Bible Treasury: Volume N4

This scene is remarkably characteristic of the outcast from his father's house, but of God's care over the destined progenitor of His earthly people. Fathers and Puritans have alike missed their way, who, not seeing the grand place reserved for Israel in the latter day and Messiah's millennial Kingdom, turn all blessed persons and things to the church's aggrandizement, and thus deny at the end God's ancient people their restored and enhanced dignity here below. This by necessary consequence lowers the Christian and the body of Christ to an earthly place, however favored and exalted. It is to judaize the future; while it balefully reacts on the present also, enfeebling if not blotting out His glory on high and our proper heavenly privileges in the Spirit.

“And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran. And he lighted on the place, and lodged there, because the sun was set. And he took of the stones of the place, and made his pillows, and lay down in that place. And he dreamed, and behold, a ladder set up on earth, and its top reached to the heavens. And behold, angels of God ascended and descended upon it. And behold, Jehovah stood above it, and said, I am Jehovah, God of Abraham thy father, and God of Isaac: the land on which thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed. And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt break forth to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And behold, I [am] with thee, and will keep thee in all [places] whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee till I have done that of which I have spoken to thee. And Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, Surely Jehovah is in this place, and I knew [it] not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful [is] this place 1 this [is] none other but God's house, and this the gate of the heavens. And Jacob rose early in the morning, and took the stone that he made his pillows, and set it [for] a pillar and poured oil upon its top. And he called the name of that place Bethel; but the name of that city was Luz at first. And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and keep me on this road that I go, and give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, and I come again in peace to my father's house, then shall Jehovah be for God to me. And this stone which I have set [for] a pillar shall be God's house, and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee” (vers. 10-22).

The place on which Jacob lighted was to be notable for the checkered fortunes of Israel; it had no bearing typically on the church. Jehovah made Bethel a pledge of assured mercy to Jacob when utterly forlorn, whatever the king raised up to be a scourge to the people might pervert it to in honor of a strange and rival god. There tarried Jacob all night, with nothing but the stones which he put for his pillows. But he dreamed, and saw set up on earth a ladder, whose top reached to the heavens; and Jehovah stood above it, declaring Himself Jehovah, God of Abraham his father, and God of Isaac, with the promise of the land, whereon he lay so desolately, to him and to his seed; and the seed to be as the dust of the earth (not a word about the stars of the sky), which should break forth on every side to the blessing of all the families of the earth in Jacob and his seed. Whatever the sad and lonely beginning, this should be the glorious end.

All is prophetic and for the earth, a dream from and of God, not such speech and open vision as Abraham had enjoyed, unless when on one occasion of deep sleep a horror of a great darkness fell upon him, when he too learned the power of death in order to establish covenant security for the earthly seed, whatever came meanwhile, and the land was strictly defined and delivered from its usurpers, as the people had been from their oppressors. Isaac had only Jehovah appearing to him whether by day or by night to bless him in Canaan, and multiply his seed as stars of the heavens, and set him above fear. Jacob, however guaranteed by the striking sight of the ladder from earth (where he lay) to Jehovah at the top in the heavens, was afraid, and with angels of God ascending and descending on the ladder could only say, How dreadful this place! none other this but the gate of the heavens! Yet had Jehovah promised to keep him in all places whither he went (and which of the patriarchs such a wanderer?), and never to leave him till He had done all of which He had spoken to him. Could words more explicitly portray the Jewish portion, or stand in more marked contrast with the peace, liberty, and heavenly access of the Christian, while suffering with joy here below like Christ?

Yet the closing verses which give us Jacob's acts and words add still weightier confirmation. For he at once set up his stone pillow for a pillar and anointed it, and called the name of the place Bethel, and vowed the first recorded vow, strikingly different from Isaac or Abraham. Therein he rises not above providential care, and the supply of present wants, yet God with him (for the root of the matter was there as his first thought), so that he should come to his father's house in peace. Jehovah should be to him for God, and this stone pillar, His house, and of all He should give him he would surely give the tenth to Him. It is, indeed, not Christians blessing the God and Father of our Lord, as from the first blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. How Jacob's vow differs from Abraham in Gen. 14 refusing to be made rich by aliens and giving unasked tithes of all to Melchizedek, priest of the most High God, possessor of heavens and earth

Priesthood: 27. Leper on the Eighth Day

HERE we have the shadow of truth, both of high import, and unthought of since the apostles passed away, when men took their place whose scanty faith fell woefully short of the inspired deposit. Thus we need peculiarly that we be on our guard and looking up for divine guidance so as to read the written word with that discernment which only the Holy Spirit can give.

“(10) And on the eighth day he shall take two he-lambs without blemish, and one ewe-lamb of the first year without blemish, and three tenths of fine flour mingled with oil for an oblation [or, meal-offering], and one log of oil. (11) And the priest that cleanseth shall present the man that is to be cleansed and those things before Jehovah at the entrance of the tent of meeting. (12) And the priest shall take one he-lamb, and present it for a trespass offering, and the log of oil, and wave them for a wave offering before Jehovah. (13) And he shall slaughter the he-lamb at the place where the sin offering and the burnt offering are slaughtered, in a holy place; for as the sin offering, so the trespass offering is the priest's; it is most holy. (14) And the priest shall take of the blood of the trespass offering and the priest shall put it on the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and on the thumb of his right hand, and on the great toe of his right foot. (15) And the priest shall take of the log of oil, and pour it into the palm of his own left hand; (16) and the priest shall dip his right finger in the oil that is in his left hand, and shall sprinkle of the oil with his finger seven times before Jehovah. (17) And of the rest of the oil that is in his hand the priest shall put on the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and on the thumb of his right hand, and on the great toe of his right foot, upon the blood of the trespass offering. (18) And the remainder of the oil that is in the priest's hand he shall put upon the head of him that is to be cleansed, and the priest shall make atonement for him before Jehovah. (19) And the priest shall offer the sin offering, and make atonement for him that is to be cleansed from his uncleanness; and afterward he shall slaughter the burnt offering. (20) And the priest shall offer the burnt offering and the oblation upon the altar; and the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be clean” (vers. 10-20).

