprinkling of blood. It was not therefore atonement in view of God's glory, the offerer being sinful, and withal Christ's perfectness in the offering of Himself in His death, there rising up wholly as a sweet odor to God. The meal-offering oblation does not atone; but, after Jehovah had His handful, the rest was for Aaron and his sons to eat. Christ and His disciples enjoy it together. Yet it was no less an offering by fire to Jehovah, and expressly “most holy,” and thus excludes the profane thoughts of men who talk of Christ's limitations so as to lower His infinite personal worth. Of no person in the Godhead is scripture more jealous. For the Holy Spirit, while fully attesting the reality of the Son's assumption of humanity in His person, and the place of bondman which He took in grace, upholds His glory as Son of man, that all might honor the Son (even with especial care, all judgment being given to Him) as they honor the Father. Thus as He quickens all who believe, so will He judge all that believe not, to their ruin as everlasting as the blessing faith enjoys by His grace.

Now we come to the various forms in detail, having had the constituents of the oblation in general as the preliminary.

“And when thou presentest an oblation of a meal-offering a baking of the oven, [it shall be] unleavened cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, or unleavened wafers anointed with oil. And if thine oblation [be] a meal-offering on the plate, it shall be fine flour unleavened, mingled with oil. Thou shalt part it in pieces, and pour oil thereon: it [is] a meal-offering. And if thine oblation [he] a meal-offering in the earthen pan (or, cauldron), it shall be made of tine flour with oil. And thou shalt bring the oblation that is made of these things to Jehovah; and it shall be presented to the priest, and he shall bring it to the altar. And the priest shall take from the meal-offering a memorial thereof, and shall burn [it] on the altar, a fire-offering of a sweet odor to Jehovah. And the remainder of the meal-offering [shall be] Aaron's and his sons' [it is] most holy of Jehovah's fire-offerings” (vers. 4-10).

In all these cases it was the finest of the flour of wheat duly sifted and bolted; in each of the three the baking had a different form according to intensity, display, or admixture. The perfect and sinless humanity of Christ is there in the power of the Holy Spirit, and in such fragrant grace as suited Jehovah and only appreciated in full by Him. But it was also variously proved here below, before the final burning on the altar, when made a fire-offering to Jehovah.

The general principle, as applied to the Antitype, may be seen in our Lord, baptized by John and praying, when the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form as a dove upon Him, and a voice came out of heaven, Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased (Luke 3:21, 22). There was the Second man, the last Adam, not yet risen and glorified as the Man of divine counsels, but as come of woman no less holy and acceptable to God the Father. In Him was no sin. Not only did He never sin, but He was absolutely without sin in His nature as man. This the minchah everywhere sets forth in type, as the N.T. declares and demonstrates it in fact. It was indeed as essential to His person from the moment the Word became flesh, as His Godhead had been and is eternally. Him, the Son of man, God the Father sealed.

But He must be proved in this world; and this is here shown typically, as the Gospels present it in the days of His flesh. Compare Heb. 2:10.

First of these is the meal-offering baked in the oven, or great pot. There the heat brought to bear was as concentrated and extreme as could be at this time for unleavened cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, or unleavened wafers anointed with oil. In both cases the absence of leaven is specified, as to which 1 Cor. 5 can leave no doubt of the intended meaning. It is the negation of all corruption. Christ, and Christ alone of all born of woman, could be so designated. But here we have the two-fold positive fact of the Holy Spirit, the mingling of the oil, and the anointing of the oil, the former being the more intrinsic and characteristic of the two. For to none does it apply but to the Lord Jesus absolutely in His generation here below. And the answer to this type appears as clearly in Luke 1:35, as we have the other, or the anointing, in chap. iii., as also referred to in Acts 10:38. There is indeed a measure of analogy in every Christian; who first is born of the Spirit when converted to God, and then, when he rests on the redemption that is in Christ, has the Holy Spirit given to dwell in Him. But of Christ alone could it be said that the Holy Thing to be born should be called Son of God. The humanity of His person was holy as truly as the deity. Though of His mother, it was by the operation of the Holy Spirit's power wholly apart from evil. This was due to His person as the Son; it was no less indispensable for the offering of Himself spotless to God in due time. He, and He alone, was incarnate; He, and He alone, propitiation for our sins, Perhaps we may compare with the oven the temptation away from the sight of men, which He knew more fiercely from the great enemy than Adam and all his sons.

The second was the converse, trial before the eyes of men. Here the meal-offering which typified a character of trial so familiar to us in the Gospels, as it had been also predicted by the prophets, is said to be baked on the plate or flat iron girdle. Hence not only was the trial in contempt, opposition, detraction, hatred, to say nothing of want and homelessness, but we have details implied specifically. It was as before fine flour, unleavened, mingled with oil; and when parted in pieces, oil was poured thereon. The power of the Spirit only the more constantly shone in small things as in great.

The third is when the meal-offering was baked in an earthen pan or cauldron, which seems more general than the foregoing, and the statement is according to this broader character, “with oil” (ver. 7), without defining the modes of application, or repeating even the absolute purity which is of course implied. The figure here appears to imply the combination of public trial with inner also. This the more intelligent Christian can scarce fail to recognize in what the Lord underwent in His rejection. For indeed and in every way He was beyond all “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” yet in unwavering obedience, whatever the power that rested on Him. He also had that holy nature of man which sought only God's will and glory, the perfection of a Son, and that Son a man on an earth filled with all the evil of which the race under Satan are capable.

When the meal-offering, whatever the form, was brought by the priest, its memorial was taken and burnt on the altar, a fire-offering of a sweet odor to Jehovah. This was of course the severest test of all; for it was His consuming judgment, and yet drew out nothing but fragrance before God. No creature, still less a fallen one, could stand such a trial. He is our acceptance; and it is perfect. Without Him the grace wherein we stand were impossible. We are in Christ Jesus, as well as justified through Him. All things are ours, we may joyfully re-echo. And this is here the more evidently verified, in that we see in our Christian position of being priests (as well as kings), that it is ours to eat “the remainder” of the meal-offering in communion with Christ the great High priest. It was for Aaron and his sons. What a privilege to eat of what was offered up to God! It was “most holy” of Jehovah's fire-offerings; yet, after His portion with all the frankincense, it is ours to feed on the perfectness of Christ here below where only and above all it was proved to the uttermost. To enjoy such food we need to appreciate our priestly nearness to God. Alas! how few saints in these degenerate days of earthly-mindedness even think of their actual relationship to God in the true sanctuary. Such unbelief soon opened the door, as we see in the Fathers, to a human caste and earthly priesthood now rampant in Christendom.

The Rich Fool

Luke 12:16-21

CHRIST puts before the disciples the consequences of Jewish unbelief. The light of God's testimony shines only the brighter. He is the Son of Man as well as the Messiah, and His rejection by the old people of God but opens the door of grace through His death to all the nations of mankind. Here He warns of not Sadducean evil only but of Pharisaic: their leaven was hypocrisy. But as God is light, so everything covered up shall be revealed.

Such is Christ and Christianity. The veil is rent, and the blood of Christ brings the believer to God, Who alone, not man, is to be feared. And the Son of man is the test. Him who shall confess Him before men will the Son confess also before the angels. For now it is not a question of the earth, but of hell (Gehenna) and of heaven, of things eternal, not seen and temporal. And the testimony of the Holy Spirit is final: he that blasphemes Him shall not be forgiven. The Holy Spirit deigns to teach the believer; no matter what the emergency, he need not be anxious: the Holy Spirit suffices (vers. 1-12).

Another root of evil is now laid bare thoroughly covetousness. “Teacher (said one), speak to my brother to divide the inheritance with me. But he said to him, Man, who constituted Me a judge or divider over you?” This the Lord will be in the most glorious way when He comes in His kingdom. It was therefore no unreasonable wish for one, who if he owned Him as Messiah, had no perception of the change His rejection brings. It was in no way for the rejected Messiah to divide earthly. inheritances. “And he said to them, See and keep yourselves from covetousness; for, while one may have abundance, his life is not in his possessions. And he spoke a parable unto them, saying, The land of a certain rich man bore fruitfully. And he reasoned in himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have not where to gather my crops? And he said, This will I do: I will take down my granaries, and build greater; and there will I gather all my produce and my good things. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast many good things laid up for many years: rest, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said to him, Fool, this night is thy soul required of thee; and whose shall be what thou didst prepare? Thus [is] he that treasureth up for himself, and [is] not rich toward God” (vers. 13-21).

Are not these evils rife now in Christendom? Do not both abound in what we are apt to think the most favored lands on earth? Who can deny their sanctioned prevalence among the Anglo-Saxon race? Where are they more unblushing than in England and America? What is a fair show in the flesh but hypocrisy, not merely in Establishments here or there, but quite as really in the dissenting societies? Where is not the influence of money dominant? Where is “the unrighteous mammon” so much discussed, so earnestly sought, and, as far as given, so glaringly vaunted? Money is treated even by pious men as the sinews of the gospel; just as the world counts it the sinews of war. The entire system of religious societies rests on the pillars of gold and silver. Never was there so deep and open and general an affront put on the Holy Spirit; never did Christian effort rest on so debasing a foundation. Never were souls encouraged so distinctly to make money insatiably that they may give more liberally. In this gold and gain hunting day are not Christians as assiduous and eager to heap up wealth as the sons of this age? And if they spend on themselves and their families, who reproves worldliness, if there be fairly large gifts for the chapel and the societies, for Bibles, for Tracts, and for Missions, to enumerate no more?

Here the Lord presents the picture of an everyday reality. Covetousness implies no dishonesty, and is not even hard or sharp dealing, being no more than the desire of more: the very spring of modern effort, the motive of bettering himself commended to all from the mechanic to the millionaire. Thus the creature becomes the object, not God; and therefore is covetousness declared to be idolatry. It is man looking down, not up in dependence on God. The rich man was not content, but high-minded and trusted not in God but in the certainty of what is most uncertain. Rich in good works he was not, nor liberal in distributing, nor grateful for the abundance which he had, nor disposed to communicate. He aspired after greater things and planned for nothing but his own ease and enjoyment, as if he had a lease forever. God was in none of his thoughts, but read them all. When the rich man called on his soul to be merry over the many goods laid up for many years, the summons came: “Fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.”

O my reader, rich or poor, is this your folly? For it may be in hope, yet more frequently than in possession; and God is not mocked. Many a rich man perishes in his selfish ease; many would-be rich fall into temptation and a snare, into unwise and hurtful lusts which plunge them into destruction and ruin. Oh! look to Him Who, being rich, for our sakes became poor, that we by His poverty might be enriched. The abiding riches of glory we, changed into His likeness, shall receive and use aright. The riches of His grace He offers you now in His redemption. Despise not them nor Him; for this is to brave or court perdition. Confess your true place as a lost sinner before God, that He may give the salvation of your soul now by the faith of Christ, and by-and-by the salvation of your body at His coming.

Reflections on Galatians 4:1-7

THE apostle has said that we are all sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus. He now proceeds to open this out more fully and shows the glory of this wonderful relationship and position, with its results in the coming day, when Christ takes up His universal inheritance. In doing so, he puts in strong contrast the position of believers under law before Christ. They were heirs, undoubtedly, but their state was that of infancy.

“Now I say that the heir, so long as he is a child (infant), differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all, but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. Even so we, when we were children (infants) were in bondage under the elements of the world” (ver. 1-3). This is a principle of great importance, and helps us to understand much that would otherwise be very difficult with regard to the saints of the Old Testament times.

An infant may be heir to vast possessions, but know little or nothing of it. Until the suited age is reached, he is under restriction and therefore little better than a servant. When the moment comes, he is put in possession of everything, and can enjoy to the full all the advantages of his position.

The Old Testament saints were in this condition of nonage. There was, of course, a positive link of relationship between their souls and God, but there was but little knowledge, or enjoyment of what was involved in it. They looked up confidingly to God and counted on Him in His own time to make good all His word. He promised salvation—they waited for it; He said that He would bring near His righteousness—they looked for it. But these things and many other blessings came not until Christ came and meanwhile believers were kept under the law and its ordinances as under a tutor.

Even those who followed the Lord in the days of His flesh were in this state also. In many respects they were very privileged men. Their eyes saw, and their ears heard things which many prophets and righteous men before them had greatly desired to see and hear (Matt. 13:16-17). Their position being in advance of those who had preceded them, the Lord (as we know) gave them a prayer suited to their then state (Matt. 6:9); a prayer decidedly in advance of the utterances of Old Testament saints, though as yet short of Christianity. Still they were under law, Redemption must be accomplished and Christ must take His place before God as risen ere the new place for man in Him could be unfolded.

We must be careful to keep before us that the apostle is describing the former condition of himself and his fellow-Jewish brethren. Gentiles were not thus under the law, their state was wholly different as we shall presently see. “But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (vers. 4, 5). “The fullness of time” is an important expression here. The Seed was spoken of in Eden, but God suffered some 4,000 years to run their course ere He sent Him forth. Herein we may see the perfect wisdom of His ways. He would allow man to fully demonstrate his condition. He tried the creature in a variety of ways, under conscience and under law, sending prophets, &c. But what was the result? Man proved himself in every way an incurable creature—sin, transgression and enmity abounded. “In due time Christ died for the ungodly.” “Once in the consummation of the ages hath he appeared.”

When thus sent forth, the Lord Jesus came of a woman, and came under the law. He took upon Him true humanity, real tangible flesh and blood, yet not sinful flesh, though in the likeness of it; in Him humanity was seen holy. Adam was formed innocent. Innocence is simplicity as regards good and evil; holiness implies a knowledge of both, but abhorrence of the one and love of the other. Such was Christ.

When we think of Him as “come” (not “made”) “of a woman,” we are not on peculiarly Jewish ground. Having linked Himself thus with man in grace, all may appropriate Him in faith, Gentile as well as Jew, for the need of their souls. But as “come under the law,” Jewish believers are particularly before us. He came where they were, bowed beneath the curse of a broken law, that He might buy them out once for all from such a condition. What a contrast between the bondage of the law and the liberty of sonship! Yet how slow souls are to grasp it! One has only to read the Acts of the Apostles to see how very slow the Jerusalem brethren were to grasp their full deliverance and their new place in Christ risen. God bore with a mixed state of things till Jerusalem was destroyed.

It is to be remarked that Paul alone uses the word “son.” In John's Gospel and Epistles the term uniformly is “children,” and it is not a distinction without a difference. The latter expresses the tie of life and falls quite within John's line of things; “son” implies rather position. Thus believers now are placed in full possession of all the title-deeds of their heavenly position, and are admitted also into the Father's confidence, and know His mind and counsel through the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. If Rom. 8 be consulted, the two terms will be found alternating; we are both “children” and “sons.”

Being sons, the Spirit is given, a privilege unknown until Christ was glorified. “And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (vers. 6). Mark the change from “we” to “ye.” When it was a question of former bondage to law, the apostle did not include the Galatians; now when he speaks of present blessing and relationship, he says “ye,” for it was as true of them as of himself and all the brethren with him. Thus all believers have received from God His great gift. The Spirit is here to instruct us as to our place and portion and to lead our souls into enjoyment of it all. He directs our thoughts and hearts to heaven, to the glory into which the Son has gone. Through His gracious ministry we know ourselves to be in Him there, blessed with all His blessings, in the enjoyment of His relationship to the Father.

Our proper cry now is “Abba, Father.” This is very different from the cries of believers of previous dispensations. If the Psalms be examined, Jehovah will be found appealed to, to burn up their enemies, to drive them away like stubble; and the man is praised who would dash their little ones against the wall. Are these Christian sentiments? Assuredly not. Yet they are all inspired of God and proper in their place. The speakers were saints of God but under law; Christians are under grace, free from law, and know God as fully revealed in Christ.

Let us rightly divide the word of truth. To go back to the book of Psalms for proper Christian experience is to lose the savor of grace and to breathe legalism; it is to climb down from heaven to earth. If the Psalms are really understood, they yield a harvest of blessing to the soul; but if misunderstood and misapplied, as alas! is too often done, only loss can result.

Being sons and having the Spirit, we are no longer servants. “Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ” (ver. 7). This is incomparably higher than angels will ever know. They are servants, His ministers who do His pleasure, but they cannot say “Father,” nor join in redemption's song. This was reserved for sinners, picked up by the. sovereign grace of God. Men sometimes have sons who are not heirs, because they do not choose to give them a portion. But there are none such in the family of God. All will share with the Only-begotten; when He takes up His rights and administers all things, we shall be with Him as sharers through grace.

James 2:12-13

MEN easily satisfy themselves before a God who no longer manifests Himself visibly, Who does not act now as when the law ruled or government was displayed in immediate rewards and punishments. And the error of men is apt to be so much the greater when they regard the gospel as introducing a mitigation of legal severity. They fancy that a little sin here and there, now and then, will meet with mild dealing, so that there is no need of over-righteousness. The circumstances of those addressed in this Epistle would naturally expose souls to this snare, which is itself laid bare and torn to pieces in the verses already before us. No notion was more derogatory to His authority Who had spoken at Sinai, none more subversive of the law itself, which is necessarily inflexible. If broken in a single point, righteousness under it is gone, and the honor of the whole is compromised.

If infraction in one respect were tolerated, license would go on to expect more and more, till perhaps every point but one was surrendered, if indeed even one on such a principle could escape the encroaching will of man. But all such tolerance is unknown to the law which demands nothing less than absolute uncompromising subjection.

Is it argued then that the condition of man under it, no matter what his privileges and helps, is and must be hopeless? The answer is that so it is assuredly, because man is a sinner. Evil is there since the fall in his very nature, a law in his members, warring in opposition to what is holy and just and good. The apostle Paul goes to the root, and shows that death to the old man is the sole divine deliverance, amelioration of ourselves gradual or sudden being alike human and vain, the nostrums of theological empiricism, and not the remedy proclaimed to faith in God's word. Again, were it simply our death, it would be unavailable for us here below, and the blessed fruit would only be after death when we should be with Christ; and thus the victory that God intends now through our Lord Jesus would be shorn of a great part of its luster and power. But it is not so. The death and resurrection of Christ gives far more now than most Christians believe to their own loss. For it is not only that He died for us—for our sins, which are therefore blotted out and forgiven. He died also to sin, He Himself wholly without it. He knew no sin; yet God made Him sin for us; and we who believe are associated with Him in that death of complete deliverance from sin in principle, root and not fruits merely, as the apostle so elaborately discusses in Rom. 5:12-viii. Our very baptism signifies, not only that we washed our sins away, but that we died to sin and are justified from sin as well as sins. Hence we are called to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Our Epistle does not penetrate to such depths nor rise to such heights, as it was given to the great apostle of the uncircumcision, minister of the church no less than of the gospel as he designates himself in Col. 1 But it is no less inspired of God, no less necessary to man, in order to test mere profession where it most abounded and was most dangerous, to maintain the true character of that law which must be a ministry of death and condemnation to the guilty, and to insist on “a law of liberty” which exactly suits the new nature of those whom God in His purpose or will begot by the word of truth. The law was not accompanied by the rainbow, the beautiful sign of divine mercy in the covenant with creation (Gen. 9), after Noah began the post-diluvian world with the burnt-offering, the sign of Christ's sacrifice. Lightning and thunder, unearthly trumpet, and God's voice more terrible than all to sinful man, inaugurated the law. It is Christ here below Who first shows us the law of liberty in all its fullness and perfection.

This portion closes with the next two verses: “So speak and so act as about to be judged by a law of liberty; for the judgment [is] merciless to him that showed no mercy. Mercy glorieth over judgment” (vers. 12,13). James as ever was led of the Spirit to press in practice the manifestation of God's will on those that have or say they have, the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ; and he resents as we ought the shame which a lax and spurious profession puts on the Lord “of glory.” Can any appeal be more wholesome now as then? They are indeed to be pitied as well as blamed who think it beneath scripture; and it is to be feared, that, even if at bottom true believers, they find the edge of the sword as James wields it too sharp for their ways. Otherwise it seems incomprehensible that they should not welcome his words as of great and permanent value for themselves as for others.

Nor is it true that the Epistle is absorbed in the outward conduct. Speaking and doing are its exhortation as covering a very large part of our practical life; but it is carefully defined that both were to be of such a sort as was suited to those that are to be determined by a law of liberty: a principle of the inner man and inscrutable to such as, having no faith, have no new life from God and no knowledge of His grace. As mercy is the spring of all we profess as God's children, God is indignant at its absence in those that by grace claim kindred with Himself. They surely of all mankind are responsible to delight in mercy and to manifest it in word and deed, as having to do and to be judged by a law not of bondage but of liberty. For God is not mocked but sanctified in those that come nigh Him, as all do who are begotten of Him; and He will be glorified in the solemn judgment of those that set Him at naught. As we here read, “for the judgment [is] merciless to him that showed no mercy.” Is not this as it should be?

Say not in a depreciatory way, It is a sentiment suited to James the Just. Read on, and learn that God gives us much more through him: “Mercy glorieth over judgment.” Are not we who believe witnesses of it? Was not our Lord Jesus the proof of it, so exhaustively that there is no need, no room, for more? For all the vessels of mercy derive it through Him. Mercy is God's habitual and congenial work; judgment is His strange work, yet most righteous, against those who, having the utmost need, despise His mercy and most of all in the Lord of glory. Yet He has shown and proved it in its richest resources and its most affecting form, emptying Himself, yea, the true God humbling Himself, to save His ungodly enemies. But how blessed for those that believe! Beyond doubt “mercy glorieth over judgment” in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. But are not we who bear His name responsible to have it bright within us, that our practical conversation may be filled with it and governed by it?

On the Millennium: 3

It is unfounded then that the period of the Seals, in Rev. 6, “extends from Christ's Advent to the end of time” (p. 4); it is at least equally so that “after the opening of the Seventh Seal John commences again at the initial point from which he had first proceeded.” Both series are expressly and in the plainest terms declared to be “the things which shall be” (Rev. 1:19), and “which must be (4:1), hereafter,” or (more definitely) after “the things which are,” the state comprised by the seven churches in chaps. 2., 3. The vision in chaps. 4. 5. is exclusively future, and must be accomplished before the Seals and the Trumpets can begin. The crowned and enthroned elders, &c., are in their due positions on high before a Seal is opened; and the Seals are all opened before the first Trumpet is blown. There is only a brief but solemn silence in heaven “about half-an-hour” between the first series and the second. What can exceed the monstrous interpretation of the ancient commentators, such as Victorinus and Tychonius, that this means the saints' eternal rest Yet this wild idea, which has not a shade even of plausible appearance to commend it, has prevailed from early days to our own. It is the less reasonable, as the same writers profess to see eternity in the palm-bearing Gentiles before the seventh Seal was opened. This too we have already noticed as a blunder, but at least intelligible if not intelligent: whereas their notion of the half hour's silence, on any feasible principle, is neither. It is a marvel of credulity without reason and against scripture.

Nor is it true that, after the sounding of the seventh Trumpet, a return is made to “the first origin of the church” (ib.). For there is not a trace of “her history” beyond chaps. 2. 3. After that the symbol of the saints glorified is seen as the four-and-twenty elders in heaven, till this yields to that of the bride, the Lamb's wife, when the due moment comes to present the bridals of the Lamb. What the Bp. with a crowd of predecessors calls the church (in Rev. 12) is really the symbol of Israel about to appear on the scene, mother of a Son, Male of might, Who is to shepherd all the nations with a rod of iron. Who this great personage is ought not to be inscrutable but most obvious. It is Christ, come of Israel according to flesh (as all know, and both Testaments witness), Head and Bridegroom of the church, not her Son, as perverse misinterpretation alleges. No! The Revelation clearly distinguishes the woman of chap. 12. from her of chaps. 19., 21., 22. The church is the bride in this book (as the great world-church is the harlot); while the mother is Israel, seen in God's purpose of glorious power as she is destined to in fact, but in sorrow before that time come. For also the dragon is invested with the form of the Roman empire to oppose and devour, so that she must again flee into the wilderness till the day dawn. There are undoubtedly in John's Revelation, as in Paul's Epistles, “some things hard to be understood, which the uninstructed and unestablished wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their destruction “; but the grand outlines here as elsewhere are distinct, and convict the mass of commentators of inattention to scripture.

The truth is, as we may state in brief, that “the beast” had only been named in its antagonism to the Two Witnesses in chap. 11. and the general stream of prophecy to the close. Then in chap. 12. connected with “the ark of God's covenant seen in His temple” (which verse is its proper beginning) we have retrogression to give first the complete history of that portentous power with God's ways in good and against evil. These bring in the Seven Vials, and the descriptive chapters that follow on the corrupt woman and city Babylon and her fall, before the heavenly marriage with the appearing of the Lord Jesus and the Millennial reign. Is it possible to conceive a clearer or more certain view of the order of events in chaps. 19., 20. and up to 21:1-8? There a necessarily retrogressive vision is given about the holy bride and her relation to the kings and nations; just as chaps. 17., 18. were a retrogressive description of the great whore to explain what her corrupting relations were to the kings and nations, which at length drew down divine judgment.

In other words, no person that understands the Book of Revelation questions either the parentheses that occur at distinct and unmistakable points, nor the clear retrogression at chap. 12. fair wise and necessary reason. So it is with the descriptive returns of chaps 17., 18., and of chaps. 21:9-21:5, which are introduced in a way precisely analogous, as if to intimate to the reader of any discernment that they answer to each other in contrast. Otherwise the book is strictly consecutive, as indeed the inspiring Holy Spirit has made indelibly plain to all who heed the strongly defined proofs of its internal order. Bp. Wordsworth is, like his guides of antiquity, altogether hazy and hap-hazard. He slights, as they did, the landmarks which God has given us through the prophet. Neither he nor they perceived the principles of its structure, but they caught at appearances here and there which have no bearing on the relative bearing of its parts. Thus, as all began with guess work, no considerate Christian can wonder that all has resulted in confusion.

But it is surprising that a pious and learned man, as I gladly believe Dr. W. to have been, should so misstate the views in the most ancient remains on the Millennial prophecy. Why cite Bede (8th cent.) and Haymo (9th)? He knew perfectly well that Justin-Martyr, as well as the pseudoBarnabas, Irenasus (an Asiatic godly bishop of Lyon in Gaul A.D. 177) who wrote in Greek and Tertullian who wrote in Latin, Hippolytus bp. of Portus Romans Methodius bp. of Tire, and Victorinus, all the three martyrs, and Lactantius the rhetorician father, believed and taught a literal reign of Christ and the risen saints over the earth. Origen, learned but heterodox, was the only one (those excepted who denied the genuineness of the book) of the pre-Constantinian writers who differed in principle as an extreme allegorist, though he did not live to comment on the Revelation. From Constantine's time indeed writers began to imagine, as it was not to be wondered at perhaps, a present millennium, though not all in the same sense. But it is unnecessary to speak of later Fathers, as I attach not the smallest authority to any of them, however early.

However this may be, the notion of the millennium advocated by the late bp. of Lincoln, no matter who held it, is in every respect absurd. What contempt of the Apocalyptic order to say that John “reascends once more” (p. 5)! What ignorance of chap. 20. to fancy that it declares what Christ had done for the church since His incarnation? How He had bound Satan though the N.T. is express throughout to the contrary. See 1 Cor. 5:5; 2 Cor. 2:11; 11:3; 12:7; Eph. 4:27; 6:12; 1 Thess. 3:18; 2 Thess. 2:2; 1 Tim. 1:20; 3:6, 7; 4:1; 5:15; James 4:7 Peter 5:8; 1 John 4:1, 6; Rev. 2:9, 13, 24; 3:9, to say nothing of chaps. 9:11, 20, 12:17, 13:4, 16:13, 14, 19:20. Christ's preservation of His servants in every age no believer contests. But the vision speaks of their reigning; whereas the N.T. reproves such a present thought as the practical folly of the Corinthians, and insists on the contrary that they must suffer now, until “that day.” Undoubtedly Christ has done His infinite work, and carries on His intercession and care in every suited and blessed way for us on high, till He appears the second time unto salvation. But this, or His calling to heavenly glory all that are true to Him, or His ordaining strength out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, what has it all to do with a saintly resurrection to reign with Him?

It is a miserable bathos to conclude, that “St. John shows in the twentieth chapter of the Apocalypse that the failings, which had been described in such vivid colors in the preceding Visions of this book—under the Seals, the Trumpets, and the Vials—were due to themselves; and that all God's acts toward man are done in equity and love” (pp. 5, 6). A Jew might have said far more; a heathen almost as much. John shows this in Rev. 20! The only thing really shown is how utterly, with the one exception of chaps. 17 and 18., Dr. Chris. W. misunderstood the book as a whole, and this chapter in particular: else he never could have conceived an inference so pitiful and even imbecile. And this is the real moral to be drawn: that a man, be he ever so respected and able otherwise, should seek to comprehend a book before he writes. Think of his adding, “This twentieth chapter, then, according to this view, is a summary of the Apocalypse” !!! Beyond doubt, “it is in perfect harmony with the whole.” It is the moral picture and bright issue of what he calls “this sublime drama.” And when so regarded, it gives no countenance to Dr. W.'s Anti-millenarian notions.

The Dimbleby System of Prophetic Dates: 2

BEFORE passing onward, I would direct attention to the manipulation of the periods Mr. D. assigns to the Four Empires, already cited in full from his page 3. There can be no doubt as to the end of Babylon's imperial power by the Medo-Persians under Cyrus in B.C. 538. But what is the groundwork for giving “90 years” to the empire of Babylon? Mr. D. furnishes neither authority nor proof. It is his assumption of the starting-point, or terminus a quo. But why at that point? Scripture, I am bold to affirm, does not say so. Profane history, extremely indistinct and precarious for that era, is (as far as I am aware) wholly silent as to any epoch adequate. The Astronomical Canon of Ptolemy is indeed a human document of unusual importance, of high interest in its way, and in my judgment far more reliable than the monuments set up by vainglorious monarchs, as anxious to omit and disguise disasters as to exaggerate successes. But the Canon is too general for the conveyance of short or concurrent reigns and other important details; and the names of the Babylonian rulers are modified naturally by the famous Egyptian scientist of the second century A.D.

One could conceive a person reasoning from Nabonassar's accession as a new era in the history of Babylon; but this was in 747 B.C. which is out of the question. So is that of Mardocempadus in 721 B.C., the Merodach-Baladan of Scripture in Hezekiah's day, of course far too early. But “90 years” would suppose a beginning of the Empire under the reign of a singularly obscure prince, of whom nothing is known but the name Chyniladan or Chinaladinus, his accession in 647 B.C., and his regnant term of years 22. What can any reasonable mind infer but that Mr. D. attributed the “90 years” to Babylon from this imaginary epoch, simply and solely in order to make up the desired theory of 1260 years? What mighty and far reaching event occurred “90 years” before the fall of Babylon, or before the first year of Cyrus, to justify the notion of Babylon's rise to be the imperial world-power at that particular point?

Turning to scripture, we do find another period well and repeatedly defined in O.T. prophecy, which necessitated the momentous dealing of Jehovah when He gave over His people in their last and weightiest representatives (Judah and David's house, Jerusalem and the land and the sanctuary) to the Chaldean Nebuchadnezzar. The captivity in Babylon resulted, only ending with the MedoPersian Empire of Cyrus who proclaimed liberty to the captive Jew. Here began a change of incalculable gravity. God's center for the earth and the nations was His people Israel (Deut. 32:8, 9). In them as His portion and inheritance He took His place as Lord of all the earth (Josh. 3:13). But Israel, yea Judah, (people, priests, kings) became apostate after wondrous patience; and the wrath of Jehovah rose against His people, “and there was no remedy.” Jehovah thereon, till a brighter day dawn, withdrew, the sign of His presence, revoked their title as His people, and retired as it were meanwhile into His indefeasible name of “the God of the heavens,” as He is called in Daniel, &c., when the times of the Gentiles proceed. His ancient people are Lo-ammi (not-My people) till in the end of the age they welcome the rejected Messiah, Who will then say, My people thou, as they will say, My God. Meanwhile the “Beasts” reign and ravage; and since redemption God has not a family only in relationship with Himself as Father, but His church, Christ's body, baptized in virtue of one Spirit into that blessed unity. God no longer associates Himself as He once did with the earth.

It is this, the most solemn fact in the O.T. that should or could befall His earthly people, which powerful kingdom (which it had been growingly for a hundred years or more), but the first of the four imperial powers of the Gentiles. These in God's sovereignty fill up the vacuum for the world created by His present disowning of His people Israel, till they are restored in His mercy by-and-by to everlasting and more than pristine blessing, and to glory here below, a blessing to all the nations and a joy to all the earth. During the “Beasts,” government (which we see in Dan. 2 formally given of God to the captor of Jerusalem and the Jews, and of course inherited by all that succeeded) was severed from God's calling. Both were united in Israel, as they will be forever under Messiah and the new covenant ere long. Meanwhile the Gentile powers have the government; as the calling enjoyed by the godly remnant expanded in due time (after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ) into Christianity and the church. This the N.T. proves.

What more certain and evident than that this fact so notable and involving principles of the greatest weight in God's ways for man on the earth, is the true initiating epoch of the imperial system, or “times of the Gentiles?” “Thou, O King (says the prophet Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar), art king of kings unto whom the God of the heavens hath given the kingdom and the strength and the glory; and wheresoever dwell the children of men, the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, He hath given them into thy hands, and hath made thee to rule over them all; thou art the head of gold” (2:37, 38). Hence none had such a gift and place from God before Nebuchadnezzar, not even Nabopolassar his father who appears to have brought in a new dynasty distinct from his predecessors, and helped to destroy Nineveh, the seat of the Assyrian power, within the “90 years.”

But this leads to the assured conclusion that the true period of Babylonish imperialism according to scripture is not 90 but 70 years, including the two years when Nebuchadnezzar (being associate king), in the third year of Jehoiakim first ravaged Jerusalem and its temple, and the two years of Darius before Cyrus in his first year gave liberty to the Jews. In fact the preliminary and the sequel tell how much, even at that depression because of their sins, God's heart yearned over His poor guilty people; and this is worthy of Himself. But the conclusion accompanied the rise of Babylon to be, not a from scripture is serious for Mr. D.'s system of dates, which is overthrown, not only by the error of the end, already pointed out—tacking on to the Four Empires the “Mohammedan of 1260 years,” without proof and against the testimony of the prophet, but also by comprising 20 years too much within the Babylonish empire if we believe Daniel. For I give Mr. D. so much credit for figures that I readily assume a more candid mind than his striving to raise a cloud of dust on it. It is an error due to his confidence in a plausible theory helped out by a faith in arithmetic, astronomy, and history, due only to God's word. His scheme even at the start breaks down indubitably and hopelessly at both ends. It is against all the evidence of Dan. 2 and 7. to bring in Mohammedanism as having part in the four Gentile Empires, before the kingdom of God come in Christ's power to set aside the entire system by divine judgment, and to fill the whole earth, as not Daniel only but the prophets in general fully predict.

There is another and twofold assumption as to “seven times,” yet earlier in this opening page of the tract, which ought to be proved if it can be, had been so greatly used to their blessing. Their ways and words had forced the apostle to speak of himself and his ministry—this to a larger extent than he would have wished to have done. Consequently ministry in this epistle has largely an experimental character. The deep feelings and emotions of the wounded servant are to be observed throughout. To simplify the matter, I would just observe that the subject is presented thus—in chap. 3. we have the ministry, in chap. 4. the minister, in chap. 5. his motives, and in chap. 6. his moral traits.

The ministry is of an exceedingly blessed character. The gospel—called here the gospel of the glory of Christ—is put in contrast with the law. Paul had been made an able minister of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. The law was a ministration of death and of condemnation. It set forth, not what God is, as some have said, but what man ought to be. This was fatal to the creature. So helpless is the ruin of nature that none can render the righteous requirement. Law knows nothing of mercy. It instead of being taken for granted. But this may proposes blessing—life and righteousness—to those be reserved for a later moment when it will be more convenient to bring it to the test. What we have discussed in this paper is of gravity quite sufficient to stand alone for such as weigh the word of God in the balance of the sanctuary.

(To be continued, D.V.).

The Ministry and the Minister: Part 1

It is on my mind to dwell a little upon the ministry of Christ as it is presented to us in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. The manner of presentation in Corinthians differs greatly from that in Ephesians. In the latter epistle we have the mystery unfolded of Christ and the church, and our heavenly blessings in association with Christ risen. In connection with this, ministry is found, as the gracious provision of the Head for the need of His members below. It comes out, as it were, as part of a circle of teaching concerning the church, its blessings, and endowments.

But we observe a different hue in Corinthians. The apostle is here seeking the full spiritual restoration of his children in the faith. They had erred. Satan had got in. Their hearts had been estranged from the Lord, and from the man who keep it; but thunders out a curse upon all who fail, whatever their plea.

Law came in with glory, as our chapter speaks. The circumstances in the giving of it were full of majesty. The mediator who brought it into the camp shone with the brightness of the glory he had been beholding, and had to put a vail on his face. Let it be observed that it is the second giving of the law that the apostle here refers to. This is important. The first tables were broken before they reached the camp, for Moses would not bring them in where the golden calf was. The second giving of the code was accompanied by a proclamation of long-suffering and sovereign grace (Ex. 34). It is this the apostle describes as a ministration of both death and condemnation. The law, even when thus accompanied, has this solemn character for all who have to do with it. A grave consideration surely for thousands in Christendom I For it is undeniable that those, who in this day take up law, speak of mercy at the same time. Well, even a mingled system is ruin for the creature. Law in any shape or form only works wrath for man, fallen and a sinner. None can escape this, whether in profession cleaving to Moses or Christ.

The old ministry is spoken of here as “that which is done away” (ver. 11). It came in incidentally as it were until the promised Seed came. God would make manifest to all the real condition of the creature ere the mighty remedy was introduced. So grievously have men misunderstood the declared object of God in giving the law that, instead of learning their true state by it, they have gone about to establish a righteousness of their own by its means. What utter blindness as to the real condition of flesh before God.

The gospel, on the contrary, is spoken of as “that which remaineth.” It will never fade before a brighter glory. It is not the statement of what man ought to be, but of what God is. He has revealed Himself in His Son, and in a manner blessedly suitable to our need and condition. It is not merely introduced with, but it subsists in, glory. This is the glory that excelleth. It is divine testimony to One Who, having accomplished redemption, has gone up into the glory of God. Him we gaze upon with unveiled face, in perfect peace in the presence of infinite holiness. The children of Israel could not look on Moses' face because of its brightness; it is ours to gaze without interruption upon the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. He did not take His seat in that glory until every question relating to our souls was fully settled, and every foe was silenced. Unlike Moses who went up into the Mount, saying, “Peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin” (Ex. 32:30), while the people stood trembling and mourning at the foot, He first made atonement and then went up to take His seat at the right hand of the Majesty on high. If our sins were not all entirely removed before He was thus glorified, they never can be, for He will never come to earth to die again. Righteousness was accomplished, and God was glorified, ere that place was taken by the Second Man, the Lord Jesus. Therefore the brighter the glory that shines in His face, the fuller the proof to our souls, and the deeper our peace and blessedness.

It is a ministry of righteousness, and of the Spirit. It is of righteousness, not in requiring it as under the law, but in revealing it unto all. “Now God's righteousness, apart from law, is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even God's righteousness which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all, and upon all them that believe” (Rom. 3:21, 22). God can now maintain His own consistency with Himself, yet hold as righteous every soul that believes in Jesus on the ground of redemption. It is not mercy, though He is rich in it and has lavished it upon us, but righteousness. He is perfectly righteous in all His dealings of grace with us through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Here is solid ground for our feet. Resting here, peace is sure and settled.

It is a ministry of the Spirit also. This God never even proposed to confer as the result of law-keeping. The holy anointing oil could not be poured on flesh (Ex. 30:31, 32). The Spirit could not be granted as the reward of man's work. But God has put this honor on the work of Jesus. The Spirit has come out from the glory into which He has entered, and is God's gift to all who believe the gospel of God's salvation. How could we wish to go back to law? Yet the Galatians did so. And many in this day say to their own loss, that “the old wine is better.” This is the gospel, the wonderful ministry, Paul had received. It is not a dry abstract statement of doctrine, but a precious testimony to Christ's glory, and confers righteousness and the Spirit on all who bow to it. But the Spirit of God having come, He leads up our hearts to where Christ is. The new man finds delight in Christ, nowhere else. The Spirit is the living link between us and Himself in glory. He causes us to gaze upon Him, and we become changed into the same image from glory to glory. This is true Christianity—the heart drawn off from things here, and adoringly occupied with One up there. This we may call the permanent result of the gospel, though there is progression in it. From the moment we believe and are sealed, our faces are turned upward and our backs are turned upon the world, and we become increasingly conformed to Christ. It is the delight of the Spirit to make us so.

Letter on the Lord's Supper

DEAR Brethren in Christ.

I salute you in the Lord, having learned that you have received the gospel by faith; and that you have left the world-church to follow Christ, not the tradition of men, whether Romanist or Protestant.

You have been called to liberty. Hold it firmly then, and be not drawn anew under a yoke of bondage. Though your faces are unknown to me in the flesh, I have not ceased to pray for you since the day that I heard of your earnest desire to celebrate the Lord's Supper in a manner conformed to scripture.

Allow me to write to you a few words on a subject so dear to our hearts and so important for the glory of Christ. In Christendom some regard the Lord's Supper as the principal means of obtaining life eternal; others neglect it, far preferring a fine discourse.

What says the apostle of the Gentiles? “I have received of the Lord that which also I have delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and, when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me. Likewise also [he took] the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread and drink the cup, ye announce the Lord's death till he come” (1 Cor. 11:23-26). The best text is here followed and translated faithfully.

The evangelist preaches the good news of God; he proclaims the gift of life eternal and remission of sins to all such as believe in Jesus. The pastor and teacher, publicly and privately, tells the whole counsel of God to the faithful; that they may be built up in the truth and filled with the knowledge of His will, so as to walk worthily of the Lord and to please Him in all respects.

But as often as the children of God take the Supper in accordance with the Lord's institution, they announce corporately the capital truth of Christianity, “the Lord's death till He come.” Doubtless, when thus gathered together, they read God's word prayerfully; with adoration in the Spirit they praise the grace of the Father and the Son; but in the midst of all else we may say that the Supper has a very distinct voice. The death of the Lord is there remembered; and the believers announce His death every time they are partakers of the Supper. It is true of those whose voice is not heard in the assembly, yea, even if some were dumb. What an immense privilege, dear brethren! Jesus alone could confer it on us, Jesus exclusively in virtue of His sacrifice, so precious to God, and so efficacious to blot out our sins.

Before those symbols, faith recognizes that all was evil on our part, but sovereign grace on the part of God. We feel profoundly humbled, and yet more by our Savior's love and His death than by our own sins, numerous and shameful as they were. There Christ in His death is the real and direct object of our souls. This it is that attracts and suffices us, that absorbs our minds and fills our hearts. The Son loves us, as does the Father too; and we honor the Son as we honor the Father. But it is Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of man, Who alone suffered for our sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. And God in His wisdom has here willed our joy, founding a feast on the great Sacrifice, a feast the most blessed on earth, where in communion one with another we recall the death of Jesus. We there proclaim also the unity of the body of Christ, with thanksgiving to Him Who loves us without bound or end to the glory of God the Father.

Search the scriptures, and scrutinize the ways of God from the beginning to the end as they are therein made known to us: you will find that, in fact, as in divine purpose, the person of Jesus, the Second man, eclipses all others born of woman; and Jesus is also the Last Adam. There is, there can be, none comparable with Him. He answers to all the thoughts, to all the affections, and to all the counsels of God. All the acts of Jesus are perfect, each in its place; yet is there one which is distinguished from the rest and rises above all. It is “the Lord's death.” There was nothing but evil and pride in the creature. We were even conceived in sin, we were dead in sins, one quite as another. But in Christ God in His love went down below our sins to take them away; and Christ is exalted above all to send us pardon and peace. Where sin abounded, grace much more abounded; that, as sin reigned in death, so also might grace reign through righteousness unto life eternal by Jesus Christ our Lord.

On this basis of righteousness God sends the good news of His grace in all the creation that is under heaven. The same Lord of all is rich toward all that call on Him. Whoever believes in Jesus is justified by Him. Thus it is that God saves. And the Supper is the privilege of the saved, not the means of saving; it is the happy portion of those who believe and know that they have life eternal (1 John 2:12; 5:12). As for such as believe not in the Savior, they remain responsible for His death, as well as all other sins of theirs; but for those that believe in Him, their sins are forgiven for His name's sake, themselves are justified by faith. So speaks the word of God. We receive now the end of our faith, soul-salvation (1 Peter 1); by-and-by at His coming our bodies will be saved (Rom. 8).

Also the Lord instituted His Supper, to which He invites all that are His. His name is their passport and guarantee. His Supper is the constant feast for the family of God: they break the bread, they drink the cup, in remembrance of Christ. Before inaugurating this feast, Jesus had already in His view the dangers His own must meet, the difficulties they have to surmount, the decline and the fall of Christian profession; and He had consoled the disciples with those words of love, “Where two or three are gathered together unto My name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20). This is His real presence; it is our need, and His assurance. His word ever abides, His love never fails.

The Supper then is the common privilege conferred by Christ on all His members, excepting those that justly incur His discipline for bad morals or evil doctrine. If the blessed institution of the Lord is perverted or neglected in Christendom, none the less does it subsist in all its reality for such as adhere to scripture; and faith appropriates it when observed accordingly, which alone carries the stamp of divine authority. In man's hands with this institution were soon mixed worldly elements, which altered its character so that it was no longer His. Nevertheless His Supper is not lost for those who submit in humility to the revealed will of our Lord. When the Corinthians tampered with its nature, the apostle (ver. 20) denied it to be the Lord's Supper. It became their own supper, not His.

The Lord's Supper is not a question of administration or of presidency; still less is it a ceremony wherein the priest stands between the faithful and God. “The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth” (John 4). The Lord Jesus is the sole High Priest; and we who believe are His house. God no longer has, as in Israel, a people His yet without. “Through Him (Christ) we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” The Epistle to the Hebrews teaches explicitly (chaps. 7. and 10.) that, the priesthood being changed, there is also of necessity a change of the law; and that as holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, we have full liberty to enter into the holies by the blood of Jesus, the veil being rent and the two now making only one.

Reversing the Jewish rites generally, the Supper is a “Communion,” and even specifically the communion. It has nothing of a ministerial charge. “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? the bread which we, break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, the many, are one bread, one body; for the whole of us partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:16, 17).

Therefore scripture, as all may easily see, leaves the Supper open. In presence of the Head, the distinctions among Christians vanish from view. It is good for the most honored servants to have a time and place to efface themselves in the presence of Jesus; this time and this place are found in celebrating the Supper. After thanks are given, one breaks the bread and eats in remembrance of Him; and a similar thing with the cup. He gave it to them, we read (Mark 14:23), and they all drank of it. For the believer it is the most simple, the most touching, and the most solemn of observances. How incomparable an occasion to contemplate the infinite humiliation and the perfect grace of our Savior! What happiness for the saint to rejoice, with all saints round him in spirit, not only in their blessings, but in His presence, the Blessed and the Blesser, conscious that they are objects of perfect love to the Father and the Son, and knowing all things in the power of the Holy Spirit Who dwells in us (1 John 4).

There is also in the Lord's Supper a moral bearing on which the apostle insists, because of the profane levity of some at Corinth. Let us never forget it. “Therefore whosoever eateth the bread or drinketh the cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But let each prove himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup; for he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh judgment against himself, not discerning the body. Therefore are many weak and sick among you, and some fall asleep. But if we discerned ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world” (1 Cor. 11:27-32). That is not the damnation of unbelievers, but a judgment which the Lord exercises at present over His own. They had treated the holy feast unworthily; they had not distinguished His body, for this is what the breaking of bread means. Accordingly the Lord now judges those who fail to discern themselves. In view of His supper, in remembrance of the Lord's death, each of His own is called to search himself, and thus to eat and drink: if not, he does it unworthily, and this is irreverence toward the Lord Who judges those that do not judge themselves. But even in this case it is not His eternal judgment. On the contrary it is His chastening, “in order that we should not be condemned with the world.”

As for the time when the Supper should be celebrated, it is clearly indicated in Acts 20:7, “And the first day of the week, when we gathered together to break bread, Paul discoursed to them,” &c, His discourse was a great boon, but purely casual. The Supper, in which the breaking of bread took place, was a thing fixed, not only for the disciples at Troas, but for all the saints wherever they might be. The confessedly right reading is “when we were gathered together,” here implying that “the first of the week” was the day now settled for the Supper everywhere. At Pentecost and for some time after, the saints broke bread every day “at home” (not of course in the temple), because all the blessed of the Lord were then found in the same city—Jerusalem. But this passed away when the call of God's grace went forth and souls believed everywhere. In Acts 20:7 we have the regular order henceforth applicable to the church anywhere, as recognized by the Holy Spirit. It is for us, in the evil day, to act in faith and in obedience, with thanksgiving. Have faith in God, beloved.

Ever yours in Christ the Lord,

W. K.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Ham's Misconduct

Q.-Gen. 5:25. Why did Ham's misconduct entail a curse on a son of his instead of on himself? Why was Canaan the youngest of Ham's sons singled out? The servitude of negroes is notorious, but the popular notion that they are of Canaan unfounded; and it not being so, perhaps of Cush or whoever may have been the forefather of the negroes.

E. J. T., Elsternwick, Melbourne.

A.-In the government of the world God does not at all confine Himself to the particular person or generation that has offended. So it was in Jerusalem, and so it will be in Babylon at last: Matt. 23 Rev. 18 Of old we see how the first-born of Egypt was smitten, though Pharaoh and his host were afterward swallowed up in the Red Sea. It was mercy not to punish Ham in all his descendants, but in Canaan. God is sovereign in judgment as in mercy, and altogether righteous. Possibly, if not probably, Canaan may have played part with Ham in the heartless insult and dishonor done to Noah, not only the head of the rescued family, but governor in chief of the renewed earth. But whether so or not, it was mercy, not to involve all in God's avenging the wrong, but to restrain it within the least bounds. And if God let the blow fall on him that possessed himself of the land promised to Abraham and his seed, and filled it with idolatry and immorality of turpitude not to be named, was it not altogether right that Canaan should be cursed above all, and given up practically to extermination? They were very far from being physically degraded like negroes, or other races such as the aborigines of Australia, but early and highly civilized; which did and may consist with the most shameless sins against God and man.

By W. KELLY.

An Exposition of the Book of Isaiah

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THE BIBLE TREASURY

EDITED BY WILLIAM KELLY.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:27

AFTER the four sons of Joktan already noticed, we have now before us three: “and Hadoram, and Uzal, and Diklah” (ver. 27).

The fifth son appears to have settled farther east in that part of the peninsula which has long been designated Oman, and gives its name to the lower waters of the Persian gulf, opening into the Indian ocean. The south-eastern headland of that deep bay is called Ras-el-Had, which must be carefully distinguished from Ras-Fartask or Fartaques, “the wild boar's snout,” answering to its Greek designation of Σύαγρος ἄκρα (Ptol vi. 7, §11). It is the more necessary to be on one's guard, as of old we learn from the Alexandrian geographer that the position of the latter was misconceived by his predecessor, Marinus; and in this Marcianus (Hudson's Geog. Gr. Min. i. 24) agrees with the correction. In modern times D'Anville, followed by many (as e.g. Long's Classical Atlas) confounded Syagros with Ras-el-Had. Dean Vincent in his earlier writings had been thus misled; but he corrected himself in his elaborate work on the so called Periplus of Arrian (ii. 331-351). The classical title of the headland we are occupied with is really KopoJayov ibcpov, as the learned Bochart long ago conjectured from the name of the forefather therein disguised, i.e. from Hadoramum. So convinced is Mr. Forster of its soundness that he does not hesitate to say, the fact, unnoticed by Bochart, “is simply this, that the promontory now actually bears the name of Hadoram, under an ordinary abbreviation of the Arabic, in its modern appellation of Ras-el-HAD” (i. 140, 141).

It is indeed a confirmation not to be despised also that Commodore Owen's Survey “first gave the correct form of this bay, accompanied by what is more important for our present object, its Arabic name, Bundes Djuram or Doram, the Bay of Doram.” Abbreviations of this kind are notorious in that tongue as in others, as Dfira or Dora for Adoraim, and Jok for Joktan. It appears too from the MS. Journal of Captain Sadleir that there is still existing in the desert of Ul Ahsu on the northern confines of Oman the tribe Dreeman, which corresponds with the Drimati of whom Pliny speaks as being in this quarter. So he does of the Fons Dora and of the Darrae which last word has its analogue in a town and tribe at this day. Hadoram (in the LXX. Ὀδοῤῥᾶ) seems not obscurely traceable in a race singularly unyielding.

It may also be observed that, if we heed the statement of Dionysius, there was a district on the east of Arabia called Chatramis south of Chaldamis (Bahrein) opposite to Persia, which agrees with the north of Oman. This race must be distinguished from the Adamitae, or Chatametitae, that sprang from Hazarrnaveth and lived in Hadramaut on the south. The town of Hadrama corresponds apparently.

Uzal (in the Vat. text of the LXX. Αἰβήλ, prob. err. for Αἰδήλ in others) is named in the sixth place, and gave his name in ancient times to the capital city of Yemen, afterward and still Sanά. Mr. E. S. Poole cites the printed edition of the Marasid, which says “that its name was Oozal, and when the Abyssinians arrived at it, and saw it to be beautiful, they said, Sanά, Which means beautiful, and therefore it was called Sanit.” Arabic authors have compared this with Damascus for its waters and its fruits; as Niebuhr says its houses and palaces are finer than those of any other town in Arabia. The Jews, it seems, who are immemorially settled there, only know it by the name of Uzal. That there should be other traces of the name is natural; but we need not dwell on what is disputable, having a record so direct and clear. The Auth. V. of Ezek. 27:19 has darkened an important reference, which stands no better in the Revised. Dr. Henderson and Mr. Darby present it thus: “Vedan and Javan of Uzal traded in thy [Tire's] markets: wrought iron, cassia, and calamus were in thy traffic [or barter].” The LXX. render it “from Asel,” the Syriac and Aquila “from Uzal.” As ver. 17 gave Judah and Israel, it is possible that Dan or Vedan and Javan were of the Arab race, and Uzal their emporium. So Dathe renders the clause; and de Wette adds to them Mehusal (as the Vulgate Mosel) for a third trafficker. Diodati in his French as well as Italian Version preferred “Dan also, and the vagabond Javan” in its Greek application. Dr. Benisch has for Uzal “spun yarn,” and Dr. Leeser “silken goods” according to other points.

Of Diklah, the eighth name, there is little to say. From signifying “palm-trees” some have looked to the city of Φοινίκων in the northwest of Arabia Felix; but Gesenius after Bochart for a similar reason inclines to find his descendants in the widely spread people classically called Minaei. But Mr. Forster strenuously contends that they were of the stock of Jerah, and that the great region of Kerje or Karje is none other than an anagrammatic inversion (so common in Arab names) of the patriarch Jerah himself. Into this discussion we do not enter; but any one can discern in the Dulkelaitae, of whom Golius speaks in his Lexicon, a name that answers to the son of Joktan we are now tracing, from whom descended a people of Yemen between Sant and Mareb. Pococke also refers to them as Dhu l'Chalaah. Yet Mr. Poole is unaware of any trace of Diklah in Arabic works, except the mention of a place called Dakalah in El-Yemameb, mentioned by Kamoos, where grew many palm-trees. Enough then appears to this day, even as to the least conspicuous. Of these early tribes a Arabia, not only to testify to the Mosaic account, but to demonstrate the gracious interest of God in the otherwise obscure and undistinguished races of mankind. We shall have occasion to speak of some not of the Shemitic stock who seem to have been the first that entered the peninsula as they also penetrated elsewhere the earliest after the dispersion. Also we have to take note of the repeated influx of the Abrahamic seed, outside those chosen and called, who settled in its wide domain and gave special form to a characteristic portion of its denizens. But this must suffice for the earlier names of Joktan's sons.

The Offerings of Leviticus: 7. Meal Offering Injunctions

Lev. 2:11-13

WE have, next laid down, injunctions of much interest and spiritual weight. On the one hand leaven and honey were in every fire-offering to Jehovah; on the other, as oil we have seen was to be variously used, so salt was not to be lacking, but offered with all.

“No meal-offering which ye shall offer to Jehovah shall be made with leaven; for ye shall burn no leaven and no honey as a fire-offering to Jehovah. As to offering of first fruits, ye shall offer them to Jehovah; but they shall not come up for a sweet odor on the altar. And every offering of thy meal-offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meal-offering: with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt” (ver. 11-13).

There is no shadow of doubt on the symbolic force of leaven. It is used for corruption that spreads and contaminates, unless the contextual employment modify it otherwise. This force is plain in the first and standing type of the Ο.T., the peremptory exclusion of leaven from the pass-over and its accompanying dependent feast of unleavened bread. On and from the very first day they were to put away leaven out of their houses; for seven days none should be found there. Nothing leavened was to be eaten on pain of cutting off from Israel. In 1 Cor. 5 the reference is express, and the antitypical meaning certain. As leaven, even a little, taints the whole lump; so does known sin, if tolerated, the Christian assembly. It is vain to plead the old man. For was not Christ, our passover, sacrificed? and is it not our obligation now, as being unleavened in Him, to purge out the old leaven, that we may be a new lump? Leaven is characterized here as evil in itself and wickedness in its effect. Likewise in Gal. 5:9 it is applied to the pravity in doctrine of letting in a ritual ordinance, which upset grace in justifying by the faith of Christ. Both are hateful to God, and incompatible with our calling: if either enter, we are bound to clear ourselves at all cost.

Yet we know as a fact that the church, or Christian, differs in this essentially from Christ, that He was the Holy One of God, absolutely in and from His birth, we only as born anew and in virtue of His sacrifice. Hence in the type of Him as the wave-sheaf (Lev. 23:10-14), it was waved before Jehovah with burnt-offering and meal-offering and drink-offering; whereas the new meal-offering of the wave-loaves which represented us was baked with leaven. The sin of our nature is clearly taken account of, and a sin-offering requisite, with peace-offerings, as well as the burnt and drink-offerings. A similar principle obtained in the peace-offerings for thanksgiving. In no case was uncleanness more solemnly denounced (Lev. 7:19, 20); but it is recognized that leaven was there, though not actively working, and leavened cakes were prescribed accordingly (ver. 13, Amos 4:5).

Honey set forth the sweetness of nature. It was good in its place and allowed for use, but not too much. Nevertheless it was forbidden in an offering to God, however wholesome and pleasant to man's taste. No one approached the perfectness of Jesus, the Child or the Man. If He grew and waxed strong, He was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him. Yet even as a Youth, He said to His parents (tried by His staying behind in the temple), “Did you not know that I ought to be in the things of my Father?” And when His mother appealed to Him at the marriage in Cana, saying that they had no wine, His answer was, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.” Certainly there was not an atom of disrespect; but it was not what answered to honey. Rather was it the salt of the covenant, which must not be wanting in a fire offering to Jehovah. Christ was doing then as always the things that were pleasing to the Father. He would not act on a human motive, were it even to hearken to His mother. He was come to do the will of God. All must be a sweet odor to Him.

We have already noticed the deeply important truth taught by the oil, whether as mixed with the flour in the composition of the cakes, or as poured thereon. There too the bearing on Christ is plain. In His birth, in His incarnation, was the former verified as nowhere else. He was the truly and only-begotten Son of God here below, as He was Son of God eternally. The believer has analogy, as being born of God. He is quickened by the Spirit's power, born of water and the Spirit; but this leaves his old nature where and what it was. Christ on the contrary had “no old man.” By the Spirit's power His humanity was free from all taint and evil. Not only He sinned not, but no sin was in Him. His anointing or sealing was at His baptism, the reception of the Spirit in power for His service; and here by virtue of His work of redemption the analogy in our case is quite as close, always remembering that Christ received the Spirit as Himself the Holy Son of man, we after His blood-shedding and by the faith of it.

As the oil may be viewed as in contrast with honey, so may salt, which the Lord pronounces “good,” stand opposed to leaven, the type of corrupting evil. Its use among men as preserving purity without any violence fits in with such an application. Our Lord said “Everyone shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt.” So the apostle exhorts that our speech be always in grace seasoned with salt. As the salt of the covenant was a pledge on God's part of a savor that passed not away, so is there the need on ours of a holy separative energy Godward to keep from corrupt words and ways. Christ and His offering of Himself to God for us could alone be the ground of such a pledge and perpetuity. But how wondrous that such a figure should be extended from His offering of Himself to our speech as it should be seasoned! But as our Lord exhorted at the close of Mark 9, “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” The separative power applies here to ourselves, the gracious spirit is for one with another. Without holiness peace mutually would be an illusion.

Ver. 12 seems to be the new meal-offering (fully described in chap. 23:15-20) where the oblation in an exceptional instance was expressly made with leaven as already shown. It was necessarily leavened in order to express the truth; but its exceptional nature was fully provided for. Even so these first-fruits could only be presented to Jehovah; they could not rise up on the altar for a sweet savor.

Waiting for the Lord

Luke 12:35-38

THROUGHOUT this chapter the Lord is withdrawing His disciples, now that His rejection proceeded and His departure approached, from their thoughts and ways as Jews. This is ever wholesome, for it grounds the believer in Christianity, which nature and the world resist. But then it was absolutely requisite and of the highest value that they should be weaned from the old weak and beggarly elements, to learn, enjoy, and live the new thing. It is not the power of Messiah present and governing here below, hut God's word and Spirit. Hence the unseen and eternal things are revealed; hence confession of the truth, of the rejected One, is imperative, as God only is to be feared, and the danger is of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Only the gracious Lord encourages the faith that owns Him by the very things which terrify unbelief. Earthly justice is not His care now; nor should earthly care be theirs. What was the portion of the rich man that forgot his soul?

The disciples are called to confide in Him who feeds the ravens, and clothes the lilies and the grass, with a glory beyond Solomon's. Why then should they be anxious like the nations of the world? Their Father knows their bodily wants, and adds these things to such as seek His kingdom, Moreover He would have them of good courage for was it not His delight to give them the kingdom? Hence, far from covetousness, they were called to be kings now in superiority to money. The world was no more their quest, but to use it things in unselfish love. This is to make for themselves an unfailing treasure in the heavens, when also their heart was to be. And thus in practice they become heavenly. “Let your loins be girded about, and your lamps burning, and ye like men awaiting their own lord, when he may return from the wedding, that, when he cometh and knocketh, they may immediately open to him. Blessed are those bondmen whom the lord on coming shall find watching! Verily I say to you, that he will gird himself, and make them recline at table, and come up and serve them. And if he come in the second watch, and in the third, and find them so, blessed are they!” (vers. 35-38.)

Here then beyond just question the Lord lays down the attitude of the Christian. Is it yours? He Himself is the test beyond all else. It is not consistent with faith to be worried with anxiety about the things that perish. It is well to be of good cheer, knowing His love and His purpose of glory for the little flock, tried and exposed as it now is. But to be like men that wait for their own lord is a still more positive and decisive test. It presupposes in a personal way faith working by love. Their treasure is in the heavens where He is. They love Him, because He first loved them. They do not forget Him in His absence; they are not merely occupied with their work, for indeed their loins were girt about and their lamps burning, but themselves awaiting their own Lord. Nor again were they discussing dates, nor on the lookout for political change, nor yet with eyes fixed on signs in the sun, moon, and stars. The Christian watches for Christ. He, his life, his righteousness, his Savior, his Lord, is gone with the promise of coming to receive him to Himself, one knows not how soon. And He has sent His last message since that He is coming quickly.

Therefore would we not doubt but wait, content with His word Who is the Truth, and the Faithful and True Witness. Long as it may seem, He is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, “but is longsuffering toward you, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” As He is waiting, so should we be; and thus we keep the word of His patience, but assure our hearts in the bright hope. Is He not worthy? is not the hope well worth the while? and is it not deep consolation that meanwhile many hear His voice, believe in His name, and with us wait for Him?

O my reader, if it be not so with you, where are you, and what? You well know whether you are waiting for the Lord Jesus; yea others, even the world, can in fair measure judge whether this is your habitual attitude. The Lord recognizes no other object of hope in His own. This is also the chief responsibility as His bondmen. Be assured that other duties will be done all the better, because this has the first and constant place. Read all the N.T. and see if this hope be not bound up with every joy and sorrow, with the walk and work and worship of the Christian, who found in Him the object of faith when he was a lost sinner, and now as a saint has none other as his hope. If you believe in Him, be not untrue to Him as your hope, but judge yourself in everything that hinders your waiting for Him day by day.

If you have no faith in Him, how sad is your estate! Perhaps you are so beguiled by the spirit of the age growingly infidel, as to deny His glory as the Son of God and His humiliation as the Son of man. Perhaps you deny His resurrection, if not His death, yea the death of the cross. You deny all this at your peril; and your peril is everlasting punishment. For it is folly to suppose that, if the Son of God came to be propitiation for our sins, God did not give adequate proof to make mankind responsible to receive Him, and verily, fatally, guilty in rejecting Him. To reject a divine Person, Who in infinite love deigned to die in order to save you and me by faith from judgment, cannot be a secondary thing. It is the truth that God now testifies to all in the gospel, which bears the self-evidence of His holy love as no pretended sacred book does comparably. It has been proved to the peace and joy and salvation of millions as guilty and incredulous as you. Why then be so careless, so mad, so wicked as to fight more against God, and turn His message of mercy, because refused, into a sentence of condemnation righteous and everlasting? Receiving the Lord Jesus by faith, you are entitled by God's grace to salvation, and can then welcome His coming with love and delight and triumph. You can then join those that are waiting for Him, that, when He knocks, you may open to Him immediately.

Job 38:7 appears to express poetically the joy of the orbs of heaven when first ushered in as the hosts of heaven, with the audible acclaim of the angels, who in this book as in Genesis are called God's sons.

Reflections on Galatians 4:8-18

BUT what were the Galatians before the gospel of Christ was brought to them by Paul? Simply idolaters, as all the heathen around them. “Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods” (ver. 8). How contemptuously the apostle describes their old heathen deities! And how strongly he speaks of their votaries! Philosophers though many of them were, they knew not God. They might be well stored with the wisdom of this world, and be able to moralize, etc.; but Godward their hearts were hardened and their understandings darkened. They were totally ignorant of Him.

Here we see the importance of noticing Paul's use of the pronouns “we” and “ye,” as already pointed out. All this could not be said of Paul and his fellow-Jews. They did not follow after heathen idolatry. They abhorred it and had the utmost contempt for it and its victims. Whatever the disgraceful proneness of the Jews before the Babylonish captivity, they kept clear of idolatry afterward. True, the house was only empty, but neither occupied nor cleansed, though swept and garnished. Still they were not idolaters; the Gentiles around them were.

And what were the Galatians doing now? “But now, after ye have known God or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain” (vers. 9-11). This may sound strong language to some, but it is the faithful language of the Holy Spirit. They were not returning to their old gods, but were going after Judaism, with its legal requirements and ritual observances. And this is called a return to idolatry! Judaism was a system set up and once owned of God, being expressive of Christ in all its parts. Indeed, souls established in grace can turn back at all times to the books of Exodus, Leviticus, etc. and find real delight in all the Spirit's unfoldings of Christ that are found there in a typical way. Viewed from such a standpoint the old order was very far removed from idolatry. But Christ having come, the substance of all is here; heavenly realities have been brought in. Consequently a Judaism perpetuated by willful and blinded men is now idolatry. It is sensuous religion, in which flesh can engage and delight itself. Things that spoke once of Christ are now weak and beggarly elements, and the whole atmosphere is one of bondage.

Solemn words for thousands in this day! Christendom has always been more or less infatuated with its law-keeping, feast-days, and ritual in general. But now the enemy of souls seems determined to darken in this way all the light which God of late years has shed through His word, to say nothing of the partial, help graciously granted at the Reformation. Men are mad after weak and beggarly elements in every direction. Such things are placed between the soul and Christ, involving darkness and ruin. So gravely did the apostle regard this movement among the Galatians that he feared lest he had bestowed labor upon them in vain. What would he say of Christendom now?

It is well to compare this with his very different tone in Rom. 14. There he insists on toleration and contends that he that regards one day above another, regards it to the Lord. Here we may see, not contradiction, but the exceeding grace of the Holy Spirit. The Romans were evidently a mixed company. Some had been Jews, others had been Gentiles. He would not have the latter impatient and ungracious as to the prejudices of their brethren, but would have the weak dealt with considerately by those who judged themselves strong in the faith. Here in Galatians, it was no question of dealing patiently with souls who had been formerly under legal bondage and were slow to unlearn; but of recalling men who never had been in that position, and who were now hankering after it. The apostle does not deal with all alike; let us learn in the school of God to do the same.

Paul appeals now to his erring children by his own former relations with them. “Brethren, I beseech you, be as I [am], for I [am] as ye: ye have not injured me at all” (ver. 12). He was free from the law, and was thus where believing Gentiles properly were. They had done him no wrong in insinuating that he was no longer under law. He had learned deliverance through the death and resurrection of Christ and gloried in it. These Galatians owed everything to him. “Ye know how through (in) infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first. And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus” (vers. 13, 14). His thorn in the flesh was a real trouble to the devoted apostle, and rendered him very despicable as a speaker in the eyes of some. But when the Spirit is at work, souls are occupied with the message, not with the messenger. Thus it had been in Galatia. Had he been an angel come straight from heaven, yea, had he been Christ Himself, they could not have received him more warmly and gratefully. His speech distilled as the dew, and those who had been poor blinded idolaters found peace and rest in Jesus through his instrumentality. Was it all a dream? “Where is then the blessedness ye spake of? for I bear you record that if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your eyes, and have given them to me. Am I become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?” (vers. 15, 16). Alas how fickle is man! The same thing may be observed in the Corinthians. Paul had brought them abundance of blessing, but it took very little to alienate them seriously from him. He loved them greatly, but he was little loved in return.

As in Corinth, so in Galatia, there were those who sought deliberately to alienate the saints. Paul had his detractors in many directions. “They zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them” (ver. 17). Such men sought influence among them that they might draw them after themselves away from him who had served them so well. Wretched party work! Alas! the spirit of it is not dead yet. They cared little that this would result in the Galatians losing the valuable ministry of the apostle. Self was their object, everything else was secondary.

Paul is cutting, yet the wounds of a friend are kind. “But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing, and not only when I am present with you” (ver. 18). How differently he could write to the Philippians! They were not only steadfast when he was among them, but much more in his absence (Phil. 2:12). They confided in the Lord, and were thus sustained; the Galatians lent an ear to the seducer and were turning aside.

James 2:14-17

THUS the spirit of grace has been upheld, and a law of liberty which accompanies it, in contrast with a judicial spirit which avails itself of the law of bondage and ought to be as alien from an object of mercy as it displeases God. How solemn the warning of merciless judgment to him that showed no mercy! How sweet the assurance that mercy glories over judgment! Life, liberty, and grace go together for blessing.

Thence the transition is simple and intelligible to the snare of setting up a bare creed. Israelites were above all exposed to this danger; so that the dealing with such a case is peculiarly appropriate to this Epistle. In judgment they had been used to a brotherhood after the flesh, as the seed of Abraham. When professors of Christ, they were liable to regard their new brotherhood as founded on no more than their common recognition of the Lord of glory. But it is as plain in fact as it is in scripture that such a recognition of Him might be no more than intellectual, having no root of divine life because it sprang from no work of conscience through the Holy Spirit's application of the truth in revealing Christ. For we are not brought to know God save through our wants and guilt, not as students of science, but as poor sinners in need of His mercy in Christ. A mental profession of faith was of no more value than the schools of differing thought, under different names as leaders to which Greek vanity was ever prone. It was even more fatal and in itself “natural,” as their contentious zeal was “carnal,” for so the apostle made the distinction.

“What [is] the profit, my brethren, if one say he have faith, but have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or a sister be naked and destitute of daily food, and one from among you say to them, Go in peace, be warmed and filled, but ye give them not the things needful for the body, what [is] the profit? So also faith, if it have not works, is dead in (or by) itself” (vers. 14-17).

When the apostle Paul declared the gospel, he insisted on faith in Jesus Christ as justifying, apart from works of law; because it is God's righteous ness, not man's, unto all, and upon all that believe, Jew and Greek being lost sinners. It is a question of being justified freely by God's grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Now, for our Epistle, it is the quite different question of a practical life in accord with Christian profession. Indeed Paul insists on this moral reality in Rom. 2 as strenuously as James does here. It is a worthless faith which does not produce fruit of righteousness that is by Jesus Christ unto God's glory and praise. The scripture before us does not answer the question how a sinner is to be cleansed before God, but what conduct befits those that have the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ.

To this end of necessary consistency are the questions. What is the profit for a man to profess faith and have no works as its witness? Can faith save him? This is illustrated by the heartlessness of dismissing a naked and hungry brother or sister with the words, Be warmed and filled, without any corresponding gift to help them. Does Christ own a faith that does not work through love? Here again we may observe how the apostle Paul's words in Gal. 5:6 energetically express the practical aim of James. The tongue may be active, the heart cold, the walk selfish as before; but are these the ways of a nature begotten to the Father of lights by truth's word? Are such unreal talkers a kind of first-fruits of His own creatures?

There is no need, however, to give the Greek article with Wakefield the force of “this,” nor with Bede and the Revisers the emphasis of “that,” nor yet the more legitimate possessive sense of “his.” Faith is entitled, even apart from previous mention, to the article in Greek as an ideal object, the thing faith, or as we in English say “faith,” as much as if it expressed the different sense of “the faith” required in many scriptures. The context can alone decide in which shade it is employed. Hence also we may observe that in ver. 17 scarce any person thinks of translating the same words, ἡ πίστις, save as faith; and rightly so, for it is still used in the same general sense. This is not at all invalidated by the anarthrous form in ver. 14, where the insertion of the article would be improper. For in such cases the accusative is complementary to the transitive verb, and expresses the character of the action that resulted, unless it be intended to denote that which through some reason becomes a specific object before the mind; both of which cases may be seen again in ver. 18.

The principle is stated concisely in ver. 17: “faith, if it have no works, is dead in itself.” If it were divinely given (Eph. 2:8, Phil. 1:29), it would manifest its mighty and gracious effects. For Christ is its object, and His love above all thought of man, but influential beyond anything in us or around us to raise the soul accordingly. He is not only an example that powerfully acts on all He loves and loving Him, but a motive and a source, to form the affections and the walk of His own here below. It is easy for those who are no better than James describes in their human faith to decry its energy where the Holy Spirit has wrought livingly. In fact they know nothing of its divine reality. Their faith is dead in itself; and any works so wrought are no less intrinsically dead.

On the Millennium: 4

IN the next section 2. (6-14) the Bishop proposes “to consider the reasons pleaded in behalf of Millenarian opinions,” but really offers his own reasons against them. 1. He is like others under the delusion that the doctrine rests on one single passage of scripture, Rev. 20. If it were so, God's word once spoken is amply sufficient for faith, as a thousand times would not suffice for unbelief. But that kingdom is revealed in many scriptures of both Old T. and New; and, once received, it is seen to fill a very large part of the Bible indirectly as well as directly in the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets, in the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Revelation. Not to have seen this implies sad prejudice and lack of intelligence.

John 14:2 and Luke 20:36, as well as John 12:32, Acts 1:11; 3:21, John 5:28, 29; 6:39; 12:48, 1 Cor. 15:52, 1 Thess. 4:15, 2 Thess. 1:7, Matt. 16:27; 25:31, 32, Luke 9:26, 2 Tim. 4:1, and Dan. 12:2 are the texts culled to prove that a Millennium is repugnant to scripture. On the contrary every one of these falls in with the doctrine; some even demonstrate its truth, besides the bulk of distinct testimony which is left out.

Thus the Christian's hope of Christ's coming to present us in the Father's house above is as consistent with the Millennium as is our risen equality with angels. Other scriptures prove the blessing of Israel and the nations on the earth at that very time under Christ's reign, as Matt. 19:28, Rev. 21:24-26, and in the O.T. Isa. 11:10-13, 24:21-23, and Zech. 14:5-9.

Theologians in general quite overlook Eph. 1:10, God's purpose in Christ for an administration of the fullness of the times; which is to head or sum up all things in Him, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth—in Him in Whom we too were made to have lot or inheritance; for we are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. Here we learn in the dogmatic teaching of the great apostle, and not only in parable or prophecy, that God will put the entire universe heavenly and earthly under Christ; and that we shall share it with the Heir of all things in that day of glory. This is neither the present time of gathering the heirs, nor the eternal state, when it will be no longer a question of His government; but having put down all enemies He gives up the kingdom to Him Who is God and Father, that God may be all in all. Hence, as a ground-work for it, we hear in the companion Epistle to the Colossians that all the fullness was pleased in Him to dwell, and through Him to reconcile all things to itself, having made peace by the blood of His cross—by Him the things on the earth and the things in the heavens (1:19, 20). For it is to be on the basis, not of His creative rights only, or of His incarnation, but of the reconciling work in His death.

To leave out of our faith and hope the counsels of God is to have no intelligent communion with the future display of Christ's glory. It is also to ignore the mystery of Christ and the church; and this is just where believers are for the most part, since they betook themselves to the weak and beggarly elements against which the apostle strove so strenuously and solemnly in early days. He knew, and took care that we should hear, that after his departure grievous wolves should enter in among the Christian confessors, and among their own selves should men arise speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. And so it came to pass that Christendom lost largely the sense of God's grace and almost wholly the understanding of His glory as purposed for Christ “in that day.” Through the influence of such as Origen and Eusebius, or of the more sober and orthodox Augustine and Jerome, the hopes of Israel were denied; and consequently the church, ignorant of her heavenly glory with Christ, was held to have succeeded to the earthly inheritance. This is what the apostle dreaded for the Gentile, as we may see in Rom. 11, lest he should be wise in his own conceit; and, instead of fearing, become boastful to his ruin and eventual cutting off.

Why the Bp. referred to John 12:32 is strange; for it refers to the attractive power of Him crucified, and has no bearing on the question. But Acts 3:21, especially 19-21, refutes his own view; for it proves that the Lord Jesus is to be sent from heaven for the restoration of all things according to the testimony of the holy prophets since time began. This is the Millennium, not the White Throne judgment; and Acts 1:11 agrees with it, for He will come to restore the kingdom to Israel as well as for other glorious designs of God. Among these, and of the deepest moment, is His raising bodies, as He is now quickening souls (see John 5:25-29). But it is an error of the first magnitude to think of one simultaneous resurrection. Our Lord here speaks of two, in open contrast of character, “of life,” and “of judgment,” or as elsewhere called “of just and unjust.” These Rev. 20 declares, as might be expected from the great Christian prophecy, severed by more than 1,000 years for a momentous purpose, the special reign of Christ and His own over (not “on”) the earth, where they once were holy sufferers, and distinct from reigning in life throughout eternity, wherein even the millennial saints that never suffered will in due time share.

“The Last Day” is the general expression in John 6, 11. 12. for that time which begins by our Lord raising the believers and ends with judging the faithless, answering to the two resurrections, and opposed to the Jewish hope of present exaltation under a living and reigning Messiah as things are. There is no difficulty in the “hour” of John 5:28 covering 1,000 years and more, since the “hour” of ver. 25 covers admittedly a still longer space. It is therefore unfounded and indeed plain contradiction of scripture to say “there will be no Millennial interval between the Resurrection of the saints and the Universal Judgment.” It is an absurdity to talk of both taking place on one and the same day, unless the last day be understood as already explained: why imagine an ordinary day?

For not only do 1 Cor. 15:52 and 1 Thess. 4:16 fall within its capacious limits, but 2 Thess. 1:7, Heb. 9:27, Matt. 16:27, Luke 9:26, 2 Tim. 4:1, Matt. 25:31, 32, Isa. 2, 4. 11. 12. 24. 25, 26. 27., Jer. 30-33, Ezek. 12, &c., and Dan. 12:2, varied as they are in scope and character. But why need particulars be cited, when prophecy as a whole bears on it? It is the day when the Lord takes in hand His execution of God's purpose in good and evil from raising the saints to judging the wicked, as distinguished from the first man where all ends in failure and ruin through sin.

As to all this the Bp.'s views, through heeding human tradition, were vague and confused, defective and even false. With Christendom generally he was a Ptolemaist, not a Copernican; he made the church his center, not Christ; and thus, bending all scripture to his own relations, he left no room for the various glories of Christ for earth as well as in heaven, and for His reign over Israel and all nations, and indeed for His displayed supremacy over all creation, which we shall share with Him. Hence, too, his ignorance of the judgment the Lord will execute on the habitable earth (τὴν οἰκουμένην) in righteousness at His appearing, as well as earthly rejoicing and the multitude of the isles glad at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth, when idolatry will with shame vanish forever and the desert blossom as the rose.

No doubt the ancient Chiliasts were in error who only saw the earth restored and the glorified reigning with Christ on it; but so were the theologians who transferred all thoughts to heaven and the souls in bliss eventual if not present with Christ, among moderns even to losing sight of, if not denying, the resurrection. But even Gen. 14 might have taught these short-sighted men on both sides a better lesson of God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, as will be made manifest by our Lord in His day when the enemies are delivered into His hand, and the friends are refreshed after the victory is won over all the opposing might. The great foe will then be restrained by power, as he never has been, the pledge of his final and everlasting punishment. The true or at least antitypical Melchisedec shall sit and rule, a priest on His throne, no longer hidden, but every eye shall see Him, not only after that “order” as He is now, but then also in the exercise of His royal priesthood, blessing man from God and blessing God the Most High from man, when hateful rivals, mere nonentities with demons behind, are gone forever. Oh, what a blank where all this, and much more accompanying it and hanging on it, to Christ's glory, are unperceived and unbelieved, though clearly revealed in God's word!

(To be continued, D.V.).

The Dimbleby System of Prophetic Dates: 3

MUCH is assumed without proof even in the first page (3), more in the next two consisting of diagrams (4, 5). But time fails for noticing every questionable statement, nor have such discussions a just title to a place in a journal like this. Pass we on to the opening sentence of p. 6— “This 2520 is therefore the seven times of the Gentile period thrice mentioned in Dan. 4:23, 25 and 32; also by our Lord in Luke 21:24, and Paul in Rom. 11:25.” Is this correct or well founded? Let us weigh these scriptures.

Be it noticed that the alleged complete period of Gentile domination occurs in no natural place for it; if intended by God, this one might look for. Neither Dan. 2 nor Dan. 7 intimates anything of the sort. The latter has only the “time, times, and half a time” (1260 days, as all agree), which comprise the audacious doings of that last chief of the fourth or Roman empire. This entails the final catastrophe of divine judgment on the entire system of Gentile power, the transition to the everlasting and universal kingdom of the Son of man. We have seen that the introduction of the Saracens, as displacing the Romans, is unknown to both visions, and involves a greater harshness than the Protestant scheme of the Papacy. Either error is due to not possessing the divine key afforded in the Revelation—that the Roman empire which played its part against the Lord of glory, as its predecessors did not, is to rise up under Satanic agency against His return to take the world-kingdom (Rev. 11:15; 17:8-14; 19:19, 20). Thus Mr. D. stumbles at the threshold of prophecy and sets up a scheme from the start antagonistic to the plain and unmistakable revelation of God.

It is Dan. 4:23, 25, and 32, to which he might have added 26, where the phrase “seven times” is found. The question is, what does it mean? Seven years, none need doubt, though some have reduced it one half, as Theodoret tells us in his Commentary. One can understand the further idea, especially from Dan. 7 compared with chap. 12., of a comprehensive term embracing the whole Gentile lease of power. The late Mr. G. S. Faber in his Sacred Calendar expressed the same thought; and Mr. Elliott cursorily accepts it in his Horse Apocalyptical. But where is the proof? The assumption of it, without scriptural evidence, misled Mr. D. as we have seen, no less than Mr. Faber, as could easily be shown. The fact is, that not a solitary text of scripture applies such a term prophetically. The chapter, which exhibits it four times, uses it solely of Nebuchadnezzar in a literal and therefore quite different sense. Not even in Dan. 11:13 can such a prophetic sense be extracted, “at the end of times” being explained by “years,” and “years” in the ordinary sense. This surely confirms our taking Dan. 12:7-12 in the same sense.

Nowhere does it appear that any solid proof has ever been given for regarding even Dan. 7:25 as anything more than the 32 years of the peculiarly blasphemous and violent monarch in the future crisis of the revived Roman empire before God judges it, and destroys him so signally at Christ's appearing. If so, the dates in the twelfth chapter as well as in chap. 8. (though the latter be somewhat singularly expressed) claim, if we would be consistent, to be understood similarly. That is, they were not meant to express the long providential history of medieval and modern times, of which men make so much. They in fact converge (save “the morning-evenings” of chap. 8.) on the unexampled tribulation in store for the Jews under Gentile persecution before the Lord interferes for their deliverance from heaven and notably in Jerusalem and the land. For it is in the typical part that we read this extraordinary expression of time, not in the verses which look on to the closing antitype. And the time expressed in no way speaks of the long period of Gentile empires, as Mr. D. assumes with others, but solely of the peculiar enormity of one profane oppressor of the Jews and their religion. Natural days therefore are in question, and not so many years.

And note well, what many have overlooked, that in Rev. 12, which (6) speaks of the 1260 days and “a time, times, and half a time” (14), this very period is described in ver. 12 as “but a short time.” Now in a prophecy where times and seasons are spoken of definitely and in their relative proportion, this is evidently of the utmost importance. It is not a possibly long while made short by the power of faith, as Christ's waiting to the Christian, but an absolute statement which could hardly be if 1260 years were meant. In the same book the reign of the saints with Christ is declared to be 1000 years. Why not “days” if this always be the symbol? If “days” mean “days,” all is clear and consistent.

We may add (as a further confirmation that the dates of Dan. 12 refer to the brief and awful crisis yet future, and are therefore not to be allegorized into long periods of the past), that our Lord directs attention in Matt. 24:15-22 to Daniel's last prophecy, and uses these remarkable words, “except those days should be shortened,” &c. How could His words fit in with long ages of divine providence? If they apply to God’s “short work” of judgment at the end of the age, they are plain and appropriate.

It is only in Dan. 9 where we are assured that “week” means seven years. Had this been the earliest chapter of the prophecy, it might, with some show of plausibility, have been taken to rule all that followed. Instead of this the two and only two general prophecies were already revealed; and the first of the special communications (chap. 8.) where is prominent Gentile meddling with the Jews and even the sanctuary. Dan. 9 is yet more filled with Jewish piety and has an answer of the deepest moment vouchsafed to the prophet (humbling himself before Jehovah on the eve of the return from captivity), suited to guard the faithful from unwarranted expectations just then. Even when Messiah came, they must prepare for His rejection, with the horrors that followed, not only in the Roman destruction of the city and temple, but worse still to come in the closing week. Yet shall the salvation of Israel come out of Zion. For God bringeth back the captivity of His people, and Jacob shall rejoice, Israel be glad. So exceptional a prophecy as this chapter contains cannot legitimately furnish the rule for interpreting the ordinary and differently conveyed times in other cases. There ought at any rate to be some attempt at a demonstration; and we may at the least conclude that the sense of 2520 years assigned to “the seven times” in Dan. 4 is without even a show of proof; though to convince others cogent and commanding evidence from scripture is requisite.

Mr. D. indeed refers also to Luke 21:24. But in our Lord's lips it is wholly general, and wears not the smallest semblance of a chronological. expression. Both “times” and “Gentiles,” or nations, are without the article. The prediction is the more interesting because it differs from Matt. 24. and Mark 13 in presenting from ver. 20 to 24 the Roman siege and capture; and in the clause quoted gives us the state of Jerusalem that followed up to the present time. This may serve to show how little it conveys a specific date. Then from ver. 25 to 37 we have the end of the age when the Son of man will be seen coming in a cloud with great power and glory, after striking signs above and below to warn men and encourage the faithful in those circumstances. Instead of the siege under Titus, and the subsequent continuous treading down of Jerusalem by Gentiles till their times are fulfilled, Matthew and Mark were led to dwell on the future and still more awful tribulation.