The ritual of the eighth day foreshadows the work of Christ in the light of His resurrection, the Christian's rich appropriation, and the consequent gift of the Holy Spirit. It is not merely the general and indispensable efficacy of Christ's blood with the action of the Spirit as living water in order to purification morally as well as judicially. Here we have the conscience cleansed from dead works to serve or worship a living God, and be at home as it were, coming not merely into the camp but into his tent. It is in its measure a consecration like the priests'. Only here it is founded, not on a sin offering (Lev. 8:14; 9:2) but on a trespass offering (14:12, 13); for there had been a violation of a holy relation to meet. And the priest applied its blood to the right ear, right thumb, and right great toe (14). All the man is brought under the most holy blood, what he hears and does, with his walk; he belongs wholly to God in thought, work, and way. In the case of the priests it was the blood of a peace offering.

Then follows the unction from the Holy One (15-18). The waving too of all was before Jehovah, so was the application, as with the priestly consecration. The oil was put where the blood had been. How clearly was prefigured the full blessing first enjoyed at Pentecost. Not only was Christ's death for removing evil, but entered into in all its fullness as before God, and in the Holy Spirit's power to give personal consciousness and enjoyment of it all, as having redemption in Christ through His blood, as well as priestly access to the sanctuary, we may add. We are meant to be already in known and near relation to God. Whatever be the intrinsic efficacy of Christ's work (and here it is viewed in its various value as it is really infinite), how much we owe to the Spirit sent personally to abide in and with us! For thereby we dwell in God and God in us, as 1 John 4 says of the Christian. The heart is thus free intelligently to realize God's righteousness and grace in Christ's work to His glory, when the worshipper once purged has no more conscience of sins. But this can never be rightly or safely unless the conscience has first been searched and cleansed in the light of God.

There is great force in the figurative state of ver. 18, crowning the previous details. Yet when the completeness of the Spirit's power is thus set out, how sedulously God takes care to mark after this in ver. 19 the sin offering offered, as well as the burnt offering and its accompanying meal offering, each essential to make atonement for him that was to be cleansed from his uncleanness, and all offered that he should be clean and know it with the utmost assurance. For atoning virtue Christ is the all; yet has the Spirit His own blessed function. What a testimony to that which God is in grace and truth and righteousness withal on behalf of the evil and lost!

Day of Atonement: 12. Azazel

Azazel, or the People's Lot (Continued)

Still the message goes forth to all, for in verse 23 it is written, “Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all.” But the moment you come to application it is said, “And upon all those that believe.” These are justified, but the word of grace goes out to every one. Thus the two truths are borne witness to in a remarkable manner throughout the New Testament. There is universal proclamation by virtue of Christ's precious blood; and there is the positive assurance of justification wherever there is faith in Him. So in Rom. 5 we are told, “God commendeth His love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.”

We may observe by the bye, that scripture speaks in three ways of justification as the need of man naturally unrighteous—justified by His grace (Titus 3:7), if we speak of the source; justified by His blood (Rom. 5:9), if we seek the procuring cause in the work of our Lord Jesus Christ; and justified by faith, if we ask the way by which the soul is individually brought into the blessing (Rom. 5:1).

You may have heard possibly that there are those who will have faith to mean the sum and substance of all Christian virtues. This is in principle to annul the gospel of God. Faith means the soul's reception of divine testimony. He who believes is one who sets to his seal that God is true. If God testifies of Jesus as His Son, he who believes receives it heartily. It is for the guilty and lost: how then can it be the sum and substance of all Christian virtues, when the gospel is expressly for any poor soul as a lost sinner? When we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Take even a stronger word, “To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.” Is this the sum and substance of Christian virtues? It is the full contradiction of such unbelief. Yet it is not simply believing God, or receiving His testimony; it is trust in Him and in His grace. Compare 1 Peter 1:21. There is enlarged exercise of faith, through Christ, on God Himself.

Alas! what is thus expressed is the doctrine of men that heard, but do not understand the gospel: though the particular person referred to is the late Dr. Pusey, and indeed men of his school, besides that party in particular. Their heterodoxy or rather misbelief is, that in effect we become our own saviors by the help of the Holy Ghost. Redemption is unknown, little as they suspect it; for outwardly they pay reverence to more than Christ, some seeming to adore the sign of the cross. They believe that Christ died to put every one, especially the baptized, in the way of salvation, and that without baptism nobody in general can be saved. But when it comes to the application, they bring in ordinances and morally the sum of all Christian virtues. So that it is a complete robbing the Lord of His redemption spoil, as it deprives the lost of all possibility of peace with God. How could any upright man say to God, “Now let me have peace with Thee, for I have the sum and substance of all the Christian virtues?” The very thing the Holy Spirit has been proving home is, that the soul has not one good thing as it ought to have; and therefore is it forced to fall back on God's sovereign mercy in Christ. The idea completely nullifies the direct operation of God in quickening souls, as well as in redemption. Yet these are the sentiments of pious men. But withal they are blinded by human tradition. They read the Bible only through deceiving mists, unless when they defend it in some little measure against rationalists; for their ignorance of truth is deplorable.

There is no more fruitful source of darkening the spiritual understanding than the allowance of man between the soul and God, particularly at that solemn moment of a soul's coming for the first time into God's marvelous light, the revealing of the Savior for eternity.