There remains Rom. 11:25; but how Mr. D. could cite the entrance, of “the fullness of the Gentiles” to help his dates is marvelous; for with these it has not the remotest connection. He is probably misled by tradition, and the habit of men in following each other under a mere shadow or a sound of words; and this applies to writers on prophecy as much as to their neighbors. The true bearing of the apostle is unquestionable. He shows that hardness or obduracy in part (for it was never total) has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the nations shall have come in i.e. the complement of the Gentiles that believe the gospel. What has this to do with chronology? When God has filled up the present purpose of His grace, “all Israel” (in contrast with any actual remnant) “shall be saved.” For He has made known through the prophets His intention of saving His ancient people as a whole. Meanwhile as touching the gospel, they are enemies for our sake (the complement of the Gentiles); but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sake. For the gifts and the calling of God are not subject to change of mind. Whatever Israel's demerits, mercy shall glory over judgment. Such is the evident drift of the passage.

( To be continued, D.V.)

The Ministry and the Minister: Part 2

Such is the ministry. Chap. 4. brings before us the minister. The ministry imparted its own character to the vessel; it formed him, so to speak. He did not faint (though there was much to cause him to do so), being energized and sustained by the glory of Christ. “Strengthened with all might according to the power of His glory.” He was guileless, walking transparently without a veil. How could he preach such a gospel and be otherwise? He eschewed the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in darkness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully. He gave the truth forth in all its purity. It received no adulteration in passing through such a vessel. The God who once commanded the light to shine out of darkness, had Himself shined in Paul's heart, for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The apostle was thus a vessel of heavenly light, set here to shed a holy radiance around. Are we this practically? It is not merely that Paul set forth in his teachings the doctrines of these things. Assuredly he did so. But the words mean more than this. He was all this in himself, as well as in his teaching.

He was a vessel of heavenly light. The treasure was in an earthen vessel, that the excellency of the power might be manifestly of God and not of man. Who but God could have accomplished all that Paul carried out in the face of habitual and serious opposition, with the added difficulty of a thorn in the flesh? But the vessel must be broken, in order to the effectual shining forth of the heavenly testimony. The allusion is doubtless to Gideon's lamps and pitchers. The lamps were placed within the pitchers, and the pitchers had to be smashed (Judg. 8). Thus did God bring power out of weakness. “The foolishness of God is wiser than men: and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor. 1:25).

The breaking process is touchingly described. “Troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken; cast down but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.” Precious servant of Christ! Treading with scarce a falter, a path of unparalleled trial and suffering for the sake of Christ; filling up that which was behind of the afflictions of Christ in his flesh for His body's sake, the church; meeting nothing but reproach and loss on every hand. Yet some were heartless at Corinth, in Galatia, etc., to call in question such a minister and ministry! So infatuated had some become with that which puts honor on flesh and gives it sanction, that they had lost their appreciation of the heavenly testimony and ways of the apostle Paul. Well, the Lord valued it all, if men did not; He estimated all things duly, if erring saints failed to do so. What comfort for the heart!

What wonders grace accomplishes! Here was one, who glorified formerly in fleshly advantages and legal attainments, and who hated and persecuted to the death those who believed in Jesus, now content to let all things go for His Name, to carry daily the sentence of death in his person, and to shed his last drop of blood in the service of Christ and the church. The life of Christ operated so powerfully in him, and heavenly things were so absorbing, that life as regards the body might be yielded up, and afflictions seemed light and momentary. If his path ended at last in death, he rested in the assurance that He Who raised up the Lord Jesus would raise him up also through Jesus, and present him in the glory with the saints he had borne so well and so constantly on his heart in his service below. This is a ministry indeed. Yet this is not the perfect Servant. But comparing ourselves even with Paul, how deeply, beloved brethren, do we come short? Is there not a tendency with us to seek our own, and not the things of Jesus Christ? Are we not prone to seek a comfortable pathway in our service, and to shun reproach and suffering? Is there not a danger of flesh and the world proving a snare to our hearts? Let us search ourselves closely in the light of the Divine Presence.

In chap. 5. we get the motives of the minister. There are three, the coming glory, the judgment seat, and the love of Christ. As to the bright future, the apostle was full of holy confidence. We know that if the earthly tabernacle be destroyed we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. If life has to be laid down, we are confident that we shall be clothed at the appointed moment, and shall be like the Son. But we do not look for dissolution, but for Christ's coming, that the power of life in Christ may swallow up mortality. We anticipate a glorious change at the fulfillment of the blessed hope. Let it be distinctly understood that the apostle himself looked for this. By no means did he relegate the Lord's coming to a distant day. It is a mark of the evil servant so to do, and such was not Paul. True, when he wrote the Second Epistle to Timothy, he spoke differently; but the Lord had then made known to him that he must go into death for His sake, and be amongst the sleepers at His coming. Peter was similarly acquainted by the Lord.

God path wrought us for the glory. His purpose, when first He began in our souls, was to have us ultimately like His Son. He has predestinated us to be “conformed to the image of His Son, that He may be the First-born among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29). Meanwhile He has given us the Spirit as earnest. Thus are we filled with confidence. If we fall asleep, it is but absence from the body, to be at home with the Lord. All this with the apostle became a motive for service. “Wherefore we labor that whether present or absent, we may be acceptable to Him” (2 Cor. 5:9). How could he help laboring for such a Lord? To have been marked out for glory, to be assured of the presence of the Spirit meanwhile, so filled the apostle with adoring gratitude that he was very gladly willing to spend and be spent for Him.

Then comes the judgment seat. “We must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ.” This includes saints as well as sinners. Not that all will stand before the Lord together, nor with the same issues. Those who believe in Jesus, and are at peace with God, through His work, are in the possession of eternal life in His Son, and thus beyond judgment. Christ cannot judge His own handiwork. But all must be told out, that we may know the real truth as to H is grace and as to ourselves; and that any rewards that are due for faithful service may be dealt out by the Lord. But how solemn it will be for some to stand before Christ! What confusion of face; what eternal ruin! In all the nakedness of nature, without a rag in which to appear, without a single plea; only to be righteously expelled from Him into eternal woe!

The thought of it quickened the apostle, and became a second motive for service and ministry. “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord we persuade men.” Does it act thus with us, beloved brethren? Satan seems determined in our day to remove this motive for service altogether. Never were the terrors of the judgment to come so softened, not to say openly denied. But this is to act falsely with men, and to become tools of the enemy. Paul had the future, with its tremendous and appalling issues fully before his eyes; and it had the effect of making him even more zealous in his labor for Christ among men.

The third motive is by no means the least, but rather the spring of all. “The love of Christ constraineth us.” He thought of Him coming down to where men were, walking here in an attitude of reconciliation toward men, then going into death, that He might close the history of the first man and lay a righteous ground of reconciliation, and for the new creation. This wondrous love filled the heart of the apostle, and was a constraining power. It caused him to go forth throughout the Gentile world, as an ambassador of the absent Christ, with this blessed ministry of reconciliation, beseeching men, as it were, on God's part to be reconciled to God. Service is of but little worth, if love is not the spring. “Servile work” can never satisfy Christ. But what will not love endure? What will not it accomplish for its object?

Now we come to the moral traits of the minister (chap. 6.). The apostle and his fellow-workers besought the Corinthians not to receive the grace of God in vain. He speaks of beseeching sinners in ch. 5:20; now he beseeches saints. If they turned out badly, the ministry was blamed, and thus the Lord was dishonored. John presents the matter similarly in his Epistles (1 John 2:28, 2 John 8). As for Paul, how did he behave? “In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God.” He was most anxious to be without reproach, and to preserve a true character as God's minister, in whom the divine glory was in measure bound up. Faithful man! He not only set forth the truth by word of mouth, but exemplified it in all his ways. Our teaching has only the weight which our lives give to it.

The first moral trait is “much patience.” This is found in the front rank in chap. 12. also. In Paul it was proved “in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses.” None endured what he did in the service of Christ. But is there no place for it now, because persecution has ceased? Assuredly there is. Latter-day service in the assembly of God is not unfrequently of a distressing and discouraging character. With declining love on every hand, the world coming into the hallowed circle, and growing indifference to the claims of Christ, the spiritual laborer needs “much patience.” I refrain from going further into detail at this time. Let the whole chapter be examined with all its features, and may the Holy Spirit of God produce these things in us all for Christ's glory.

W. W. F.

The First of the Week: Part 3

IT has already been noted that the first of the week received special distinction in New Testament times through being the day upon which the Lord Jesus rose in triumph from the grave and appeared to His own. Further, it was observed that this distinction is the more strongly marked, in that the Lord appeared again to the assembly of His disciples who gathered together with that expectation, not on the succeeding sabbath, but on the first of the week, the octave of His former appearance.

We now come to the consideration of a third event which, by its occurrence on the first of the week, adds its weighty testimony in confirmation of the special claims that day has upon those who believe in the Lord Jesus. We refer to the event recorded in Acts 2 viz., the descent of the Holy Spirit.

The abiding presence of the Comforter with the disciples of the Lord on earth during His absence on high was the reiterated promise of Christ before He took His departure. His valedictory words (John 13-16) make abundant reference to the coming of the Paraclete. The Promised One was to be to them what the Lord had been, and a great deal more. So much so, in fact, that the Lord said to those whose hearts were filled with sorrow because He was leaving them, “It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you” (John 16:7).

Thus it cannot be concealed that the Lord laid the utmost stress upon the fact that the Spirit was about to be with them to abide on earth during His absence above. It was just such an assurance as this that those distressed ones needed. They were feeling what an utter blank the world would be without Christ. They had learned to love Him. They had learned, too, to depend entirely upon the resources that were in Him. Moreover they had found in the discipleship of Christ an ample compensation for what came upon them through enduring the scorn of the world as well as through resisting its blandishments. But how could they go forward in face of trial and persecution when their Master was gone?

The Lord provides for this real need of theirs by the promise that One should take His place, not less in power than Himself, to preserve them from every foe and to maintain their souls in continued enjoyment, through faith, of their privileges. “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever; even the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16, 17). Thus while the Lord was preparing a place for them in the Father's house, the saints on earth should have the uninterrupted presence of the Holy Ghost with them and in them.

Hence the Lord's provision for them contemplates the defined period between His own ascension and His personal return for the purpose of receiving unto Himself His own, that He may conduct them into the place He has made ready for them where they are to be with Him forever. He first announces (John 14) what is His purpose in going away, and then He tells them Who would be along with them as the Great Helmsman to pilot their little bark safely across the tempestuous seas into the desired haven.

But the teaching of scripture is clear enough that the present office of the gracious Spirit of God is not solely to be the guide of the church through the world which is now but a wilderness because of the absence of the Bridegroom. His operations in and among the saints are manifold. There is not one function of the spiritual life which the ever-present Spirit of God does not make effectual by the co-operation of His own omniscient omnipotence. Does some distressed soul feel overpowered by the sense of its many infirmities?

At once comes the gracious assurance, “The Spirit also helpeth (or, joineth help to) our infirmities.” Is there a sense of powerlessness to duly express the needs of the soul in prayer to God? “The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.” Does one lament its utter impotence to comprehend the word of God? We have received the Spirit of God, that “we may know the things that are freely given to us of God” (1 Cor. 2:12).

So we might go on. The blessed Spirit of God is here dwelling in the church and in the believer as in a domicile, and His effectuating energy permeates every spiritual action, that rises acceptably to God. Will any therefore dispute that the Spirit of God is now on earth in a sense that He was not either in the times of the Old Testament or in the time of the Gospels? The fact is that the presence of the Holy Spirit is one of the chief distinguishing features of Christianity.

And if we ask ourselves as to the date of the advent of the Spirit, what do we learn from Acts 2? We find it was upon the day of Pentecost. This was upon the seventh octave of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and it therefore occurred on the first of the week.

This date is fixed by the law of the feasts of Jehovah, as laid down of old. The people were instructed to count from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that “ye brought the sheaf of the wave-offering” (beyond doubt fulfilled by the Lord's resurrection on the first of the week), “seven sabbaths shall be complete; even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat-offering unto Jehovah” (Lev. 23:15, 16). This makes it clear that the day of Pentecost (Acts 2) was the morrow after the seventh sabbath, or, in other words, the first of the week.

Here then, we are brought face to face with the fact that the great initiatory act of Christianity took place on the day of the week so many would slight. As the antitype of the Wave-Sheaf was found in the resurrection of Christ, so that of the two wave-loaves, “baken with leaven,” was found in the church, the body of Christ, which was first formed by the baptism of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost (1 Cor. 12:13). What fitter day of the week than the first to inaugurate a new testimony for God in the earth!

But the question now arises, whether any custom of the apostolic churches in specially honoring this day is given us or not. We find that the inspired historian, in the course of his narrative of the labors and travels of the apostle Paul, shows us in a casual way (which makes the evidence not the less but the more powerful), that the early Christians were in the habit of assembling on that particular day of the week to commemorate the Lord's death in the appointed manner.

The apostolic company came to Troas after a tedious voyage of five days (compare Acts 16:11, 12; 20:6). Here they remained seven days for the purpose, as we believe, of breaking bread upon the ensuing first day of the week. “Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples (or, “we,” which is acknowledged to be the better reading) came together to break bread” (Acts 20:7).

We say no more upon this now than to point out that we here possess an authoritative instance of the practice in apostolic days of eating the Lord's supper, not on the sabbath, but on the first of the week.

But we have a second testimony of a somewhat similar nature, which confirms the first. In his exhortation to the Corinthian saints concerning the collection to be made in Gentile assemblies for the poor saints in Jerusalem, the apostle writes, “Upon the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come” (1 Cor. 16:2).

Even if we do not translate (as the sense is) “Every first of a week,” the call of the apostle is without force if there was no recognition in the Corinthian assembly of the first of the week as invested with associations and claims upon the saints that no other day of the week had. Evidently there were memories and customs connected with that day which ought to move them to bestow some of their goods for the benefit of their poorer brethren and sisters at Jerusalem. If the passage means, as it undoubtedly does, that the reservation of a certain portion of their money was to be done individually at home, certainly it is also implied that, when they came together on that day to break bread, their several offerings should be thrown into one common fund.

But our point is that these two scriptures establish that on this particular day of the week,

The saints assembled to break bread, and

Contributions were then made for the poor.

One other scripture, however, must also be referred to, Viz. Rev. 1:10: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day.” This phrase is of singular occurrence in the New Testament, The construction of the words in the original is such as to forbid its being confounded with the more frequent phrase, “the day of the Lord.” This is the coming time indicated by prophecy as that when the kingdom of the Lord shall be established in the earth.

But “the Lord's day” is quite different; verbally it is connected with “the Lord's supper” (1 Cor. 11:20). In each case the effect of the epithet is to raise out of the common level. The saints in Corinth were in danger of reducing the breaking of bread to the level of “their own” supper, or an ordinary meal. The apostle Paul solemnly reminds them it was the Lord's supper. It was sacred to Him.

There is one day the apostle John distinguishes above the other six as the Lord's day. Which of the seven is it? Was it not on the first of the week that he saw the Lord (on two occasions at least) after His resurrection? Can there be any room for doubt that it was on the same day of the week that John in Patmos heard behind him a great voice, and turned to see One like unto the Son of Man. It was not only “the first of the week;” it was also “the Lord's day.” Now if the former term speaks to us of resurrection and grace and the new order of things of which Christianity consists, the latter speaks of the authority of Christ Himself. It is the day pertaining to Him; and such a thought is surely sufficient for every right-minded Christian. Is the believer looking for a positive injunction? Let him know it is not a question of law but of grace; not of what was established in Eden and confirmed at Sinai, but of what the Lord introduced at His resurrection, giving also indications of its connection with the heavenly people who are called out for Himself. By these indications, which have already been referred to, there is surely no difficulty in discerning what the mind and will of the Lord is.

(To be continued, D.V.)

Lectures - Are They Scriptural?

Q.-Are “lectures” so-called scriptural? Is it not true that in apostolic days the gifted members spoke in the assembly? S. V.

A.-Undoubtedly there was the free exercise of gift in the assembly, as is laid down in 1 Cor. 14, based on the great fact and principle developed in chap. 12. But much more appears elsewhere. Take especially Acts 19 where we hear of Paul, first in the synagogue at Ephesus “discoursing” for three months with boldness, and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God; then, when evil speaking ensued, separating the disciples, and carrying on the same work of “discourse,” or “lecture” as we call it, day by day in the school of Tyrannus for two years more. This was more than evangelizing, and both are quite distinct from action in the assembly, though it may have been in the same meeting-room. But the principle was the different and individual responsibility of trading with the Lord's gift, conferred for the purpose of testimony, both “without,” and “within.” Scripture is equally plain for the free action of the Spirit in the assembly, and for the individual responsibility of a teacher or a preacher. The danger is of mixing up the two to the enfeebling and falsifying of both. We owe it to the Lord to value and leave room for each. In Acts 15 we read of Paul refusing Mark and choosing Silas for united testimony; which could not apply to the assembly. Are not these things for us now?

Just Appearing

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The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:28

WE have now to trace, as far as evidence reaches, the seats of Joktan's sons brought together in the verse before us, the eighth, ninth, and tenth names: “and Obal and Abimael and Sheba” (ver. 28). As before, some have left marks much more distinct than others; so it is in the present three.

Obal (“bare, or script of leaves”) is represented as “Ebal” (in the LXX Εὐὰλ, in 1 Chron. 1:22 Γεμιάν). Arabic pronunciation still more closely approximates the name to the Abalites of Pliny, who are evidently the same as G. Ptolemy's Avalites with a bay and emporium of the same name. Indeed Bochart pronounces them to be no other than the name of the eighth son of Joktan. It is true that the settlement which thus recalls the founder was on the African side of the Red sea, not in Arabia; but this is no insuperable difficulty. We may not be able to trace such as abode with the great mass in Arabia; while it is of interest to identify such as crossed the strait to Africa. Nothing binds us to confine all the progeny of Joktan, save as a general rule, to Arabia. And the coast which affords the apparent traces of Obal was severed only by the narrow strait, called by the Greeks Παλίνδρομος, as was the promontory adjacent, and by the Arabs Bab-el-Mandeb. It is a strait made still easier, if not for commerce or passengers, for immigrants into Africa by intervening islands, Cytis, &c. In fact, though on the western side of the Strait, they were but a few miles distant from the coast of Yemen where their kindred abounded pre-eminently. The Gebanites with whom Knobel would identify them were no doubt in a general way their kinsmen; but where is any real evidence to show that they were the offspring of Obal? What has been above given suffices to prove that their mark was left south of Berenice Epidires, a town built by the Ptolemies at a much later day, north of the indentation which was called Avalites Sinus, on the south of which bay dwelt the Avalitae.

Abimael (“father of Mael,” taken as an appellative, “fatness”) is to be found, it would seem, on the east of Yembo (Jambia) and even of the town Ausura (C. Ptolemy) or El-Szafra of Burckhardt. Their town is called both Malai and Kheyf, and appears in Theophrastus (Hist. Plant. ix. 4), along with three others celebrated of old for its spices, under the form MaL. The Alexandrian geographer speaks of Malichae in the neighborhood of Yathreb or Iathrippah, in after history famous as ElMedineh, “the city” in the eyes of Mussulmans, about ten days' journey north of Mecca. The people of Mali or Malai seem no other than the Malichae. To this day the district has a high reputation for its balsam; the sale of which is even now an active trade, and highly remunerative. But of old it was very much more so, when Egypt and the West, Rome especially, used aromatics largely and luxuriously; whereas at present Persia appears to be the chief consumer. But Bochart's identification of Abimael with this people on the edge of the great Arabian desert appears to be well founded.

Sheba needs the greater care because in the inspired history we hear of no less than three heads of tribes who bore the name, the tenth of Joktan's sons now in question, preceded by the Cushite Raamah's son (ver. 7), and followed by the Abrahamic son of Keturah, Jokshan, who begat another Sheba (xxv. 2, 3).

But we may also distinguish Seba's posterity, Cush's eldest son, the Sebaim of eastern Arabia, to which they seem to have migrated from Chuzestan on the eastern side of the Persian gulf. They were dark-colored, and very tall (Isa. 45:14), the Dowser or Danasir Arabs of modern times. C. Ptolemy draws the line between these, the oldest, or amongst the oldest, settlers, and the Sabeans in the province of Sabie (who appear to be descended of Sheba, Raamah's son), and calls them Sabai as distinct from those in the east coast of Omdn, whom he names Sabi (or Asobi, the common Arabic prefix). Of the Jokshanite Sheba the less need be said, as they had their seat far north and were more obviously distinct.

The race from Joktan's son Sheba had their kingdom in the S.W. of Yemen; and these were the Sabeans, familiar to the Greeks and Romans, who had high notions of their wealth attributed to their own products without adequate account of their Indian trade. Their capital was called by Eratosthenes Mariaba, and by C. Ptolemy Sabatha Metropolis. The Arabs used both Mareb and Saba. It is Abulfeda, as Mr. Forster shows (i. 155, 156), who in his geography expressly states that Mareb was the central seat of the Beni Kahtan, i.e. the sons of Joktan. This can only be Sheba's posterity when we come to specify to which of Joktan's numerous sons in particular it belonged.

Nor is there any reasonable doubt that the Queen of Sheba, or as our Lord said “of the south,” whose visit to King Solomon holds so interesting a place in scripture, ruled the Sabean kingdom of which we have last spoken. Indeed “Yemen” means the south generally, and that quarter of Arabia Felix in particular. But scripture carefully distinguishes the Shemitic lines of Sheba, Joktanite or Jokshanite (distinct as they are in themselves), from the Rahmanite Sheba in Yemen and the kindred Seba on or near the Persian gulf. It was the last race which gave its name to the kingdom of Meroe, far as its seats might be apart. Pliny confounded these races, as if one and the same ruled the entire south of the peninsula from west to east; but C. Ptolemy as usual shows more exactness and discrimination. The “Sheba and Raamah” of Ezek. 27:27 would seem to be the Cushite race in the west, as being spice-merchants; whereas Sheba, Asshur, and Chilmad in ver. 23 point to the Keturah family as dealers in choice clothes or wares and bales of broidered work. This too was the Sheba that first plundered Job's possessions.

The Offerings of Leviticus: 8. Oblation of Firstfruits

Lev. 2:14-16

QUITE distinct from the meal-offering of the wave-loaves on the day of Pentecost, wherein leaven was put because it was the needed type of man's fallen nature with its accompanying sin-offering, we have in the closing verses what is more in keeping with the wave-sheaf. Only here it is not the prescribed oblation at the annual feast, but a voluntary offering any time.

“And if thou offer an oblation of first-fruits to Jehovah, thou shalt offer for thine oblation of thy first-fruits green ears of corn parched with fire, corn beaten out of full ear. And thou shalt put oil on it, and lay frankincense thereon; it is an oblation. And the priest shall burn the memorial of it, of the beaten corn thereof, and of the oil thereof, with all the frankincense thereof; [it is] a fire-offering to Jehovah” (vers. 14-16).

It is still a shadow of Christ, but of Christ as man on earth in a point of view distinct from what has already passed before us in this chapter, or from the wave-sheaf which alone from its place in the series of the feasts presented Him risen on the morrow after the sabbath of passover week, on that great first day of the week after the great sabbath day when He lay in the grave.

That any of them represent Him as glorified seems quite a misapprehension. So it is to regard the drying by the fire as the infliction of wrath He bore in atoning for our sins. For whether the meal-offering had a principal place, as in the Feasts, &c., or was only an accompaniment to the holocaust, it had a wholly different aim and character, setting forth our Lord not in bearing our sins but in the perfection of His activities here below, and therefore never said to be atoning as the holocaust or yet more the sin-offering in their respectively distinct ways. But if our Lord was not forsaken of God till He was made sin for us on the cross, He was tried to the utmost through His life and increasingly; so that the divine sifting served only to bring out His entire subjection, devotedness, and obedience, in the face of such difficulties and sufferings as none but He ever knew.

This is what the meal-offering distinctively exhibits. The constituents of His humanity in the abstract, if such a phrase may be used reverently, we have seen in the opening verses; then the concrete man, Christ as He was on the earth; next, the variety of the forms of His trial as here below in the central verses; now we see Him typified, apart from those divine tests, as Christ the first-fruits, offered up to God, yet spared no trial and His life taken from the earth, His days shortened. To the feeble saints in God's mercy it could be said, that no temptation has befallen them but a human one. Our Lord was subjected to far more, to every sifting possible, yet only bringing out perfection as thus proved, and this in dependence and obedience, as became Him Who deigned to become man that He might be God's bondman.

Hence we may observe the plain distinctness of the oblation of the first-fruits from the wave-sheaf which set forth Christ as risen from the dead. We hear nothing of the wave-sheaf but waving it before Jehovah, with its holocaust and meal-offering and its drink-offering. As to our first-fruits we are told of green ears of corn roasted or parched with fire, bruised corn of the fresh ear or corn beaten out of full ear. Yet is it Christ only and none else, and Christ here below, not reigning in righteousness without end of days forever and ever, with gladness of joy in Jehovah's presence, and making all enemies as a furnace of fire in the time of the same presence. Here on the contrary it is the evil day as in the day of the temptation in the wilderness; and on Christ, as the fresh and early grain and moreover rubbed out of full ears, came fiery trial. The Holy One of God, He was a Man in a world at enmity with God, and in the midst of a people still more bitterly hating Him because of their blind self-complacency in an exclusive title to be God's people when God had long written on them Lo-ammi (not My people). Hence again both oil was to be put on these first-fruits, and frankincense; which is not said of the wave-sheaf, whatever might be true of the meal-offering proper.

Thus the difference is clear enough when the word is duly examined.

The Puritan interpretation, as in M. Henry's Commentary, may be as good as that of the Fathers or of the Reformers; but they are all short of the truth, because they stop short at man or even reduce Christ to that level. Hence Henry talks of not expecting from green ears what we may justly look for from those left to grow full ripe, and says of the oil and frankincense added, that wisdom and humanity must soften and sweeten the spirits and services of young people, and then their green ears of corn shall be acceptable. How deplorable is the lowering and the loss when Christ is thus left out! But if this humanitarianism wrought of old grievously to hinder the joy of faith, what is the danger and the evil now when the pride of man is swelling far more portentously?

Himself He Cannot Save

It is not usual to mock at the sufferings of the dying. Even if it were a criminal, ordinary feelings of humanity would preserve men from such a crime. But this was the Son of God, and thus a different matter altogether. Man had no regard for Him; nothing was too bad to heap upon His holy head. We only see fully what man is when we look at the cross. In earlier dispensations he had violated his conscience, and broken God's law, and thus something of his wickedness was told out; but when we look at the cross of Christ, the tale is complete. Had there been a spark of goodness in the natural heart, the coming into the world of the blessed One would have brought it out. He came in love and lowly grace, not in judgment. “His hand no thunder bore.” But man was not to be won. He rose up in rebellion; and dared to lay his impious hands on the Son of God. And now He was upon the cross, and men were mocking His dying agonies! But who? Was it the ignorant and depraved? Nay, but the chief priests and scribes, the representatives of religion and learning in their day. What a tale this tells! How it refutes the notion that, given favorable circumstances, education, &c., man is reclaimable! Nay, dear reader, man is corrupt at the core—he is utterly ruined before God. Have you learned this, and bowed to it in His holy presence?

Mark what they said. “He saved others.” They knew His acts of power. He had cleansed the leper, cast out demons, and raised the dead. But they thought that now He was bereft, that His power was gone. “Himself He cannot save.” This was false. He was the mighty God, the Creator and upholder of all—there was no “cannot” with Him One word from Him, and the whole pack of foes might have been consigned to the pit. If Elijah called down fire from heaven upon his enemies, could not Elijah's Lord? But they were blind to His glory. They knew not that it was Jehovah Who had visited His people, though they might have known from both His actions and words, had they had eyes to see and ears to hear. It was guilty ignorance.

But, oh! dear reader, there was a sense in which it was true, “Himself He cannot save.” He had come into the world to save sinners, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself; and to accomplish this He must suffer and die. Naught else would have availed. It is a lie of Satan that the incarnation of Christ was sufficient for the redemption and raising of fallen humanity. Blood must flow, His blood; or atonement could never be made. Had He saved Himself, salvation from eternal woe would have been impossible for any. Love led Him on: the awful cup has been drained, the dreadful baptism has been endured, divine justice is satisfied, God has been glorified. Christ is no longer straitened. Salvation is now free to all. Mercy flows like a flood. Peace is proclaimed. Pardon is offered.

“He saved others.” So the Magdalene can testify, the thief on the cross, Saul of Tarsus, and millions more besides. The same Savior avails for you: will you trust Him? Oh, turn not away in the day of visitation! The Savior Who died is risen again, and is at the right hand of God. Him that cometh He will not cast out. He has saved others, and is ready and willing to save you. “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom. 10:13).

“Faithful the word, and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am first” (1 Tim. 1:16).

Working for the Lord

Luke 12:41-44

CHRIST is the fullest test for every soul of man, for sinner or for saint. He is the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Him; as he that has seen Him, the Son, has seen the Father. For no one has seen God at any time: the only begotten Son that is in the bosom of the Father—He has declared Him. All blessing for the sinner turns on receiving the Savior. He only is the propitiation for our sins, as He alone gives the believer life eternal.

So also Christ makes manifest the practical difference between one believer and another. Thus of the two sisters with their brother, whom Jesus loved, Mary was shown to have chosen the good part which should not be taken from her; whereas Martha chose rather that much serving which distracted her, and made her grumble because her sister sat down at His feet, listening to His word.

Not otherwise is it here in the Lord's estimate of waiting for Him with working for Him. Undoubtedly the believer is called to do both. But we readily let slip His mind, and are apt to prefer what gives us importance to what pleases Him most. Now the lack of being filled with the sense of His glory and His grace weakens and injures our service; because it exposes us to the ways, if not devices, of our own activity, instead of dependence on Him and subjection to His word.

Hence our Lord draws the twofold picture of blessedness in this chapter. (1) “Blessed are those bondmen whom the Lord on coming shall find watching: verily I say to you, that he will gird himself and make them recline at table, and coming up will serve them” (ver. 37). And He repeats their blessedness in the following verse. What immense grace on His part! It was love that wrought thus mightily. It was His love that created theirs; His that was seen by faith to be so great in One so glorious that formed and fed theirs, and drew them out in waiting for Him as their chiefest, dearest, and constant hope. At His coming He will not forget their loving and worshipping hearts. He will show in the day of His glory His appreciation of their longing for Him, while others expended it more or less on other objects. It will be His joy, never ceasing His service of love even in glory, to pay them especial honor, girding Himself to serve them.

(2) But there is more than this, though not so near His heart nor so high morally. For when Peter said, “Lord, sayest thou this parable to us or also to all?” the Lord said, “Who then is the faithful and wise steward whom his lord will set over his household to give them the portion of food in season? Blessed is that bondman whom his lord on coming shall find doing thus: verily I say unto you, that he will set him over all that he hath” (vers. 41-44). Here it is working as distinguished from waiting or watching. It is doing Him service, rather than the eyes of the heart fixed on His coming. His interests may be cared for with zeal, His work done faithfully and with intelligence. Sinners are sought earnestly that they may be saved; saints are loved and tended because they are precious to Him. Neither is the Lord unmindful of the service; nor is God unrighteous to forget the work. For that bondman whom the Lord on coming shall find so doing, He will set over all that He has. And has He not pledged Himself so to act, Who is Heir of all things? The servant shall share in the display of His Lord's glory, if he serve faithfully now in the day He is slighted.

Yet great and glorious as will be the day of recompence, and the requital worthy of Him Who is now served, however weakly in the face of the world which crucified the Lord of glory, what are such returns, wondrous as they shall be, compared to the inner scene of His love Then, according to the graphic figure, He will make them recline in the Father's house and serve them in that loving service that has no end. When Christ our life shall be manifested, then shall we also with Him be manifested in glory. All the world will see and know it. But it is a deeper thing to enjoy His personal love and honor in a way beyond all creature thought and the world's ken, as He here promises to the bondmen who wait and watch for Him.

O my reader, how is it with you as you read these lines You may not be conscious of enmity to the Lord Jesus. But are you a confessor of His name? Are you following Him openly as well as believing in Him? Remember the ruler so moral from his youth, who could bear neither to part with his large possessions, nor to follow Christ. It is indeed impossible with men, but not with God, as the Lord said; for all things are possible with God. And what has He done for you and your salvation?—given His own Son to become a man, and a bondman, and a sacrifice that you by faith may lay your hand on that all-efficacious Burnt-Offering. “And it shall be accepted for you to make atonement for you.” For nothing less than this, but even more, does the gospel of God present to you in His name.

Fear not therefore if you draw near in that Name of Jesus which is above every name; fear not; only believe. You cannot make too much of the one Mediator between God and man. God will honor your drawing on His infinite grace, if you draw in the name of the Lord Jesus. The Son of God became man, Christ Jesus, and gave Himself a ransom for all; and the Holy Spirit in the gospel proclaims it now that you may believe in the Lord Jesus and be saved. This is God's testimony in the good news, and these are its own times. The night comes when none can work and none can hear, when those that refuse to hear must perish. If it be so with you, it is your own sin. God sent His only-begotten Son that you might not perish but have life eternal. Oh! hear His word that you may believe and be saved.

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Grace and Discipleship

THE Spirit of God in this place has linked together two very important yet distinct principles. First, we get the fullness and freeness of divine grace set forth in the parable of the great supper, then we have truth for the conscience as to the pathway of discipleship. Our deceitful hearts are prone to disassociate these things, but they are divinely joined in the scriptures. The Lord was at meat in the house of a Pharisee on the sabbath day. He did not forget (how could He?) that He was the witness of God in this world, though for the moment a guest in the house of another. His all-searching eye detected the selfishness that reigned there. As to the guests, poor self-assertive flesh in them all struggled for the chief place; and as to the host, he had gathered a company who were well able to recompense him again. The Lord rebuked all parties. The spirit of grace was lacking all round—self reigned in all their hearts.

He set before His host, that when making a feast, it were better far to fill the house with the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind, and to await reward at the resurrection of the just. There was no honey in the meat-offering of God. He was a guest, but merely natural courtesy and deference could not make Him withhold the rebuke that was due. He set forth in His remonstrance God's grace in contrast with man's selfishness. The word apparently charmed one, who said “Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.” This led to the well known parable. Alas! however men may like the sound of grace, when the heart is tested, it is found to have no real appreciation of what is in the heart of God. If God invites, excuses are made; if He wishes a houseful, He must Himself seek them, yea, compel them to come in.

God's grace is attractively expressed. The Lord Jesus likens it to a great supper well furnished, Nothing is lacking; all that is good is provided by bounteous hand. His principle ever is, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” In the interpretation of the parable, I suppose the first invited guests were the Jewish leaders. But their hearts were in the world, there was no taste for God and His Christ. The field, the oxen, and the wife furnished excuses ready to hand. If the world is in the heart, whatever form it may take (and the world has many forms), there is no room for Christ. We should remember that the things that were put forward in this way were really the temporal blessings pertaining to the Jewish calling. So treacherous is the natural heart that it is possible for the very blessings of God to supplant Him in the affections, indeed to shut Him out altogether.

But if the rich man had no desire and thus went empty away, He fills the hungry with good things: to the poor the gospel is preached (Luke 1:53. 4:18). It was the common people who heard Jesus gladly. The publicans and the harlots went into the kingdom of heaven before the scribes and Pharisees. The streets and the lanes of the city were scoured; and all the despised of men were gathered together, “the poor, the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.” This did not exhaust divine grace. “The servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room.” Consequently the highways and hedges must be searched, that the wanderers and outcasts might be brought in to share also. Here we come in. We were highway and hedge folk. Do we object? As Gentiles we were completely outside. We were uncircumcised men—dogs—sinners of the Gentiles.

The picture is charming. A divine hand has drawn it. It is grace full and free. The branches run over the wall. The well is deep. Nothing is sought for from the guests, all is according to the riches of God's grace. Let us deeply enjoy this. There can be no discipleship until this is thoroughly understood. Any attempt to follow Christ before grace is fully known is mere legalism and displeasing to Him. He must be blessedly known as a giver ere we can speak of surrendering aught for His sake. He gives all, no payment is required, we are not asked to give anything up. This is grace. Let it have full place in all our hearts.

Flesh likes the sound of this, “and there went great multitudes with Him.” We can understand it, for we know something of our own hearts. This must be tested. Did they know who they were following? Did they apprehend the path that He was treading in this scene? He was not yet the Reigning One, surrounded by all the pomp and glory of the kingdom (all of which will be seen in its day), but He was despised and rejected of men. Israel had no heart for such a Messiah. Their thoughts were carnal. A mere temporal deliverer like Saul would have satisfied them; a lowly man full of patient grace (yet withal God manifest in the flesh) was repugnant.

Do we sufficiently realize in this day, that we are called to follow a rejected Christ? He has been here, but is not here now. How is this? Men cast Him out. Yes, the creatures of His hand rose up against Him and slew Him. The heavens have received Him, and He is at the Father's right hand. But, as far as earth is concerned, He is the rejected One. Such a Christ we have been called to know and follow. What manner of men ought we to be? The Lord turned upon the multitude and said unto them, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.” Does the Lord despise natural relationships? By no means. They are of God. It is one of the features of the last days to be “without natural affection” (2 Tim. 3:3). He knew how and when to render obedience Himself in the days of His flesh.

The point is that He must have the very first place in the hearts of His own. The time is straitened. Things here, whatever they might be, must be held with a loose hand. It cuts very close when we read “and his own life also.” Paul knew the meaning of this better than any. He always carried the sentence of death in his person. How far on are we in such a path? This rises above, yea crosses, nature. Are we prepared for it?

It was trying for Aaron and his sons to be forbidden to uncover their heads and rend their clothes when Jehovah made a breach upon them (Lev. 10). It was equally trying for the Levites on the day of the golden calf. But they responded well to the summons, “Who is on the Lord's side?” “who said unto his father and to his mother, I have not seen him; neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew his own children” (Ex. 32:26, Deut. 33:9).

The cross must be taken and a rejected Christ followed out into the way, or the path of discipleship is not known. But here the Lord guards against the flippancy to which we are prone. The cost must be counted. A man intending to build a tower must count whether he have sufficient to finish it. A king going to war must consult “whether he be able to meet him that cometh against him.” It is easy to say, “I am ready to go with thee into prison and to death.” A breakdown is humbling. The Lord is dishonored. It is tantamount to saying that He has called the soul out into a path in which He is not able to sustain it. Such is the appearance to those who observe. And the failing one is mocked—— “This man began to build and was not able to finish.”

How heart-searching and strange must all this have been to a Jew! Perhaps some said, as in John 6, “This is a hard saying, who can hear it?” Perhaps, too, many went back and walked no more with Him. The Jew was filled with thoughts of earthly kingdom glory, and to be told to bear a cross! Many misunderstand in this day also. The professing church has allied itself with the world, dwelling in honor where Satan's throne is. Flesh is sanctioned and worldly glory is sought all round. Therefore how strange the cross must sound to some, and how perplexing to be called upon to go forth to Christ without the camp bearing His reproach (Heb. 13:13)! But this is the true place of the Christian to-day. He who would do the will of the Lord in all things must step into this pathway of reproach and loss.

Alas! how many we have known who have essayed to tread the path and who have turned back with confusion of face! They once abandoned the abominations of Christendom, and took their place with Christ outside and professed considerable devotion to His name and to His word. They boasted of heavenly light and spoke glibly of the advanced things of the truth of God. We thought them firm and true. We believed they apprehended the seriousness of the position and pathway. But some cold north wind blew, some test came, and they failed. Their name was Lot, not Abraham. They now build again the things they destroyed. Thus is the Lord put to shame, and His truth exposed to ridicule. Better far never to have ventured forth than turn back thus. But it is a warning to us all, “Let him that thinketh he standeth beware lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). Let us look matters straight in the face and weigh them up in the sanctuary of His presence.

The closing word in Luke 14 is very solemn, “Salt is good, but if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be seasoned? It is fit neither for the land, nor yet for the dunghill; but men cast it out. He that hath ears to hear let him hear.” To lose one's savor is a different thing from turning back and giving up the path. The outward position may be maintained, yet the true character gone. Salt expresses that spiritual energy which preserves the soul from the corruption around and enables it to bear a true testimony for Christ. If this declines, where are we as witnesses? Of what use are we in this scene? Of how many is this sadly true! They did run well, their sound was clear, their walk was unequivocal; but they are not the men they used to be. Not that they have abandoned the path, nor surrendered the truths formerly professed. These are held still, but the world has got in, the tone has become lowered, the heavenly ring is scarcely discernible now. How sorrowful that this should be true of any! Our devotedness should be deepened as time proceeds, and our faith strengthened as difficulties increase, and we are cast more and more on God.

Discipleship is an individual thing. “If any man.” “He that hath ears to hear.” Each must look to Christ for himself, each must follow in his own appointed path. There is ever a tendency to look at our brethren to see what they intend doing. It is easy to walk with a crowd. Faith is but little exercised in such circumstances. He who cannot. follow Christ for himself is not fit to follow with others. Many have been hindered in this way. Others have been looked to or waited for. Satan has taken advantage of it, and has got in, and chilled the desire to follow Christ in all things.

I dare not despise the fellowship of my brethren, but must seek it, and cultivate it in every possible way; but they must not be allowed to take the place of the Lord. He must be looked to and followed, or the testimony cannot be good, nor discipleship true and real. The Lord give us understanding in all things.

W. W. F.

I Ascend Unto My Father

IT seems difficult to imagine how any thoughtful mind among believers can miss the majesty of these words. There are indeed writings merely human that are not without a certain elevation, as they are permeated with a charm that appeals to the cultivated intelligence. But how great the contrast between the choicest utterances of the princes of literature and the unique sublimity of the holy scriptures! The difference is as great as in the circumstances that call them forth. It must at any rate be granted, even by a skeptic, that, supposing Christ to have been what He claimed to be, all His words and acts are consistent with His being God incarnate. And more than this, all that is written about Him in the four Gospels, all that is written in the Acts and the Epistles, is stamped with the same consistency. Nay, what, on any other hypothesis, becomes of the innumerable predictions in the Old Testament, that point onwards to a coming Savior? Whittle down your conception of the nature of Christ, and you are confronted with a bewildering enigma. Bow to Him as “the Word made flesh,” and all is plain—not to speak of the incalculable blessing to the soul that does bow.

Now in none of our Lord's words is there greater sublimity than in those that head these remarks. We, to whom, by God's grace, Christ is everything, hear them echoing over the sad tumult of nearly nineteen centuries, and, like sounds of true music clearly caught amid discordant noises, they ring out sweet and clear to-day. And they have a voice for to-day. We do not, I think, dwell enough on these great events in our Lord's history here below. Undoubtedly the atonement must ever occupy the central place, when we think of our deep need. Without that “precious death” it were vain to plead the incarnation, indispensable and supreme as that fact is. But we do well to ponder every now and again both the resurrection and ascension. The latter event indeed might have followed at once on the former but for God's purposes of grace. And undoubtedly the blessed Lord at once passed into “the holiest” after He had “dismissed His spirit” (Matt. 27:50). But the ascension was the crowning act of God in vindicating His beloved Son. It is also true that Christ ascended by His own act. “I ascend.” Here we have the divine majesty and sublimity of the passage.

I do not dwell at length upon the occasion of these great words of our Lord. We know that Mary Magdalene, in her most commendable love, would have detained the Savior, not knowing that by her, as by the church at large in the sequel, Christ was to be known only after a heavenly sort. No contradiction between our Lord's manner here, and His permission subsequently to the other women to hold Him by the feet. For did not these typify how Israel will know Christ in the millennium? But Mary's was a higher privilege, though then she might hardly realize it. And so the Lord utters the magnificent words; “I ascend,” &c. And is there not exquisite beauty in the fact that “Father” comes before “God”? It is doubtless the same divine hand that wrote, by the same John, “grace and truth.” The tenderer relation comes first. Still, as more than one has remarked, it is not “our Father,” nor “our God.” That could not be. Whatever the grace, never can the interval between the Creator and the creature be bridged—not in that sense. The Lord could tell His disciples in that most comprehensive prayer, which He gave them, “When ye pray, say our Father.'“ But His is a unique Sonship, though doubtless at the same time there is an emphasizing of the truth that His God and Father is also ours.

But where in the whole range of human writings, ancient or modern, can anything be found approaching these words? I speak not of mere grace and charm of diction, wherein moderns are only gratified if they can equal the ancients, but in subject-matter. Doubtless there are touches of true pathos as well as sound and lofty sentiments on the vanity of human life in ancient and modern classics. But where is there assurance? where comfort and anchorage for the soul? It is well known that there is none. How could there be? “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,” sang a great but wayward poet. Nay, but the Christian sings most sweetly in his brightest joys. For this we have to thank Christ alone. His was the sorrow, the unfathomable pain. It is easy to write about it. It is less easy to enter into it, and to shape one's life according to it. But at least it is something, spite of shortcoming abundant, to love beyond all else these and like words of our Lord, words that are said to us as truly as to Mary of Magdala—to us, who have not, like her, seen Him in His humiliation, but who, like her, are to see Him in His glory, and be with Him, when we too have ascended to the Father. R. B. Junr.

Reflections on Galatians 4:19-31

How tender and touching the apostle's language now becomes! “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you. I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you” (vers. 19, 20). He had the feelings both of mother and father towards the saints, as he lets the Thessalonians know (1 Thess. 2:7-12).

He goes beyond Moses here. The lawgiver, when smarting under the perverseness of his charge, was ready to repudiate them. He asked Jehovah why He had afflicted His servant, in laying the burden of the people upon him. “Have I conceived all this people? Have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers?” (Num. 11:12). But Paul was willing to travail with the Galatians a second time. He longed to be personally with them that he might see for himself their actual state, and the extent of the damage that had been done. Perhaps then he could change his voice, but at the moment of writing he had the gravest doubts of them.

The apostle now adopts another line. “Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?” (ver. 21). It is evident that the word “law” has two senses here slightly different from each other. The second use of the word refers to the Old Testament scriptures in general. The quotation that follows is from Genesis. He now illustrates the opposite principles of law and grace by the things that occurred in Abraham's household. “For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a free-woman. But he who was of the bondwoman, was born after the flesh; and he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Hagar,” &c. (vers. 22-24). The principle of grace shines brightly in Sarah. When nature was proved impotent, God came in with His promise. It was received in faith, though there was long to wait ere the word was fulfilled. Her son, therefore, sets forth the seed of faith; those who inherit blessing. Hagar, on the other hand, speaks to us of the energy of the flesh, of bondage too. The apostle shows that this is where Jerusalem now is, whatever the boast of the Judaisers who had troubled the Galatians. “For this Hagar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children” (ver. 25). Yet the Jews boasted to the Lord that they were never in bondage to any (John 8:33)! To submit to Jerusalem now was to place themselves under servitude and to rob their souls of blessing.

What remarkable instruction the Spirit draws forth from so simple a matter as Abraham's two wives! Who would have seen in Sarah and Hagar the principles of law and grace, had not the Spirit of God drawn our attention thus? There is a mine of wealth in the pictures and types of the Old Testament to reward the patient and diligent soul.

To continue, Christians have nothing to do with Jerusalem, or the system of law and bondage connected with her. Christianity knows no center on earth. Our metropolis is in heaven. “But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all” (more correctly “our mother”) (ver. 26).

We now get a remarkable quotation from Isaiah. “For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not; for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath a husband” (ver. 27). Observe the place in which this is found in the writings of the prophet. In chapter 53. we have Israel bowing to the truth of the atonement, owning the once smitten One as having died for them. Then we hear the remarkable call quoted by the apostle in this epistle. The truth is, that Israel in the coming day will be astonished to learn what God has been doing during their long term of widowhood. They will find that countless children have been born to Abraham-true children of promise. These are reckoned, in a spiritual way, as Jerusalem's progeny. We do well to remember that the gospel started from Jerusalem and all its first preachers were of the Jewish stock. While Israel is estranged God is busy, and many are being brought in to taste the sweetness of His grace.

“Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now” (vers. 28, 29). Here another incident is dwelt upon. The Spirit of God saw in the mocking of Ishmael, an expression of the inveterate hatred of flesh to Spirit. Paul knew much of this. Had he been a preacher of circumcision, he would have been spared much. That would have put honor on the first man, and no persecution would have ensued for him. But he was a faithful minister of heavenly things, and had to endure the consequences in his person and circumstances. Others know this in measure.

Those who contend for law and ordinances have ever been bitter persecutors of the true seed of God. The Inquisition and many a burning pile, to say nothing of minor things, furnish painful proofs of it.

“Nevertheless, what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman” (ver. 30). This is Ishmael's lot, as we know. The Galatians must learn that this must be their portion also if they persisted on the ground of flesh and law. There can be no blessing for such, for God will not share His glory with another. Jerusalem was about to be made a solemn example. The Lord had warned His blinded people, but to no purpose. The heavenly light was resisted, flesh and ordinances were clung to; not submitting to God's righteousness, they were still going about to establish their own. The stroke was soon to fall; and Jerusalem was to be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Solemn warning for Christendom, if men had eyes to see, and ears to hear! Soon will God's hand fall there also, let men boast never so loudly.

But Paul hoped better things of his beloved Galatians. “So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free” (ver. 31). Believers in Jesus are Sarah's children, heirs according to promise. Such will not be cast out, when the Ishmaels are rejected, but be preserved and blessed by God to the glory of His grace.

James 2:18-19

WE have now another saying in order to bring out the reality, as we had in vers. 14 and 16. In the first Epistle of John we may see the contrast pursued more deeply. “But some one will say, Thou hast faith, and I have works. Show me thy faith apart from works, and out of (or, by) my works I will show thee my faith. Thou believest that God is one; thou believest well: the demons also believe and shudder” (vers. 18, 19).

The fact in the spiritual realm, which lies under the question here discussed, we have seen to be laid down with the utmost simplicity and clearness in chap. 1:18. It is the possession of a new life, which is given to all who are begotten by the word of truth. No intellectual process can amount to such a boon, though a spiritual understanding never in operation before accompanies it, as there are also new affections proper to it. We can readily apprehend how unpalatable such teaching must be to those that were attached to the ancient system of ritual and law for a nation chosen as a whole, as well as to the still wider snare of crying up human powers, with no adequate sense of God or His kingdom on the one hand, or of man's sin and ruin on the other. It was therefore urgently requisite that all should learn on divine authority, that in Christianity a mere action however powerful on a man's faculties is altogether short of the truth. For there is communication of a life in Christ, which he never possessed before, as well as the Holy Spirit thenceforward dwelling in him in power, the gift of God's grace; so that he might know the things of God and the revealed objects, as the old nature was capable of knowing the things of man and of the old creation subjected to him.

This new nature, attaching to the family of God, and of course to every member of it, involves with such a relationship the responsibility of a corresponding walk as well as inward communion with the source and giver of its blessedness. It was the allotted and appropriate work of James to charge home this all-important truth and its practical consequences on those he addresses, and indirectly but none the less really on all that have the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here he is resisting an abuse easily understood, and as dangerous as evil. He censures and repudiates a mere doctrinal scheme without life, and hence destitute of the works which attest a new nature from God. John, who was given to set forth the glory of Christ's person beyond all others of the inspired, shows us life in Christ which the believer even now has, and the gift of the Spirit, the other Advocate. But here the same truth of the divine nature whereof we become partakers is no less truly revealed, the basis of all works acceptable to God, of all godly practice in word, deed, or feeling.

“But some will say, Thou hast faith, and I have works:” a supposition that divorces what God joins inseparably, an evident fighting against His word and nature, as also His will. For had he not affirmed in the Spirit, that God, the Father of lights, of His purpose begat us by the word of truth? To be doers of the word, not hearers only who are not so begotten, is our consistent and blessed place, a perfect law of liberty in which we by grace continue because our new nature loves Him and His word. Those who sever work from faith have no living association with God and simply deceive themselves.

Hence the refutation in the next words:” Show me thy faith apart from works, and out of my works I will show thee my faith.” It is an answer in both its parts conclusive. Faith is as it were the soul, and needs works as its body to be shown. To “show” faith separate from works is therefore an impossibility. He who believes by the Holy Spirit shows his faith by his works, as the rebuker rejoins.

This very word “show,” as it falls in with the great aim of the Epistle is the key to the difficulty, which from of old till now so many uninstructed and unestablished souls have found in comparing the teaching of Paul and of James. Inasmuch as both were inspired, there can be no ground for it. The appearance is due solely to the ignorance of unbelief. The one is occupied with the root, with what is “before God” (Rom. 4:2); the other, with the fruit, and therefore “show me” before men. Both agree that, where faith is divinely given and souls are begotten by the word of truth, good works are the fruit and the outward witness of faith. There is nothing in fact to reconcile, because there is no real variance. The one insists that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law; the other, that he who claims to have faith is bound to show it by his works. In the one the question is how a sinner can be justified by grace; in the other, what God looks for from him who professes faith.

But the refutation goes farther. “Thou believest that God is one; thou believest well: the demons also believe and shudder.” It was well to own the unity of God, and wicked to hold a multiplicity of gods, which were no better than demons. Even these were not so insensible as those who boasted of their faith but had no works corresponding to show. For the demons shudder, as we see in the Synoptic Gospels. The mere professor of faith may not have as much feeling, though God's word solemnly warns that such as he have no inheritance in the kingdom of the Christ and God.

The Dimbleby System of Prophetic Dates: 4

IT is hard to gather or even guess what Mr. D. means by the next paragraph (p. 6) after the brief one already reviewed. “In connection with the first 1260 years, let me point out what must be regarded as a remarkable prophecy in the Book of Daniel. There is in the British Museum a copy of the scriptures which I often look at, and which all antiquarians know was written in the fourth century of the Christian era, say about 350 A.D. According to this copy, which is the same as our English Bible, the fourth beast had to begin to dominate over the saints in the year 3970 1/2 , and cease in 4636 ½ . Now what are the facts of history? Jerusalem became tributary to Rome in 3970 ½ and in 4636 ½ the Saracens, who were Mohammedans, took possession of the city, it having been rebuilt. The Roman supremacy was therefore 666 years, as prophesied in Rev. 13:18, and ended about 286 years after this copy of the scriptures in the Museum was written! The following is another point of importance. In Rev. 13 the Mohammedan power is called a beast, and ranks with Pagan Rome. One beast continues 42 months, which are 1260 years, and another 666 years. The two together make 1926, which added to the fore-mentioned 3970 ½ the beginning of the universal empire of Rome, we again have 5896 ½ (our 1898 ½ ) as the fulfillment of the triple prophecy! Let him scoff who dares.” This paragraph affords as much matter for reflection as one can find room for just now.

We have already seen that 1260 “years” cannot be affirmed without a proof, which is wholly wanting. Scripture speaks in Rev. 11:3; 12:6 of 1260 days; in Rev. 11:2; 13:5, of 42 months; and in Dan. 7:25; 12:7, Rev. 12:14, of 34 years (time, times, and half a time) which are substantially equivalent terms. Again, it is too much to say “the first 1260 years,” inasmuch as scripture only speaks of 1260 days, or its equivalent, just before the end of the age. It was pointed out last month that there is no proof of any “first” 1260 days in these scriptures, still less of so many years.

Unfeignedly and thankfully is it acknowledged that all the prophecies given by Daniel are “remarkable,” though this may seem a rather cold expression for such divine communications. But who can imagine to which of these Mr. D. refers, unless it be Dan. 7:25? Yet this date self-evidently brings us up to the end by the divine judgment which terminates the age; and therefore it cannot be “the first 1260 years.” The language seems utterly obscure if not unintelligible.

Next, the allusion to the Alexandrine MS. in the British Museum is not less dark. For I presume Mr. D. refers to the open N. T. vol. of this Codex which is publicly shown there under glass. But “all antiquarians” of weight in such a question now know that it is about a century or more younger than Mr. D. says, its real date being not earlier than 450 A.D. And it may be added that “this copy” is far from being the same as our English Bible. It has the Apocryphal books, and even of Clem. Rom. the first or genuine Epistle, with a fragment of a second suspected one, to say nothing of such an omission as the beginning of John 8. If Mr. D. only means that it gives Dan. 7 no less than the A.V., he is not entitled to say that “according to this copy,” more than any other copy in the world, “the fourth beast, pagan Rome, had to begin to dominate over the. saints in the year 3970 ½ and cease in 4636 ½.” Nor is it a question of history, but of “what saith the scriptures?” What does the Alex. MS. say more than any other? Where does any copy whatsoever, or in any tongue, teach the beginning and the ceasing at these dates? Indeed so curiously mistaken is Mr. D. that the Alexandrian copy of Dan. 7:25 differs in this particular respect both from our A.V. and from every other copy known to me. For it adds by evident error Kai Kapoii, which would add another year, that is, as he interprets it, 360 years.

The only semblance of evidence that Mr. D. seems to allege (for the language is singularly incoherent and illogical) is that “the Roman supremacy was therefore (?) 666 years, as prophesied in Rev. 13:18, and ended about 286 years after this copy in the Museum was written!” The connection of ideas here is bewildering. For every one can see that in the verse referred to, the only occasion in scripture when it occurs at all, it is no question of date, but of the mystical number of a man, which wisdom will understand when God pleases, but assuredly without relation to a chronological period.

Yet Mr. D. is not quite alone in this strange application of 666 to duration for so many years. Pope Innocent III. appears to have lit on the idea, but with the notable difference of applying it, not to the Roman power, but to the Mohammedan, the close of which period and evil was at hand; and on this ground of alleged historical fact, and of his construction of Rev. 13:18, he sought to arouse Christendom to a crusade against the Turks, from whom God was about to free the Holy Land. Of learned men Bengel is one who adopted the idea but applied it to the length of the beast's power, looking for the end in 1836. But why dwell on these unfounded guesses?

The chief importance of what follows is the proof that Mr. D. has not a ray of divine light on Rev. 13, the first beast of which he fancies to be pagan Rome, the second to be the Mohammedan power. Neither the one nor the other approaches the truth. Pagan Rome had not seven heads any more than ten horns. Pagan Rome was in full power when John saw a beast thus characterized rise up out of the sea, his deadly wound healed, so that all the earth wondered after him. Such is the last phase of the Roman Empire, as made plain in Rev. 17, when it is resuscitated for Satan's grand effort against the Lamb, the King of kings and Lord of lords, in the closing catastrophe of this age.

Quite as plain, if not more so, is the misconception of the other beast that comes up out of the earth. The Mohammedan power! Why, it is the ally and religious power in active collusion with the future revived empire; and so he is said to exercise all the authority of the first or Roman beast before him or in his presence. Mr. D. fancies it to be by the Saracen power displacing the Roman! Did the Mohammedan power cause the earth and its inhabitants to worship the first beast? Not even their prophet Mohammed pretended to do great signs or miracles, still less did his successors when Jerusalem was taken by the Saracens. Whereas the other beast of Rev. 13 is even to make fire come down out of heaven before men; and this to deceive the dwellers on earth by reason of the signs done before the first beast, and to promote an image worshipped in his honor. This too the Mohammedan power, Mr. D.!

Apply it to the future crisis; and all becomes simple. The Antichrist in Palestine is to work with the last ruler of the Roman empire revived: the one the civil head, the other the religious one, each helping the other in his own sphere, but both devoted to blasphemy, both antagonistic in the highest degree to the Lord and His Anointed. These accordingly are the two whose awful judgment is announced in Rev. 19:20, both cast alive without the need of future or formal judgment into the lake of fire. Far be it from one's heart to “scoff” at Mr. D.'s words; but it is permissible and a duty to deplore mistakes as to God's holy word, so palpable in themselves, and so perilous to those that lend a credulous ear.

Not a shade of unkindness mingles with the caution against so haphazard a way of understanding scriptural dates and of manipulating them historically. In this case, for example, as most of us read history, Jerusalem was captured by the Roman Pompey in B.C. 63; and it was not till about A.D. 638 that it capitulated to the Khalif Omar (as given in the Benedictine “Art de verifier les dates"), after some vicissitudes before and much more since. There is not the smallest connection between the 666 of scripture and that event. The western Roman Empire too had ceased to be pagan long before the rising Mohammedan power came into collision with Jerusalem; and the eastern empire, from which it was really taken, had always been nominally Christian, never pagan. What then can one think of such an interpretation, but that it is lame on both feet?

On the Millennium: 5

Dim. W. urges (p. 9) that the saints reign with Christ, not that He reigns with them. This no sound Christian disputes; but he uses it to deny Christ's reign and ours with Him over the earth It is not wise to plead either Eph. 2:6 or Rev. 1:6 to get rid of that future glory we are to share. He tell us in a note that the best MSS. of Rev. 5:10 have the present tense. But the fact is that the most ancient extant (à) has the future, and so has the Porphyrian uncial of cent. 9., with some 30 cursives, and the best Latin copies, Coptic, &c.; whereas the Alex and the Basilian uncial (of cent. eighth) support the present with less than 30 cursives, &c. Of these the Alex. might have greater weight, but that it alone reads the present in chap. 20:6; all else give the future. The title of king given to the believer in no way means that he is now reigning, which the apostle reproves in 1 Corinthians as inconsistent with an actual call to suffer with Christ. Assuredly John 10:28 implies simply that no hostile power can pluck out of His hand, as Phil. 3:21 shows that at His coming He will prove Himself Savior of our bodies as He is now of our souls.

What he failed to see is that scripture is abundant and plain in assuring that, distinct from the present and before eternity, Christ will come in glory to reign over Israel and all nations according to the consentient testimony of the Prophets, confirmed by His own words in the Gospels, and the Holy Spirit's witness in the Epistles, and by the Book of Revelation. He thought such an expectation leads necessarily into low and irreverent notions concerning our Lord. Entirely do we sympathize with the hope for the glorified of our proper blessing in the heavenly places; but to slight the prospects of a blessed earth for Israel and the nations is not faith but prejudice (p. 10). O.T. and N. we have seen to be an ample and irrefutable witness to it. If sin entered there, the Son of God came there to put it away by the sacrifice of Himself. Satan achieved the greatest success there; Satan will be thence expelled, first for a long while, then forever. God there displayed His grace in Christ; in Christ God will there display His glory.

So far from there being any inconsistency the kingdom of God when manifested has its heavenly things no less than its earthly; and all things shall not only be put but seen under Christ the Heir of all, heavenly and earthly headed up in Him, as they were all reconciled to God by His work on the cross. The low view is the curtailing of Christ's glory, nor is it true reverence to explain away plain scripture. Others yielding to unbelief think that for a Divine Person to take flesh and die on the cross is incredible degradation. Why should it seem to disgrace Christ risen and glorified to reign over the earth for 1,000 years, besides the perfect and unbroken rest of eternity? It will accomplish unfulfilled scripture and display a righteous kingdom over men as Christ only can. The Deity of Christ stands distinct and intact, and indeed will derive further and rich evidence thereby.

It is all a mistake (p. 11), though made by early Fathers and those who have since followed guides so erring, that the earth is to be peopled by the risen saints. Not so; they will have heavenly glory and reign with Christ over the earth, not on it, as we see in the symbolic New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:9-ch. 22.). Israel will then be on earth a saintly people, not in name only but in reality; and the nations shall seek (as they have not yet done) unto the Rod of Jesse; and His resting place shall be glory. And all the creation that still groans shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty (not of grace, as is the new creation even now, but) of The glory of the children of God. Therefore we that have the first-fruits of the Spirit, though we too groan within ourselves, do all the more wait for the adoption, the redemption of our body; as the earnest expectation of the creature also waits for our revealing, the signal of its deliverance. What difficulty is there in believing that the unconverted among the nations, though controlled by the power of the great King, surrounded with abundance of all good, and freed from the Tempter, will relapse under his wiles when he is let loose for a little season, and be consumed with fire? It is only the “monstrous” mistake of the Bp. that the risen saints are concerned. The earthly saints, Jews or Gentiles, are threatened by Satan, not his allies.

It is false that the present mixed state (p. 12) will continue when Christ reigns. For the darnel and wheat grow together unto the end of the age (αἰῶνος), not of the world (κόσμου). The error excludes the judgment of the quick, and of the habitable earth (Acts 17), as well as of the world-kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ (Rev. 11:15). All the parables cited, good and bad fish, good and bad guests, wise and foolish virgins, find their separation at the end of this age; and the Millennium is no gulf (p. 13) but a blessed bridge between the age's end and the eternal state.

So the Thessalonian saints (p. 13), like others, were waiting for Christ's coming, which is followed by the Millennium. It is His appearing that destroys the man of sin before the kingdom is set up in power and glory. When Christ our life shall be manifested, then shall we also with Him be manifested in glory (Col. 3:4); we are caught up before, and follow Him out of heaven for that day of judgment of the earth (Rev. 17:14; 19:14). 2 Peter 3 warns those who mock His promised coming with His day, which fills a thousand years and does not close till the universe melts with fire; and Rev. 1:9; 11:18, agrees with this.

The creeds of Christendom do not contradict (p. 16) the Millennium. The Athanasian confesses the foundations of the faith; the so-called Apostles' Creed is rather infantine like the Nicene. They do not assert the Millennium. Utterly false is it that, if true, it would falsify Christ's promises to His church; for on the contrary in the millennial day the world will see that the glory, which the Father gave Him, He gave them, perfected as they will then be into one, that the world may know the Father sent the Son and loved those glorified saints as He loved Christ (John 17:22, 23). I am sorry to say that such language betrays infatuation, but am glad to agree that it is no question of the early Patristic writers, but of scripture (p. 15). No importance is attached to the Rabbis either (p. 15).

And as to Cerinthus or the like, one abhors their heterodoxy yet more than Montanist enthusiasm (p. 17). What matters the opinion of a worldly-minded semi-Arian like Eusebius about Papias? Neither (pp. 18, 19) is an authority, any more than the Romanist expositor who falsely attributes the decline of faith in the Apocalypse to millenarian teaching. None love, understand, or enjoy that blessed book so much as those who believe what it teaches of that kingdom (p. 20). The Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse clashed with men's will, and hence were unjustly questioned by men of shallow faith, like Caius the early Roman presbyter (p. 20). Origen, learned and clever indeed, was but a sorry defender of the faith. Did not the Bp. know that he was unreliable and wild, even to the ungodliness of universalism? Surely also Dionysius of Alexandria (p. 23), an able man without doubt, cannot be acquitted of strange doctrine on Christ's person in opposing the Sabellians. Nor was Jerome (pp. 24, 25) a model of orthodoxy any more than of temper, though an erudite and laborious translator. Augustine of Hippo was one of greater weight; but we have to bear in mind that the Millennial views he opposed (pp. 26, 27) were not sound, those which were rejected by the Reformers and the Puritans (pp. 28-31). Only it is certain that some of the best instructed and most pious men in the Anglican body found no such incompatibility in its formularies with their faith in Christ's millennial reign as the Bp. argues, who himself narrows “the last day” unscripturally (p. 22). The prayer in page 33 is on the contrary consistent. “The end of the world” is the mistake repeated from the A. V. of Matt. 13:39, 49. We all value the Apocalypse at least as much as the Bp. (pp. 33, 36) and do not share in daily use the slight which the Book of Common Prayer puts on that divine book, while it honors the Apocrypha for its lessons in Oct. and Nov. and more.

Scripture Queries and Answers: 2,300 Evenings-Mornings; Farewell-Rejoice

Q.-Dan. 8:14. The meaning of this verse is inquired; and the question is raised if the “2,300 evenings-mornings,” apply to the desolation since the Roman destruction of Jerusalem under Titus.

F. F. T. (Dublin).

A.-It helps to clear the book and its particular visions if we observe that the last Beast in chap. 7. is the Western Empire; and Rev. 11-13, and 17. enables us to say the Roman Empire revived but pointedly distinguished from Babylon the Harlot, viewed as a great city as well as the great corruptress of Christendom. Her the Beast and the ten horns, his vassal kings, unite to destroy; but they are themselves destroyed by the Lamb when He returns with His glorified saints from heaven (Rev. 17:14; 19:14). No ingenuity can make these revealed facts fit into the Protestant interpretation, as I showed many years ago in reviewing the last edition of Mr. Elliott's Hore Apoc. before he died.

One main defect of that hypothesis is that it neglects the final future crisis for the Jewish people and the land before the Lord appears in glory and judgment. Another is that the proper Christian and church hope is not appreciated by this school, but mixed up with the Jewish. The times and seasons, which wholly pertain to the earthly people, are misapplied to Christians. These are not of the world and are called to be ever expecting the Lord Jesus, to take them to Himself and the Father's house, before the unaccomplished measures of time begin to apply to the Jews and the powers of the world at the end of this age.

This chapter however brings to light a power in the east, not Roman, but from the Seleucid quarter

of Alexander's divided empire. And we have to distinguish the general vision of which ver. 14 forms the close from the interpretation which deals with the future catastrophe and goes from ver. 19 to ver. 26. For the interpretations given by scripture add fresh light, and enable us to discriminate the part accomplished in Antiochus Epiphanes from the final enemy of Israel in the N. E. Of him we hear much in Dan. 11, “the king of the north” at the end, who is to be judged no less awfully than the Roman emperor of that day, and his antichristian colleague, the false prophet-king in the land. This N. E. power is the same predicted by “the Assyrian” of Isaiah, Micah, and other prophets.

There are no dates attached to Nebuchadnezzar's vision of the four great Gentile empires raised up successively on the apostacy of the Jews, and set aside by the kingdom of God figured by the little Stone. But in the corresponding vision of the four Beasts, judged and superseded by the universal kingdom of the Son of man when the saints of the heavenly places appear, and the people of those saints, we have the well-known formula of “a time, times, and half a time,” i.e. three years and a half, during which times and laws will be given into the hand of their western enemy. Chap. 8. is occupied with the east, and “the daily” is taken away “by reason of transgression"; and the peculiar term occurs of “2,300 evenings-mornings,” which I see no reason to doubt was literally accomplished in Antiochus Epiphanes of whom we hear so much in chap. 11:21-32. But the special object is the enemy “at the last end of the indignation.” In chap. 9. we have another sort of computation—by “weeks,” or periods of seven years; and there the Roman capture of Jerusalem is plainly set out, though in the general interval without date after the cutting off of the Messiah. But the last week, severed from the chain, awaits its completion in the doings of both the Western emperor and his eastern antagonist at the end of the age. In chap. 11:36-39 the Antichrist (who is to reign over the land and be the object of attack “at the time of the end” to both the king of the south and the king of the north) is seen. And the last chapter gives a variety of dates but all bearing on that future crisis, our Lord in Matt. 24:15 directing particular attention to verse 11.

Q.-Phil. 3:1; 4:4. What ground had the Revisers for putting “farewell” as the marginal equivalent for “rejoice”? A. B.

A.-Nothing but pedantry. The verb as a secondary meaning is used for “saluting,” and so for “farewell “; but this sense is in narrow contextual bounds, as Matt. 26:49; 27:29; 28:9; Mark 15:18; Luke 1:28; John 19:3; Acts 15:23; 23:26; James 1:1, and 2 John 10, 11. Everywhere else it means “rejoice,” or “be glad,” and emphatically so in the Epistle to the Philippians where it is an evident keynote, as in 1:18, 2:17, 18, 28, 3:1, 4:4, 10. What would be the sense of “Farewell in the Lord alway”? Yet this is long after 3:1, where “farewell” would be therefore unnatural. Then we have also to take account of the kindred “joy” (χάρα) in the same Epistle, as in 1:4, 25, 2:2, 29, and 4:1 which it is impossible to mistake. But the verb ought not to be confounded as the A.V. does with καυχάομαι, “I boast” as in Rom. 5:2, 11, Phil. 3:3, James 1:9; 4:16. It may surprise one that so profound a scholar as the late Bp. Lightfoot should express the opinion on Phil. 3:1 that the word conveys both meanings here, referring also to 2:18, 4:4. Spiritual perception is another thing, and indispensable for the right rendering of scripture.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:29

IN addition to the sons already passed in review there remain three; “and Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab: all these were sons of Joktan” (ver. 29).

The local habitation of “Ophir” has been contested most notably; but no sufficient ground appears to look for it outside the peninsula. Josephus (Ant. viii. 6-4) referred it to India, as did Vitringa (Geog. Sac. 114), and Reland in his dissertation on the question, and of late Lassen, Ritter, Bertheau; again, Sir W. Raleigh to the Molucca, Islands; and Pererius, Sir J. E. Tennent, Thenius, Ewald and Gen. Chesney (Euphrates ii. 126) to Malacca and the adjoining tracts. On the other hand, Huet, Bruce, Robertson the historian, Heeren, and Quatremore placed Ophir in Africa; and Plessis and A. Montanus contended for Peru, arguing from the word “Parvaim I” But Michaelis (Spicil. ii. 184), Karsten Niebuhr (Decor. de l'Arabie), Gosselin (Lech. sur la Geog. des Anciens, ii. 99), Vincent (Comm. and Nay. ii. 265-270), Crawford (Desc. Diet.), Forster (Geog. of Arabia i. 161-175), Thirst, Kalisch, Knobel (Volk. 190), and Winer (Realw.), assign it to Arabia. The learned I3ochart (Phaleg ii. 27) was inclined to two Ophirs, one in Arabia, the other in Ceylon; as D'Anville admitted two, one in Arabia, the other in Africa. Gesenius, both in his Thes. and elsewhere, thought that the balance of evidence between Arabia and India was so even that he declined giving a decisive judgment.

The fact is, however, that ever since the maps of Sale and of D'Anville, as Mr. Forster observes (i. 167), Ofor or Ofir appears as the name of a city and district in the mountains of Oman, seated on their eastern side, near the source of the Oman river, and within about a degree, or a little more, of the coast; and the adjoining coast, lying due east under Ofir, was still celebrated in the elder Pliny's time (Nat. H. vi. 32) for its traffic in gold, “littus Hammaeum ubi auri metalla.” This answers to the town and coast of Maham, as laid down in modern maps for that precise locality.

One of the chief arguments against Arabia by those who looked elsewhere is the absence of gold as a known product of the country for many years. But Dean Vincent had anticipated the objection by his remark that silver is not now found at Carthagena in Spain, where the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Romans, obtained it in great abundance. Niebuhr (iii. 256) says of this very province Oman, “there is no want there of lead and copper mines"; and Mr. Wellsted (Travels in Arabia, i. 315) states that the notion is untrue that Arabia is wholly destitute of the precious metals. “In this province we meet with silver, associated as usual with lead. Copper is also found: at a small hamlet, on the road from Seined to Neswah, there is a mine which the Arabs at present work; but the others are wholly neglected. Even in the vicinity of Maskat the hills are very metalliferous.” In ancient times the testimony is distinct that Arabia was a gold-producing land. Thus Agatharchides the geographer who lived in the second century before Christ testifies to it (Hudson's Geog. Min. i. 60); a little later wrote Artemidorus, whose account Strabo reproduces (xiv. 18); Diodorus Sic. is no less plain in his Eibliotheca (ii. 50, iii. 44); and Pliny the elder as we have seen; to whom from Eusebius' Praep. Evang. ix. 30 we may add the testimony of Eupolemus before the Christian era: only that he affirms Ophir to be an island with gold mines in the Erythrean sea, i.e., the sea that compassed Arabia, west, south, and east. At the least Ophir was the emporium whence not gold only but algum trees, red sandalwood or whatever else is meant, and precious stones, were brought.

No one denies that peacocks, apes, and ivory point further east than Arabia; but Ophir was their meeting place and mart. It is to be noticed that Uphaz, as equivalent to Ophir, means “isle of fine gold,” if there was another such place besides the inland one still bearing the name.

The family of “Havilah” have left their mark in the country in a distinct manner, though the name is as usual somewhat disguised by the difference of pronunciation which prevailed when there was little of known pervading literature to fix it. Only we have to take into account that there was a Cushite Havilah which extended itself in its branches over the peninsula from the N.E. to the S.W. These we have to discriminate from the Joktanite tribe which found their place, it would seem, chiefly among their kindred. But as the names of their respective patriarchs were identical, so the same changes of form prevailed over the descendants of each, and the places which derived their designation from them. Thus Khaulan or Haultim evidently sprang from Havilah, harder or softer, as also Hevila and Flail, and Strabo's Chaalla, as we may see in Niebuhr. So Dr. Wells long ago from Bochart noticed the Chaulothaei of Eratosthenes, the Chaulosii of Festus Avienus, the Chablasii of Dionysius Periegetes, and the Chavilei of Pliny. Mr. Forster puts the case yet more strongly that, when in Ptolemy we read Huaela or Huaila, and in Niebuhr Huala, or more correctly Hauiiah, we have before us literally the Havilah of the Hebrew Scripture, Aval or Alial being a dialectic softening which prevails on the Persian Gulf. In Yemen, and north of it, it can hardly be doubted that the Joktanite section of Havilah prevailed.

Nor is there any serious question as to the descendants of “Jobab” in the clan of Jobaritae. They are mentioned by C, Ptolemy as dwelling in the south and near the Sachalitae, who gave their name to the well known hay. Besides, we hear of the Beni Jobub or Jubbar of Niebuhr, as the existing name of a tribe S.E. of Beishe or Baisath Joktan, halfway between lizal (Sand) and Sabata (the modern Zehid). Thus there seems no sufficient reason to doubt the identification. The variations of form at most found in this case in no way hinder the recognition of the ancient designation; while the measure of change is no more than time brings about in the immovable east, even in a land so shut out from intercourse with mankind in general. It is truly remarkable that, for every member of Joktan's numerous sons, living representatives should be traceable, attesting in a simple but striking way the inestimable value of God's word, long before human records, even then few and failing, till long after.

The Offerings of Leviticus: 9. Peace Offering - General Traits

Lev. 3

GENERAL TRAITS.

This is the last of the freewill offerings. Like the Burnt offering it was the sacrifice of animals; like the meal offering or Minchah it was in part to he eaten. As with the former, the offerer laid his hand on the head of his offering, and slaughtered it at the entrance of the tent of meeting; and Aaron's sons the priests scattered rather than sprinkled the blood on the altar round about. It was, of course, presented like the Burnt offering before Jehovah; but no more than the fat that covers the inwards, and also the fat that is on the inwards, and the two kidneys, and the fat that is on them which is by the flank, and the net or caul upon the liver was to be taken away as far as the kidneys and burnt on the altar. The special feature of this offering, the Shelem, was to complete, as the cognate verb means. The aim was to express communion; and this it did with fullness indeed if we knew not who He is that inspired these communications through His servant Moses.

In the law of the sacrifice of peace offerings (chap. vii. 11-21) we find this distinction in point of character or motive. They might be offered for a thanksgiving with their appropriate unleavened cakes mingled with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil, and cakes mingled with oil, of fine flour soaked, but not without cakes of leavened bread also; for man's taint is in his rendering of thanks. In this case the flesh of the sacrifice had to be eaten on the day of the offering, and none of it was to be left until the morning. But if the sacrifice of this offering were a vow or a voluntary offering, not only the flesh might be eaten on the day that it was presented, but the remainder of it on the morrow also, though the rest, if any, must be burnt on the third day. For if eaten then, so far from being accepted, it should be imputed an abomination to the offerer, and he that eat of it should bear his iniquity, just as uncleanness upon the eater would bring on him cutting off from his people. Thanksgiving is simple, and looked for from the simplest believer; but it has no such sustaining power as that devotedness of heart which Christ and His sacrifice more deeply known create in some that know God's grace better. There is no real communion apart from faith in Christ's sacrifice and the thanksgiving it calls forth. Separate from Him and the faith that owns His work, it is fleshly, abominable to God, and ruinous to man; but the energy of the Spirit which fills the heart with Christ and forms devotedness has greater permanence, and it produces greater vigilance against all that defiles, though this in principle is true of those born of God, however feeble they may be.

It is in the appendix of the same chapter (2834) that we find the distinctive communion that belonged to the peace offering. The offerer's own hands were to bring the first offering to Jehovah. The breast, for Aaron and his sons, was to be waved before Jehovah, as the fat was to be burnt upon the altar. The right shoulder was to be as a peace offering to the offering priest. The rest was for the offerer, his family or friends. Thus Jehovah had His portion, Christ as signified by the priest that presented the blood and the fat, He and His house (“whose house are we”), and the believers one with another, all entering into and enjoying the fellowship of Christ's work. But all uncleanness is peremptorily treated as incompatible with the feast on that sacrifice. If man's communion be prominent, the more care is taken that he forget not what is due to God and His holiness.

The Wicked Servant

Luke 12:45-48

INSTRUCTIVE and solemn is the picture which the Lord draws of the servant in verses 45. 46, rendered still more full and precise in verses 47, 48, when a notable difference comes to light.

When our Lord announced His departure to the Father's house, and the mission of another Advocate, the Holy Spirit to be in and with the disciples, He was no less distinct in promising His own coming again to receive them unto Himself, for the same place as Himself on high. And when gazing into heaven after their ascending Master, they were told by unimpeachable testimony that He should thus come as they had seen Him go. There is no doubt that in apostolic times the church walked in this hope, and that the mouths of preachers and teachers then spoke of it out of the abundance of their heart. Yet none ever regarded it as a question of date, any more than the Lord Who revealed it as a simple and pure and constant hope from His love to their love. And this difference is the more striking, because, the day of His appearing, which in due time follows His coming for His heavenly saints, is associated with prophecy and its judgments and signs in both the Old Testament and the New.

Hence the earnestness with which the apostle taught the converts, like those in Thessalonica from their first start, to await God's Son from the heavens, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus our deliverer from the coming wrath (1 Thess. 1:10). Not only did He write of His coming with all His saints in 1 Thess. 3:13, but of His coming for them to raise and change them, as a necessarily antecedent action in ch. 4:12-17. He does much more; for he identifies himself and all saints with it as their proximate hope by saying, not “they” as at a distant future, but “we, the living, that survive” (in contrast with those meanwhile “put to sleep by Jesus”) until the coming (or presence) of the Lord, shall not precede those put to sleep. Both were to be caught up together. The aim of the Spirit of truth, Who knew the end from the beginning, and expressly gave the message “in the word of the Lord,” was to put the hope ever before the heart, trade sure of its fruition, but by set purpose not sure when, so that all the saints might be always looking for it. It was impossible otherwise to have the hope common, constant, and living. Infidels and those under their influence mock, as if it was the apostle's error, at that which was really the perfect wisdom of God in giving “one hope,” which never did nor can pass away till His coming shall be its crown.

In the parable the Lord points out from the first that putting off the hope would betray the evil heart of unbelief, the root of other evils.

“But if that bondman say in his heart, My lord delayeth to come, and shall begin to beat the men-servants and the maid-servants, and to eat and drink and be drunken, the lord of that servant will have come in a day when he expecteth not, and in an hour that he knoweth not, and shall cut him asunder and set his portion with the unfaithful” (verses 45, 46).

It is not a doctrinal mistake (though this is not a slight thing with God's word and Spirit to direct aright), but the far more serious aberration of the “heart,” which is too easy where this doctrine may be held. How sad the soul's state where Christ's coming is unwelcome; and the bondman does what his heart likes! Thus is the separative power of the hope lost, and its attraction to Him Who is coming and His word. Violence ensues towards his fellows, who become disagreeable, as the world with its enjoyments become pleasant company. Can any words more graphically sketch Christendom's practical ruin, of which the first symptom was the heart's plea, My Lord delayeth His coming? This will not hinder but rather hasten His coming unexpectedly, Who will punish his disloyalty and assign his portion with the faithless, notwithstanding all his boast of Christian privileges.

In the verses that follow, the Lord rules, that sad as the heathen's case may be in the day that hastens, incomparably worse is the Christian professor's. “And that bondman who knew his own lord's will and made not ready nor did his will, shall be beaten with many [stripes]; but he who knew [it] not and did things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with few. And to every one to whom much has been given, much shall be required of him; and to whom they commit much, of him they will ask the more” (verses 47, 48).

O my reader, forget not that you have an open Bible, her the gospel, are sometimes troubled when you think of your sins and feel ashamed because you shrink from confessing the Lord's name, as much as you love the world and the things of the world. “The end of those things is death;” after which comes judgment. How will your guilt and the madness of your unbelief seem then when it is too late? Oh, turn not away from Him that speaks from heaven of His cleansing blood, Whose voice will soon shake earth and heaven also. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” His grace now is as sure to the believer, as His judgment will be shortly terrible for the unbeliever. God is not mocked.

Parting of Paul and Barnabas

Acts 15:35-39

EVERY Christian reader of the Acts of the Apostles has been arrested at this pathetic incident. What did it not cost the great heart of Paul? Had it been Apollos or Philip the evangelist, had it been one of the twelve, or even Cephas, it would have been sore trial to his spirit. But the rupture of cooperation with Barnabas, for it did not exceed that limit, must have been anguish to him.

Was it not the Son of Consolation, who, when all the faithful in Jerusalem were afraid of Paul (not believing him to be a disciple), took him and brought him to the apostles and related to them his seeing the Lord and His speaking to him, and his bold testimony to the name of Jesus in Damascus? Was it not the same (for he was a good man and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith), who, when sent to Antioch to investigate the work of the Lord first informally carried on among the Greeks, went off to Tarsus to seek him who was still called Saul, to its mighty furtherance at Antioch? Were not they also singled out and associated in the help sent to the brethren in Judaea when famine was predicted by Agabus? Were not they two separated by and to the Spirit for the first or express missionary work to which they were called? And after that most fruitful errand among the Gentiles, was it not arranged that Paul and Barnabas, though not alone, should go up to Jerusalem from Antioch to have the question of circumcision settled according to God where and whence fleshly influence sought to press it to the danger of the gospel and the damage of the church? And no wonder; for it was the virtual denial of Christ, the dead and risen Savior, the glorified Head on high. Were they not, in the letter which emanated from that notable assembly with the apostles and elders, characterized as “our beloved Barnabas and Paul,” men having given up (or staked) their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ?

And now, not long after, must there be an open breach as far as concerned joint service between souls so closely and long united? It was even so. At Antioch before they had been separated by the Spirit for the work; there now they parted never to be so joined again. “And Paul and Barnabas stayed in Antioch, teaching and evangelizing with many others also the word of the Lord, But after some days Paul said to Barnabas, Let us return now and visit the brethren where we have evangelized the word of the Lord, how they fare. And Barnabas wished to take with them also John that was called Mark; but Paul thought proper as to him that withdrew from them from Pamphylia and went not with them to the work, not to take him with them. And a provocation arose, so that they parted from one another, and Barnabas took with him Mark and sailed for Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and set out, commended to the grace of the Lord by the brethren” &c. (vers, 35-39).

There ought not to be a question that Barnabas was wrong, and that Paul was right, in this painful difference. Yea, a principle was at stake, which the Holy Spirit saw fit to record for permanent admonition, even though it laid bare the failure of an eminently blessed witness of Christ. This very fact attests how momentous it must be that other servants of God far below either of those concerned should take heed. Yet if it had not been here presented with the adequate notice of inspired authority, what on the one hand could have seemed more gracious than that Barnabas should desire a fresh opportunity to efface the past discredit of his cousin? And how many at all times would on the other hand be ready to implite rigor to him whose delight was in grace beyond all other men? But the grace he delighted in was according to truth; both made him all the more jealous for the Lord's glory. From this Barnabas had swerved into amiable feeling where it had no place but was the power of the Spirit devotedly and without compromise.

The case before us is all the more emphatic because it is the mildest form of failure one can conceive. No dark spot was on the name of John Mark. Never was he accused of loving this present age or of seeking to stand well with the religious world. He was no fawner on the rich and great. He was no despiser of the poor, nor covetous of social distinction. Still less could it be said that he shirked the reproach and the sufferings of the Christian life; or that he declined the constant burdens and trials of that holy fellowship. Nobody taxed him with half-heartedness to the “within” which grace has formed, or could lay the charge of coquetting with such as ought to be avoided scripturally. He that was in due time honored of God to write the inspired narrative of our Lord's service incurred no suspicion of laxity or indifference. Who could accuse him of barely keeping within the form of communion or of cultivating the friendship of its adversaries?

No; John Mark had grown weary of the labor, scorn, and opposition of the first apostolic journey from Antioch; and Paul refused association with him again in that work till his consecration of spirit was proved beyond dispute. Paul would have no honey any more than leaven in the oblation; he looked for unction from the Holy One, and that seasoning of salt which should never be lacking. Barnabas alas! in this question thought more of his relative than of the Master, confounded graciousness with grace, slighted the wise and holy warning of Paul, and henceforth lost notice for himself and his work in the divine records of the chronicle which tells the tale. Nor this only; for when Paul chose Silas and set out, he was recommended to the grace of the Lord by the brethren (compare Acts 13:1-4; 14:26). Nothing of the kind is said of Barnabas now, but an ominous silence prevails.