But, passing on, we may see the same truth in the twin Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, and with no small precision and brilliancy. It may assume a somewhat different shape. For instance, “In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.” Although redemption and atonement are very distinguishable, they are indeed none the less in fact inseparable. You cannot have atonement without redemption, or redemption without atonement. Therefore it appears to be quite lawful to adduce the force of these scriptures into the case. As all is based on the blood of Christ, so it cannot be enjoyed without faith. The “we,” who “have redemption,” are those who believe, those described in a previous verse as the faithful in Christ.

So again we may look at a scripture very distinct indeed in the First Epistle of Peter. I purposely pass over the Epistle to the Hebrews for the moment; but in 1 Peter 2 we have what distinctly refers to Christ making good the day of Atonement. “Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps; who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, when He suffered, threatened not, but committed [Himself] to Him that judgeth righteously; who His own self bare our sins in His body on the tree.” It is not “up to” the tree. The margin, after many others, so gave it; but this was an ignorant and total oversight of the sacrificial language in the Old Testament. There are two forms employed in the LXX., and always distinctly. When it is a question of “up to,” or “to,” another different preposition is compounded. Where the one found here is expressed, it invariably means “upon,” and not “to.” It is allowed that in other connections this may not always hold; but in sacrificial language the distinction is certain and constant. Now it is plain that here the apostle Peter is referring to the sacrificial language of the Old Testament. All his Epistle indeed abounds in allusions of a similar kind. If the world tells us that Peter was an unlearned man, let not believers forget that the Holy Ghost inspired him. There may be no show of human reasoning or rhetoric, no effort to gild the golden truths in what he was given to announce; but the language for all that is divinely accurate. Any unbiased scholar ought to understand it also on the surface of the passage. The believer ought to be sure.

It is sadly plain that there is, at the bottom of all these efforts to mystify, a want of faith in the true inspiration of God's word as well as in the perfect efficacy of Christ's work. But let me refer to another point showing how unfounded is the idea that our Lord was bearing sins all His life. The word “bare” excludes the desired notion. “Bare” (ἀνήνεγκεν) does not convey continuity but a transient act. The aorist is the definite expression of such a fact. It expresses therefore what took place on the cross, certainly not what was in process before, any more than after. Christ's bearing our sins in His body was complete then, and only then. The form of the word excludes anything begun before that solemn epoch, and it implies a completeness on the cross, where it began. Therefore the notion “up to” is false, not perhaps in the form of the word itself, but in its contextual and sacrificial usage.

We may add another thing. When our Lord became a sin-bearer, He was surrounded by a supernatural darkness. It is notorious that, on scientific grounds, there could not have been an eclipse at that time. It was not then a merely natural shadow; it was a supernatural darkness. There were other supernatural tokens which accompanied it. The veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom. The graves were opened. The sun was darkened, and the darkness, we know, was absolutely unique. Thus and then it was that Christ was made sin for us. If Christ had been bearing our sins all His life, there ought to have been these mysterious tokens all the while. If Christ had been made sin before, as such He must also have been throughout forsaken of God. But plainly the forsaking of God was then, and only then. The supernatural darkness, the forsaking of God, and all the other wonderful signs, marked the presence of a crisis unequaled and unfathomable, which stands apart from all before and after. Is it too much, with scripture for our warrant, to say that in all eternity there never can be such a crisis again? How blessed to know that it all points to Christ made sin for us. No doubt it was God's doing for His own glory, whatever the wickedness of the creature in its part about it. The heart is not to be envied which can reason such things away, instead of growing by the truth that what Christ suffered that day constitutes the most important fact that ever was, or can be.

When a soul is awakened, not merely to the deep and outrageous evil done to the Son of God, but to His and the Father's unspeakable grace in achieving infinitely more than creature could either do or suffer, that sin might be judged and put away as well as forgiven, and God be glorified even as to that which in itself is most hateful to His nature, how immense the change and blessed the victory of good over evil! Conscience, in us who believe, feels that God ought to be vindicated. But if we cannot but care for His moral glory, yet more has God set His heart on the blessing of man lost in sin. Therefore has He in the cross of Christ made peace, and given us to have redemption through His blood, rising in the majesty of His love above our hatred where it was vilest against His Son going down to the uttermost to save us out of our miserable selfishness, rebellious works, and foreboding of just wrath and judgment. He therefore gives us to know that the same death of our Lord Jesus Christ was both the complete meeting of His glory as Judge of sin on the one hand, and the blotting out by His blood of our sins on the other. Irreconcilable everywhere else, they are united in the reality of Christ's death; as His person alone afforded the sole Being capable of solving the problem of sin to the sinner's blessing and Gods honor as well as His love.

The sending away of the people's sins, grounded on the sin-offering of Atonement-day, is the meaning of the scape-goat. We have but glanced at certain unhallowed speculations which need not be dwelt on. Suffice it now to say that, from the early days of Christendom's departure from apostolic truth till our own day, not a few learned persons have not been wanting who have dared to conjecture that the scapegoat represents the devil! Plain Christians might think that these men must have lost their senses to broach such defiling notions, as if God's word sanctioned them. But one form of the dream was put forward by a chief champion of orthodoxy as opposed to the neologists of Germany. It was quite common among the Fathers, so called, some of whom went so far as to think that there was even a sacrifice to the devil! Far be it from me to attribute such low heathenism to the learned Dr. Hengstenberg of Berlin, or to the respected Mr. George Stanley Faber of our own country. They were Christians, but slipped into the extraordinary delusion that the scapegoat meant Satan dealing with our Lord Jesus Christ. No! it was the figure which God graciously vouchsafed, as the complement of the sacrificed goat, for the removal of all their sins from the burdened souls of His people. It was God Who, as He found His rest as to sin in the shed blood of Christ on the cross, would also signify His banishment of all dread of judgment from the verily and confessedly guilty that looked to Him who confessed and bore their sins on the tree.

It is almost superfluous to commend the subject as one of urgent and exceeding moment to souls. May the Lord grant, if any now who look to Him be still troubled by their sins, that they may see God's written testimony to the cross, blood, and death of Christ, if one may put it in the largest form. It is not a mere question of their loss through unbelief of scripture; but are they truly doing honor to the atoning work of our Lord Jesus Christ? The Holy Spirit testifies strongly the virtue of Christ's death (Heb. 10:15). It is not the bare fact of His death of course, but God's declaration to and for man of its value in His sight that you are called to weigh—the revealed power of it for your sins. It is the cleansing and peace which God gives the believer by reason of Christ. He wants you to have the settled assurance that all against you is so clean gone that God will never remember it more.

Proverbs 14:13-27

IT is truly a dreary world of grief, where man seeks pleasure and mirth, in lieu of a happiness which cannot be where the conscience is not purged after a divine sort, and the heart has not Christ before it, God's object as ours too.

“Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of mirth [is] sadness.

The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways, and the good man from himself.

The simple believeth every word, but the prudent heedeth his going.

The wise one feareth and departeth from evil; but the foolish is overbearing and confident.

One soon angry dealeth foolishly, and a man of mischievous devices is hated.

The simple inherit folly; but the prudent are crowned with knowledge.

“The evil bow before the good, and the wicked at the gates of the righteous.

The poor is hated even of his own neighbor; but the rich have many lovers.

He that despiseth his neighbor sinneth; but he that is gracious to the afflicted [or, meek], happy [is] he.

Do they not err that devise evil? But mercy and truth [are] for those that devise good.

In all labor there is profit; but the talk of the lips [is] only to want.

The crown of the wise [is] their riches; the folly of the fools [is] folly.

A true witness delivereth souls; but deceit uttereth lies.

In the fear of Jehovah [is] strong confidence; and his children shall have a place of refuge.

The fear of Jehovah [is] a fountain of life, to turn away from the snares of death” (vers. 13-27).

“Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of mirth [is] sadness.” So it is till man receives Christ. All otherwise is hollow; and the passing levity leaves its sting. “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thy heart and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou that for all these God will bring thee into judgment.”

Still darker is “the backslider in heart.” Terrible is the promise to him he “shall be filled with his own ways “; and all the more terrible, because he had outwardly known the lines in pleasant places, and the way of peace. On the other hand “the good man” by grace shall have his boast in what belongs to himself alone, and not what belongs to another. He shall be filled from himself. God has freely given him all he values most, the unseen and eternal in the promised One.

In such a world as this few greater follies can be than credulity. Believing God is the effectual safeguard. “The simple believeth every word; but the prudent heedeth his going.” We are exhorted to “prove all things,” but to hold fast the good (τὸ καλόν), the comely.

Next, it is for us to use “fear and depart from evil,” as a wise man does; to be “overbearing and confident” is arrant folly. “Honor all,” says not the least of the apostles; as a greater still loved to style himself, and in truth was, “a bondman of Jesus Christ.”

And what folly to be soon angry? Even a wise man “deals foolishly” who is easily provoked; but “a man of mischievous devices” makes himself odious when found out as he is.

“The simple” again “inherit folly.” This is what descends to man naturally. “The prudent” are lowly enough to receive and learn from the Highest; and theirs it is to be “crowned with knowledge.". “He giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to those that know understanding.”

Here we have not the simple or the foolish, but the evil and the wicked (ver. 19) and their failure even before a King shall reign in righteousness, and princes rule in judgment. God is never without a testimony in the evil day, if it be only here and there, now and then. Yet things are as yet far from what they ought, and are, to be.

What men sow they reap, and soon sometimes. Nor are the evil without conscience, so that they bow to the good, as the wicked court the favor and the help of a righteous man.

Poverty is dreaded more than sin; and hence the poor is hated even by his own neighbor, while the rich man has many who make up to him. Such is the covetousness of the heart, and the hollowness of the world.

To despise one's neighbor, what a sin in His sight who despises not any? Let us lay to heart what Christ was to needy men, women, and children. What an example to us! Who ever showed such kindness to the afflicted? May we have the happiness found in grace like His!

Yet proud heartlessness may go to greater evil in devising evil, but not escape His eyes who sees cunning mischief and every secret of the heart. How profound and fatal the error! For judgment slumbers not, any more than His mercy and truth fail for those that devise good unobtrusively:

For man as he is labor is as useful as idleness is worthless. Hence we are told here that in all labor is profit, while the talk of the lips tends to want.

The crown, not of the foolish, but of the wise, is their riches; for these turn their wealth to the account of unselfish goodness and the relief of human misery, and the furtherance of God's will and glory. They would be rich toward God. The folly of fools on the contrary is folly. God is in none of their thoughts, and all they express or do is folly all the more seen, if they have riches to attract a crowd of witnesses.

We pass through a world of evil and error. Hence the value of a true witness in delivering souls open otherwise to be mistaken and misrepresented by the false. But not many are willing to speak out at all cost. One there was who never failed, the Faithful and True Witness; and He the great Deliverer of souls. May we cleave to Him, and represent Him in this! But deceit, what can it utter but lies? It were sad to think that there could be no repentance for a deceiver; but it must be hard for a deceiver to gain credit for his self-judgment. Nevertheless if real, God would not fail to vindicate what His grace effects.

So we read next that in the fear of Jehovah is strong confidence. For this fear takes away all other fear, and becomes a tower of strength; and it avails for others who tremble at His word, especially His children. What place of refuge so sure and near?