It was in vain for Barnabas to talk about his “right” any more than “love” or “largeness of heart,” pleas often urged in excuse without the least real ground. No one trenched on John Mark's title to fellowship with any or all of its privileges.

No one forbade John Mark to preach where he pleased over “the field;” nor did anyone desire to close his mouth in the assembly, be it in dangerous and evil; whereas the service demanded Antioch or Jerusalem or anywhere else. But it was quite another thing after his failure, to put him forward again till his recovery was proved, in a service conspicuous and weighty and as honorable as full of difficulty. What consistent part could he take in a testimony of hardness and danger, who was known to have so soon withdrawn himself, even before persecution grew hot, or shameful usage set in, or resisting unto blood? How could a runaway not yet restored exhort the disciples to continue in the faith? With what face could such a one preach that through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom?

Alas! in our day far more glaring is the incongruity which a fleshly or worldly-minded policy dictates. And the low scattered state of Christendom is often argued as its excuse or extenuation. But that low state is never rightly used save to overcome it by faith, certainly not to yield to it by those who profess to feel its evil, which is but to sink lower still. What could expose the testimony of God's truth to greater ignominy and juster censure for hollowness than to put forward men whose ways are glaringly out of harmony with their theme, and even a source of continual pain and shame to those that love them best?

Besides, when a self-willed act like this takes place, which violates the spiritual sense of true-hearted souls as not of the Lord, whatever the motives, it naturally (not to say inevitably) breeds party and division. For the faithful and wise cannot but blame it, especially if initiated without seeking counsel or yet worse if pursued against it. There is in our day and perhaps always a radical spirit, ready to oppose those whom God has given to lead or guide, and as ready to support such as are disposed to independency and self-assertion. For the same person who plays the despot in his own sphere often incites to insubordination elsewhere. What can the unhallowed issue be but confusion and every evil work?

It is a comfort to think that eventually grace blessed, not the weak temporizing of Barnabas, but the fidelity of Paul. For, years after, he was led by the Spirit to write cordially in favor of Mark (Col. 4:10, 11, Philem. 1:24 Tim. 4:11): a joy at the end greater than the sorrow of earlier days, when he refused to sanction the wish of his dearest friend, even at the cost of parting from him as a colleague.

I Could Wish Myself Accursed From Christ

I do not suppose these words are often taken as a text. If Paul had not given utterance to them, it is hardly too much to say that nobody else would have imputed such sentiments to him. It is true that the English Versions, Authorized and Revised, alike give it a little more strongly than the original warrants. At any rate the Greek simply says, “I was wishing, or praying." It was doubtless but an impossible wish of love, such as Moses had felt and expressed before. For Paul was the last man deliberately to wish himself “accursed from Christ.” As he more than any man knew and appreciated what it is to be “in Christ,” so he must necessarily have had the keenest sense of the infinite misery consequent upon losing Christ—if that were possible. Indeed it could not be. None of all that the Father had given Him can be plucked out of the Savior's gracious hand. But still the apostle meant it at the time, meant it so much indeed that he was led of the Holy Spirit to record his wish on the imperishable page of scripture, where he solemnly affirms that the same Holy Spirit was a witness of his pain. And, I doubt not, there is more than one lesson to be learned from it.

And, first, it is most refreshing to find that Paul speaks out, as always, plainly and fearlessly, as well as most sincerely. We know of course that these qualities must characterize the divine word. Such seems but its low-water mark, if we may so term it. Still there is nothing stilted in the Bible. We no doubt are sometimes in danger of using high-flown language, of speaking or wishing it may be more as we fancy our brethren will approve, than as we soberly realize. We may be too careful at times to keep to the beaten track. Undoubtedly we should guard our words as well as our ways, and seek to speak only as the Holy Spirit would direct. But while, on the one hand, we must ever have this before us, and remember (I refer now to ministry of the word) that if we cannot “speak as oracles of God,” or as His mouth-piece, we had better hold our tongues, and restrain our lips and pens, yet we do well, while judging ourselves, not to refrain from speaking out just what we believe in our hearts to be His mind. And this quite apart from the wish to say anything startling or novel, which is of course the opposite fault of mere sanity.

“There are those,” an eminent writer has said, “who are fond of digging up a meaning from beneath a verse, which they would be amiably sorry to think any other human being had been so fortunate as to discover before them.” Of course I would commend nothing so unworthy. But the fact is that, leaving inspiration out of sight for a moment, Paul could afford to be, as I have said above, plain, fearless, and entirely sincere. He touched a harp of many strings. How many tones were in his voice! At, one time full of burning indignation, then subdued in pathos, anon quivering with delicate irony, but always earnest, elevated, and fearless before God. And such should our voices be in our measure, always bearing in mind that he was inspired, which we in any true sense are certainly not. For the word of God is both perfect and complete, and our words are worthless or worse, if they be not an echo of that which was “once for all delivered to the saints.” But still we may learn to be large-hearted from the wonderful expansiveness and elasticity, if I may so call it, of the great apostle. It seems to me this is one lesson we may get from the passage.

But the words of Paul become much more striking still when taken with their context. Is it not singular that we should be told of his “great sorrow and unceasing pain” immediately after the grand outburst that closes the eighth chapter? Perhaps, if we except the Ephesians and Colossians, there is no more triumphant language in the whole Bible than this, as there is none loftier in its sphere outside the words of our blessed Lord Himself, whose utterances necessarily have a unique majesty. Paul had just been saying that “nothing could separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Immediately after he speaks of wishing to be not merely “separated” but “accursed from Christ!” Even so, do not our hearts understand it? Do we not recollect in our own history occasions of deep trial following hard upon seasons of special elevation and holy joy in the truth? Surely then it is not written in vain, but for our encouragement, that he who was “not a whit behind the pre-eminent apostles” was momentarily disposed to wish himself “accursed from Christ.” No wonder we have our “ups and downs” if Paul felt thus. At the same time it is well to remember that the apostle's anguish was wholly unselfish, which is more than can always be said of ours. It was his consuming zeal for God's ancient people that caused the deep pain be felt at their rejection of his Master. Our sorrows are too often due to our own want of subjection to that Master. Not always indeed. There is such a thing as pure and unselfish sorrow in the contemplating of such a world as this. Those who know it know a little, and only a little, of what the apostle felt for the chosen people of Jehovah. And the record of this sorrow of his is just as much a part of revelation (no doubt a very much less important part) as his preaching of the Cross or his unfolding of the mystery. In this way too, as in those of direct teaching, we are meant through “the comfort of the scriptures” to “have hope.” We are encouraged after temporary grief or depression to rise on more buoyant wing. And One suffered even more than Paul (I speak not of the atonement, where He was alone), as His is and will be the greatest joy (Heb. 1:9). R. B., Jun.

[The writer is alone responsible for mod s of expression and his thoughts.

Ed. B. T.]

Reflections on Galatians 5:1-5

THE apostle has made it perfectly plain that the believer in Jesus is not under law. We are not children of the bondmaid, but of the freewoman, as Isaac of old. What we are, divine grace has made us; it is no question of human effort at all. This is now followed up by urgent exhortation. “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (ver. 1). The Galatian movement, instead of being an advance, was retrogression. It was letting slip the blessedness into which God introduces all who have faith in His Son. We have not to make out a place for ourselves with God. He has made one for us on the basis of Christ's work; we have simply to abide there in full enjoyment.

The matter is then put very strongly. “Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing” (ver. 2). The Galatians never meant this. They thought that to engraft circumcision &c. into their Christianity was to improve it. But human works and divine grace cannot go together. We cannot be justified on two opposite principles. If we stand upon works, we are ruined men, whether Jews or Gentiles. There is no rest for the soul on such ground, and no confidence. As for Paul, he had abandoned fleshly efforts once for all as useless, and was standing before God in the righteousness which is of God by faith. Christ was all to him.

To adopt circumcision was to incur the whole responsibility of the law. “For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law” (vers. 3). This may require a little explanation. It is well known that circumcision was given long before the law. The Lord Jesus remarked to the Jews that it was not of Moses, but of the fathers (John 7:22). The institution of it is found in Gen. 17. It is a sign that flesh can have no recognition with God, and that sentence of death must be passed upon it. Faith thus confessed the utter worthlessness of flesh, and availed itself of the provisions of God's grace. This is where Abraham stood, when at ninety-nine years of age, Jehovah renewed His promise as to the Seed, and gave him the sign of circumcision. On this ground he received blessing from God. It is solemn that such an ordinance should become a mere matter for fleshly glorying; but so it was in Israel. Flesh boasted, and took pride in the distinction. Had its meaning been understood, it would have been seen that God was pouring contempt by it on flesh and all its efforts.

In Moses' day the rite became incorporated with the law, hence the apostle's word in this epistle. It became an integral part of the legal system; therefore to take it up placed the soul under responsibility to do the whole law. This is very serious for souls who profess faith in Christ. The man that binds himself to meet the obligation of the law is a lost man, whoever he be. Law makes no distinctions, and shows no mercy.

The apostle becomes more vehement. “Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace” (ver. 4). Christ will not share His glory with another. The tendency of the Galatian movement is plainly shown—it was abandonment of grace. They sought to amalgamate principles that were mutually destructive. “If by grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace” (Rom. 11:6). We see in them how souls may be beguiled by Satan into consequences of which, at the beginning, they had no conception. They had no intention of giving up Christ, or of abandoning grace—but this was the tendency of what they were doing; nevertheless, thank God, all was not lost in their case. At heart they were true men, and he said, “I have confidence as to you in the Lord” (ver. 10).

All this is very serious for men in Christendom, if there were any eyes to see, and ears to hear. For what we see around us is not law pure and simple, nor grace in its abstract beauty, but a painful mixture of the two, to the marring of both. Paul trembled for souls in such a position; to him it was grave departure from the gospel of Christ.

The true Christian state, in contrast, is then briefly described. “For we, through the Spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith” (ver. 5). This is one of the few bright flashes in this epistle. Notice the words with care. We wait, not for righteousness, nor for the Spirit, but for the hope. Righteousness is ours now, we have been made the righteousness of God in Christ; and this can never be unsettled. The Spirit is God's gift to us now, for by Him we have been sealed for the day of redemption. All Christ's work being accomplished, and God having been glorified, the other Comforter has been sent from heaven, and is God's gift to every believer in the Lord Jesus. Then what wait we for? the hope. We do not get here what it is; it would not suit the character of the epistle. It is the Lord's coming to receive to Himself His own, to introduce us into the glory into which He has entered. To this, divine righteousness entitles us. Such a hope was never attached to legal righteousness. Suppose a man had kept the law in its entirety, would it have given him a claim to heavenly glory? All that God ever set before souls under law was to live long in the land which He had given them. But God is perfectly righteous in placing us in glory with His beloved Son. It is due to Him who suffered all for us and rose again.

For this we wait “by faith.” The Spirit sustains our hearts by the way, ministering Christ to us, and speaking to us constantly of the glory into which He has gone. Unbelief may mock and deride, but faith rests confidently. God will yet make good His word, and take us all out of this scene to be forever with the Lord.

James 2:20-21

THE allusion to the demons is a powerful illustration of the point in hand. None believe more decidedly than they; none anticipate their doom more surely or keenly. But such faith has no link with a new nature from God, nor does it issue in works that please Him. The demons are subject to the evil will of their chief, the devil. Man alas! plays his part in a way most offensive to God, boasting of a faith with even less feeling than the demons, and without the works testifying to a life received from Him. There is nothing to “show,” as there ought to be and must be if the gospel were accepted as it is truly, not men's but God's word, which is also energetic in those that believe.

“But art thou willing to learn, O vain man, that faith apart from works is dead (or, idle)? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when (or, in that) he offered Isaac his son upon the altar?” (vers. 20, 21).

As to the difference of reading in the first of these verses, the great majority of MSS. gives “dead “; but the witness for “idle” is ancient and excellent. The shade is but slight, the substantial sense remains as before. Only there was here as elsewhere the danger of assimilation, for the chapter ends with the conclusion that faith apart from works is “dead.” If “idle” were the true text in ver. 20, the language of ver. 26 would not be a repetition but a striking and effective climax. Hence Alford, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, with Westcott and Hort, prefer it.

Then we are confronted with an appeal to Abraham's case, always of the greatest weight with his descendants, and in the present instance an overwhelming disproof of the evil that is combated, “Was not Abraham our father justified by (or, out of) works when he offered Isaac his son upon the altar?”

It is the more decisive, because the work of Abraham here adduced had nothing in common with the benevolent or philanthropic works which men mean by “good,” and boast of as sure to weigh with God. To be willing to slay his son Isaac, on the contrary, this class of men would consider atrocious in Abraham, and only worthy of Moloch as they blasphemously add. They do not believe that God ever put Abraham to such a test, and become more and more bold in treating it as the Syrian legend of a barbarous age and of a heathen superstition.

Our Epistle, and it is not alone in this (for the Epistle to the Hebrews, wholly distinct as it is in character, is emphatically in accord), cites it as a deed of the highest moral excellence, and proving Abraham to be justified by works. It was characteristically an act contrary to every instinct of a father. It was enhanced by the fact that Isaac was “thine only son, whom thou lovest,” as God said in putting Abraham to this extreme proof. There was, on the face of the demand, the apparent frustration of those blessed hopes of blessing, long promised by God, “In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed,” to say nothing of making of him a great nation, and making his name great. How could this be if Isaac must now die, and this so unaccountably by his father's hand, as an offering to the God Who had wrought wondrously in giving him, and now strangely required his sacrifice? Doubtless God could give another son, and by Sarah if it so pleased Him; but this would not meet the case. For had not God said in calling his wife not Sarai but Sarah (Gen. 17) that the son of her, to make her mother of nations and of kings of peoples, would be this very Isaac, with whom He would establish His covenant for an everlasting covenant for his seed after him? There in fact it was Abraham's faith rested. He laughed, we may say, at impossibilities, in contrast with Sarah's laughter incredulous at first. The real impossibility was for God to lie. He was sure therefore that if Isaac had now to die, God would raise him up from the dead in order to make the promise good. Abraham's faith was now, not as before, that God would give him a son of Sarah, but that He could not fail to raise this son from the death now required, in order to fulfill all He had promised. Never such a trial of faith; never such a triumph by grace.

Long before this event, if late in Abraham's fruitful course, it is written that he believed in Jehovah, and He counted it to him for righteousness (Gen. 15:16). This is the most express acknowledgment of him as justified by faith. And scripture uses it beyond controversy in this way and to this end, as in Rom. 4. But in Gen. 22, as referred to in our Epistle, we behold the believing man “showing” his works and thereby justified. Nor can anything be more certain than that Abraham's work in offering Isaac his son on the altar derived all its value from his faith in God's call; so much so that without this it would have been heinously evil.

Peter's Preface

1 Peter 1:1-2

THE Epistles of Peter occupy an important place in the Scriptures. In them believers are regarded, not as sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus (as in Ephesians), but as strangers and pilgrims in the world going onward to the inheritance reserved in heaven, and subject to the government of God by the way. This line of things is highly necessary for our souls. It is not sufficient to be taken up with the Ephesian line, elevating though it is; Peter's aspect of truth has an equal claim upon our hearts.

My present object is to draw attention to Peter's preface to his first epistle, in which we shall find an assemblage of important truths for our souls. He wrote “to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.” These were scattered Jews, as we read in John 7:35, “The dispersed among the Gentiles.” James wrote in a similar direction, but addressed the whole twelve tribes. Peter, on the other hand, addresses only the believers among them. These were his allotted charge, as we know. The risen Lord bade him feed His sheep (John 21), meaning, I suppose, those of the circumcision. Other sheep were to be called in, who had never known the Jewish fold (John 10:16); but they in due time were committed more to the care of the apostle Paul. He that wrought mightily in the one to the apostleship of the circumcision, wrought in the other to the apostleship of the uncircumcision (Gal. 2:8). Consequently, Jewish believers are addressed in Peter's Epistles, though all that is written, one need hardly say, is for Gentile believers also.

They are described as “elect according to the fore-knowledge of God the Father.” This is a far higher thing than Israel's national election by Jehovah. As a people they were chosen of God, in time, to inherit the promises concerning the land. They were to be His people, walking in separation from the nations around, maintaining His truth in the midst of universal idolatry. How deeply they have failed, we know; but God will yet make His intentions good, for His gifts and calling are without repentance (Rom. 11:29). But during their rejection, God is speaking of another election, Believers in Jesus were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4). This, in contrast with Israel's election, is individual. It would not be correct to speak of the church, as such, as “elect,” though it be true of all the members who compose it. Here some fail in their apprehension of the mind of God. They like to think of the church as a whole as elect, leaving it an open question as to individual believers, who may, in their judgment, be finally disowned after all. But scripture is decisive and clear. Election is a truth of God, but it concerns individual believers, and not the church as such. These Jewish brethren, if one may so say, were an election out of an election. They had stood in the old Jewish circle of outward privilege; they had now been called out of it to enjoy God's eternal counsel-relationship with the Father as His children through grace.

Next we get the means whereby this election is made good, “through sanctification of the Spirit.” This again is in contrast with what Israel had known. Their sanctification was of an outward character, and by means of the law of commandments contained in ordinances (Eph. 2:15). By the possession of these, they were marked off from the uncircumcised around them. Flesh gloried in them, and despised others. But Christian sanctification is another and deeper thing. It is an inward work—the work of the Spirit of God. By His gracious operation in the soul, the person becomes set apart from God, to be His forever. It is important to observe the particular phase of sanctification that is in view in this place. It is absolute, not progressive. To bring the latter in here, as is often done, is to endanger the blessings of the gospel. The apostle put it before the sprinkling of the blood. Progressive sanctification never precedes this. Any efforts after holiness before the work of Christ is known, are merely legalism. The monastic principle is fundamentally false here. Souls who are utter strangers to the grace of God, and the virtues of the blood of Christ, endeavor by their own works to attain to holiness and thus to fit themselves for God. But this is vain, and not the gospel. Holiness, in the progressive sense, follows the reception of blessing; to attempt to place it anywhere else, is to upset all the truth of scripture. Hence, in Peter, it is the absolute aspect of the truth. Sanctification in this sense is true of every believer from the very first moment of the Spirit's work in the soul. This phase of the matter has been let slip seriously, to the injury of souls. Yet the scriptures say far more about the absolute aspect of sanctification, than the progressive. The reader should examine the following among other passages, 1 Cor. 6:11, 2 Thess. 2:13, 1 Cor. 1:30, Heb. 10:10-14.

There is more in Peter's preface— “unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” This is in plain contrast with the position taken up by Israel in Ex. 24. There they were set apart unto the obedience of the law. Moses “took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that Jehovah hath said will we do, and be obedient” (Ex. 24:7). Solemn obligation! In utter ignorance of themselves and of God, they undertook to carry out all the requirements of the law. The result we know. But the Christian is set apart unto a higher character of obedience— “the obedience of Jesus Christ.” We are to obey as He obeyed. The blessed One did not obey from dread of consequences, nor did the will of God come to Him as a check upon an opposite will in Himself. To Him it was a law of liberty, as James speaks. In all the perfection of the divine nature, He took delight in carrying out all God's will. Here is an example. We have been born of God, are partakers of the divine nature, and have His Spirit. It is ours now to render a prompt and happy obedience to His revealed mind and will in all things. It is one of the first inquiries of the new-born soul, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” The soul feels that the time past will suffice to have wrought the will of man, and it now fervently desires to please God. This we have to keep before us day by day. Thus do we become heavenly persons practically. The law, if kept, will never make a man what a Christian is expected to be. Can we wonder that those who look no higher than the law, regarding it as the proper rule of life, walk on low ground? Need we be surprised that such are involved with the world, to the hurt of their souls and the loss of their testimony?

Next we get, “the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” We are sanctified unto that also. Israel was sprinkled with blood at Sinai. “Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words” (Ex. 24:8). This was not atonement, For he sprinkled the book of the law also (Heb. 9:19). Atonement could have no place at the giving of the law, however suited, in the grace of God, after the infraction of it. The blood was intended as the sign of death which must be Israel's portion if the covenant was violated. But what a different voice has the blood of Christ! It not only speaks better things than that of Abel, but also better things than that of Sinai. It speaks of atonement made, of redemption accomplished. Blessed be God, it has been applied to us. The sprinkling of it upon us has rendered us clean before God, and every sin has gone from the conscience. In virtue of it, we may draw near to God without a veil, and worship in His holy presence. This is the happy place of the Christian. Would that our souls enjoyed it more thoroughly! Into all this blessing these dispersed Jewish brethren had been introduced, in glorious advance of everything known under the law. Yet alas! the bondage and distance they had been brought out of in order to share these blessings through faith in Christ, men in Christendom are now hankering after more than ever. May all our readers be preserved. Our souls are only secure from the efforts of the enemy when in real heart-enjoyment of the fullness of divine grace in Christ Jesus.

The Dimbleby System of Prophetic Dates: 5

WE are told that “there is another way of reaching the same result,” i.e., 5896(1/2), or our 1898(1/4), “viz., by dealing with Babylon” (p. 6). But this is only ringing a change without giving new evidence. It repeats what we have already had in substance with a variation of phrase. There is no proof here any more than before, but looseness in confounding Babylon with Babylonia, and its fall with that of the Beast, which quite differs. The prominence given to Babylonia introduces a fresh element of error of no small moment, which not only misleads but directly contradicts the warning of the Holy Spirit. The following is the new way of making out the case—

“3466(1/2) Babylon, with King Belshazzar,

fell by the sword of Cyrus.

200 years the Medo-Persians continued to

hold Babylon.

304 the Grecians held Babylon.

666 the Roman power dominated over

Babylonia.

1260 the Mohammedans succeeded, and are

to hold Babylonia 1260 years.

—————————

5896(1/2) again.

“Hence we see that the fall of Turkey will also literally be the fall of Babylonia, for the city of Babylon has no existence except by Constantinople its head, as described most graphically in Rev. 18”

We have already discussed briefly the assumptions unproved and the actual mistakes, in these alleged periods, wrong in the starting-point, and still more flagrantly in blotting out the predicted revival of the Roman Empire, on which final judgment is to be executed. We have shown the absurdity of the 666 “years” assigned to the Roman power on the ground of a scripture entirely misunderstood and in no way chronological; and also the anti-scriptural interpolation of an evil fifth power into Dan. 7; whereas the prophet distinctly intimates no more than four beasts, the last of which by its last chief's “great words,” brings us, not a mere change of dynasty as before, but definitive and divine judgment when the Ancient of days comes, and the Son of man's universal and everlasting dominion. The simple statement of Daniel excludes Mohammedanism from having anything to say to the “time, times, and half a time” of Dan. 7:25. Besides reasons were given why that term should be understood of 1260 days in the great future crisis.

But this dream of here introducing Turkey has misled Mr. D. to substitute the comparatively unimportant Babylonia for the portentous Babylon of Rev. 18, which is clearly not on the literal plain of Shinar, but that more corrupt system against which the great book of Christian prophecy so energetically testifies, having its central seat in Rome, and in Rome, not Pagan, but since it tortured the gospel into what a famous Pope called truly their “profitable fable.” For the corruption of the best thing is admittedly the worst corruption. No spiritual eye can contemplate what God says of Babylon in the Book of the Revelation without learning that of all. objects of divine displeasure none is so disgusting to God, none so roused the wonder of the prophet, none has so large notice in the latest inspiration, none filled heaven with a louder or more reiterated Hallelujah over her judgment. “The Beast” may be fuller of proud self will, violence, and blasphemy, the second or false prophet Beast more audaciously impious and lawless; and both suffer the due reward of their deeds in being cast alive together into the lake of fire that burns with brimstone. But she on whose forehead was written “Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of the harlots and of the abominations of the earth,” she who was drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus, has a character of loathsome hypocrisy, of shameless idolatry, and of gloating cruelty, which coupled with the highest pretension to truth, holiness, and title of universal rule, elicited the holy indignation of heavenly minds, even beyond the open madness of self-exaltation with which Satan filled the first Beast or his wicked ally claiming to be God in His temple.

How absurd then is this error about Turkey, which lands in the notion that Babylonia or the land of the Chaldeans is described in Rev. 18. Babylon of old was indeed the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldean's pride; but it has for ages been, according to Isaiah, as when God over threw Sodom and Gomorrah. It has, as Jeremiah predicted, “become heaps,” “an astonishment and a hissing without an inhabitant “; “jackals lie there,” and “owls dwell there.” No Arab pitches his tent there, nor there does “shepherd fold sheep.” Hillah's being built out of its ruins, like other greater places further off, in no way conflicts with the utter waste. “Thou shalt be desolate forever, saith Jehovah” (Jer. 51:26, 62). Babylon, not Babylonia, was by the inspiring Spirit made symbolic of another city, characterized in John's day as seated on “seven mountains,” in marked contrast with the Chaldean prototype, but even more emphatically than it, “the great city that reigneth over the kings of the earth” (Rev. 17:9-13). Further, the Beast, or Roman empire, was said to “carry her” (ver. 7), which is as inapplicable to Mohammedanism as to Babylonia. And how possibly make Babylonia in Mohammedan times to be the mother, not only of the harlots, but of “the abominations (or idols) of the earth”? A horrid imposture is Islam, a sensual brutal system of vain self-righteousness; but of all systems it is the most notoriously iconoclastic. The identification of it which Mr. D. desires with the Apocalyptic Babylon is therefore grotesquely false and impossible.

But there is more to observe. The error has the deplorable result of blinding souls to the hateful plague-spot of Rome, the great harlot, drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. Here again it is Rome, Popery in its central seat, that is characteristically thus branded far beyond Mohammedanism which expended its rage on idolators. One may not go with the dates as applied by the pious Fleming, or the late learned and God-fearing E. B. Elliott; but at least they were sound and godly in their abhorrence of the Roman harlot and her abominations. Ought we not to detest what God detests? Here was no “unchristian spirit,” but bright zeal against idolatrous Christendom, the guiltiest, haughtiest, and least scrupulous idolatry under the sun. It is no wonder that Pagans should persecute those that preached and lived the truth that condemned themselves; nor is it strange that Mussulmans should despise and hate image-worshippers, who were the worse for calling themselves Christian. But that a corrupt and worldly-minded system, claiming to be Christ's bride, should play the strumpet with the kings, intoxicate the masses, and persecute the faithful with an ingenuity of torture beyond either Pagan or Turk, could not but fill the prophet with extreme amazement. I do not believe that the little horn of Dan. 7 is the papacy, but the last apostate chief of the Roman empire when revived and filled with Satanic energy. I believe that “the harlot” is to he destroyed by the kings and the Beast before he is hurled into perdition, in God's judgment under the seventh vial (Rev. 16) Much that these Protestant expositors say of Babylon is true and wholesome; but what Mr. D. in this page writes of Babylon in the future is unmitigated error, and mischievous in its palliation of Rome. And here closes this notice of “The New Era at hand,” with more than sufficient proof given of its unreliability. There is no wish to add more.

On the Millennium: 6

THE second Lecture calls for fewer words. How strange the doctrine that Christ through His death bound Satan!—that this is the true interpretation of Rev. 20:1-3 (pp. 37-44)! and that the first resurrection of vers. 1-6 is not bodily but spiritual by baptism! Hence they live with Christ and are made unto God Kings and Priests in Him (p. 52), and even now judge the world and angels by the precepts of the Law, &c. represented by the 24 elders, as the four cherubim typify the Gospels! This Bp. Wordsworth will have to be the authorized interpretation of the church, attested for more than a thousand years by such as Origen, Dionysius, Jerome, Augustine, &c.

On the face of the prophecy this scheme ignores its plain structure. For Rev. 19 beyond a doubt supposes Babylon on earth fallen forever, and in contrast the marriage supper of the Lamb in heaven, followed by heaven opened, and the Lord with His armies, His saints, emerging to execute judgment on the Beast and the kings of the earth, and their armies. Thereon, not before, ensues the binding of Satan for a thousand years (not days), and the long predicted reign of the saints over the earth for the same long period. Yet during it the Beast reigns also, not only the ten horns but his the one great authority to whom the dragon gives his power! What?....during the reign of Christ and His saints! Such is Dr. W.'s scheme, hear on the contrary the scriptural expectation. “And it shall come to pass that Jehovah shall punish the host of the high ones on high, and the kings of the earth on the earth” (Isa. 24:21). “In that day Jehovah with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea” (chap. 27:1). Only the N. T. is fuller and more precise, giving stages in Rev. 12:2; 20:1-3, and ver. 10, of which the present vision is intermediate. The same N. T. leaves no shadow of doubt that, though the work is wrought by which Satan will be crushed forever, he is still active in deceiving the nations, as well as in tempting, hindering, and accusing the saints: Acts 5:3; 19:13-16, Rom. 16:20, 1 Cor. 5:5, 2 Cor. 2:11; 4:4; 7:5; 11:14; 12:7, Eph. 2:2; 4:27; 6:11, 12, 16, 1 Thess. 2:18; 3:5, 2 Thess. 2:2, 9, 1 Tim. 1:20; 3:7; 4:1; 5:15, 2 Tim. 2:26, James 4:7, 1 Peter 5:8, 1 John 2:13, 14; 3:8, 10; 4:4, 6; 5:18, 19, Rev. 2:9, 13, 24; 3:9; 9:11; 12:7-17; 13:1, 2; 16:13, 14. These scriptures abundantly prove that the promised binding is still future, and that Bp. W.'s notion is hopelessly at war with revealed truth. Nothing could be farther from his intention; which the more illustrates the peril of deserting the plain word of God in deference to the thoughts of then, however venerable or numerous. The binding of Satan is reserved for the presence and day of the Lord.

“The first resurrection” only, and brightly, confirms this. The O.T. saints and those of the N. T. the church were already in heaven; for how else could the Lamb's wife have made herself ready for the marriage? These saints had been symbolized by the 24 elders (Rev. 4, and in 5. also by the four cherubim): which is as sure from the context as the application to the 24 books of O.T. scripture and to the four Gospels is a chimera. Here that symbol changes to “the bride,” and “the guests” at the Lamb's marriage supper; and this again to “the armies” that follow the Lord out of heaven, when He assumes the character of Warrior. Then in chap. 20. we have the change from “white horses” to “thrones,” when the reign is to begin. In Dan. 7 the thrones were set. Here they are filled. “And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was given to them.” These were the saints already glorified, who had followed the Lord out of heaven (Rev. 18:14; 19:14).

“And [I saw] the souls of those that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God.” These were the martyrs whose souls were seen under the altar in Rev. 6:9, who were slain in the earlier persecutions of the hook after the elders were seen complete in heaven, and who were also told that they should rest yet a little while till their fellow servants also and their brethren that should be killed even as they were should be fulfilled. But now as these were fulfilled under the later persecutions of the Beast, these two classes are raised together. Hence we read, “and such as (or whosoever) worshipped not the beast nor his image, and received not his mark upon their forehead and upon their hand; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” “Souls” is therefore strictly correct, as in chap. vi. 9, so here in ver. 4. They had died and were seen in the disembodied state; but now “they lived,” which has no reasonable sense but in a resurrection from the dead, as it must be also to “reign with Christ a thousand years.” And this is the uniform apostolic doctrine of the N. T. “If so be that we suffer with [Him] that we may be also glorified with [Him]” (Rom. 8). “If we died with Him, we shall also live with Him” (2 Timothy H.). “Through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14).

Granted that “a thousand years' reign” must not be confounded with “reigning in life,” as all saints shall throughout eternity. But the principle of the difference is as clear as it is scriptural. The millennial reign is for those that suffer with Christ, which embraces all that are His in Old. and N. T. times till He comes for them and presents them on high. It is not restricted to saints who suffer for Him. All saints who from the beginning suffered with Christ share that reign. But those who suffered in the Apocalyptic troubles were only called of God while the glorified are seen on high. As they did not survive to welcome His appearing for the reign, they are thus raised at the last moment, not to be reigned over, but to reign with Christ like those already seen seated on the thrones. Those thus honored are then fulfilled. “The rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years should be completed. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: over these the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of the Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.”

Such is the simple and unforced interpretation of the vision, as worthy of the Lord and of the prophet, as that of the Lecture is mean, and harsh, as incongruous with the Apocalypse generally as with this particular context. The plain and just meaning furthers the action of the Book and is consistent with all revealed truth, not to say requisite for God's glory, and the Lamb at that juncture. “Know ye not that the saints (not the martyrs only) shall judge the world? Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” Those converted during the millennium escape all suffering with Christ; for there is no enemy there to sift or tempt, Satan being forcibly kept away. Hence they will have no such reigning before the world, then for the first time, as the millennium affords for Christ's holy sufferers. Yet like all saints, they “shall reign in life by the one, Jesus Christ.” Rom. 5:17.

It would have been easy to have criticized the lecture in detail from first to last; as it would have been difficult in that case to have avoided sharp notice of singularly wild sentiments, if one dealt with the statements as they deserved. It is preferred therefore to let the distinct enunciation of the truth itself dispel the error, which leaves a lamentable blank in the future of the universe, where God has revealed, in both Testaments, the grandest scheme for the glory of Christ and the saints of the heavenly places to the joy of all creation, especially of Israel and all the nations, before the judgment of the dead and the eternity which follows. How blind are all who, listening to tradition, fancy that the state of things which began with the cross, wherein Satan is still the prince and god of this age, is the reign of the saints with Christ predicted by John! No, that reign is the restitution of all things (Acts 3), the revealing of the sons of God, when the whole creation ceases to groan, the idols utterly pass away, all families of the earth are blessed in Christ, He and His heavenly ones shine in heavenly glory, and Jehovah alone is exalted in that day. The gospel and the church are given their special development in the N.T. But the visions of glory promised to Israel and of blessing for all the nations of which the O.T. speaks must surely be “in that day.”

Scripture Query and Answer: Marriage to an Unbeliever

.Q.-That a Christian is bound to abstain from marriage with an unbeliever is self-evident. But if the evil is done, what does scripture lay down as its remedy, or right dealing with it? F. F.

A.-The word of the Lord enjoins (Heb. 13:4), “Let marriage be honorable in all things,” a very different thing from the A. V. which makes it a necessarily dignified status for any and everybody. It is a solemn exhortation that nothing should be done in the relationship inconsistent with its holy and intimate character, as well as implying honor due to the relationship in itself and in every way. For Christians 1 Cor. 7:39 guards the limits of “will” with that sole worthy principle, “only in the Lord.” The immediate application is to a widow marrying again; but it would be absurd to restrict it to her, or to doubt that it equally applies to any Christian woman or man.

On the other hand the same chapter shows that a brother might have an unbelieving wife, as a sister an unbelieving husband, as is not infrequently the fact now as of old; and it deals with the case with the grace of the gospel in vers. 12, 13. In contrast with the rigor of the law, wherein separation was imperative if a Jew had taken a Gentile wife, “let him,” or her, “not leave;” as the children too were not “unclean,” but “holy.” Neither laxity nor bondage characterizes the gospel. if the unbeliever left, let him (or her): a brother or sister is not under bondage in such things; but God has called us in peace. What did each believer in the case know whether he or she should save the other? Clearly not a word anywhere sanctions contracting mixed marriage; but neither does the word prescribe putting away an offender. It is too often forgotten that godly discipline as revealed in the scriptures covers a great variety of dealing, and that not a little censure due to the Lord's honor should be as the general rule before a case ought to be before the assembly. So, even when that last resort here below is reached, rebuke has its just place no less than excision. It is deplorable when one or two rash men, and mistaken followers, see nothing but the assembly for every fault, and nothing but its extreme action. They are evidently far from spiritual, and in spirit rather Jews than Christians, though even that is morally better than laxity and lawlessness.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:30

THE verse we are now to consider demands close investigation, as it is not without importance and difficulty also. “And their dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest to Sephar, a mountain of the east” (ver. 30). It is beyond question a general description of the limits within which dwelt the many sons of Joktan. We have already identified in detail their local habitation throughout Arabia, with the slight exception of those who crossed to the western shore of the narrow strait that severs their father's land from Africa. There is therefore the best reason to reject the idea that they left their original seats for dwellings between “Mount Masius in the south part of Mesopotamia and an imaginary” mount adjoining Siphare, a city in Asia, as Dr. E. Wells conjectured in his Help to the Holy Scriptures i. 77 (Oxford, 1728). In fact Mount Masius forms the northern boundary of Mesopotamia; but this is a slight misapprehension to which the Μασσῆ of the LXX. may have led, in comparison with the chief error, as the Persian Siphare (city or mount) is still more untenable. And so must one think of Dr. C. Wordsworth's idea of Mesha as an island of the Tigris and of a Sephar on the Persian Gulf. Such limits do not include the dwellings of Joktan's sons.

Very different is the hypothesis of Bochart (Phaleg iii. 29) who identifies Mesha with Meza, which seems to be the same as Ptolemy's Μασσῆ (or Μοῦδα in the Periplus), a little north of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. But as he considers Sephar to be the mountain near Saphar in the hill-country between Yemen and Hadrdmaut, it seems clear that such limits (little above 200 miles) are incompatible with the widespread dispersion of the sons of Joktan throughout the southern half of the peninsula. For “the east” seems no difficulty when we bear in mind its usage as in Gen. 25:6.

Gesenius (Thes. i. 823) inclined therefore to the suggestion of J. D. Michaelis (Spicil. ii. 214, Suppl. 1561) of a Mesene (or Middle-land) between the mouths of the Pasitigris. Hence he understood the last part of our verse to mean “from Mesha unto Sephar and (or as far as) the mountain land of Arabia.” He lays it down as certain that “mountain in the east” is not to be joined in apposition with Sephar, but is some other third place to which the boundary extended. It is difficult to understand on what ground this consummate Hebraist so decidedly maintained a construction which seems extremely harsh; for his rationalism did not here intrude to bias him. Like many, he and of late M. Fresnel (Lettres sur l'Hist. des Arabes) regarded Sephar as the metropolis of the region of Shehr, between Hadrdmaut and OnAn; as the highland of the east he held to be the chain of mountains near the middle of Arabia from the Hedjaz on the Persian Gulf. It is called to-day Dhafiri or Dhafhr. But as of the ancient name, so of the modern, there are various places so called.

It becomes therefore a nice point to decide which is here intended. For there are, as C. Niebuhr and E. S. Poole say, no less than four places bearing the same name, besides several others bearing names that are merely variations from the same root. Now Niebuhr (Descr. iii. 206, 207) speaks both of the ruins of DhafAr near Yemen, and of Sumara or Nak'l SumAra as the greatest and the highest mountain he had ascended in Yemen, and very probably the same that the Greek geographers called Climax (Κλίμαξ ὄρος of C. Ptol, vi. 7). This is near the Dhagr which Bochart identifies with the Σαπφάρα μητρόπολις of Ptolemy, capital of the Σαπφαρῖται (vi. 6, § 25), and with the Sephar in our text. Dhafar seems the same city a little disguised, which the author of the Periplils and Diodorus Sic. called Aphar, as others call it Tafar?

If then Sephar be traced to the Dhafar on the border of Yemen and Hadramaut in the S.W. of Arabia, this goes far to determine the site of Mesha as in the N. E. of the peninsula. This satisfies best the compendious summary of the Joktanite settlements, answering to the similar allusion to the Canaanite border, N. and S. in ver. 19, which follows the details of their several families. Now there is a mountain chain in the Nedjd, which was the boundary of the sons of Joktan in that very region, on the north of which wandered their adversaries, the sure indication of a distinct race. The Beni Shaman or Samman, the sons of Mishma or Masma, son of Ishmael, being no other than the MaEcrattiavEig of Ptol. (vi. 7, § 21), jealously guarded mount Zames or Zametas (as the Alexandrian Geographer calls the mountain) against intrusion from the south, where lay the Κατανῖται or Joktanite races. Equally hostile were the Aenezes, or sons of Kenaz. Hence Chesney's suggestion of Mekkah for Mesha is untenable; for the tribe of Harb, the Cerbae, Darrae, &c., descendants of Kedar and enemies of the Joktanites, was paramount in the Hedjaz. The Kenezites, or sons of Kenaz, were of Edomite extraction and dwelt north of the Salapeni, or sons of Sheleph, a Joktanite.

It may be added that it was to Yemen the Greek and Latin geographers applied the epithet Εὐδαίμων, or Felix (Happy), which was at a later time extended more widely, as when one of our own poets speaks of “Araby the Blest.” There was no little exaggeration in allowing the justice of such a claim, even allowing for the mystery in which the Arabian traders indulged with their western and even eastern customers, in attributing to their own country some precious imports from lands more distant still. For mendacity has long infected the Arab people like others of the east. Yet it is not improbable, as Oriental scholars suggest, that the designation may have been an accidental misnomer. Thus Felix was a mistranslation of El-Yemen, or the right hand, the fortunate side in usage of the Greeks, whom the Roman poets mostly followed, Notoriously, as the face was directed to the east, so the peninsula lay as compared with Syria, EshSham, the left hand. Hence was Arabia said to be “fortunate” or “blessed” through a word of good omen, which was afterward by a mistake construed of extraordinary wealth and fertility.

If Mohammedan fanaticism has for long centuries shut out Arabia and its numerous races from the free or friendly intercourse of the rest of mankind, it is interesting to note the striking help given by the Greek and Latin geographers before and since the Christian era to identify places and races with those which then existed. Of comparatively late years the travels of C. Niebuhr, Burckhardt, and Wellsted have contributed to prove that they still exist, though it also appears that the religious imposture has not failed to cover the land and the people with malignant and withering influence. For there are but traces and ruins where considerable tribes and cities once flourished. Happily for the object here in view in no part of the world do names abide more signally resisting change or surviving it, than among the sons of the east.

The Offerings of Leviticus: 10. Peace Offering of the Herd

Lev. 3:1-5

THE Peace offering emphatically, and among the sacrifices distinctively, expressed fellowship. Here, however, it is the highest aspect which is put forward. It is only in “the law” of these offerings that we find the larger communion set out. Meet it is that God should be honored in the first place; and this is carefully done throughout the chapter.

“And if his oblation be a sacrifice of peace offerings, if he present of the herd whether male or female, he shall present it without blemish before Jehovah. And he shall lay his hand upon the head of his oblation, and slaughter it at the entrance of the tent of meeting; and Aaron's sons the priests shall sprinkle of the blood round about on the altar. And he shall present of sacrifice of peace offerings a fire offering unto Jehovah: the fat that covereth the inwards and all the fat that is on the inwards, and the two kidneys and the fat that is on them, which is by the flanks, and the net above the liver which he shall take away as far as the kidneys; and Aaron's sons shall burn it on the altar upon the burnt offering which is on the wood that is upon the fire: a fire offering of sweet odor to Jehovah” (vers. 1-5).

As usual, the most abundant offering occupies the first place. It represents Christ entered fully into according to God's mind, not for atonement as in Lev. 1, still less for sin or trespass as in chaps. 4. 5., yet slain and the blood sprinkled or dashed round about upon the altar, and so distinguished from every form of the Meal offering. Simple faith is ever strong and intelligent; subject to the written word, it rests through grace on divine righteousness; it owns according to the Spirit's testimony man wholly evil as well as guilty and lost, but it no less owns the believer forgiven and saved according to God's estimate of Christ's work, so that doubt henceforth is treated as sin, and the gospel is received in full assurance of faith. Christ therefore is apprehended in the richest form of this fresh presentation of God's grace, where His enjoyment of the Savior's death in its positive excellency as the deepest ground of communion is set forth for the joy of faith. We may see a beautiful answer to it, as well as to the Holocaust, in our Lord's expression of His death in John 10:17, 18. “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life (soul) that I may take it again. No one taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have authority to lay it down, and have authority to take it again: this commandment I received of my Father.” In this point of view, the objects of compassion and their clearance by atonement vanish to leave the absolute devotedness of Christ to the divine glory alone; so as to furnish the highest motive for the Father's love, independently of evil to be judged and benefits to be conferred righteously. How wondrous that once guilty and selfish creatures, such as we, can be let in to share such divine delight and find in it even now the spring of our deepest worship!

Latitude ordinarily was left, as compared with the Burnt offering; male or female might be presented; for man was to share as well as God. But it must be “without blemish,” for it typified Christ. And in both cases the offerer laid his hand upon the head of his oblation, the witness of identity with the victim's efficacy; as indeed though for another end in the sacrifices for sin. Burnt, Meal, and Peace offerings, were alike Fire offerings and an odor of rest to Jehovah. But here it was the fat, all the inward fat, expressive of the sound state and intrinsic energy of the victim, no less than the blood, was for Jehovah only. Abel we see led thus by faith to honor God in his acceptable sacrifice, when Cain's unbelief sinned against Him.