But the fear of Jehovah is much more than a protection from enemies. It is a fountain of life, not a well that may fail when most needed, but a perennial spring of enjoyment to strengthen the heart, ever so timid and dejected without it, to turn away from the snares of death with which Satan overspreads the world, and which are dangerously nigh to every heart of man.

Alms

Luke 12:32-34. Act the part of kings, as persons called to and having a higher inheritance; and give alms. And there is a reason—it is a separating principle: let your treasure be there, your heart will be there also; you will be formed for God. It is not, observe, the value of the gifts meritoriously, but the effect internally. Such is the suitable position of believers in the kingdom: hereunto are they called.

Gospel Words: the Beatitudes

In what is called the Sermon on the Mount the Lord does not treat either of new birth or of redemption. He addresses His disciples that came unto Him, and begins with pronouncing who are the blessed in the kingdom. It is a solemn test whereby every disciple may try himself.

“Blessed the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.

Blessed they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.

Blessed the meek; for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed they that hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled.

Blessed the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed the pure in heart; for they shall see God.

Blessed the peace-makers; for they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake; for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.

Blessed are ye when they shall reproach and persecute you, and falsely say every wicked word against you for my sake. Rejoice and exult; for your reward is great in the heavens; for thus persecuted they the prophets that were before you.”

Such are the qualities, said the Lord, which suit the kingdom. They are not those of man fallen nor even unfallen. The first man in Paradise had none of them any more than the outcast race. “Ye must be born anew,” and even then have your new character formed and impressed by the Lord Jesus. None other He owns (vii. 21-23), nor can others have to do with the Kingdom save for judgment. Those only do the will of His Father that is in the heavens. But the Savior Son of God elsewhere shows, and is, the unfailing way. “As many as received Him, to them gave He authority to become children of God” (John 1:12). Who are they? “Those that believe on His name.” They are born of God. They have life eternal, and can each say, “I live, no longer I, but Christ liveth in me; and that which I now live in flesh I live by faith in the Son of God that loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Gal. 2:20). O, believe Him in Whom is life producing every quality God values! There is none other in His sight. Believe, and it is yours now; and with an evil nature in an evil world as is the fact, here it is indispensable as well as for heaven.

You, my brethren, may not have noticed that there are seven characters, all blessed in vers. 3-9, divided as after into four and three. Four righteous qualities are first, three gracious follow; and they rise respectively in each class. Christ manifested each and all in perfection. Those that follow Him, having Him as their life, must have His qualities reproduced and manifested in them.

Poor in spirit is the first named. It is just the opposite of fallen man's aspiring spirit. Outward forms of poverty will not do. Under that garb what pride may lurk, what self-seeking, what party-spirit! “It shall not thus be among you, but whoever would be great among you, let him be your servant; and whoever would be first among you, let him be your slave” in this evil age and rebel world. Such was the Son of man in life and I death. He is the disciple's example; for his is not a present place of honor but the kingdom of the heavens whether to faith now or displayed by-and-by.

And who was such a mourner where His Father I was unknown, and His own light and love scorned?' Here too the disciple treads in His steps and looks for the comfort wherewith He was comforted and comforts.

Next, as He was meek and lowly in heart, so must he be who takes His yoke and learns from Him, assured of inheriting that earth where the hard and haughty have now their brief portion.

The last of these are such as hunger and thirst after righteousness, which marks not only persevering energy but this in inward personal desire, and they shall have satisfying fruition in and like “Jesus Christ the Righteous.”

After this, we have the higher characters of grace, but with righteousness preceding. As Jesus was full of grace and truth, so His followers not only exceed in their righteousness that of scribes and Pharisees, but show mercy not known to these. And truly they shall find mercy, as they have found it plenteously.

Theirs too is purity in heart, and as by faith they see God now, so shall they beyond others by-and-by (Rev. 22:4).

In fine, they are the blessed peace-makers who now represent the God of peace; and His sons shall such be called as they are.

But observe that the Lord reveals a supplemental blessedness for each of the two great classes. “Blessed they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake” answers to the opening class in 3-6, and so fitly repeats the opening blessing, “for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.” The last of the two rises to the highest, and leaves the abstract for direct personal words of love: “Blessed are ye when they shall reproach and persecute you, and falsely say every wicked word against you for my sake.” This was suffering for grace in full. “Rejoice,” says the Lord therefore, “and exult, for your reward is great in the heavens; for thus they persecuted the prophets that were before you.”

As Christ only is all-sufficient now for evil and lost man, if he believe, so in His day shall the poor in spirit have the true and abiding riches. What then must be the lot of all who despise Him?

1 Peter 2:18-20

The exhortation is next addressed to domestics (οἰκέται), instead of continuing the unrestricted appeal of verses 11-17. The apostle begins with those, and does not follow up to their masters as in the Pauline Epistles; and then he writes to the wives and the husbands, without specifying either the children or the fathers. But it may also be noticed that the “domestics” here exhorted are a milder name if not a wider class, not necessarily “bondmen” as in the letters to Ephesus and Colosse. At least they were in contrast with the οἰκόυτιφ or born slave. One can understand hired servants of Jewish origin among Jews.

“Household servants, be in subjection with all fear to your masters (δεσπόταις), not only to the good and gentle, but also to the crooked. For this [is] grace if for conscience toward God one endureth griefs, suffering unjustly. For what glory [is it] if when ye sin and are buffeted ye shall endure? but if when ye do well (ἀγαθοποι) and suffer ye shall endure, this [is] grace with God” (vers. 18-20).

One of the hateful and fatal plague-spots of Romanism is the so called church's interdiction of God's word, save according to its own will. None but Satan gave such an authority. But Protestantism never rose in this to the truth; for, in opposing Popish arrogance, it fell into the snare of claiming man's right to the Bible; which easily led on to the wicked principles of the French revolution, socialism, and other like iniquities. The Christian knows it as his real privilege and solemn obligation to assert God's right to address His word to His children now, as of old to Israel, not forgetting man universally in the Old T. as well as in the New. And this it is which constitutes the apostate guilt of the miscalled Higher Criticism, which is but a euphemism for base infidelity, however many amiable and would-be reverent persons are thereby ensnared in both Nationalism and Dissent as well as Popery. What a contrast with the world is God's communication first to the domestics whose lot among Greeks and Romans was hard indeed! The slaves at any rate were no more than living tools or possessions; and their numbers were immense, public as well as private.

With these home-menials as a class the apostle begins. As he had exhorted all in view of public authority, here he presses like subjection in the house. The domestics are enjoined to be subject with fear on every side to their lords; they were Christians, and bound to serve many a master where the danger of provocation was extreme. They needed therefore to walk in all awe. For according to Christ their godly subjection was due not only to the good and gentle, but to the crooked or perverse which last naturally abounded.

Where was any so noble a principle, morally speaking, found among men? We see in the O.T. how selfish were the ways of the Jewish chief men toward their own brethren after the flesh. What a conflict, and what humiliation to such as Ezra the priest and Nehemiah the governor! Of heathen heartlessness and cruelty we need not speak, even among the civilized Greeks and especially the Romans who had to face reprisals and rebellions and serious wars through their barbarity. It is Christ seen by faith as we perceive in the context that follows, which explains the elevation of heart which is here counted on by the apostle. They were to serve the Lord Christ in the spirit not of self-abnegation but of grace. No matter how worthless their masters might be, grace raises the soul above the most morose, and enables it to obey and suffer even in face of wrong.

For as the apostle explains, this is grace, in contrast with the natural bias toward the legal claim, if for conscience toward God one endure griefs, suffering unjustly. The A. V. renders it “acceptable,” and this is a fair sense in this place, and capable of defense. But it appears to me simpler and more forcible to adhere to the ordinary meaning, bearing in mind of course that it is not grace as in God which is in question, but the answer to it in those who believe. They were in this and in their measure imitators of God as beloved children, and walking in love as Christ loved them.

An effort has been made to translate the word “thank worthy” here as in Luke 6:32-34. But this seems short-sighted, because there is no ὑμῖν (to you) here as there, which makes a sensible difference. We can readily perceive the propriety of “thanks to you,” where “grace to you” could not stand. Here in the first case it is used absolutely; and in the second it has the very different adjunct παρὰ τῷ θεῷ (with God), who delights to find in His child what reflects Himself.

The apostle carries his argument yet more deeply in ver. 20. “For what glory is it, if when ye sin and are buffeted ye shall endure (or, bear it)?” This no person can affirm. One bears the burden of admitted fault. It is only natural in such circumstances. “But if, when ye do good and suffer, ye shall endure (or, bear it), this is grace with God.” This is supernatural; yet it is what the Lord looks for, not only in the mature and better instructed of His saints, but in the most down-trodden menials who call upon His name. For God despises none, and has called by His grace the foolish things of the world that He may put to shame the wise; and chosen the weak things of the world that He may put to shame the strong things; and the base things of the world, and the despised did God chose, that He might bring to naught the things that are: that no flesh should boast before God. A house-servant if a Christian was exhorted instead of resenting injustice to follow Christ in

His path of suffering love. Impossible so to do unless abiding in Him; but he that says he abides in Him ought, just as He walked, so to walk himself.

Life Eternal Denied: 1

Though my immediate duty be to vindicate the Christian truth of life eternal and to expose its frightful and pernicious denial now propagated, I cannot refrain from pointing out how the revealed testimony of Christ here suffers eclipse, and little remains but a morass of mud and vapor. Who but F.E.R. would say that we get in Ex. 15 figuratively “an idea” of the Kingdom? No one denies that as to this it goes no farther than anticipating the everlasting reign of Jehovah (18) at the end. But the true aim is the celebrating of the people's redemption by power as well as blood, and the destruction of the enemy's force for salvation accomplished. In no way is it the Kingdom come, which in this series of types is the figuration in chap. 18. Hence here as elsewhere all is confusion worse confounded.

Indeed the like destructive vagueness characterizes the volume from the first address at Quebec and its first page (8): “The Kingdom was coming in in connection with the Lord Jesus, who was the expression of the grace of God.” Could any one of spiritual discernment thus put together Luke 10:21-42 &c. with John 1:17? Indisputable that the Kingdom of God came in Christ and was proved by His casting out demons in virtue of God's Spirit (Matt. 7:27) equally so that it was in their midst then, instead of coming with observation as in the days when the Son of man is revealed. But it is olla podrida to mix up as here grace and salvation with God's Kingdom even in its present moral aspect, which scripture declares to be “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

Passing over wild statements about reconciliation, in page 17 as often before we have that phrase, so offensive to a spiritual mind, “you touch life “; “You touch His life now because you have accepted His death.” Among other outlandish expressions (p.172) we read, “The moment you love God, you are in the life of Christ.” Scripture puts the truth in quite the opposite way: Herein was the love of God manifested, that God in our case hath sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. Never is it written or meant that when we love Him, we are that moment in the life of Christ, unscriptural as the language is. That life is from God's love, not from ours. But the constant error is pretending to be in the life of Christ, whilst we have not life eternal; for His life exclusively is that life eternal, and there is no other. Had Christ two lives to give, a life of His now that is not eternal, and another life at His coming which is eternal? Whatever it means, it is a detestable lie of the enemy, incompatible with scripture, and contradictory to it.