It was exactly in place, and in due homage, that God should be shown thus honored. Even though fellowship of others, yea, of all that are His, should be afterward taught with careful minuteness, His part alone appears here in the type. The blood was for Him alone; the fat exclusively His. What excellency He found in that which was the meaning and substance and end of these shadows! To every other, the blood, the forfeited life, was prohibited utterly; and the fat elsewhere, the proud rebellious self-complacency that kicked against God's will and His glory. In Jesus, for both cases, what savor of holy and gracious devotedness to His name, inwardly and outwardly up to death, yea, death of the cross! What a new and mighty motive for infinite love, which there found its adequate object and its constant delight in “the Lord's death.” What an unfailing source and everlasting sustainer of worship to His own who in faith taste of His joy—joy in God!

We may observe (Lev. 17) that in the wilderness, whenever one of the house of Israel killed an ox, lamb, or goat within the camp, or killed it without the camp, he was bound to bring it unto the door of the tent of the meeting and present it as an oblation to Jehovah, Who was entitled to the blood upon His altar and to the fat also. All such flesh, before being eaten, must be thus sacrificed as Peace offerings to Jehovah. So were Israel to walk, even in their daily food testifying their communion with Him Who gave them it and all things. Are we, Christians, to fall short of Israel? Have we not the “better thing?”

The Fruitless Fig Tree

Luke 13:6-9

MEN are apt to dwell on shocking events, and to measure the guilt of the victims accordingly. So it was when the Lord warned of the crisis for the Jewish people which His presence could not but bring about. For He was there in the testimony of the truth and in the humiliation of grace, not yet in the power and glory of the Kingdom; He was there for faith to receive, but for unbelief to refuse or despise. If rejection unto death was before Him, they were on the way to the sure dealings of God in judgment. Then it was that some reported to Him the tragic end of the Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices. But our Lord in answer corrects their own thought of exceptional guilt in that case, and solemnly warns them that, except they repented, they should all perish in the same way. Nay more, He points to the eighteen men, not slain by an unfeeling and truculent Roman, on whom the tower of Siloam fell. Yet were they debtors beyond all the men in Jerusalem? On the contrary He repeats, “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” This is God's voice to sinful man in the present disorder of the world. Man is no competent judge of the tangled scene; but he is loudly called through such events to judge himself before God, in short to repent. And the Lord gives the call divine force: “except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”

O my reader, except you repent, worse impends over you than what befell those then occupied with passing sorrows. How often their blood was mingled afterward with their sacrifices by their own infuriate zealots! Gorse, far worse, impends over you than when the burning ruins of the temple buried its multitudes, who vainly trusted the sanctuary instead of repenting of their sins. For what is any judgment in providence compared with the everlasting judgment of God? And what is more inevitable for man? “It is appointed to men once to die, but after this, judgment.” How unutterably appalling for the unrepentant! For it surely means no less than everlasting destruction.

The Lord adds a parable also to enforce the truth. “A certain one had a fig-tree, planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, Behold, three years I come seeking fruit on the fig-tree and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? But be answering saith to him, Sir, let it alone this year also, until I shall dig about it and put manure. And if it produceth fruit thenceforth, —; but if not, thou shalt cut it down” (vers. 6-9).

Can any doubt be that the Lord has in view the elect nation planted, not casually, but in His vineyard, with every advantage of site and of care? But no fruit was found. Of this there was more than adequate witness. For three years it is waited on for fruit, but there is none. It was worse than useless. It was a nuisance. Cut it down, said the owner. But He Who felt for God's rights and called the guilty to repent felt also compassion for man, and urges the plea, “Let it alone this year also.” New and final measures were to be taken. “If it shall produce fruit thenceforth, —; but if not, thou shalt cut it down.”

Alas! we know the issue. No wonder the Lord leaves a blank. What had He not done? What had He not suffered? Even on the cross He cried, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” But as they bore no fruit—nothing but leaves, so they in their pride should not be forgiven, rejecting every proof of their need and guilt. Hence they have lost not only their place as a nation but their religious status. The fig-tree is withered away. It was the people under law; never more shall there be fruit of it forever. Thank God, there will be a generation to come; and it will believe in Him. That generation, not this, will repent. That generation, not this, will say, Blessed be He that cometh in the name of Jehovah. His blood will wash them from their sins, instead of being as now a curse on them and their children. And He will write His laws in their minds, as He will give them to their hearts, never remembering more their sins and their lawlessnesses. For it is the new covenant of God's grace, not of man's works only to show them worthless and evil.

Meanwhile God is sending His glad tidings to you; to Gentile as well as Jew; yea now to the Gentiles emphatically, for it is the day of grace. He now enjoins men that they should all everywhere repent. Oh! hear the call and own yourself lost that you may receive the Savior. This He is to the uttermost now toward all that repent. How would it be with you if He were come to judge the habitable earth in righteousness? How could you stand before the Judge? It is now His call that you repent. He waits to be gracious to you in all your ruin and to save you from your sins. He can afford and loves to do it, for His blood cleanseth from every sin.

Unity According to the Apostle John

The great truth and privilege of unity appears prominently in the Gospel of John and in the Epistles of Paul; but it is viewed in a different way by these two eminent servants of the Lord, by each subordinately to the purpose which the inspiring Spirit of God had in the work given them respectively to do. In the writings of both, unity supposes and is based on the Lord's death, as in the gospel of grace and in the church of God. Without the accomplishment of redemption as well as the incarnation not one of these things could be. Every intelligent believer knows what a place the apostle of the Gentiles was led to assign to the work of the cross, whereby God was glorified, the door opened to Gentiles no less freely than to Jews, and the mystery of Christ and the church came into view. But it is no less plain in the Gospel of John, which only the present paper contemplates, though its main scope undoubtedly is to set forth Christ's personal glory, and the mission of the Holy Spirit to be here in His own on His departure to heaven.

Hence in John 10 the Lord explains His giving His life, as the Good Shepherd, for the sheep, in contrast with both the thief and the hireling (vers. 10-13). His laying down His life for the sheep He repeats in ver. 15 before He speaks of His other sheep, “not of this fold” (Judaism), but believers from among the Gentiles, whom also He must bring, as hearing His voice; “and there shall be one flock, one Shepherd” (ver. 16). Here is in this Gospel the first explicit announcement of unity for the flock answering to the one Shepherd. It is due to His glory and His love, to His person and His work. They are His own sheep, they hear His voice. To Him the porter opens, as He only is the Shepherd, Who calls them by name and leads them out. For He disowns the enclosure now condemned, that once had divine sanction; and when He put forth all His own, He goes before them, and the sheep follow Him. He is thus their way, protection, and warrant. A stranger they will not follow. It is not that they know every snare; but they know His voice (either in Himself or in whomsoever He speaks), not the voice of strangers. How simple and secure for him who hears!

Plain and all-important as this was, for it is the introduction of Christianity, it was a dark proverb when first spoken. “They understood not what things they were which he spoke to them.” So it was when even before His Galilean ministry He spoke of raising up the temple of His body (2:9-22). This the resurrection cleared up much, the coming of the Spirit what remained. But He adds a new and deeper figure with the utmost solemnity; He was “the door,” not of the fold, not of Israel, but “of the sheep.” All that claimed them before He pronounces thieves and robbers. Are not all since yet more blasphemously guilty? How awful for either! For the Father has given all execution of judgment to the Son on Whose rights they encroach, Whose title they in effect deny, as those that honor Him honor the Father also. The sheep hear Him, not these pretenders; and He is the door, so that if anyone enter in (for it is sovereign grace), he shall be saved, and shall go in and shall go out, and shall find pasture. By Him (not the law) are salvation, liberty, and food. In contrast with the thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy, Christ came that the sheep might have life, yea abundantly in Himself risen. What can hinder Him and His grace to His own?

Thus He presents Himself as the Good Shepherd, and His laying down His life for the sheep as its exercise and proof, in contrast with the hireling, whose own the sheep are not, seeing the wolf's approach, leaving the sheep, and fleeing; so that the wolf seizes and scatters them. Far from self He cares to the uttermost for the sheep, and repeats His gracious title (14), declaring their mutual knowledge according to the knowledge the Father had of Him and He of the Father, saying again, He lays down His life for the sheep. This introduces the Gentile sheep, who could not consistently with the divine ways be brought in, and form with the Jewish ones “one flock,” till He died, rose, and ascended to heaven. Here however the Lord, though revealing and reiterating His devotedness in dying for His sheep, speaks with the authority of His person according to divine counsels. Nor is there a passage in scripture which more definitely claims the “one flock” for dependence on Himself, or which excludes more peremptorily the pretensions of men to appropriate this place of His, the only competent and worthy One, the center of all.

Not for a moment is it overlooked that, in restoring Peter from his distressing fall, He made its completeness evident before chosen witnesses by charging him to feed His lambs, to shepherd or tend and feed the sheep. Nor again does one forget that the ascended Christ gave gifts to men, not apostles and prophets only as the foundation (Eph. 2, and 4.), but evangelists, and shepherds and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, &c. till we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. But He has in no way abnegated His own relations because He gives and sustains subordinates, each in his place to serve and do His will as laid down in His word. Nor is any notion less worthy than to relegate the “one flock, one Shepherd” only to the future and heaven. It is here that we need to recognize both, as He recognizes them. It is now that the enemy subtlety and persistently and everywhere tempts the saints to give up the truth of the relationship as a present fact, and the responsibility it involves on us to walk faithfully in accordance. It is revealed to act on our faith and practice as we are on the earth. In heaven by-and-by there will be no question, for that which is perfect will have come.

In chap. 11:51, 52 is the next reference. Here it is the comment of the Holy Spirit on the words of Caiaphas to the Jewish council, not in parabolic form like our Lord's in chap. 10., but in terms void of figure. “Now this he said not of himself (ἀφ’ἑαυτοῦ); but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but that he should also gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.”

More than one weighty truth denied in Christendom we find here unambiguously. To the cynical sentiment of the wicked high priest God gave a turn of incomparable grace. Its adoption in apostate unbelief by the Jews in the politic sense of Caiaphas was the ruin of their place and their nation by the Romans. By-and-by mercy will prevail according to the oath sworn to Abraham, glorying over judgment. Jesus died for the nation, not to gather it into the church as some vainly imagine, nor assuredly to make it an object of irreversible woe like the Babylon of the seven hills, but to save and bless Israel as such at the end and forever, beyond all that was ever tasted at the be ginning under David and Solomon. For He Who died for them will come and reign over them, an infinitely greater than either (to cite a few decisive proofs, Isa. 4:2-6; 9:7, 8; 11).

But He should die, said the Spirit, for another purpose wholly distinct, and about to receive its accomplishment in the very near future while He sits at God's right hand on high. The virtue of His death was then to be shown in the new and wondrous work of gathering together in one the scattered children of God. Till Jesus died and went to heaven and sent down the Holy Spirit, nothing of the kind was known or could exist. In Judaism as established of God provisionally (and He had no religious dealings of a public nature elsewhere), no such gathering was thought of. It was an elect nation responsible to be governed by His law; and they were bound to separation from all other nations. There He dwelt Who brought them forth from Egypt to this end, Jehovah their Lord.

Now that the Jews rejected Him Who was not Messiah only but God, His death (their awful sin) became in God's ways the basis of an entirely different and an incomparably “better thing,” the gathering together in one of God's scattered children. It is the church undoubtedly, but not viewed as “one body” which was revealed elsewhere. It is family union, in the closest connection with life eternal, the special truth prominent throughout the Gospel and the Epistles of John, the groundwork of communion with the Father and the Son, as we find explicitly there.

Severance between the Gentile believers and the Jewish was therein intolerable. Yet before the cross the barrier, it is notorious, subsisted as God's actual order; and Jesus while yet alive in flesh charged the twelve, saying, Go not into a way of the nations, enter not into any city of the Samaritans. Risen from the dead, He expressly bids them disciple all the nations. For the children of God were to be gathered in virtue of His death into one, they “one flock,” as He “one Shepherd.” Fleshly distinctions, and outward ordinances, vanished away before the infinite efficacy of that death which blotted out the sins of all believers in the gospel, and by the grace which united them.

John 15 is not here alleged; because in the teaching of the Vine and its branches the Lord does not set forth our oneness with Himself, but our need of dependence continual on Him in order to bear fruit. The necessity of communion with Him practically is the point, not the privilege of union.

But it is in chap. 17 where this great truth of family union has its fullest expression. And no wonder; for it is the Son pouring out His heart's desires about His own to the Father before His departure. There are three occasions in our Lord's utterance where oneness is asked for His saints, and each of these has its own distinctive character.

First, in ver. 11 He says, “Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one as we.” It is for those who then surrounded Him (as is certain from vers. 12, &c.), about to preach, teach, and act with apostolic authority when, Himself gone on high, the new work of God had to see the light as the witness of Christ here below. He is not content with requesting that, as He was taking a new position as the glorified Man in heavenly glory, in virtue of His person and of His work (1-5), they might share it as far as could be, both before the Father (6-13) and before the world (14-21); He asks that in this they might be “one,” further adding “even as we.” This goes wonderfully far in His demand on the Father. And it was wonderfully answered in that unity of mind and purpose, of word and deed, of heart and service which characterized that holy band. Where and when was there anything to compare with it at any epoch before or since? It is the more striking in the twelve; for we heard of their marked differences, and their mutual jealousies, (alas! how like other saints and other servants of the Lord in all ages), which the presence of the Lord only checked but in no way excluded, as the Gospels faithfully tell us. See the same men when the Holy Spirit was given: how their words and ways by His power only evinced the activities and affections of the life they had in Christ! “Peter standing up with the eleven,” they were now truly one. If the multitude of those that believed could be and is said to be of one heart and one soul, and earthly possessions only gave occasion for love, still more emphatically was it true of those “God set first in the church.”

Secondly, in ver. 20, 21 the Lord makes request “not for these only, but also for those who believe on him (Christ) through their word.” This enlarges the sphere, and embraces the mass of the saints following, who received the gospel in the love of the truth. Here therefore, anticipating the world-wide testimony and its rich results, He says “that they may all be one, as thou Father [art] in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou didst send me.” It is not at all so simple and absolute as in the first case, where divine power wrought to secure an end so all-important. The vast range of their mission was an astonishing witness to the grace that operated in the face of every hindrance, but the effect of the power was attenuated ere long and never so complete. It is the unity of grace, of Christians in the Father and the Son (“one in us”), rising above obstacles within and without through the power of what was revealed and of Him Who made the blessing theirs: to the world, which had known them so different in every way and now beheld them “one,” a testimony far mightier than miracles however striking and numerous. And so it runs, “that the world may believe that thou didst send me.” For this was what sounded out in every place—that the Father sent the Son as Savior of the world, themselves its living example in their measure, all prejudice notwithstanding.

Thirdly, “the glory which thou hast given me I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one, that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them even as thou lovedst me.” Here, though the Lord gave the title then, He looks on to the glory and the glory displayed to the world. It is oneness in that day, and is a character without alloy, quite answering to that of the new Jerusalem in Rev. 21, where the world beholds the glory of the heavenly city, the Bride or Lamb's wife; not the mutuality of grace as now, but the order of glory, Christ in the glorified saints, and the Father in Christ. Hence then only will they be “perfected into one;” and then only will the world “know” that the Father sent the Son. For how else could those who were once sinners be in heavenly glory but by His Son sent for their salvation? How else, that the Father loved them even as He loved the Son, but by their manifestation with Him in glory? It is now a question of the world's “believing;” in that day the world will “know,” because it will see the glory in which Christ and the church will shine together.

Reflections on Galatians 5:6-12

VERSE 6 aptly follows the concise statement of verse 5. If the one sets forth the Christian position in contrast with the bondage and gloom of the law, the other shows the moral walk which God looks for in every Christian. “For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love” (ver. 6). The apostle's language is very similar in chap. 6:15, and 1 Cor. 7:19. Considerable value attached of old to the solemn rite. It was then a great matter whether a man was circumcised or not. But, Christ having come, the reality of all has been brought in for those who believe; the shadow in this, as in everything else, fades away. True circumcision—death to flesh and separation to God—is found, for faith, in the cross of Christ, nowhere else (Col. 2:11, 12). Possession of, or submission to, ordinances renders no one acceptable to God. He looks for the practical fruit of faith in all who bear the name of His Son. Faith works by love, and leads to the fulfilling of the commandments of God. Where this is seen, all else is of small account.

This point is largely developed by the apostle James. Some have fancied contradiction to Paul in the writings of this apostle; but there could not be a greater mistake. The fact is, both take up different aspects of the truth. Paul more generally dwells upon what concerns our God, which is not of works, but altogether of grace, founded on Christ dead and risen: James presents the other side, and speaks of our profession of faith before men. James says “Show me.” Hence he lays down that to bid a needy brother or sister be warmed and filled without giving them the necessary means is profitless faith (James 2:14-17; compare 1 John 3:16-18). If there be no works, it is dead, being alone. Faith works by love. It expresses itself in love to God, and to all those who are begotten of Him. The Thessalonians are bright examples of this (1 Thess. 1:3; 4:8-10).

The Galatians were apparently lacking here, as in everything else. They were biting and devouring one another, and thus stood condemned by the very law in which they were now boasting. The law at least taught love to one’s neighbor, though it did not, as the gospel, teach love to an enemy.

The apostle yearned over these misguided souls. “Ye did run well, who did hinder you, that ye should not obey the truth? This persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you” (vers. 7, 8). It is a serious thing to put a stumbling block, or an occasion to fall, in the way of the Lord's little ones (Matt. 18:6). He is very jealous over His own that are in the world. Any service, however small, rendered to them for their furtherance and joy of faith He will abundantly reward in the approaching day; as on the other hand He will reckon assuredly with those who have checked them in their onward course. The bloom had departed from these souls in Galatia, their love had grown cold, and their faith had become enfeebled, results of the unholy efforts of the Judaizing teachers among them. The movement was not of God. The work of His Spirit never leads to such deplorable results. He had called them in the grace of Christ: this persuasion had another source altogether. Paul describes it as “leaven,” even as he speaks of the moral evil which was defiling the assembly at Corinth. “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” (ver. 9)

The Lord spoke of corrupt doctrine in this way. Thus He warned His disciples. “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees” (Matt. 16:6). They foolishly thought that He referred to their lack of loaves; but “He bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees” (Matt. 16:12). All leaven was to be purged out of the habitations of Israel when they kept their feasts to Jehovah, and none was permitted in any offering to Jehovah made by fire. It is a type of evil everywhere in the word of God. Neither moral nor doctrinal leaven must be sanctioned in the assembly of God; or its character is falsified, and its testimony is lost. We need to especially remind ourselves of this to-day. There is increasing corruption of doctrine in every direction; and the gravest possible teaching is often screened and palliated for party purposes. Corrupt doctrine is leaven, and does its deadly work among souls until dealt with in the fear of God.

We need not wonder at Paul's concern for the Galatians. They were his children in the faith, his work in the Lord; and he groaned to see them led astray by evil men. But his heart was with God about them; hence he had confidence. “I have confidence in you through the Lord that ye will be none otherwise minded: but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be” (ver. 10). His language in this place may be compared with chap. 4:20. There he lets out his deep anxiety in view of their state and proclivities. Here he looks up to God, and his heart had rest. Israel when viewed in the plains of Moab presented a sorry spectacle, sufficient to destroy the confidence of any servant of God; but, when viewed from “the tops of the rocks,” their beauty, order, and justification could be proclaimed as seen by the eye of God (Num. 22-25). This could not fail, being divinely secured through grace.

Are any surprised at the strength of the apostle's language concerning the troublers? It is not inconsistent with faith working by love. It is one of the characteristics of divine love that it rejoices not in iniquity, but with the truth (1 Cor. 13). Divine love is not always saying smooth things. It is ever righteously indignant when truth is trampled in the dust and error is exalted. This may sound strange in a latitudinarian day such as the present, when everything is accepted or tolerated. Paul did not hesitate to denounce evil workers, nor to set before them the righteous judgment of God.

How different his own path! Faithfully preaching Christ on every hand, and willingly accepting in his own person and circumstances all the consequences of what he preached. “And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? Then is the offense of the cross ceased” (ver. 11). There seem to have been insinuations that the apostle was not consistent in his preaching—that he set forth in one place what he condemned in another. But this was false. He was no mere time-server or man-pleaser. He declared all the truth of God, not keeping back anything that was profitable. He never adapted himself to men's carnal tastes, though he would vary the manner of his instructions according to the condition of souls. He nowhere preached circumcision. There was nothing in his ministry that flattered the first man. If so, would he have had to suffer? Would Jews and Gentiles in every quarter, particularly the former, have heaped upon him every kind of indignity if he preached ordinances? Assuredly not; flesh loves them too well. The scandal of the cross would then be at an end, and the servant of Christ would have an easy path through this world.

This is precisely what has happened in Christendom. Ordinances have supplanted the true grace of God; a humanly appointed priesthood has taken the place of Christ and the Spirit; and the supporters and propagators of the system are in ease and honor in the world. Flesh has no quarrel with such men, but appreciates them. Persecution in such circumstances is impossible.

But the offense of the cross has not ceased. Let any set forth the full grace of God in the gospel, to the thrusting aside of ordinances and fleshly efforts in general; let any really exalt Christ and His work, in contrast with the first man; and it will soon be proved. What flesh loved in Paul's day, it loves still; and what it hated then, it hates as fiercely as ever. Flesh never changes in its antagonism to God, and in its dislike to His free grace revealed in Christ. The apostle concludes this part of his subject with the indignant exclamation. “I would they would even cut themselves off which would trouble you” (ver. 12).

James 2:23-24

BUT the reasoning goes farther, and the weight of Abraham's example is urged yet more in a way as telling as simple. So did our Lord Himself when here below in divine wisdom and grace dealing with the Jews; so did the great apostle of the Gentiles repeatedly and in the power of the Spirit.

“And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness, and be was called Friend of God. Ye see that a man is justified by works and not by faith only” (vers. 23, 24).

It is a striking arrangement that the offering up of Isaac is introduced before the statement of Abraham's believing God. This departure from the order of fact and of the inspired history was of course not only intentional, but essential to the question in hand. For it is asked in the first place if Abraham our father was not justified when he offered Isaac his son upon the altar.

Greater trial than such a demand never was laid by God on a believing father. For many years had passed after the promise to make of him a great nation, to bless him, and to bless in him all the families of the earth (Gen. 12) This was ere long enlarged by defining the land or visible scene of the blessing with a promise also of his seed made as. the dust of the earth beyond number (Gen. 13) Later on, when there appeared to the childless man no possessor of his house but Eliezer of Damascus, Jehovah assured him that one to come forth from his own bowels should he his heir, and that as the stars, for He bade him look up, should his seed be. And he believed Jehovah, Who counted it to him for righteousness. Long years after this was the son born, at the set time of which God had spoken to him. And not a few years elapsed during which Isaac grew up, the object not only of the tenderest love but of hopes far deeper and higher than filled any other heart on earth. God then proved Abraham. It was not to resign him in death, as many a father has sorrowfully known. It was not to have another son as a substitute for Isaac. For, in the bitter trial of Ishmael sent away with his bondwoman mother, Abraham knew from God that in Isaac should his seed be called. In him only was the line of promise. Yet God, in no way softening the blow, “after these things” said, “Take now thy son, thine only one, Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of” (Gen. 22:2).

What! God, the true God, the God of grace, lay such a claim on His Friend—the demand on such a father of such a son, the surely and solely expected channel of blessing so immense and hopes so glorious! And not this only, but in a way so unexpected and so terrible, as a burnt offering to Himself, and from his father's hand as the slaughterer! Yes, it was a trial beyond example, heightened by all that nature could feel, by the very faith that received the word of Jehovah so implicitly, and by the hope so fed by promise, and matured by experience of divine mercy beyond all he dared to ask when interceding. It was just to prove the faith unqualified which His grace had given to Abraham, and this not in word only but in deed and truth. Truly it was faith perfected by works.

This could not be deduced from Gen. 15 It was manifest to the highest degree in Gen. 22 And hence we see the ground which requires that this 5 should take here the first place.

But it is carefully added, “And the scripture; was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness,” as the earlier chapter has. For this was the joint result of a faith proved to be of God. The works had nothing in common with those activities of benevolence which fill the horizon of man and are the boast of such as make the creature all but God nothing. Here it was one who looked death in the face and in a form incomparably harder to bear than if he had been called to die for his son—to smite with the knife at God's word his only and well-beloved son on whose life hung the promises of blessing for all mankind! It was not only to trust God for his own character who would seem the worst of murderers, but for raising from the dead him who must live again to make good the promised blessings for Israel and for man.

Yet, however differently applied at the last, it was the same divinely given faith on which God at the first had pronounced. “The scripture was fulfilled.” No wonder he was called God's Friend. So Jehovah treated him in Gen. 18 when He disclosed His secret intentions. “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing?” So Jehovah treated him when drawing out his heart there in intercession. Hence in due time the pious king of Judah (2 Chron. 20:7) and the prophet friend of another pious king (Isa. 41; 8) called Abraham Jehovah's friend.

But it was a work that man would never have thought of, a work deriving all its virtue from absolute trust in the God Who demanded what He alone was entitled to ask, as He alone could have availed by resurrection power to conciliate it with His love, His truth, His character, and His purposes, turning it too, spite of appearances, to such experimental blessing as Abraham had never yet enjoyed, and to like blessing for the family of faith in their turn. We see from such a case how far Abraham was from a bare faith of the mind, when justified out of his works, and not out of the empty assent there denounced. How could it justify any one? Surely we may here apply the Lord's word, Wisdom is justified of all her children.

The Bride the Lamb's Wife

IN the O.T. the literal Babylon on the plain of Shinar appears in contrast with Jerusalem. In the N.T. we hear of a still more portentous Babylon on seven mountains, the great harlot on whose forehead was written “mystery,” which is in no way said or true of the Chaldeans' pride. No principle is more unintelligent and unfounded than to assume that the Revelation, in borrowing names of persons, places, or other objects from the ancient oracles, is bound to the letter and takes no larger views. To confound the new things with the old in that twofold treasure is to prove oneself a scribe uninstructed to the kingdom of the heavens. For in the new things, whatever the allusion to the old, the sphere is indefinitely widened, and the character deepened, as much as heavenly associations rise above earthly. To identify them, as do the pseudo-literalists, is to lose the special light of the N.T., the gravest, the highest, the most precious communications from God, whatever the subject-matter. It is to surrender the mind of Christ; and, what is more, out of the vain conceit of an unreal originality, in rejection of a testimony which men have not the spirituality to appreciate. Is it not sad when saints decline to opposing the word and the Spirit of God?

What can be more certain in its kind than that the glorified church is the Lamb's wife? Not less so is the world-church that sits on or by many waters. With her the kings of the earth committed fornication, and she intoxicated the dwellers on the earth with the wine of her fornication. She was seen sitting on the scarlet beast full of names of blasphemy, having seven horns and ten horns, the peculiar and unmistakable symbol of the Roman empire. How absurd to fancy an ephemeral revival of the city of Bel in the east, even if God had not said of it while yet the golden city, It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation In the fullest sense Rome alone has written on her brow, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS (idols) OF THE EARTH. She indeed rode the Western Beast, she as none other was drunk with the blood of the saints, and, to make it quite plain, with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: an object of great marvel to the prophet, considering her pretensions, which are preposterously impossible of a future Chaldean city.

The introduction of the harlot-church in Rev. 17:1 expressly and instructively answers to that of the Bride, the Lamb's wife, in Rev. 21:9, who is identified with the holy Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. How any sober man, I say not spiritual, could conceive this applicable to the earthly Jerusalem, no matter how beautiful or blessed in the Millennium, passes comprehension. Does it not simply show the blinding power of an idea in contempt of the clearest scripture? The just and true inference from God's word is, that it is essentially neither of man nor of the earth like the Palestinian Jerusalem, but heavenly and divine and so having the glory of God, and described in figures altogether and purposely beyond the first creation, which will be ransacked to clothe the earthly metropolis with riches and beauty. Think of jasper clear as crystal, gold transparent as glass, and each gate of “one pearl!” It is all above nature; whereas earthly Jerusalem will be founded and built up with the best things of the earth. We must not think of material beauty in the heavenly city; it is a symbolic description.

This is confirmed in a simple yet important way by the opening scene of chap. 19. where heaven rejoices over God's judgment of the great harlot. It is immediately followed by a yet mightier outburst of joyful praise. The time came for the marriage of the Lamb, and His wife made herself ready; while others share the feast in heaven as the blessed guests at that scene of divine love and glory, which even John left undescribed, as Paul did that of our translation at Christ's coming in 1 Thess. 4:17. Can there be a notion more incongruous and inept than to lower this wondrous heavenly vision to earthly Jerusalem? Yet so it must be if such is the meaning of the city in Rev. 21:3, and 9.

But we are told that there are just “seven signs” that this is not the church. Let us hear, though seven thousand “signs” could not set aside the irresistible force of chaps. 19., 21., and 22.

(1) Christ is described as “the Lamb;” and this is called an essentially Jewish title, referring to the passover, and the daily sacrifice. The fact is that John's Gospel 1:20, 36 and 1 Peter 1:19 use the different word ἀμνός, the Revelation ἀρνίον in pointed contrast with θηρίον. But in no case is there a limited or Jewish horizon. What can refute this contracted view more flatly than the Baptist's words, “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world?” So Peter lifts the believing remnant he addresses wholly above the nation and the earth and time itself, by pointing to Christ foreknown before the world's foundation. So does the earth-rejected “Lamb” of the Apocalypse (glorified on high while the Jews have lost their place and their nation) point to dealings of judgment far wider than the Jews, and to heavenly and earthly glories far transcending those secured to Israel according to O.T. prophecy. The true deduction is therefore quite adverse.

The company is described as the Bride, the Lamb's wife. This sign again is no less invalid. For, though a wife is an O.T. figure, not so is the wife “of the Lamb,” which the context states to be “of heaven,” in the most evident distinction from the earthly Jerusalem, “the beloved city” of chap. 20:9. Jerusalem is authoritatively declared to be “the city of the great King"; it is a great honor that He will reign over it as nowhere else here below. But the church is the Bride, the Lamb's wife, who, suffering with Him on earth, shall be glorified with Him on high. To confound these relationships is to lose the key to their distinctive force as revealed in scripture.

It is “a city,” a holy city, which John is shown. This is thought to exclude the church, Christ's body. But God declares it to be the Bride, the Lamb's wife, which we have learned to be the church, and nothing else. It is not even the city wherein the Bride dwells. The holy city is declared authoritatively to be the Bride; and scripture cannot be broken. It is vain to fly to Heb. 12:22. The misquotation and the perversion are only fresh proofs of error not without prejudice. “We are come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,” is a daring change from God's word to man's will. “And” is left out after “Zion,” and before “the city.” But it is essential for marking each new object. Zion is the highest point, as it were, on earth; then follows what is above it, “a living God's city, heavenly Jerusalem.” This was Abraham's hope, the seat on high of the saints who shared his faith (cf. Heb. 11:13-16). But it was not the church of first-born ones, enrolled in heaven,” which is another object as the “and” designates, though the A. & R. Vv. are here as dull as the commentators, swayed by tradition against the only sure word of God. The bride is neither Israel nor Jerusalem, but “new Jerusalem,” which a tyro ought to distinguish. And how strange not to see that the heavenly city in Rev. 21 has “no temple;” whereas earthly Jerusalem will have the temple so minutely predicted in Ezek. 40-48. Can nothing clear such dim eyes? It may be added that “mother of us all” is a known bad reading, itself the parent of a great deal of bad theology ancient and modern.

The city comes down out of heaven from God. How does this sign identify it with the earthly city? How does it clash with its heavenly character and glory? It is a necessary part of God's counsel for heading up all things heavenly and earthly in Christ (Eph. 1:10) in Whom we also are allotted inheritance. We reign with Him, as He is Head to the church over all things. It is only when the new heaven comes that the new Jerusalem lights on the new earth in the eternal state, when the kingdom is given up to Him Who is God and Father. Earthly land, people, and city are no more then: God's tabernacle is with men.

The city had “a wall great and high” (12), the figure of its perfect security. Think what the mind must be that confounds this with Eph. 2:14, though even so obliged to blow hot and cold on it!

The gates with the names of Israel's twelve tribes are next alleged. But the twelve angels might have guarded from such a blunder, and also (7) the twelve apostles of the Lamb. For God evidently in one way or another connects with the holy city associations of government, whether angelic, Jewish, or apostolic. It is the heavenly seat of the kingdom; and it will display in that day, what is even now ours to say in faith, that “all things are ours.” Paul was not given to so describe the church's glory, but speaks of her as the heavenly Eve of the heavenly and last Adam. John, while expressly identifying the Bride, the Lamb's wife, with the new Jerusalem, develops here only the city side. It was needless for him to dwell on what O.T. prophecy so fully reveals, the blessedness of Israel in that day. It was of interest to mark, that the kings and the nations pay the most distinct homage to the glorified church, as they will also to the earthly city and people of God. The context requires “unto,” not “into,” for which the Greek had but one and the same word. But it ought to be familiar to all that the true reading is “the nations,” omitting “of them that are saved,” which is spurious and almost nonsensical.

Having dismissed the seven “signs” which are no signs, let me add that Rev. 22 is as clearly opposed as we have seen its predecessors to be against the earthly view of the Bride, the Lamb's wife. “The Spirit and the bride say, Come.” Such is the constant aspiration and cry of the church as led by the Holy Spirit Who dwells in her. But it will never be the case with the earthly bride. For she will receive that great gift of the outpoured Spirit when the Lord will have appeared to her everlasting joy; and after that it will be too late to say, Come. It is ours in the power of the present Spirit to say, Come, while He is absent on high.

The Hope of Christ Compatible With Prophecy: Part 1

THERE are few simple-minded Christians who, in searching into the prophetic word, have not felt the difficulty of reconciling the undoubtedly normal posture of the church in daily waiting for Jesus with the long train of successive events presented, e.g, in the Revelation. The principle, if not the measure, of the difficulty is the same, whether you understand the Revelation to be fulfilled in a brief eventful crisis, or to extend over a course of many hundred years. In either way, can one truthfully expect the Lord from heaven from day to day, if one is looking out for a series of numerous, and some of them unprecedented, and all of them solemn, incidents to occur on earth, the gradual and accumulative evidence of His approach.

But it is certain that in the apostolic times, when the grace of God was proclaimed in its real power and freshness, when His word was most prized and best understood, and produced its loveliest effects, the saints were habitually expecting the Lord to come. In Him they had redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins; and they knew it. They were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Were they, therefore, satisfied? Was not the Spirit Himself, blessed divine Advocate though He be, yet was not He the earnest of glorious things to come? Doubtless they received Him as the Spirit of sonship, and not as a spirit of bondage unto fear (Rom. 8). Yet far from His leading them into rest and contentedness here below in the absence of Jesus, in the same chapter it is said, “Ourselves also, [besides the groaning creation,] which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” It is the groaning of those who are justified by faith and have peace with God. It is the groaning of those who have the Holy Ghost dwelling in them, and bearing witness with their spirit that they are children of God. It is the groaning of the adopted earnestly yearning for the full results of adoption; of those who, because they have known God's grace in redemption forgiving their sins, look for more, for all—for the redemption of the body in the actual presence of the Savior, that they may be like Him and with Him forever.

The aim, however, of these remarks is not to prove that the personal coming of the Lord is the hope of the church—proofs easily found elsewhere. My desire is rather to convince those who know what is and was meant to be the hope of the church, that God, by no concurrent or subsequent revelation, ever interfered with the practical power of that hope. That He might give fuller details as to the growing iniquity of man, of the Jew, and especially of the outward professing body, and as to His own judgments upon each before the millennial reign; that He might describe in greater minuteness the circumstances of that reign and the events that succeed it, is not only possible, but that which He has done. But that He, on this or any other theme, corrects in one part of His word what is affirmed in another, is that which every Christian ought surely to repudiate from the bottom of his soul, in whatever modified form it may be insinuated.

The word of our God needs no apologies from man. Unhesitatingly believed, every part of it will be found to be perfectly true, though (from narrowness and imperfection in our apprehension) patient waiting on God is needed to avoid the systematizing of the human intellect, and to discover in what order God puts things together. Haste in deciding such questions only leads to forcing scripture, which will not yield; and hence the danger of framing one-sided hypotheses, which are only tenable by shutting the eye to the plainest scripture that contradicts them as hypotheses, though there may be elements of truth in them.

To apply this to the matter in hand, it is undeniable that the apostle Paul (to say nothing of others) invariably speaks of the coming of the Lord to take the church to Himself as that which might be at any moment, however He might tarry. But no necessary detention—no chain of occurrences involving a period virtually—no certain lapse of time—is ever presented to the church as keeping Him in heaven. On the contrary, if he writes to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15), it is “Behold, I show you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” Admitting that “we” is a representative word, not the persons addressed merely, but those standing in the same privileges; still will any one say that the apostle or the Corinthian saints knew that the moment would be deferred till they had fallen asleep? Was it not calculated, beyond all cavil, to keep them in simple, constant expectancy of the Lord?

The Thessalonians (1 Thess. 1), who were trained, from their birth to God, in looking for their Deliverer, were they mistaken enthusiasts? Or, did not the blessed work of the Spirit in their case consist not only in turning them from idols to serve a living and true God, but to wait for His Son from heaven? Did that wise and faithful servant, who knew what it was to mingle the service of a nurse with the affectionate care of a father—did he consider that blessed hope to be unsuited food for such babes? So far from it, that when he writes to them supplying some things that were lacking, the Holy Ghost impresses this great doctrine in such repeated and different modes as to demonstrate how cardinal a truth it was in the mind of God, and how influential as regards the communion and walk of His saints. It ramifies both Epistles, being not only found at least once in every chapter, but in some chapters occupying the most conspicuous place. (See 1 Thess. 1:3, 10; 2:19, 20; 3:13; 4:13-18; 5:23, 24, 1-10. 2 Thess. 1:5-10; 2:1-12; 3:5.)

Let us weigh the facts more. They had rejoiced in this hope of our Lord Jesus Christ from their earliest Christian career; they had patiently continued it through the Spirit; and the blessedness of such patience was sweet to the absent apostle, even as their work of faith and labor of love. True, they needed further light as to its circumstances, and the Lord granted it. So immediately were they awaiting the Lord, that the decease of some of their number plunged them into deep sorrow. Not, I apprehend, that they for a moment doubted of the salvation of those who were gone. No one that had the gospel in word only (much less knowing it in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance, as it came to them) could have such a doubt. But they feared that death had severed their departed brethren from the glorious hope, which they had so brightly burning before them, of being caught up together to meet the Lord in the air. They were gone and doubtless were happy; but would they not be absent from that crowning joy for which they themselves were waiting?

Here was the place (may we not venture to say?), if they had been mistaken in so waiting, to have corrected it. Here was the place for the apostle to write—We have been all wrong in living with our eyes heavenward till the Son of God comes to take us to Himself; He is not coming soon. We need not yet expect Him; for many ages must expire before He comes. Besides, He has already given you some, and He now adds more, signs of His advent. You have not seen these signs yet; you must wait for them, and not for His Son.

The exact reverse is the fact. The Holy Spirit deliberately keeps them in the same attitude of waiting which He had previously wrought and sanctioned in them, though He gives them a comfort of which they were ignorant as to their brethren who had been put to sleep by Jesus. “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we Who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent [i.e. go before] them who are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with cheering shout, with archangel's voice, and with trump of God. And the dead in Christ shall arise first; then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words (1 Thess. 4:15-18).

But it may be said, If the Holy Ghost did not here correct the excited notions of the Thessalonians, He did in the second chapter of the Second Epistle. I answer that the true question is, Does the Holy Ghost correct Himself? He may supply that which is suited to correct the undue sorrow of the believers in one Epistle, or their fear in another Epistle; but I insist upon it in the strongest manner, that if the church is set in the position of waiting for Christ's coming in one part of scripture, no other part can possibly alter such a position. It is necessarily right, whatever increase of instruction may be given. Let us only be well established in the perfectness of every word of God, and we shall soon see how little the passage warrants the notion that the apostle Paul, in the second Epistle, dissuades them from expecting Him, Whom the first Epistle had confirmed them in expecting.

In the first place, it is generally assumed that the day of Christ (or “of the Lord,” for this is the true reading) is identical with “the coming (παρουσία, presence) of our Lord Jesus Christ” in the verse before. But it is a groundless idea. If it be affirmed, let proofs be adduced. It ought to be quite clear that “the day of the Lord” is a distinct though connected thing. In its full ultimate sense (and no one disputes that such is its force here), it supposes the presence of the Lord; it displays the judgment consequent upon it. But the presence, or coming, of the Lord by no means necessarily supposes judgment. Is there a word of judgment, or wrath, or destruction, expressed or implied in the full description given in 1 Thess. 4 of the Lord's coming for His own? So when the apostle says, “What is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? For ye are our glory and joy” (1 Thess. 2:19, 20), where is the word of judgment on evil? On the other hand, when “the day of the Lord” occurs, it is, whether used in a full or a limited application, habitually connected with judgment and its consequences (compare 1 Thess. 5:2-4; Zeph. 1, 2. 3; Zech. 14; Mal. 3, 4.). One infers therefore that, though the coming of the Lord may include the day of the Lord, as the whole includes a part, the coming of the Lord is in itself presented in an aspect of grace, not of judgment. Why should the terms and the things be confounded?

(To be continued, D.V.).

Scripture Queries and Answers: The Lord's Genealogy

Q.-How is Matt. 1:16, taken in connection with Luke 3:23, to be explained?

Matthew says, “Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary;” and Luke, “being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph, which was of Heli, which was of Matthat,” &c. Matthew in ver. 15 had said, “Matthan begat Jacob.”

In Luke 3, I presume, Mary's. genealogy is given down to 31, “Nathan (who was) of David,". while in Matt. 1:6 “David the king begat Solomon,” and so on down to Joseph. But what explains the apparent discrepancy between Matt. 1:16 and Luke 3:23? O. P.

A.-The solution of the difficulty turns on the true marking of the parenthesis in Luke 3:23 “(being, as was supposed, son of Joseph"). The Revisers are no more right than was the A.V. in limiting it to “(as was supposed).” Christ's being considered son of Joseph is thus intimated to be outside the proper genealogical line which is here traced from Heli or Eli, Mary's father, up to Adam and God Himself. Jesus, reputedly son of Joseph, was really of Heli, &c. Even the unbelieving Jews did not question that Mary, the virgin mother of our Lord, was Heli's daughter; for the Talmud speaks of her thus, and as tormented in the unseen world. The fact is that there is a choice of ways which all remove the apparent discrepancy. On these we need not dwell here, but simply state the one which we believe to be the truth.

The internal evidence entirely sustains this view as intended of God. For as υἱός was expressed in the parenthetical clause as the reputed relationship, so by a purposely different construction the real natural succession through Mary is traced from her father up to the father of all (τοῦ Ἡλὶ, τοῦ Ματθὰτ, κ.τ.λ.), a grand fact characteristic of our Evangelist. In Matthew, on the other hand, where it was essential to trace the Messianic title of our Lord legally, we have “Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary.” Again both Evangelists are equally careful to repudiate the actual fatherhood of Joseph, and to affirm the divine generation of our Savior, as well as His eternal being in the Godhead before the Incarnation.

But there is much more in corroboration, which goes along with the special design of each of the two Gospels. For it will be noticed that only Matthew records the apparitions of Jehovah's angel to Joseph (1:20, 2:19); whereas in Luke 1:26-35 the angel Gabriel was sent by God not to Joseph but to Mary, even though Jehovah's angel appeared to Zachariah before (1:11), and to the shepherds after (2:9), the Child was born, the Son was given. Of course, His birth of Mary was of absolute moment for His person as now Man no less than God forever, and for the infinite work He was about to accomplish. But so far was the legal position of Joseph as His reputed father from being unimportant, that He could not have been indisputably viewed as the promised Son and Heir of David's throne, till Joseph passed away. Hence not a word is said in any one of the four Gospels which supposes Joseph alive, when our Lord enters on His manifestation as the Messiah, though (as every believer knows) much more than the Messiah. This also disposes of the notion, cherished by not a few ancients and moderns, that Joseph had a family of sons and daughter, before Mary was betrothed to him. For in that case his eldest would have been legally the heir to David's throne. So completely was the law fulfilled, as well as the Prophets and the Psalms. Scripture cannot be broken.