What impresses one's soul in reviewing these dreary talks and effusions (“readings” and teachings they are not, save by euphemism), is that Christ is lost, not being held in faith. Hence the truth sinks into a chaos, partly of traditional ignorance as on the Kingdom and the world to come, and partly of hazy “ideas” as on the new covenant and reconciliation far beneath old puritanism. On the kingdom enough has been said however briefly. But a fairly sober Christian has only to confront the “readings revised” with the Epistle to the Hebrews to convince himself how manifestly these speculations stop short of the “divine teaching” vouchsafed to us in holy writ. They are no more than the inanities of an active and feeble mind, which has broken away from subjection to scripture. In 2 Corinthians care is taken to guard against “letter” instead of “spirit “; for though the foundation is laid in the blood of Jesus, the terms and fulfillment of the new covenant can only be for the houses of Israel and Judah. We have only that of it which is compatible with a heavenly calling, yet enough to help greatly the Christian remnant of Jews to whom the Epistle was addressed.

What F.E.R. means by saying in page 38 that “you get two things in this chapter (Col. 1), viz. the new covenant and reconciliation” is just a proof of his total incapacity to expound scripture. Where is a trace of the new covenant in the Epistle to the Colossians? Apparently he, for one statement, alleges “In Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell “, but this immense truth goes far beyond, and wholly differs from, the new covenant; and, for the other statement, “by Him to reconcile all things to Himself” is a purpose wholly future. “In the cross” says he, “there was the removal of the old man to the glory of God: but where that man was removed, the love of God was expressed. The latter gives you the covenant! and the former reconciliation!” Can one imbued with scriptural truth imagine greater imbecility, letting pass the phraseology employed? For according to scripture the love of God was preeminently expressed in His Son's mission, that we might live through Him, and that He might die as propitiation for our sins. Only F.E.R., not scripture, connects it with “the removal” of the old man. Nor does scripture but F.E.R. say, that “where that man was removed the love of God was expressed,” but that “love hath been perfected with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4). This we could not be if we had not now eternal life, propitiation, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in a power far beyond the new covenant or the reconciliation, as Israel are to know under Messiah.

The new creation is a distinct truth, super-added to reconciliation and never in scripture confounded. No divine teaching is clearer on it than Rom. 5:10, 11; which closes the question of God's righteousness in view of our sins, before the supplement which treats the annulling of our old man, a special Christian privilege for faith but not without the need of learning it experimentally.

As to the new covenant the apostle cites Jeremiah's words for days to come of blessing on all Israel; but thence for the Christian he turns to the beautiful shadows of heavenly things which the Mediator's death brought in, “God having foreseen some better thing for us.” This never seems to enter the mind of these interlocutors. Yet is it the express truth which God opens in the Epistle to the Hebrews, a hope that enters within the veil, of which the new covenant in itself knows nothing, and never will. Have these sorry laborers forgotten what used to cheer and gladden the hearts of true men in days that are past, and of some by grace still? Let them read and learn what follows in Heb. 9. 10. where the Christian is shown to be put into living relation with the true holies, ourselves not only sanctified but perfected in perpetuity. Israel even under Messiah and the new covenant will have no such spiritual portion, but Levitical priests, material sacrifices, and an earthly temple with a veil, and the sons of Zadok. How fallen from divine teaching are those who once seemed to enjoy it forsaking the fountain of living water for broken cisterns which can hold no water! And what are others who sit quiet and dumb in the face of such enormous corruption? For there are not a few spiritual men who value heavenly truth, I feel sure, and who groan at this spurious substitute.

But it is in the Toronto reading (23-34) that the vagaries about the Kingdom come out so grotesquely. Matt. 18 is spoken of as very important, notably for the condition of entrance, but “at the close the great principle of the Kingdom i.e., grace reigning through righteousness.” Now every person of real intelligence must know that the closing parable gives a totally different teaching, not in the least grace reigning through righteousness, but after pardon was proclaimed, the one who proved alien from its spirit consigned to condign torment. Can we conceive an archer more thoroughly missing the mark? No wonder he and his friends regard dispensational bearing with disfavor. “This is the rock on which many have split” (26) says the wrecker.

Nor is this specimen of “divine teaching” all the error here. In p. 32 we read that David's throne is really the throne of God! the very thing which the apostle contradicts in Acts 2. For David both died and was buried, and his monument was among the Jews unto that day; but being a prophet he testified of Messiah's resurrection, and to Psa. 16 we can add Psa. 110 where he tells us of His Son sitting at God's right hand, on His throne above, where none ever sat or ever can sit but Himself. “You could not understand this well from the Old Testament, but in the New find that David's throne is God's throne!” Was there ever a more perverse as well as pretentious blunderer? The O.T. does speak of Solomon chosen to sit upon the throne of Jehovah (1 Chron. 28:5), which as it is differently expressed has quite another import. “But in the New” you do not “find that David's throne is God's throne.” Not only is it an invention but a falsehood. The Son of God, the anointed of Jehovah, shall sit on David's throne. But every decently taught Christian knows that this will not be till He appears in glory: and we have always treated such an identification as the ignorance and even folly of adversaries. In contrast with sitting as King on Zion by and by Christ sits now on God's throne, His Father's throne. This is not mere ignorance in F.E.R. It is shameless abandonment of the truth which he long confessed. Yet not one of his fellows moved the wing, or opened the mouth even to chirp. They seem spell-bound and won over to invincible darkness. Can one be surprised that these unworthy retrogradists allowed it to pass that “ecclesiasticism! standing!! ground! and such ideas! have almost ruined us” (34). Brethren, how have such insults to God's precious truth been heard or read without rebuke and repudiation? Truly “all have not faith": if they have only “ideas,” they must come to ruin. Yea, they seem ruined already.