Q.-Does not 1 Cor. 6:9 with many like scriptures warrant the inference that Christians who fail in faith or fidelity will be excluded from inheriting the kingdom of God, though saved at the end from the second death? MATHETES.

A.-In no way is this true, but wholly opposed to the mind of God in His word, and productive of nothing but confusion like any other serious error. On the face of this text itself, how can any taught of God allow that one born of the Spirit is to be classed among the ἄδικοι or unrighteous? Compare also the rest of the verse and the following verses, where not failure in a believer is in question, but unqualifiedly wicked characters are denounced, with the very different statement that “such were some of you, but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” Take one of the strongest apparently for such a construction, Luke 12:45, 46, “But if that bondman should say in his heart, My lord delayeth to come, and begins” &c. We may see from the corresponding parable in Matt. 24:48 that it is no case of a believer excluded but of an “evil” servant, a hypocrite. Nor indeed need we travel beyond the further words of Luke to arrive at the same fact; for his lord is said to cut him in twain and appoint his portion with the faithless (ἀπίστων). Rill the Lord so deal with any born of God? It is indeed a far other lot than missing the reign though blessed for eternity, a portion assigned to not a single Christian in a single scripture. That the language of our Lord, and also of the apostle in this Epistle and elsewhere, implies it of professing Christians is true and solemn. “That bondman,” in fact, seems expressly intended to warn of this tremendous issue.

But Christians in the genuine sense, as the query supposes, stand on other ground. If they discerned themselves, they should not be judged. If they grow careless in self-judgment, the Lord does not fail to deal with them. Yet when judged in this way, they are chastened by the Lord, that they should not be condemned with the world, as say the scriptures in the text queried. The doctrine behind the query is wholly false and evil.

By W. Kelly

AN EXPOSITION OF THE BOOK OF ISAIAH

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The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:31

SUBSEQUENT statements in the Book of Genesis give particulars of other families of the Shemitic stock who entered the Arabian Peninsula. All that is intended here is to fill up the general view of its denizens, in order to complete the picture, in this measure anticipating what follows our chapter. As sons of Cush were the first to settle within it, chiefly on the Persian Gulf and the S. W. coast skirted by the Red Sea, before Joktan and his sons possessed themselves so largely of its borders and interior, we may notice first Ishmael and his sons as a most characteristic class of the dwellers in Arabia. No prediction of the kind has been more signally fulfilled than Gen. 16:12: “He will be a wild ass of a man, his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell before the face of all his brethren.”

In vain has the skeptical Gibbon (Decline and Fall, chaps. 46. and 50.) strained his ingenuity to get rid of their standing independence, felt alike by strangers and by natives. There it is to this day, as it has been through all history. Of whom else can it be pretended similarly? The overruling power of God, as always, has guarded His word. Ishmael, though in no way the line of covenant any more than Esau, has lived before Him. Other peoples, and conspicuously in their neighborhood, have dwindled and disappeared, I do not say they are extinguished. Ishmael He made fruitful and a great nation. In this world as it is, no sane person denies checks or exceptions during the course of ages, when God was ignored or misrepresented. But oven the infidel historian had to acknowledge that these exceptions were “temporary or local.” “The body of the nation has escaped the yoke of the most powerful monarchies: the arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey and Trajan, could never achieve the conquest of Arabia. The present sovereign of the Turks may exercise a shadow of jurisdiction, but his pride is reduced to solicit the friendship of a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke and fruitless to attack.”

The wilderness of Paran was the earliest seat of Ishmael; but his posterity extended completely across the northern parts of Arabia, including the district of Sinai on the west to the Euphrates. In this district the sons of Keturah also dwelt, and thus Ishmaelites or Hagarites got mixed up with Midianites, as we may see in Gen. 37:36, 25-28, Judg. 8:1, 22-26 Chron. 5:20. Nebaioth, Ishmael's firstborn, gave his name to the large region of Arabia Petraea; where Josephus places all the other sons. But this is too limited; for they settled also south of what the ancients called Nabathea or Nabateus. They bred camels, and kept sheep, as they were also merchants in aromatics and other commodities. Like other rationalists, Gibbon imputes their love of independence to their accidental locality. It was rather their wild character which availed itself of rocks and deserts; and God so acted as to suit both to His word and will. Here too the Edomites, or sons of Esau, found their place in mount Seir.

The second of Ishmael's sons was Kedar (from whom Mohammed proclaimed his descent through the tribe of Koreish), the Cedrei of Pliny, Cadraitae or Kadranitae from time immemorial living in the Hedjaz; as the B'nei Kenaz dwelt and still dwell in the interior N.E. who are called in modern times the Aenezes, descendants of Esau, the largest (as Burckhardt says) of all the Bedouin tribes of Arabia, at constant feud with the Joktanites south of them, as their progeny are to this day. Some of the other sons of Ishmael may be more or less obscure; but this cannot be said of Dumah (who had also the characteristic title of B'nei Kalb, as the Kedarites were correspondingly styled B'nei Karb), and Tema, written large and deep in the northern part of the Negd, as the interior highlands of Arabia are called among themselves.

There is no intention at this point to give more than a general notion of the relation of the Ishmaelites and other Abrahamidae to the previous settlers in Arabia. But it is well to bear all in mind, as each race had its influence on the circumstances and history of a land remarkably divided.

“These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations” (ver. 31).

Blessing in the prophecy of Noah was assigned to Shem, or more strictly the word was “Blessed [be] Jehovah, the God of Shem.” So it has been; so faith knows now; so it will be completely fulfilled, when Christ makes the truth indisputable in glorious results to every eye. This is not the design of God either by the gospel or in the church; it is reserved for the age to come.

The notion of such as Ronan (Hist. Generale des Langues Semit.), that the Shemitic races were to be in purpose or in fact monotheistic is a delusion. As the Adamic condition of innocence yielded to sin, so did the post-diluvian government of the world break down, and God's judgment of the earth with which it was preceded was soon darkened and perverted to serving other gods. Ham may lead the way, as beyond doubt the beginning of Nimrod's kingdom was Babel; but Asshur soon followed in the same path, not of ambition only but of idolatry; and the very family of him that was chosen to be the father of the faithful were thus corrupted when the call of God called him out to bless him and make him a blessing to all families of the earth (Josh. 24:2). Thus no flesh can glory in itself or its ways. Let him that glorieth glory in Jehovah.

Even Max Muller, though far from believing reverence, is compelled by overwhelming facts to abandon the Rationalistic dream and to pay homage in a measure at least to the truth, as another has culled out of his “Chips out of a German Workshop,” i. 345. “Can it be said that a monotheistic instinct could have been implanted in all those nations which adored Elohim, Jehovah, Sabaoth, Moloch, Nisroch, Rimmon, Nebo, Dagon, Ashtaroth, Baal or Bel, Baal-peor, Baalzebub, Chemosh, Milcom, Adrammelech, Anammelech, Nibhaz and Tartak, Ashima, Nergal, Succoth-benoth, the sun, the moon, the planets, and all the host of heaven.” Shemitic races worshipped these and more.

In the same work M. M. goes farther still in his disproof. “Nor is it possible to explain on merely historical grounds how the Hebrews first obtained and so persistently clung to this grand first truth. Their chronicles show continual lapses into idolatry, and yet they always recovered themselves; till at last, after a bitter discipline of national calamities, they finally turned with enthusiastic devotion to the worship of Jehovah.

“Reference to a primitive religious instinct in mankind is as little satisfactory; for though there must have been such an intuitive sentiment in the earliest men as the basis of their future idolatries, it could only have impressed on them the existence of some Divine Being, but in no degree involved the conception of that Being, as one and one only, but as all history proves, tended to the very opposite. Nor can it be said that the Hebrew worked out the great truth by a profound philosophy; for no contrast could be greater between the Jewish mind and that of other nations of antiquity sprung from a different stock, than the utter absence from it of the metaphysical speculations in which other races delighted.

“Yet, while all nations over the earth have developed a religious tendency which acknowledged a higher than human power in the universe, Israel is the only one which has risen to the grandeur of conceiving this power as the One, Only, Living God.” Better still is his closing confession: “If we are asked how it was that Abraham possessed not only the primitive conception of the divinity as He has revealed Himself to all mankind [a very questionable proposition, corrected anticipatively in Rom. 1:19, 20], but passed, through the denial of other gods, to the knowledge of the one God, we are content to answer that it was by a special divine revelation” (ib. i. 372).

When the Anointed came, He tested this “enthusiastic devotion to the worship of Jehovah,” and proved as Isaiah had testified long before, that in vain the people worshipped Him, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men. For had they learned of the Father they would have come to Christ, but they knew neither the Son nor the Father Who sent Him. “Who is the liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son hath not the Father either; he that confesseth the Son hath the Father also” (1 John 2:22, 23).

The day is at hand when the worthlessness of Jewish devotion even to monotheism or rather to their Elohim, or Jehovah, will be manifest. For, as the rejected Messiah warned, the unclean spirit of idolatry which they then thought and still think exorcised forever, will return to his house empty, swept, and garnished; and just because it is empty, instead of filled with His presence Who is Jehovah as well as Messiah. Yea more, he will take to himself in that day (for it is not yet fulfilled) seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man becometh worse than the first. Even thus shall it be also to this wicked generation (Matt. 12). To banish idols and judge idolatry forever is reserved for the Lord in the day of His appearing.

The Offerings of Leviticus: 11. Peace Offering of a Sheep

Lev. 3:6-11

THERE was a certain latitude allowed as to the Peace offering as compared with the Burnt offering. In the latter a male was required, in the former the animal presented might be either a male or a female. Where the entire victim was consumed on the altar save the skin which went to the offering priest, the highest form of the animal was demanded, whether of herd or of flock. It was to make atonement, for the offerer was a sinful man, though not occupied then with particular offenses for which a sin or trespass offering was needed. But the peculiarity of the Peace offering lay in its being not only offered up to God but participated in by man also. It was meet accordingly that a lower standard should be prescribed than where He exclusively was in view.

Hence also, though the hand was laid on the head of the offering and it was offered like the Burnt offering at the entrance of the tent of meeting, not a word is said of its being accepted for him, still less to make atonement for him, though it was alike slaughtered there, and Aaron's sons the priests alike dashed the blood on the altar round about. Nothing is here said about flaying it as with the Burnt offering, nothing about cutting it up in its pieces as in that case for the convenient and complete burning it up on the altar. The sacrifice of the Peace offering was to be presented no less truly as a fire offering to Jehovah. Whatever the privilege enjoyed, it is inseparable from sacrifice, and God has His honor in the first place. How could it be a type of Christ without such homage as this? And assuredly it is here expressly and carefully enjoined.

But it is on the fat that unusual stress is laid. In the Burnt offering a term is employed which does appear otherwise. Here it is the more general expression, but pressed with emphasis and descriptive care, “and the fat that covereth the inwards and all the fat that is on the inwards, and the two kidneys and the fat that is on them, which is by the loins, and the net [or caul] above the liver which was to be taken away as far as the kidneys.” Indeed where a sheep was offered, the whole fat and tail also was specified besides, which was to be taken off close by the back bone, and burnt on the altar. The fat represents, not the life as in the blood of the animal given up to God, but its inward energy. The richest part is here claimed sacrificially for the altar.

In the offering from the herd the fat or other inward appurtenances was formally declared to be burnt on the altar upon the Burnt offering which was on the wood upon the fire. This was the fullest pledge of divine acceptance. In the offering from the flock the word is more brief; but a new and blessed phrase is added; it is “the food” or “bread” of the fire offering to Jehovah. How wondrous for Him and us to enjoy the same offering! Here again what a falling away from the truth of Christ to find, in this burning of the fat, “the offering up of our good affections to God in all our prayers and praises,” or, far worse even, “the mortifying of our corrupt affections and lusts, and the burning up of them by the fire of divine grace.” Yet I am citing, not Augustine nor Chrysostom, not Bossuet nor Pusey, but Matthew Henry; and Scott is no better. Think of either alternative being “the food of the fire offering to Jehovah for a savor of rest!” No; it was neither our good offered up, nor our bad mortified, but the inward energy of Christ Himself, as the ground perfect and abiding of communion for God and His family. For God's grace would have His children to enjoy a common portion with Himself; and it is the special aim of the Peace offering to show how the sacrifice of Christ secures this blessed fellowship to us. Christ offered up to God could alone furnish it in Himself. Quite another thing is what He produces in us, and yet more what He delivers us from.

We can perceive even in chap. 3. that comparatively little of this sacrifice was burnt on the altar. What was burnt there was the choicest and most intimate; but besides this we shall see from chap. 7. that part was given to Aaron and his sons in general, part to the offering priest in particular, and that the larger portion remained for the offerer, his family and his friends. In the same victim this remarkable fellowship of Jehovah, the priestly body, the true Priest, and the faithful at large, is the distinctive property of the Peace offering. It is urged forcibly by the apostle in 1 Cor. 10 when insisting on the communion of Christ to guard from all inconsistent with it. “Behold Israel according to flesh: are not they that eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?” By eating of these they had fellowship with the altar. This was their communion, which made it morally impossible to be in communion with the heathen and their idols behind which were demons. How much more hatefully incongruous for us who drink of the Lord's cup and partake of His table! For the Lord's Supper is the standing and solemn act of communion for the church of God. It is the communion of Christ's blood and of Christ's body; and as we therein remember Him in death and in deeper than death for us, so He would the more strengthen us in self-judgment and abhorrence of all that offends God or sanctions the enemy.

No doubt whether we eat or drink or whatsoever we do day by day, we are called to obedience and to holiness, doing all to God's glory. But we have one special act in the breaking of the bread, constantly before us on each “first” of the week, the Lord's day. This agrees in spirit with the eating of the Peace offering, though the Lord's Supper becomes deeper, as Christianity exceeds the Law, and Christ Himself the victim which typified Him in certain respects.

What Is God's Kingdom Like?

THE kingdom of God is no secret hid in Himself. It is a purpose revealed of old in His word. When Moses and the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea which covered Pharaoh's host, they sang, “Jehovah will reign forever.” But this, like everything else under the law, for the present failed through their sins. At length they rejected Jehovah's reign, desiring a king “like all the nations.” Saul their choice was their sorrow and shame; but God in pity gave them David and Solomon. Even then all was but provisional, and at best but a type of God's Son, the true King, Who alone will make good His throne on the holy hill of Zion.

When the Lord Jesus presented Himself to the Jews, they proved their evil estate by denying and crucifying Him, as their prophets had foreshown. And He Who knew all beforehand told them that they should not see Him henceforth till they should say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of Jehovah. But they surely will, and He will build up Zion, appearing in His glory. So the nations shall fear Him, and all the kings of the earth His glory. This will be the kingdom in the manifest sense, to which all the prophets gave witness, postponed as yet through Israel's unbelief. When their heart shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away; to this day alas! it remains unremoved.

Meanwhile the Lord in His ministry here below announced the mystery or secret of the kingdom of. God (Mark 4:11), while the King, rejected on earth, is absent on high. The consequence is that divine power is not manifested in the removal of Satan and the putting down of all the enemies; it works spiritually in those that believe, whilst a vast system of mere profession grows up and spreads to a certain extent here below. This last and by the Jews wholly unexpected result is what our evangelist was inspired to set out in our Lord's two comparisons.

“And he said, To what is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I liken it? It is like a grain of mustard which a man took and cast into his garden; and it grew and became a great tree, and the birds of heaven lodged in its branches. And again he said, To what shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal until the whole was leavened” (vers. 18-21).

The moral design of our Gospel is well illustrated by the peculiar introduction of the two parables at this point. No intimation marks that they were then uttered. The first Gospel gives them in their place where the seven parables disclose the kingdom of the heavens, or rather its mysteries, as a complete whole. The parable of the Sower is separated from them and given in connection with His own ministry in chap. 8.; the others of Matt. 13 Luke does not at all record. Here the object is to enforce the solemn lesson of what man is in presence of “all the glorious things that were done by him” [the Lord] Adversaries might be put to shame; and all the crowd might rejoice. But man is the same as ever, and turns all to vanity and self-exaltation. Christendom with better privileges is not really better than Israel. “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” “Ye must be born again.” “If any one be in Christ, [there is] a new creation: the old things are passed away; behold, new things are come. And all things are of God who reconciled us to himself through Christ.” What are outward changes in His eyes? Yet man, professing man, without life in Christ, can show or effect nothing more.

As the Lord described, such has been the course of God's kingdom. In chap. 8. Luke tells us of the very different work wrought by the seed that figures the word of God. Even so it does not by any means produce in result what the Sower desired. For the enemy is not yet dislodged from his bad eminence, and he avails himself of both the flesh and the world to spoil and hinder, besides his own destructive wiles. Still grace gives effect in good ground, and fruit is borne a hundredfold.

But in the parable of the mustard seed which a man east into his garden, we hear of the lofty growth from the lowly beginning of what bore the Lord's name here below. The symbol of a tree is taken, and of one that from a very little shot up to give shelter to the birds of the sky. So earthly potentates as the kings of Egypt and Assyria are described by Ezekiel, and the king of Babylon by Daniel; only that here stress is laid on the incongruity of what was originally small with its towering development in time. None can deny either fact in Christendom. As the philosophic Guizot says in his Lect. ii. on Civilization, “It was the church with its institutions, its magistrates, its power, which strove triumphantly against the internal dissolution which convulsed the empire, and against barbarity; which subdued the barbarians themselves, and became the link, the medium, the principle of civilization, as between the Roman and barbarian worlds.” What a mighty factor on earth the little flock became!

In the parable of the leaven, it is not the rise of earthly power out of what was originally despised, but the spread of doctrine till a given sphere was permeated. In it the creed-work of Christendom is portrayed. There is no thought of vital energy, only of a certain quantum assimilated by doctrine. Certainly grace in power is never so symbolized but doctrine such as that of Pharisees, Sadducees, or Herodians. Of this the natural mind is capable. The creed of Christendom, truth even, might be held, and held firmly, without faith and in unrighteousness (Rom. 1). The action of the Holy Spirit appears in neither comparison.

O my reader, hear the word of God. Receive Christ, Who alone is the Savior and gives life eternal. It is “of faith that it might be according to grace.” Ordinances may figure truth but cannot save. On the ground of works you are lost; but Jesus is Lord and Savior. “Ye are saved by grace through faith; and this not of yourselves [which some might have thought]; it is God's gift; not of works that none might boast.” Jesus is the way, the sole and sure way, to the Father. Look to Him only, and call on Him. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek; for the same Lord over all is rich to all that call upon Him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. The word of truth is the gospel of salvation to the believer.

Unity in the Pauline Epistles

IT IS however in the Epistles of the apostle to the Gentiles that we find fuller light, where unity rises (beyond the union of God's children however sure, sweet, and blessed, as seen in John's testimony), into the truths of God's habitation, and Christ's body. To be built together is close indeed; to be constituted an organic body, the one body of Christ, is yet more, the closest unity possible. Let us trace this new thing to His praise.

In the Epistle to the Romans unity is applied practically, after the gospel of God has been elaborately set forth in chaps. 1.-8., and God's sovereign grace to all is in chaps. 9.-11. conciliated with His special promises to Israel. The saints are exhorted to present their bodies a living sacrifice, not conformed to this age, nor with high thoughts but sobriety. “For as in one body we have many members, yet all the members have not the same function” (thus communion is taught, each fulfilling his own place in the one body, but not exceeding his measure), “so we the many are one body in Christ and severally members one of another.”

Thus, in this Epistle as in all the N.T. and in the nature of things, God does not fail to make it evident that it is for the individual to repent and believe. We are reconciled to God and justified individually. Before the body of Christ was formed or revealed, the believer had through His blood the remission of sins, and was a son of God by faith in Christ Jesus. The work of redemption was now accomplished; Christ had taken His seat at God's right hand; and the Holy Spirit came down to baptize all who received the gospel into one body, and to dwell in them as God's house. Then and there was the church of God formed. “The Lord was adding day by day such as should be saved together” (Acts 2:47); and this united body was in due time called “the church” (chap. v. 11).

The saints who believed through grace were no longer left as of old among their brethren after the flesh (Mal. 3:16), however slowly they gave up habits and prejudices. They had now “their own company” (Acts 4:23), outside Israel and of course the Gentiles. Their hearts, their prayers, their praises, rose up to God and His Anointed, Whose bondmen they were bought with a price, and therefore to glorify God in their body. They were taken out of Israel and brought into the body of Christ by the uniting power of the Holy Spirit before they could explain its nature and character. But His descent they knew well, and that they had received Him. It was for Paul in due time to interpret the result and even to reveal it as bound up with Christ, given to be Head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all. The presence of the Spirit sent from heaven was their bond that made them one body, not their faith nor yet life which they had antecedently as individuals. They were no longer children of God scattered abroad, but gathered together in one; no longer invisible as units in the midst of the outwardly chosen people, but a corporate body on earth one with their Head in heaven, and as distinct from Jew as from Gentile (1 Cor. 10:32).

In 1 Cor. 12 the apostle, before writing to the Roman saints, had discussed the constitutive principle on the side of the Holy Spirit's presence and action in the church, in the course of which the truth is stated as much above the Reformed systems or those who dissented from them, as above the ancient and so called catholic claims of Greece, Rome, or any others. His was the power that wrought in all the gifts varied as they ware, some of which the Corinthians were singling out for ostentation, all of them given to exalt the Lord Jesus. That love, a way still more excellent, must animate and direct each in order to a right exercise of any gift is clearly shown in chap. 13.; and that power is to be subject to the Lord's authority in the regulation of all is the aim of chap. 14.

In these distinct manifestations then the same Spirit distributes, the same Lord is served, the same God effectuates, by each for common profit. For as the one body has many members, and the many members are one body: so also, he boldly says, is “the Christ,” the body and Head. How truly then is it “one body in Christ!” Of this unity the Holy Spirit now given and present is the power. “For also [besides working in each] in virtue of one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and we were all given to drink of one Spirit” (13).

It is not new birth, still less water baptism, but the effect of the Spirit given when Jesus was glorified.

But in the body are many members, not one merely. The lower are as essential as the higher (15, 16). All are proper to the body; and God set the members each one of them in the body as it pleased Him. How blessed and conclusive to faith! “But if they all were one member, where the body? But now [they are] many members, yet one body;” and the superior cannot do without the humbler members: all have need of each other (21). Pride is as out of place as discontent. Nay, those that seem weaker are “necessary,” rather than the higher (22); “and the less honorable we clothe with more abundant honor, and our uncomely have more abundant comeliness” (23). “God tempered the body together, so that there might be no schism in the body” (24, 25). Hence if one member suffer, all suffer together; if one is honored, all rejoice (26). Such is the true organization of the church through the Spirit, without Whom it could not be.

Very important too are vers. 27, 28. The first proves that the local assembly (here primarily at Corinth) is Christ's body, and severally members. It represents in the locality that body, assuredly not as independent of, but as one with, all on earth. Compare chap. 1 and 2. All the saints here below were God's assembly, and each a member not of an but of the assembly, Christ's body. So the second demonstrates that if God set some in the assembly, it means not of course locally, but in it as a whole on earth. Certainly the apostles, &c. were not set in the Corinthian church or any other locality in particular. God sets the gifts in the assembly as a whole. They are, like the humblest Christians, members of the body; and the Holy Spirit acts therein by each as He pleases here below, for obviously it is no question of heaven. Thus, as the given Spirit abides with us forever (John 14), it is unbelief to doubt that Christ's body exists here still, or that He can fail on His part. Let the members of Christ see that they be subject to the written word which alone secures the truth.

1 Cor. 14 furnishes, what was so necessary, the Lord's regulation of the assembly. For the exercise of gift therein (whatever the liberty where is the Spirit of the Lord) is not left to the license, any more than the authority, of man. It is for His glory Who is the Second Man. The apostle therefore explains not only the relative value of the gifts, which men were apt to mistake, but the order that befits God's presence and promotes the edification of saints. What he wrote they were to recognize as the Lord's commandment. Now is all this, so due to His name, so full of enjoyment and growth and communion, is it obsolete? Is it not only lost for our joint walk, edification, and worship (15-17), but so fatally that we are not to seek thus to assemble, or to count on God's blessing in the only order He prescribes for the proper assembly of His own here below? Of course evangelizing, or trading with individual gift, is not here in question.

In Eph. 2 the truth appears no less clearly, though viewed, on the side, not of the Spirit's presence and action to glorify the Lord, but of Christ's love to the church. Hence are omitted all references to such sign gifts as tongues, interpretations, miracles, healings. But nowhere is the unity of the church revealed more plainly, nowhere with greater elevation, or out of love so deep. Yet here as ever (and it is due to Christ and to God, to say nothing of the soul), the individual blessedness of saints is carefully treated before the church is so much as named, in the strongest contrast with the catholic system which makes all blessing hinge on the church to its own glory but really its shame. Now in Christ Jesus believing Gentiles, once far off, are become nigh by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace who made both (i.e. Jews and Gentiles) one, and broke down the middle wall of partition... that He might create the two in Himself into one new man, making peace, and might reconcile both in one body to God by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby. So at the close of chapter ii. we are said to be built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, as the Ephesian saints also were being builded together for God's habitation in the Spirit. Thus God's house, like Christ's body, is shown to be the church, founded on redemption, and made good by the Spirit sent from heaven to that end.

Eph. 4 presents the Spirit's unity with great fullness before treating of the gifts: “one body and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, Who is over all, and through all, and in you [or, us] all” (4-6). Diversity follows in the gifts, which are not simply powers here as in 1 Cor. 12, but persons endowed for special ends in Christ's love to His own. His ascension is the declared starting-point after His wondrous humiliation and its fruit. “But to each one of us was the grace given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, When he, ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men And he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, unto ministerial work, unto edifying of the body of Christ, until we all attain,” &c. This is unmistakably if we are simple, deriving both the one body and the several gifts from Christ on high after His victory over Satan to our deliverance, and that work of redemption which has perfectly glorified God even as to sin and our sins, so that His love can flow to the uttermost. Thus and therefore is Christ set as Head over all things to the church His body. What a glorious place this gives to not only the church but those gifts, the exercise of which constitutes ministry of the word!

Beyond controversy the foundation gifts are the apostles and prophets. The basis of N.T. truth they so well laid that there was no room for their continuance, still less for the delusion of their revival. The others, evangelists as well as pastors and teachers, are given “till we all attain,” &c. Do we wish better security than the written word? Does unbelief tempt us to think that the one body admits of change without sin, or that the gifts of Christ fail, so that we need human imitations to supply their place? Do we believe that Christ's body abides on earth from the first, as that only to which we belong wherever we dwell, according to which we are called to walk and in nothing else? Do we believe that He has given evangelists to win the unconverted, or pastors and teachers to tend and feed His sheep as truly now as on the day of Pentecost?

The Epistle to the Colossians teaches no other doctrine, though its design is to assert the glory of Christ the Head rather than to develop the nature and privileges of the body. Indeed the special aspect of the mystery made known to the Gentile saints is Christ in them the hope of glory i.e. on high; the converse of what the O.T. prophets teach, Christ the glory of His people Israel with all the nations blessed but subordinate. A marked warning is against not holding the Head from Whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God (chap. 2:19). Heathen philosophy and judaizing ordinances were the dangers; and so they are to this day. Christ, not merely as Lord, nor yet as Savior of sinners, but as Head of the body, is the object of faith, Christ ever working for the best good of all the body, not only through such a gift as Paul, but through the less considerable and marked, “the joints and bands” (cf. Eph. 4:16). Thus was “all the body” to increase with the increase of God.

What a contrast with the increase of man when the spread of profession became multitudinous! “In the distress of the battle of Tolbiac Clovis [still a Pagan] loudly invoked the God of Clotilda and the Christians; and victory disposed him to hear with respectful gratitude the eloquent Remigius, bishop of Rheims, who forcibly displayed the temporal and spiritual advantages of his conversion. The king declared himself satisfied of the truth of the catholic faith; and the political reasons which might have suspended his public profession were removed by the devout or loyal acclamations of the Franks, who showed themselves alike prepared to follow their heroic leader to the field of battle or to the baptismal font... The new Constantine was immediately baptized with three thousand of his warlike subjects; and their example was imitated by the remainder of the gentle barbarians, who in obedience to the victorious prelate adored the cross which they had burnt, and burnt the idols which they had formerly adored” (Gibbon's D. & F. chap. 38. A.D. 496).

The departure of the ancient systems into sanctioned error and evil is no doubt true. The Reformed Protestant systems began without any intelligence of the church of God; the Dissenters split off with less sense of it if possible. If we feel for the Lord's injured honor, and if we love the church, are we not bound to purge ourselves from the vessels to dishonor, as in a great house? What can we do but humble ourselves before God for that ruin in Christendom which we have all shared, and fall back on all that is open to us to, obey in this evil day? We are sanctified by the Spirit to obedience; the divine word is the rule, and He is the yet abiding power. We are here and always to follow the Lord, not men. Are we to slight the organization of Christ's body and His gifts for either the old devices or the new inventions around us? I trow not.

Reflections on Galatians 5:13-18

Now we have a different phase of matter brought before us. Hitherto the apostle has been insisting on the absolute freedom of the believer from the law in connection with his relationship to God; now he shows that it is in no way the rule of the Christian's practical life and walk. Law has no place with the believer either for justification or for sanctification. This is of very great importance to rightly apprehend. Many earnest souls are confused and in error here. Not a few in Christendom would strongly repudiate (and very rightly) the law as a means of justification before God, asserting that faith in Christ and His accomplished work can alone avail. But the same persons, in the majority of cases, quite believe that the Christian should take up the law as a rule of godliness. This is a grave mistake, and lowering is its results. Law was given to men in the flesh to cut flesh, but the believer is not in the flesh (though the flesh be in him) but in the Spirit. Heavenly men need a different and higher standard; and this we shall find in the passage now before us.

“For brethren ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another” (vers. 13-15). The Galatians sought power against the flesh to keep it down, and had turned to the law for it. But with what success? What was the practical outcome? Such a low and contentious condition that the very law condemned them, for if it did not teach men to serve one another in love as Christ, the law said at least “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” This the Galatians were evidently not doing, but the opposite; hence the apostle's earnest word of warning. As Rom. 7 shows, law instead of subduing flesh provokes it and draws out all its badness. The law is thus the strength of sin, not of holiness, though in itself holy and just and good (1 Cor. 15:5, 6; Rom. 7:7-13).

Where then could the Galatians, where can the Christian now, find power? “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other, that ye may not do the things that ye would” (vers. 16, 17). Here is the secret of power. The believer now receives from God the gift of the Holy Ghost. This is one of the great characteristic blessings of Christianity, the value and importance of which no one can duly estimate. And having given the Spirit to us, God looks to us to walk in the Spirit. This is to allow Him to dwell in us ungrieved that He may be free to act and carry on His gracious work of conforming us to the image of Christ in glory. If this is true of us, if we not only live in the Spirit but walk in the Spirit, flesh does not act, its lusts are not fulfilled.

It is of moment to see that the apostle regards both as existing within the believer. It is quite a mistaken notion that flesh has been removed, though some, alas! have been betrayed into this fallacy. It is equally false that it is in any way improved. It is incurably and hopelessly evil, and abides until the change at the Lord's return. Its natural tendencies remain unaltered. It desires even to gain power over the believer and to lead him into sin and folly, as the Spirit, on the other hand, desires to lead in the ways of holiness and truth. But faith holds flesh for dead, and refuses to give it sanction, or to lend an ear to its suggestion; and for this the indwelling Spirit is divine power.

In ver. 17 read “may not” instead of “cannot.” This mistaken reading perverts entirely the meaning of the passage. Many suppose the teaching in this place to be substantially the same as in Rom. 7, whereas in fact it is the direct opposite. In Rom. 7 we have the struggles of a quickened soul who has no knowledge of deliverance, and there “cannot” is quite correct. When good is desired, evil is found to be present and all-powerful. But this is not the teaching of Gal. 5. Here the apostle is showing the power which the believer really possesses. We have the Holy Spirit of God, and He acts within us in order that we may not do the things that we would.

This removes all necessity for the law as regards those who are in Christ Jesus. “But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law (ver. 18).” It is impossible to be under the power of two principles. We do not need two guides at one time. It is characteristic of the believer that he is led of the Spirit; to such the law has nothing to say. It is thus altogether unintelligent to place believers under law in any shape. Those who do so understand neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm. It was not made for the righteous but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane (1 Tim. 1:7-10). God holds the believer righteous through the death and resurrection of Christ. All such have the Spirit as power, and Christ as life and object.

The Grace of Christ in Daily Life

THE brief Epistle to Philemon furnishes us with a lovely picture of the way in which the grace of Christ operates in the relationships and circumstances of every day life. The apostle pleads with his brother in the Lord for Onesimus, who, being the property of Philemon, had absconded (perhaps robbing him first), but who had been brought to Christ through contact with himself, while a prisoner in Rome. By Roman law the master had ample authority to punish him severely for such conduct. His behavior, too, was aggravated by the fact that he served an excellent master, not a tyrannical man of the world. Paul pleads for him, that in Philemon's heart divine grace and love might triumph over any feelings of annoyance and anger.

Generally the inspired epistles of Paul are occupied with the great doctrines of Christianity. He was the privileged vessel for the unfolding of the wondrous counsels of God concerning Christ which had been kept secret since the world began. Now Christianity not only soars high but descends low, and occupies itself with all the practical details of daily life, that in these, as in all else, the grace of Christ may be expressed by those who believe. We are thus preserved through the operation of the Holy Ghost from being mere theorists.

Paul does not here introduce himself as an apostle, but as “a prisoner of Jesus Christ.” Here we may observe the wisdom and delicacy of the Spirit of God. In addressing Timothy and Titus Paul was careful to bring forward his apostleship for obvious reasons. In those Epistles, we find inspired regulations for the internal order of the house of God, and for the walk which becomes the saints individually. Authority was as valuable there, as its omission is precious here. Paul would rest the matter of Onesimus entirely upon the ground of divine grace, which, he was assured, reigned in Philemon's heart. He was not alone in his appeal, but associated Timothy with himself to give it additional force.

Philemon was evidently a laborer among the saints. His measure we know not; Paul simply states the fact. His wife is addressed also— “our beloved Apphia,” or perhaps “the sister Apphia.” This was gracious and wise. Such a matter concerned the mistress as much as the master, and perhaps her feelings were stronger about it than those of her husband. Paul would have both act together in this, as heirs together of the grace of life. Archippus is included in the address also, a brother who ministered in connection with the assembly in Colosse (Col. 4:17). Perhaps he could help in this circumstance. Gracious counsel from him might strengthen the godly sentiments in the hearts of this excellent couple. Then the assembly is named (for evidently some saints met in their house); for Paul would have all open their hearts and lovingly welcome, according to Christ, him who was being sent back. All knew of his wrong-doing, all should have fellowship in the work of God's grace.

It is much to be observed in this Epistle to Philemon, the uniting power of divine grace. Here we have brought together Paul the former Pharisee, Timothy the Jew of mixed parentage, Philemon, Archippus, &c., Gentiles and Onesimus the poor slave. All were bound up with Christ in the same bundle of life, all were equally members of His body by the Holy Ghost. Hence we find Paul calling Timothy “brother” (ver. 1), Philemon “brother” (ver. 7 &c.), Onesimus also (ver. 16), adding in the latter case “beloved.” Precious bonds! who would or could have formed them but the Holy Spirit of God?

After his usual greeting of grace and peace, the apostle's heart bursts forth in thanksgiving to God. He gratefully recognizes all the good in his dear brother. He blesses God for his love and faith toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints. The bowels of the saints were refreshed by him. We may always observe this gracious way in the Epistles of Paul. In cases where there was much to blame, if anything of Christ was to be seen, he gladly owned it, and gave thanks; an important lesson for our souls to Learn in the school of God in this day. There is so much to grieve the spirit, and to draw forth our remonstrances and rebukes that we are apt to overlook the measure of the Spirit's fruit that is really there. Philemon's love to all the saints was about to be severely tested. Onesimus was now a saint; would he love him? It is not easy to love those who have done us a positive injury, yet nothing less is according to Christ. This loving recognition of grace in Philemon is the basis of this Epistle. Paul proceeds on the ground of it, and appeals to his fellow-laborer's heart.

He looked for reciprocation. Having owned Christ in him, he expected Philemon to do the same towards himself and to recognize the claim grace had given him upon him. Read “in us” in verse 6, not “in you.” The poor prisoner had great joy and consolation by reason of the love of this excellent Colossian.

Having cleared the way, having struck chords to which he was sure Philemon's heart would respond, the apostle proceeds to plead the cause of the erring one. He would not use authority. “Though I might be much bold in Christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient, yet for love's sake I rather beseech thee.”

He would not stand cm the position the Lord had given him in the assembly, intending this to act on Philemon, in order that he might not stand on his position toward the one who served him. Suppose he had sent back Onesimus with an apostolic mandate. Doubtless it would have been obeyed, and the runaway pardoned and reinstated. But would this have satisfied his heart? Where then the precious display of the grace of Christ which rises above all, even the deepest evil, and not only forgives but welcomes the transgressor to its bosom forever? Nothing less than this would meet the desire of that heart which longed above all to see Christ displayed in all His members below. He would not command, but besought; he names his authority, only to set it aside in such a case as this.

He presents several considerations, including two personal ones of a very touching character: 1. he was “Paul the aged;” 2. “and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ.”

Who could resist this? Who could refuse one who had grown “old” in the Lord's service, one who had patiently and earnestly served Him, in the face of all opposition and every conceivable form of suffering? “Now also a prisoner!” Surely a gracious heart would grant such an one the concession prayed for in this epistle 1. Philemon, we may be assured, was not the man to set at naught such an appeal.

He then presents two other considerations.

I. Onesimus was his own child in the faith, his own bowels. This was equally true of Titus, &c; but of Onesimus it could be added, “whom I have begotten in my bonds.” In time past he was unprofitable to Philemon, but now profitable to him and to Paul in every way. The apostle desired greatly to retain him, that on his master's part he might minister to him in the bonds of the gospel; but he would not ignore Philemon's rights. Let none suppose that this affords any sanction to slavery. It does not touch the question. The Spirit does not, in this Epistle, pronounce at all as to the right or wrong of the matter. The day has not come to set the world right. When glory bursts and the Lord Jesus reigns, God's order will be carried out through the universe; but until that day, these things are left where they are, divine instruction being given to the saints in view of them. Paul would have Onesimus received in a manner worthy of God, not now as a mere slave, but as a brother in the Lord, one who was calculated to be a help to Philemon now, in contrast with his behavior in the past, and who had shown, it would appear, an aptitude in the Lord's service as well. Being Paul's child through grace, he must be received as himself; and if he owed his master ought, Paul would repay. Mighty fruit of divine grace and love! Where had Paul learned this, if not from Him Who in deepest grace undertook His people's cause, and paid their mighty dues? “I will repay” was His language, as it were, as He went to the cross for us. The cold selfish heart of man can never produce such sentiments: these are plants of heavenly growth.

2. Next he reminds his brother that he owed all to himself; “thou owest unto me even thine own self besides.” Here we reach, as it were, the top of the scale. Philemon was himself a monument of saving grace. Paul had brought Christ to him. Having freely received, he must now freely give. Having been forgiven ten thousands talents, he must now willingly blot out the hundred pence. The exhortations in Titus 3 proceed on similar ground. We are to be gentle and meek, and are to act in the spirit of grace towards men, because we ourselves were once foolish living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another; but are now recipients of the kindness and love of our Savior God.

Paul desired that he would give him joy, that he would refresh his bowels in the Lord (ver. 20). If it so refreshed His servant to gaze upon this display of divine grace, how much more the Lord! He loves to see Himself reproduced practically in His own that are in the world. Paul now leaves the matter, having confidence in his beloved brother that he would do even more than he had said. He looked for the superabundance of divine grace. He counted upon him that thus it would be.

May the Spirit of God write these things in our hearts! This is Christianity indeed. It is a mighty power, forming the heart and permeating all our circumstances, lifting us entirely above every human consideration, and giving us practically days of heaven upon the earth. W. W. F.

James 2:25

ANOTHER example is cited from the O.T. in support of faith not bare but working by love, so needful to impress on the Jewish mind. Rahab's case is in its circumstances as different as can be conceived from that of the father of the faithful; for it is a woman, a Gentile, of the accursed race, and of previously bad character; yet after believing she entered the line of great David, and hence became an ancestor of David's greater Son. It was, therefore, no less pertinent and powerful.

“And likewise was not also Rahab the harlot justified by (out of) works, in that she received the messengers and sent [them] out another way?” (ver. 25).

Apart from faith the work of Rahab was no better than Abraham's trial. If done without God as the object and spring and authority, both were not only of no value but abominable. Viewed humanly, one was willing to kill his own son and heir, the other to betray her king and country to their destroyers. As faith wholly changed the character of their respective acts, so those acts proved the divine principle and the living power of their faith. This has been pointed out in the former instance. Wherein did it consist in the latter?

Rahab believed the two men to be the messengers of Jehovah's people. “I know,” said she, “that Jehovah hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you.” How did she know this? Not a city was taken in Canaan, not an inch of its territory was annexed, not even a blow had yet been struck. Jordan ran its barrier against Israel on the other side, and it was at that time overflowing all its banks. How did Rahab know what neither king nor people of Jericho knew? It was by faith. “For we have heard [and faith comes by hearing] how Jehovah dried up the water of the Red Sea before you, when ye came out of Egypt; and what ye did to the two kings of the Amorites that were beyond Jordan, to Sihon and to Og, whom ye utterly destroyed. We heard, and our hearts melted, and there remained no more spirit in any man because of you; for Jehovah your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath” (Josh. 2).

The rest of the inhabitants had heard no less than Rahab; but the word of the report did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those that heard. It reached Rahab's conscience, and she bowed to God in the face of every natural reason and feeling. She rightly judged the folly and the sin and the ruin of fighting against the God who had delivered His people from the power of Egypt, and crushed irretrievably their Amorite foes. His purpose to give Israel Canaan was notorious; and therefore she hid the two spies as the representatives of the people to whom God gave the land by promise and oath: two immutable things in which it was impossible that God should lie. Her faith lay thereon. Could any anchor be more secure or firm?

Yet Rahab did not despair for herself or others; she counted on mercy in Jehovah's name, as true faith does. “And now, I pray you, swear to me by Jehovah, since I have dealt kindly with you, that ye will also deal kindly with my father's house, and give me a sure sign, that ye will save alive my father and my mother and my brothers and my sisters, and all that they have, and deliver our souls from death.” The sign was given as solemnly as it was kept. As she received the messengers in faith, she sent them out by another way in the same faith.

Thus Rahab's faith was self-evidently fruitful. She had swamped all patriotism in her fear of Jehovah. As she believed in the bond that attached Him to His people, she looked, and not in vain, that assuredly as He should destroy Jericho, He would rescue her and hers. In spite of her habits hitherto impure, notwithstanding her unscrupulous readiness to deceive and baffle where her heart was engaged, faith was energetically at work; and the heart-knowing God bore her witness. “And likewise was not also Rahab the harlot justified by works?”

For her it was no barren acquiescence that Jehovah was the God of Israel. It was the living active faith that He would work on their behalf in Canaan as in Egypt, in the wilderness, and in the borders of the promised [and. Hence she acted in a faith which issued in works exactly and highly suited to His purpose for His people. Unbelief might suggest failure for herself as well as for them. But her faith overcame all fears and rose above all difficulties. It was easy to conceive hitches, and to apprehend the indignant and cruel destruction which must follow their discovery of her treason. But her faith was simple and strong in what Jehovah was to His people; and it expressed itself not in words only but in deeds which she well knew exposed her naturally to the most suffering and ignominious death. Her faith laid hold of the sound principle that the highest of all rights is that God should have His rights. Therefore she dreaded not the wrath of king or people, gave to the wind her fears, and endured, as seeing Him Who is invisible. Was not she too justified by works?

The Hope of Christ Compatible With Prophecy: Part 2

IN the second place, while it is true that the day of the Lord cannot come before the apostacy and the revelation of the man of sin arrive, which are to be judged in that day, yet is there a serious error in the English rendering of the last clause of ver. 2, “is at hand.” The word usually rendered “at hand,” “near,” or “nigh,” is ἐγγὺς, or ἐγγίδω “come near,” as is known to scholars. The word ἐνίστημι, on the other hand, is never so rendered in the New Testament, save in the passage before us. On the contrary, occurring several times, it is used invariably in a way which excludes the possibility of such a rendering (more especially when it is, as here, in the perfect tense). The first occurrence is in Rom. 8:38. It is evident that here ἐωεστῶτα cannot mean things at hand. It is contrasted with μέλλοντα, i.e. “things to come.” It signifies only and emphatically “things present,” and is so rendered in the common Bible. See the same words and the same contrast in 1 Cor. 3:22. Again, in 1 Cor. 7:26, διὰ τὴν ἐνεστῶσαν ἀνάγκην is properly translated “for the present distress.” A distress not actually come, but only at hand or coming, would spoil the meaning. The next is Gal. 1:4, “this present evil world,” the only possible meaning of the word here. The next world, or age, will not be evil, and therefore “at hand,” or “imminent,” is shut out. Compare also Heb. 9:9, εἰς τὸν καιρὸν τὸν ἐνεστηκότα “for the time then present” (not “at hand,” which cannot be the true force).

All these, notice, are instances of the same tense as 2 Thess. 2:2. The only other occurrence is 2 Tim. 3:1, ἐνστήσονται, in the future middle. Here the English version renders it, “shall come.” Still, the meaning indubitably is not “shall be at hand,” which could have no point, but “shall be there.” To be impending merely was little: the grave thing was, that perilous times should be actually present. It may be concluded, therefore, from an induction thus complete, that in all the other instances the authorized version is right, but in 2 Thess. 2:2 it is wrong. It is not conceivable to uphold both; so that, if right in 2 Thess. 2, the version must be wrong everywhere else. But we have seen, from the intrinsic meaning of the word, as well as from the sense imperatively demanded by the context, that in all the other cases the translators are justified. They were therefore mistaken here, and the proper rendering, in conformity with their own translation of the word in the same tense elsewhere, ought to be, “as that the day of the Lord is present.” So the Revisers give, “As that the day of the Lord is now present,” adding in italics the adverb, which is needless emphasis. The sense is strong and clear without “now.”

The Thessalonian saints had from the first known much affliction. They had notoriously suffered from their own countrymen, and this to such a degree that the apostle, in his earnest and watchful interest about them, sent Timothy to establish and to comfort them concerning their faith, that no man should be moved by these afflictions. They knew that “we are appointed thereunto.” Nevertheless they needed comfort. The apostle had warned them before, that “we should suffer tribulation, even as it came to pass, and ye know.” “For this cause when I could no longer forbear, I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter have tempted you, and our labor be in vain.” But Timothy brought good tidings of their faith and love, and the apostle could break out into thanks and joy for their sakes before God, and he lets them know it in his first Epistle (chap. 3.).

The tempter, however, was not to be discouraged, nor diverted from his wiles. They had been already taught that the Lord Himself was to come, and the saints, sleeping or living, were all to be changed, and to be caught up together to meet Him in the air, and so be ever with Him (chap. 4.). They also knew that the day of the Lord was one of destruction and terror, unlooked for by the world: “Yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night” (chap. 5.).

Accordingly, Satan appears to have distracted the saints by the harassing statement that the day of the Lord was actually there, thus seeking to rob them of all profit and joy in the persecutions and tribulations which they were then enduring. Nor let any think it strange if, in a time of perplexity for the world and persecution of the church, the fears of saints might be wrought upon; particularly as they knew that the day of Jehovah in the Old Testament by no means necessarily implies the personal presence of the Lord, though it looks onward to that anticipatively. Compare, for instance, Isa. 13, where God's judgment of Babylon and the Chaldeans is so designated: “Howl ye, for the day of Jehovah is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty,” &c. (See also Joel 1:15; 2:1-11; Amos 5:18, 20; Zeph. 1:7, 14, 15, &c.)

In the second Epistle the Holy Ghost conveys the needed instruction. “We ourselves,” says the apostle, “glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure: which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer: seeing it is a righteous thing With God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and on them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at in all them that believed (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day” (chap. 1.). The time of retribution is not when Jesus comes, but when He is revealed.

For though at His coming the church is caught up, there is nothing yet of retributive character. It is favor, not a process of judgment; whereas the revelation and the day of the Lord are, as is manifest, associated with judgment, and hence there is the public award of God then for the first time manifested to the world; “seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled rest with us; when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed.” Doubtless there is a tribulation, and even the great tribulation in the time of Anti-Christ, previous to the revelation of Jesus; as obviously there is rest to those who sleep in Jesus now; and there will be rest in a fuller sense when our bodies are changed, and we are caught up to be with Him. But both are wholly distinct from the public or retributive tribulation and rest here spoken of. It is the day of punishment with everlasting destruction to the adversaries, as it is the day when Christ comes, not to present the Church to Himself, nor to take them to mansions in the Father's house, but to be glorified in His saints, and to be marveled at in all them that believed. For “when Christ, our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.” It is the open judicial dealing (not the hidden joy or blessedness, before, then, or afterward,) which here enters into the scene.

Next, the apostle turns to the source of their agitation. “We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto Him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled.” Assuredly the consolation administered here is not that Christ's coming was a distant thing! Can it be that theologian upon theologian has desired to make of this fancied long and far off absence of the Lord a balm for the tried and fearful? Can it be that the poor church has but too willingly sipped the cup, and, heedless of His words, cheers herself on the delirious career of worldliness, and folly, and faithlessness to Him? “Lord, how long?”

Not so the Thessalonians. Full well they knew that His coming was to end their sorrows and crown their joys. Under apostolic guidance they had looked, and the Holy Ghost had commended their looking, for Christ. Was it not the part of the evil servant to say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming? But Paul was a blessed and faithful servant, who never says anything of the sort. He uses the fact of the coming of the Lord and their gathering together unto Him as a comfort against the anxiety created by the idea that the day of the Lord was already arrived—nay more, as a proof that such an idea was false. His ground of entreaty is two-fold. He urges a motive founded upon the Lord and heaven, and a reason connected with earth and the man of sin. There must be our gathering above, and the falling away below.

In the first place the Lord was to come, and they were to be gathered together unto Him, in order that He and they might bring in the day and appear together from heaven. This had not taken place, and therefore they were not to be disturbed as if that day had come, or could come previously. In the next place, he presses the point that the evil must first be developed completely which that day is to judge. “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there cone a falling away (or the apostacy, ἡ ἀποστασία) first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth, and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or object of worship; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” But the apostacy was not then come. “And now (if one may translate the apostle's word a little exactly) ye know what hindereth that he might he revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness doth already work: only [there is] one that now hindereth until he be out of the way. And then shall that lawless one be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall consume with the breath of His mouth, and shall annul by the appearing of His coming.”

(To be continued, D.V.).

In the Beginning

Q.-Gen. 1:1, John 1:1, 1 John 1:1; 2:7, 13, 14; 3:8, &c. What is the difference, if any between “in the beginning,” and “from” it? X. Y. Z.

A.-” In the beginning” in Gen. 1:1 is clearly the first recorded action of God in calling the universe into being, the creation of angels (it would seem from Job 38:7) being anterior. It was the beginning of time on the largest scale. But in John 1:1 the phrase goes back into the eternity that preceded, because it expresses the being of the Word Who was God and created all (ver. 3), trace back indefinitely far as you may.

“From the beginning” is always in time, not before it, to whatever epoch or period, person or thing, it may be applied. Take the earliest application, as said of the great angel who fell: “the devil sinneth from the beginning” (1 John 3:8). It was not even the beginning of his existence as an angel, but only as a fallen one.

For the angels were all sinless at first, as Adam was. God never is the author of moral evil.

But the phrase “from the beginning” carries the same time-force as to good. It never means “in the beginning,” even though applied to Him Who was the Eternal also. It refers from its own nature to a time relation. So we see in Luke 1:2, where “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word” can only mean from the manifestation of Christ in the public testimony. It is even distinguished from ἄνωθεν in verse 3, by which the evangelist draws the line between many chroniclers from tradition and his own accurate acquaintance with all things “from the outset” or origin. The phrase therefore does not and can not refer to eternity but to what was before its witnesses in time.

So it is in the all-important use of the phrase in 1 John 1:1, ὅ ἧν ἀπ’ἀρχῆς....περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς δωῆς

“That which was from the beginning.... concerning the Word of life.” Undoubtedly He Who is thus presented was “in the beginning;” and this is fully implied in ver. 2 that follows, as in John 1:1, 2. But here it is the concrete Person of our Lord, truly subsisting here below, heard, seen, contemplated, and even handled by the hands of chosen witnesses. This therefore can express nothing but the Lord's manifestation on earth among men.

1 John 2:7 is equally conclusive. “An old commandment” which the saints had “from the beginning” cannot refer to the eternal counsels of God as such, but solely to what was enjoined by our Lord when with them here below. They certainly did not hear it from eternity, but in time and at that time solely. This accordingly gives the true bearing of vers. 13 and 14, of course also 24, and 3:11, 2 John 5, 6. “He that is from the beginning “is the very same person” who was in the beginning,” both truths of the highest moment to faith; but they are distinct and in no way to be merged in one another. If I believe in Him that was in the beginning, it is the true faith of His deity and of His personality as the Word; I am not an Arian or a Sabellian assuredly. But this is not to believe in “Him that was from the beginning,” the Word made flesh and tabernacling among us full of grace and truth, Whose glory was contemplated by the apostle John and his fellows, as of an Only-begotten of (or with) a Father. Hence it is the distinctive badge of the father in God's family here below to know “Him that is from the beginning,” certainly not alone His divine personality and Godhead, however indispensable, but to know Him as He was manifested here, unchangingly divine indeed, but in all the wonders of His life among men in the lowliest, holiest, most familiar love and obedience: Christ Himself as He lived, moved, and had His being with the disciples, not only declaring God but showing the Father. To know Him thus is indeed to be a “father.”

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:32

IN the concluding verse we have the still larger summary of the post-diluvian earth, which furnishes occasion for a general survey.

“These [are the] families of Noah's sons, after their generations, in their nations; and by these were separated the nations in the earth after the flood” (verse 32).

It is not only that mankind sprang from a single pair created innocent as Adam and Eve were. A fresh start for the race began after the deluge which judged the guilty mass. From Noah and his three sons preserved from destruction, conditions began which subsist to-day and will for their descendants till, with the clouds of heaven, the Son of man come to Whom shall be given dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all peoples, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. So recent comparatively is the history of man, and his tripartite separation of land and tongue, family and nation. For instead of beginning with a single line, we have three heads with their wives, three great families to renew the history of man on earth with the experience derived from the antediluvian earth.

What can be vainer than the dreams of men? From the only evidence we have, happily the highest, surest, and most authoritative of testimony we know that primeval man was as far as possible from savagery. He was set in a garden or park of delights, where grew every tree pleasant to the sight, and good for food. Even when transgression entailed man's expulsion from Paradise, and sons were in due time born, the elder was a husbandman, the younger a shepherd. Town life began for some, nomad habits for others, the forging of tools, bronze and iron, and the making instruments of music, wind and stringed: all this before our first parents died.

It would seem in fact that it was after not only the deluge but the dispersion of the various families, that the more distant and isolated tribes degenerated into a savage condition. To this deserts and forests, marshes and mountains, would expose men, when they found themselves severed from others by distinct tongues, and the national barriers drew in their train opposing interests, and the difficulties of subsistence increasing with population. Hunting soon led to encroachment on human liberty, as our chapter has shown. There was corruption and violence before the flood, a great reason for it though by no means the only one; but there is no evidence of idolatry till after. We know it had set in even through Abraham's progenitors before his call. But idolatry, once introduced, spread like fire, and added enormously to the debasement of its victims.

The Japhetic race is first traced in the early verses (2-5), and with marked brevity. Japheth's sons present the great outline of those that possessed themselves of the north from east to west in Asia and Europe. From two only do we hear of descendants, though doubtless all had; but here we have only the sons of Gomer and of Javan. These were respectively the families which peopled Asia Minor, and Armenia on the east, and the sons of Javan whom we cannot fail to identify with the Greek or Hellenic families, extending to Spain, France, Italy and Sicily, the isles or maritime coasts of the nations.

Much more detail is assigned to Ham, who occupies verses 6 to 20. And with that holy boldness and candor which characterizes the truth, this chapter hides not but sets before us plainly the early rise of kingly power in that race. The beginning of Nimrod's kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar; Nimrod was of Cush, Ham's eldest son. He and he alone is here described in terms so strong, even if we conceive that Asshur went out from that land, though of Shem's stock, and emulated Nimrod's ambitious example by building Nineveh and three cities more in Assyria. The sons of Cush include much beyond Ethiopia, but are distinct from Mizraim and Phut as well as Canaan, minutely enumerated, though none so much as that race accursed of God which Israel was responsible to blot out.

Last of all we come to Shem's descendants in vers. 21-31, singularly described as father of all the sons of Eber, brother of Japheth the elder. Eber led the way through Peleg in due time to the father of the faithful. If Shem had not the natural priority over Japheth, he pre-eminently had the blessing, as Canaan the curse. Elam is the first named son, progenitor of those east of Persia proper, occupying the province of which Shushan or Susa was capital. It early rose to power, but faded before the energy of Assyria and Babylon, till with Persia and Media it shared the power of the second world-kingdom. Arphaxad will find his developed place in chap. 11. The Lydians answer to Lud, and Syrians to Aram. Attention is drawn under Peleg to the significant fact of the earth divided in his day. And the list closes with Joktan and his sons who fill Arabia from S.W. to N.E. as the Ishmaelites, Keturahites, and Edomites distinguish the north and west. But of these we have no particulars till later in the book of Genesis, so that we speak here only of the fact in general.

The Offerings of Leviticus: 12. Peace Offering of a Goat

Lev. 3:12-17

THIS sacrifice did not admit of such latitude as the Burnt offering, nor yet as the Meal offering. It allowed nothing less than a goat, which now claims our attention as a third alternative.

“12 And if his offering [be] a goat, then he shall present it before Jehovah; 13 and he shall lay his hand on the head of it, and slaughter it before the tent of meeting. And the sons of Aaron shall sprinkle the blood of it on the altar round about. 14 And he shall present thereof his offering, a fire offering to Jehovah: the fat that covereth the inwards and all the fat that [is] on the inwards, 15 and the two kidneys and the fat that [is] on them which [is] by the flank, and the net above the liver, he shall take away as far as the kidneys. 16 And the priest shall burn them on the altar, the food of the fire offering for a sweet odor. All the fat [is] Jehovah's. 17 [It is] an everlasting statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings: no fat and no blood shall ye eat” (vers. 12-17).

Though the goat could not be compared with the worth of the bullock or even with the harmless sheep, so suited to represent the patient blameless Sufferer, Jehovah comforted the Jew who could not bring either, yet desired to pay his thanks or his vow. A goat was perfectly valid and assuredly acceptable. He was to present it before Jehovah, lay his hand on its head, and slay it before the tent of meeting; nor did Aaron's sons sprinkle its blood with less zeal or care on the altar round about. He was directed to present thereof his offering, a Fire offering to Jehovah: all the inward fat, etc., precisely as he that offered the internal fat of a bullock.

One thing was expressly asked, indeed, when a sheep was offered, which was peculiar necessarily to that form of the offering; “the whole fat tail, he shall take it away close by the backbone.” In the sheep of Syria no portion was more prized or valuable, not only for its size but for its quality as fat with the delicacy of marrow. This was therefore claimed for Jehovah, and ungrudgingly given, “hard by the backbone.” So surely had the Antitype devoted all His energies to His Father, not His life only. No wonder that such a type in the sheep's case drew out the beautiful recognition, “It is the food, or bread, of the fire offering to Jehovah.”

It is all the more striking in the case of the goat, which had no such fat tail; and consequently no such demand held in this respect. Yet here sovereign grace consoled the offerer of the goat, “It is the food of the fire offering for a sweet odor.” It also was His bread, and an odor of rest to Him.

How much more may we not rejoice in His joy, Who knows the infinite reality that we have correspondingly found in the sacrifice of Jesus, His blood and death, and His inward energies without stint offered up to His glory! What delight to the Father in Him Who gave Himself for, us an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell! If all the fat, the inward richness of the victim, was Jehovah's; if no such fat was to be eaten by the Israelites any more than the blood, how blessedly Christ has made it all good for us, as the basis of our communion with our God and Father! The law of the offering says more of the deepest worth; but we need say no more now.

The Uprising of the House Master

Luke 13:25-30

Do you believe these plain words of the Savior? Do you, my dear reader, believe that the time is short, the. Lord at hand, and the solemn change impends from grace to judgment? The scripture before us is but one of many like warnings. The day of grace will close with the “falling away,” the apostacy. When once the House-master will have risen up and barred the door, how appalling to stand without and knock in vain! Did it ever come home that this might be your own case? Evade it not.

The appeal arose out of the question, Are those to be saved few? The prophets had intimated such a remnant in terms as searching as they were repulsive to Jewish feeling. The Lord's words are a direct dealing with conscience. “Strive earnestly to enter through the narrow door; for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and shall not be able.” Men are ready enough to do or suffer much for salvation. They welcome a means which allows of their efforts if not deserts. But “ye must be born anew” is hateful, unless it be within their ability to hinge it on an ordinance, which works without bringing the soul into the presence of God. This is what men naturally dread and shirk. They refuse to face God about their sins. Anything but the repentance which accompanies believing Him that sent Jesus. For He treats man, moral or not, as alike lost, and insists that salvation is in none other than Him Whom man despised and crucified. “For neither is there any other name under heaven that is given among men whereby we must be saved.” It is therefore by grace through faith; and this not of ourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works that none might boast. Hence strive earnestly to enter through the narrow door of being begotten by the word of truth. Entrance by any other way, however attractive, is vain and ruinous.

Thereon the Lord intimates the certainty that at an unexpected moment the Master of the house will close the gospel call. “When once the house-master hath risen up and shut the door, and ye shall begin to stand without and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, open to us; and he answering shall say to you, I know you not whence ye are; then shall ye begin to say, We did eat and drink in thy presence, and thou didst teach in our streets; and he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are: depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. There shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves cast out. And they shall come from east and west, and from north and south, and shall recline in the kingdom of God. And behold, there are last who shall be first, and there are first who shall be last” (vers. 25-30).

It is the rejection of Christ that tests souls; Christ in humiliation is the stumbling stone. So it was for the Jew then; so it is at bottom now for others. Yet is it thus that He has both glorified God and made propitiation for our sins. Christ crucified is to Jews a stumbling-block and to Gentiles foolishness; but to the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is God's power and God's wisdom. There could be no gospel of grace without righteousness. Yet scripture is clear that it is not in the sinner to whom the gospel is preached. For “there is none righteous, no, not one.” Hence the gospel is God's righteousness, not man's; and its ground is the redemption that is in Christ. And His righteousness is unto all, that they might hear the glad news, and upon all those who believe, that they might know themselves justified by faith.

But this is not all the truth. He, the Lord Jesus—He will appear in glory to judge the habitable earth. In vain will men in that day say, Lord, open to us. He who now calls in love will sentence the guilty. He will say, I know you not whence ye are.

For had they heard the word in faith, they had received, not only pardon and peace, but life in Christ. And His life is the only and the sure source of the fruit of righteousness which is by Him to God's glory and praise. Not receiving Christ to life eternal men are but “workers of iniquity,” the baptized no less than the circumcised, the Mahometan quite as much as heathen. Past privileges are pleaded to no purpose. “We did eat and drink in thy presence, and thou didst teach in our streets.” Neglected opportunities, slighted mercies, only aggravate guilt. He shall say in reply, “I tell you, I know not whence ye are: depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.” To the wicked, Gentile, Jew, or of Christendom, there is no peace: least of all to those who have heard most.

There indeed shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth, when in the kingdom the unbelieving Jews see their boasted fathers and prophets, but themselves cast out. But there is deep cheer for the despised Gentiles. For the Lord adds, “And they shall come from the east and west and from the north and south, and they shall recline in the kingdom of God. And, behold, there are last who shall be first, and there are first who shall be last.” Do you say, how terrible and true of unbelieving Israel, how blessedly true of the Gentiles who believe? What will it be for you who have heard the gospel, and neglected so great salvation? What possible hope can be in that day! But blessing in faith there is now and ever.

Unity of the Church in the Inspired History

IN full accord with what has been shown from the Gospel of John and from the Pauline epistles are the facts presented in the Acts of the Apostles. The disciples were born of God and had genuine faith. From deep anguish they had joy in their risen Lord. But as yet they were awaiting “the promise of the Father, which [said he] ye have heard of me. For John baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence” (Acts 1:4, 5). They had not yet His personal presence so as to make them one. They were living units, but did and could not yet possess the promised unity. Saints of God individually, they were soon in virtue of one Spirit to be baptized into one body, Christ's body (1 Cor. 12:13). Meanwhile they all gave themselves, Mary &c. with them, to persevering prayer.

When the day of Pentecost was a-fulfilling (chap. 2.), the wondrous answer came. The Holy Spirit, attended by significant tokens, filled them all; and they began to speak with other tongues. Devout Jews from every nation were then dwelling at Jerusalem, who could recognize their own languages in Galilean lips telling out the mighty things of God, not in creation now, but in redemption. Nor was there only the church of God but the gospel of grace. For to those pricked in heart by the truth preached and saying, “What shall we do?” the word was, “Repent ye, and be baptized each of you in (or on) the name of Jesus Christ for remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (ver. 38). Thus was the blessing to go on, as it began; the saintly status precedes the grace which established unity and gifts Repentance unto life, and washing away of sins in baptism, were followed by not gifts merely but the Holy Spirit given.

Thus were added about 3,000 souls that day; and they persevered in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles, in the breaking of bread and the prayers. It was not a human or voluntary association, but a divine institution of unequaled character, the one body of Christ. “And the Lord was adding together [the true text] daily those that should be saved” (cf. ver. 47 with 44). Baptism was the mark or sacramental badge for the individual; the Lord's Supper, for the communion of saints as one body (1 Cor. 10:16, 17).

But beyond controversy the article of the church stood, not on the truth of justification by faith, but on the presence and action of the Holy Spirit. When this was a new thing, grace gave plain, characteristic, and irrefragable proofs. These do not seem continued beyond the apostolic era and the close of the N. T. canon, which supplied henceforward the weightier attestation of permanent authority in God's word. At first, as Christ, so also His own, had favor with all the people; for unselfish love, happiness, and holiness, all hanging on the name of the crucified but exalted Jesus, told on conscience and heart, to say nothing of wonders and signs.

But as the work grew, the Jewish rulers became exasperated and threatened in vain; for with great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. Lying was sternly judged “within” as lying to the Holy Spirit, for God was there as never before (Acts 5:4). Signs were yet more abundant subsequently, as before the place wherein they were assembled shook in answer to their praying. Yea, their baffled religious adversaries might imprison or beat the apostles, but what could be done with men rejoicing to be counted worthy of dishonor for the Name? And every day in the temple and at home they ceased not preaching and teaching Jesus the Christ. The over-whelming appeal of Stephen to the Jews, always resisting the Holy Spirit as their fathers did, drew out their hatred unto blood; and all the saints were scattered save the apostles. But thereon the free action of the Spirit in the work of the gospel went forward outside the Jews. Even Saul, who had consented in his blind fury to Stephen's murder, was called as apostle to the Gentiles (Acts 9), and pre-eminently became also minister of the church, whose union with Christ was conveyed in our Lord's words at his conversion, “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest.”

Now no one disputes that the saints assembled at first in private houses to remember the Lord in His supper, the center of their worship. It was expressly κατ’οἶκον “at home,” in contrast with the temple (Acts 2:46); and there would they teach the disciples, if not preach more openly (ver. 42). Ere long, even in Jerusalem, they might need a hundred upper chambers instead of that one which sufficed before Pentecost. Unity does not at all depend on all assembling within a single apartment. This would make it material. It is really in the power of the Holy Spirit. Hence coming together τὸ αὐτὸ (1 Cor. 11:20) admits of as many localities as suited the convenience of saints dwelling sometimes in all the quarters of an extensive city. No matter how numerous the assemblages might be, scripture (i.e. God's mind) regards the saints as the church met together for the same purpose. One Spirit, not theirs but God's, created and maintained the unity for the manifestation of God's glory in Christ. Hence we never hear of “churches” but solely of “the church” in a city as in Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus, etc.; though we read of “the churches” of Judea, Galatia, Macedonia, Asia, etc.

The notion however of “churches” only on earth, contrasted with “the church” in heaven, is not only unfounded but opposed to the word of God. For this reveals, not alone the fact of local assemblies up and down the earth, but that the saints there are members of one body, in which they are set by God according to His will for His glory. That some are no longer alive but gone to be with Christ in no way clashes with the living fact; for the Spirit came down here to establish the unity. Even among men the regiment abides the same, though individual soldiers are there no more. Independency is therefore the direct negation of that unity of the saints in one body here below, throughout manifested once, which each and all are responsible to manifest, though it be now manifested only by few. There was but one communion on earth according to the Lord's will and the apostles' teaching. A Christian (when godly discipline forbade not) was member of the church everywhere; a pastor and teacher was Christ's gift wherever he might be. “God set” gifts in the church. Scripture recognizes no such thought as membership or gift in a church. Barnabas and Simeon Niger and Lucius, Manaen and Saul, labored together in Antioch; but so did such as visited Jerusalem or any other place. Intercommunion was the invariable rule, and liberty, not to say responsibility, of ministry in love. It was the right of Christ, not man's.

Undoubtedly there were also local charges, elders and deacons, in due time and place. In Jerusalem the “seven” were looked out by the multitude of the disciples, and appointed by apostolic laying on of hands. Scripture is silent how the elders there (Acts 11:30; 15:2-29) entered on their duties; but we know from Acts 14:23 that apostles chose them for the disciples, or an apostolic delegate like Titus (1:5) established them where the apostle could not act. In no case was there popular election of elders. It was a task too delicate and difficult for the saints as a company; and it demanded apostolic authority direct or indirect. As the disciples contributed their money, it was fitting that they should look out dispensers in whom they confided; it was for apostles or their delegates to choose overseers or presbyters, to whom the rest could give no authority.

The apostles derived authority as well as gift from Christ, the source of both. As Christ conferred the highest and widest authority on the apostles, so did they appoint presbyters or elders and deacons in their local places respectively; the one as a spiritual charge, the other in temporal things, as is fully explained by the apostle, not to the assembly, but to Timothy in the third chapter of his first Epistle. One sees in the quotation which Eusebius draws (H. E. iii. 23) from Clem. Alex. how far the truth was lost thus early; for how absurd to imagine the apostle John recurring to lots! a mode adopted before the Holy Spirit was given (Acts 1), as Chrysostom rightly acknowledges.

But local charge is in principle distinct from the gifts which the ascended Head of the body gave for the perfecting of the saints. Never do elders or deacons appear on any such ground. For the gifts flow direct from Christ, and are for His body wherever it may be. Nor does 1. Cor. 12. differ in this from Eph. 4, or Rom. 12 from Col. 2. And for this reason what unspeakable mercy to the saints! For the supply of those gifts which are of all moment depends on His grace and faithful care Who can no more fail now that He is on high, than when He came down to accomplish redemption for God's glory. In none of these scriptures can we restrain the church or the body to a local assembly, though a local assembly was wholly wrong if it did not represent it. The assembly on earth as a whole is contemplated; and in it, manifestly one body, the gifts were set. Hence the apostle treats it as no less visible than Jews or Greeks (1 Cor. 10:32).

This is the unity which is supposed in the very weighty scripture of 1 Tim. 3:15. “But if I delay, that thou mayest know how to conduct oneself in God's house, which is a living God's assembly, pillar and support of the truth.” Invisibility is out of the question. Responsible manifestation is the essence of what the apostle has before him and urgently presses. Nor would any other thought have been entertained, but for the practical ruin which so soon ensued, and the subsequent and deeper failure when the truth got swamped under tradition which was but precepts of men. Then began the desire to plead an invisible aggregate of saints within a visible mixed multitude, as if the church were only another Israel. The truth rather is that the church has departed from manifesting its original unity, according to the sad history of all the varied trials of man under responsibility here below. Who can see independent churches in the decree of Acts 15? Who can limit “all the flock,” or “the church of God” in Acts 20:28, to the city of Ephesus? The R. Catholics have abused the fact of the church as a visible unity everywhere to their own mere majority and the grossest sectarianism, heterodoxy, and idolatry. This does not justify Protestants in denying responsible and holy unity according to God's institution, or claiming license to set up churches independent one of another.

Are we then helplessly, hopelessly, bound by a chain of sin, either individually, or in our corporate place? If we turn away, as we are commanded, from those that create divisions and occasions of falling (Rom. 16:17), is there no way by grace to stand approved when not merely schisms but sects appear (1 Cor. 11:18, 19)? God has answered this very difficulty in 2 Tim. 2:19-21, which contemplates a state of disorder beyond rectifying. “Howbeit the firm foundation of God standeth, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his, and, Let everyone that nameth the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness. Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some unto honor and some unto dishonor. If one therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, meet for the master's use, prepared to every good work.”

Before the church began, the Lord had given the great assuring resource for the darkest day: “where two or three are gathered together unto my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20). In the brightest day no privilege more pregnant of blessing. We cannot expect all saints to recognize their relationship as members, and to refuse every body save the one body of Christ; but we can believe and act in faith ourselves. This is not a sect, but the way to be kept from it, while we look to the Lord, and own the ruin in loving sorrow. For without a real share in Christ's sense of the dishonor done thus to His name, knowing the church's privilege, and seeking to realize it, only ends in pride, evil, and worse confusion.

We are free, not to say bound, to remember Him in the breaking of the bread, but only in the unity of His body, and therefore receiving all that are His, save where His discipline intercepts. “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad” (Matt. 12:30). Undoubtedly we need the Spirit of God to guide us aright in the midst of the scatterings and perplexities of Christendom; but we have Him dwelling in us, that living in the Spirit we may walk in the Spirit, not only as individuals but keeping His unity in the bond of peace. Obedience, according to the word of God, is the safe-guard of holiness in every way: to this we are sanctified by the Spirit.

Reflections on Galatians 5:19-26

THE works of the flesh are solemnly and fully enumerated, and in such a manner as to mark the holy hand of the Spirit of God. “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are [these; adultery], fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envying, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (v. 19-21). Who but the Spirit of God would have given the unholy list thus? Who but He would have placed wrath, variance, etc. in the same category with such notoriously vile offenses as fornication, murders, and drunkenness? Man would have classified them, arranging them in the order in which they appeared heinous in his sight. Offenses that are lesser, in human judgment, would have been placed in one class, and bolder sins in another. But not so the Holy Spirit. He traces all to the one root. Whether it be murder or strife, sect-making (for such is the meaning of “heresies”), or emulations (which may even happen among brethren), all comes from the flesh, which is incurably evil, whether in the saint or the unregenerate sinner. In like manner the Lord Jesus exposed the heart of man to His disciples in Matt. 15:19. All evil flows thence. The spring being impure, all that flows from it is offensive to God.

Let every believer watch himself with earnest godly care. Flesh must be treated as a dead and judged thing, and then all is well; but if it be allowed to work, though but for a moment, any evil may follow. Those who persist in an evil course the apostle repudiates altogether here. He presses it in this place on the Galatians, as elsewhere on the Ephesians (Eph. 5:5), that those also who live thus shall not inherit God's kingdom. The truest believer may, through unwatchfulness, fall into the gravest sins; but such cannot be said to live in them—they do not characterize their lives. The believer, through the action of the Spirit of God on his conscience, owns and confesses his sin, and gets forgiveness and cleansing. Such statements are not intended to encourage doubts in the hearts of saints, but to test and sift profession. There is much of it in this day. On every hand there is boastful profession of Christianity; but in how many cases is the fruit lacking which God looks for I 2 Tim. 3:1-5 may well be pondered in this connection.

What a contrast is the Spirit's fruit “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law” (vers. 22-23). These are not called “works” implying effort; but fruit, the natural result of life. The Holy Spirit is a living power in the Christian: here we have the blessed and varied result of His operations. “Love” is God's own nature and is rightly placed first. Everything else pales before this. It is that which will abide when not only prophecies, tongues, and knowledge are no more, but when faith and hope have given place to sight and realization (1 Cor. 13:8-13). “Joy” and “peace” follow naturally. As our souls abide in the divine nature, so we are happy and calm. Things that would otherwise disturb and ruffle our hearts pass by and leave us quite unmoved. Then long-suffering, gentleness, and goodness in all our dealings with others fall into their blessed place. Wrongs are quietly borne, vindictiveness is not allowed; but on the contrary the grace which shone out always in the Perfect One is displayed to His glory. For evil, positive goodness is shown, which is ever God's way. Turning inwards again, “faith, meekness and temperance” develop themselves, enabling us to walk trustfully with God, imparting that lowly brokenness of spirit which God values, and enabling us to keep all our members well under control. What can the law say to such? It was assuredly never made for men walking in the Spirit as thus.

The foundation principle of a holy walk is next set forth. “And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts” (ver. 24). It is not said that we should do so, as is so commonly supposed, but that we have done so. Faith judges with God; it treats flesh as dead, and gives no quarter in consequence to any of its desires. Many do not understand this. They are aware of the existence within them of the evil principle, and are earnestly endeavoring to cope with it, in order to render it nugatory. But such find they have undertaken an impossible task, and are at times disposed to sit down in despair. The truth is, God has dealt with the flesh in the cross of Christ. It is proper Christian knowledge to say “knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed [annulled] that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Rom. 6:6). Thus faith accepts in simplicity what God has done, and then victory comes.

The apostle continues, “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another” (vers. 25, 26). Every believer lives in the Spirit, He being the source of the new life that he has received; to walk in the Spirit is to accept practically His gracious leadership and control in all the details of life down here. From this the Galatians had slipped, through the pernicious teaching to which they had listened: hence the apostle's grave warning and rebuke in the words which conclude the chapter.

James 2:26

THE witnesses of faith and works here adduced are the most powerful that the O.T. affords; and from it this Epistle in God's wisdom cites them as the weightiest and most conclusive for the purpose. Those of Israel who had the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ were as responsible as all others to manifest righteousness practically. It was the more relevant to press the godly walk which becomes faith, because, being brought out of a system of letter, they needed to be especially cautioned against relapse into what they had left behind. If they lived in the Spirit, they should the more seek to walk in the Spirit. For so is the will of God that with well-doing we may put to silence the ignorance of senseless men, as well as guard against our own tendencies. But there was more still in the cases before us; for even where works are most insisted on as evidence and proof of divine reality, these works owe all their value to the faith which gave them being. Without faith they would have been detestable, instead of being as they are the most solid testimony to their faith in God at all cost.

“For as the body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead” (ver. 26).

In ver. 17 it was said that faith, if it have not works, is “dead by itself;” in ver. 20 faith without works is “barren;” here at the end of the discussion faith without works is pronounced absolutely “dead,” and so it surely is. Where the manifestation of living reality is sought, what can be more offensive than a dead body? Emphatically it is so under the gospel, where the Lord Himself declares that He who believes has life eternal. To lack holy vitality is fatal. It is not to have the Son of God, Who is the sole spring of all that glorifies God. For what else is the believer left here below but to walk and serve and suffer and worship, while waiting for the Lord? For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God before prepared that we should walk in them.

Even in writing to the Thessalonian saints, recently brought to God from heathenism, the apostle remembers without ceasing their work of faith, and labor of love, and patience of hope. With them the gospel was not in word only but also in power. The very world outside was telling the effect of the truth shown in their turning to God from idols to serve a living and true God, and to await His Son from the heavens, Whom He raised from the dead, Jesus our deliverer from the coming wrath. Israelitish confessors yet more required to be warned against a lifeless formalism. And here this is fully given.

The Hope of Christ Compatible With Prophecy: Part 3

No! the Thessalonian believers were not mistaken in waiting for the Son of God. It is not wrong to believe that “the Lord is at hand” (ἐγγὺς), as the apostle pressed upon the Philippians when drawing to the close of his career. It is not wrong to establish our hearts because the coming of the Lord is drawn nigh (ἤγγικε, James 5:8). Nor does the language of the Spirit, in the passage before us, depict excitement from a too eager anticipation of this glorious event—alas! that Christians should suppose we could too earnestly desire it. The expressions in verse 2 denote fright and agitation. The enemy sought to instill the idea that the day of the world's judgment was come, and themselves obnoxious to its terrors. Where then was their hope to be caught up to the Lord and to come along with Him? Would it have been sorrow and fear, if Christ had come and they had been translated to meet Him in the air? Rather would it have been the object nearest their heart since their conversion. Their faith was growing exceedingly, and the love of every one of them all toward each other abounded. Nay, far from weakening that which he had already taught, the apostle prays for them in the last chapter of the Second Epistle, that the Lord would direct their hearts into the love of God and into the patient waiting for Christ. That is, he confirms them in their expectancy of the Lord.

But the deceiver had affrighted them, not of course by presenting the coming of the Lord as an imminent thing, which was what the Holy Ghost had done, and which is for the church a hope of unmingled comfort, but by the report that the day of the Lord was actually present— “a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness.” The apostle had already told them (1 Thess. 5) that they were not in darkness that the day should overtake them as a thief. The tempter disturbs and confounds them with the thought that, as a thief, it was already come upon them; using, it would seem, some false spirit, or word, or letter, to give to it the color of the authority of Paul himself. And how does the apostle defend them from such assaults of others, and fears of their own? For, let it be repeated, it was not high-wrought feeling as though Christ were at hand, but terror arising from their giving heed to the false representation that the day of the Lord was present, and they in tribulation on earth instead of being caught up to Jesus above.

The apostle at once brings them back to the “coming of the Lord” and their gathering together unto Him as their ground of comfort and protection against the alarms of the “day of the Lord.” As if he had said, The Lord Himself is coming, and you will be gathered to Him. When His day comes, you will be with Him. You are already children of the day: and will come along with it, for you are to come with Him Who ushers it in. You therefore need not be troubled. Rejoice always. That day is not come. You will go to meet Him Whom the bride knows as “the bright, the morning Star” (Rev. 22:16, compared with ii. 28); so that when the day breaks and the Lord appears, you too will appear with Him in glory. He and you introduce the day together—that day of retribution when those who trouble you shall have trouble, and you, the troubled, shall have rest with us, when our Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven, with His mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance.

In harmony with this it is written in verse 8, that the lawless one will be destroyed, not simply by the coming of the Lord, but by a further step of it, by the appearing or manifestation of His coming. This scene is given at length in Rev. 19:11-21, where the seer beholds, in the prospective vision, the heaven opened, and the rider, the Word of God, upon the white horse, issuing to judge and make war. “And the armies which were in heaven followed Him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean” —the righteousness not of angels, but of saints (compare ver. 8). The saints are already with Him. They follow Him out of heaven, as His army. Christ, therefore, must have come before this to take them to Himself; for they have been with Him in heaven and leave it together, preparatory to the battle with the Beast and the kings of the earth and their armies. This then is not merely the coming of Christ; it is Christ appearing, and we with Him in glory, It is His revelation from heaven, taking vengeance. It is the day of the Lord, when sudden destruction comes. It is the shining forth of the presence of the Lord Jesus, or the brightness of His coming, which destroys that lawless one.

Matt. 24:23-31 falls in with this view. “For as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” It is His coming in connection with His earthly rights. Rejected of this generation as the Christ, He comes as Son of man (in which capacity He is never presented as coming to take the church). “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds.” These are demonstrably not the church, because they are gathered subsequent to His appearing. The church, on the other hand, will have been translated before. For “when Christ, our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.” Our manifestation in glory cannot be after His manifestation. Christ and the church are to be manifested together.

Hence the signs specified in this chapter are demonstrably indices to elect Jewish disciples of His appearing. They are not to be regarded, therefore, as interfering with the posture of the church continually waiting for the Lord from heaven. They are signs for a remnant in special relation with Judea, who will be awaiting the coming of the Son of man. No signs of this or of any other description were ever put before the church, as such, whereby to judge of the near approach of Christ to take her to Himself. On the contrary, what the Holy Ghost taught the church is, to a simple mind, inconsistent with such indications: she was to be expecting always, because she knew not the moment of His coming.

The apostle (1 John 2:18) would have even the babes to know that it is the last time; and this, not from the spread of the Spirit of Christ, but from the presence of many antichrists. But, although they had heard that the Antichrist should come, no signs to be seen, no evils to reach the climax, no specific tribulations, are ever put before them, as events necessarily retarding the coming of the Lord to take the church. For the Bride the one heavenly sign is the presence of the Bridegroom Himself. But for a converted remnant of Jews, of whom the Lord has graciously thought in the instructions of Matt. 24, there are signs which will be assuredly given in due time before the coming of the Son of man.

Now, it is precisely here that the Revelation affords so distinct a light, showing us the position of the glorified in heaven, Christ having come and taken them to Himself; and afterward, during the interval of our absence in heaven before we appear along with Him, God's dealings, testimonies, judgments, and deliverances on earth. The Epistles gave us simply the fact of the rapture of those saints but did not inform as to the length of the interval before the appearing and the kingdom. That such an interval existed might have been gathered: but whether long or short, or how filled up, does not appear in the Epistles. The Revelation furnishes that which was lacking upon the subject, and connects, without confounding, the church caught up to the Lord on high, with certain witnesses to be raised up during the closing term of the age on earth before He appears in judgment.

(To be continued, D.V.).

Notes on the Book of Daniel with an Introduction in review of Dean Farrar's work on the Prophet by WILLIAM KELLY, limp cloth 1/6, stiff boards 21-. London: J. Carter, Aldine Chambers, 13, Paternoster Row.

Bible Treasury: Volume N1

Table of Contents

Reflections on Galatians 1:11-24

Compromise.

Λογια Ιηκου Sayings of Our Lord

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream and Daniel's Vision — 2

Proofs of the Resurrection. 3

Proofs of the Resurrection. 4

Scripture Queries and Answers.

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:1

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream and Daniel's Vision: 1

The Last King of the North

Treasure Hidden in the Field

Proofs of the Resurrection

Position and the Grace That Gave It

The Epistle of James: Introduction

Letters on Singing: Making Melody in the Heart

Answer to Query Last December: Head Coverings

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:2

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 2

One Pearl of Great Price

Priesthood of Christ: 1

Are God's Objects Ours?

James 1:1-4

Letters on Singing: Concluding Remarks

Scripture Query and Answer: Three Words Translated "Net"

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:3

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 3

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream and Daniel's Vision: 3

The Dragnet

Seeking and Receiving: Part 1

The Ways of God in the Acts: 1. The Calling of the Jews

Priesthood of Christ: 2

A Heavenly Christ, Therefore a Heavenly Church: Part 1

James 1:5-8

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:4

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 4

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream and Daniel's Vision: 4

The Merciless Bondman

Seeking and Receiving: Part 2

The Ways of God in the Acts: 2. The Calling of the Samaritans

Priesthood of Christ: 3

James 1:9-12

To Correspondents

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:5

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 5

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream and Daniel's Vision: 5

The Labourers Hired

The Ways of God in the Acts: 3. The Calling of the Gentiles

A Heavenly Christ, Therefore a Heavenly Church: Part 2

Priesthood of Christ: 4

James 1:13-15

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:6

The Atonement Money (duplicate Rev)

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 6

The Eastern Little Horn: 1

The Two Children

Salvation by Grace: 1

Not Self but Christ

Priesthood of Christ: 5

James 1:16-18

Time and Space

Scripture Query and Answer: 1 Corinthians 11:20

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:7

Divine Care and Interest

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 7

The Eastern Little Horn: 2

The Guilty Husbandmen

Reflections on Galatians: Introduction

James 1:19-20

Priesthood of Christ: 6

The Titles in the Epistles

The Judgment, Not Reunion, of Christendom

The Early Chapters of Genesis: Chapter 10:8-10

Esther: The Captivity Under Providence Among the Gentiles, 8

The Eastern Little Horn: 3

The Seventy Weeks: 1

Marriage Feast of the King's Son

Salvation by Grace: 2