“The New Covenant and Reconciliation” (35-47) abounds in judaizing and the like confusion as before.

But let us turn to page 148 which led to this retrospect. There we find contradiction of himself as well as of his betters. To the question of the difference between the Kingdom “of God” and “of Heaven,” the absurd answer is given that the latter is analogous to what God did at the beginning: [For it was on the fourth day] He set a great light in the heavens to rule the day. Surely any old woman might furnish one with more sense and any Christian child with more truth. But his explanation of the former is duller still. “The Kingdom of God, on the other hand, is connected with the presence of the Holy Ghost down here.” Now he had already acknowledged, as all know, that the Kingdom of God was here before His presence at Pentecost. Again, to one who asked, what was once universally owned, whether the Kingdom of God is a more inclusive term, says F. E. R. “I don't think so.” Yet when another remarked that “the Kingdom was really set up when Christ took His place on high,” his answer was, “Yes, the Kingdom of Heaven.” Yet he adds what contradicts himself that “the Kingdom of God was present when Christ was on earth;” for this conclusively proves the latter to be the “more inclusive term.”

Is it by the way worth noticing the absurd change (p. 121) from the plain and certain force of Gal. 3:26? The only error in the A.V. is in “the children,” where all agree it should be “sons,” of God. Thus “W.M. Do you read that passage in Galatians Ye are all the sons of God in Christ Jesus by faith? F. E. R. I do.” This seems drawn from the R. V. which by its strange punctuation comes to the same sense, or from an English scholar who followed two or three Germans, and, being himself learned, had great weight with the

Revisers in misleading them too often. But learning carries none safely through Scripture. The present instance is a distortion of the sentence, and the issue a truly unnatural abortion. No scholar would so twist a classic. Where is there anything in the N. T. to warrant “sons” any more than “children” in Christ Jesus? Either would be out of harmony with God's word. It is due to sonship on the brain of one who has no title to pose as the least authority in such a question, despising here as elsewhere an honored servant of God who really had the fullest claim to respect.

Who can wonder that one who dispenses such “ideas” says in page 150 “I think a great point in connection with the Kingdom is to get away from dispensational ideas. We have been greatly hindered by taking things up dispensationally”? Think of so bold a revolt from the fullest chapter God ever inspired on the Kingdom! For Matt. 13 (and it is far from being alone) for the most part sets forth dispensational teaching, though not this only. “He that hath ears let him hear” said the Lord. F.E.R. says on the contrary, “Get away from dispensational ideas.” “Have ye understood all these things?” the Lord asked. F.E.R. is not afraid to gainsay Him: “We have been greatly hindered by taking things up dispensationally”. Exactly so think the uninstructed leaders of Christendom. Extremes meet. Yet only samples are noticed by the way, by no means all that deserves severe castigation as well as entire rejection, that those who love the truth may see how far-reaching is the departure which once would have been felt intolerable and without excuse.

Think too of such monstrous teaching in the same short paragraph (154, 155), “for the moment the Kingdom is hid at the right hand of God,” compared with the quotation of the future day when “the angels shall gather out of His Kingdom all things that offend,” &c. Had it been said that “the King” is hid, one could understand; but “the Kingdom” has no sense. It is the fruit of sneering at dispensational truth and cultivating a crop of moral vanities. “In a day of confusion” (153) scripture is the divine resource not mere moral views, which without it only mislead. But what can Christians think when to one who asked the difference between the Father's Kingdom and that of the Son, the answer was, “They refer to the same point”! And to another on the same page he maintained that Christ has “received the Kingdom,” and cited for this error, “we see Jesus crowned with glory and honor!” It is to be hoped that all who heard knew the gross mistake of both answers. Heb. 2:9 is no more proof of Christ's reception of the Kingdom than Rev. 4 v. proves that the heavenly saints then reign. It is His present exaltation when we do not yet see all things put under Him. When He comes to reign, He wears many diadems and is not merely crowned. Who can fathom this disgraceful ignorance? or the dense delusion which accepts it as fresh light and truth?

In p. 164 (the Minneapolis reading on the Sanctuary) we come again to the old strange doctrine. “You don't begin with eternal life,” says an accommodating disciple.

F.E.R. You end with it, at least if scripture is right, ‘The end everlasting life.'

W.E. And that scripture does not mean then that you die?

F.E.R. I don't think so. A man gets to eternal life on earth. He may not get it until resurrection, but get it he will. Every believer will certainly get it.

W.H.F. Before he leaves earth? F.E.R. Yes. W.H.F. You don't enter into it now, but in resurrection?

F. E. R. You will be put into it then; you will not enter into it.” The meaning of this utterance seems to be eternal life given only at Christ's coming when we shall not all sleep, but all be changed. But this is to efface the Lord's giving it to believers now as a known and present possession, for mortality swallowed up of life at His coming, with which he confounds it. Scripture is as plain about the beginning as about the end. F.E.R. denies it for the believer when he most needs life eternal to know God, follow the Lord, overcome the world, and resist the devil. He is doing the enemy's work and corrupting the temple Of God.

The human invention of the believer's life by the Spirit, which is not a present reality in Christ or life eternal, explains much said hitherto, and is distinctly taught in “The Wilderness and the Land.” “You have not yet got to eternal life, but it is life Godward in the wilderness” (185). The truth is that life in Christ, life eternal, is at the starting-point; as is taught in John 3:15, &c., v. 24, 25, vi. 40, and very clearly in 1 John 4:9 compared with 10. It is unmistakably false doctrine that “John 3 [3] carries you farther than Rom. 8” [8]: a total misconception of that Gospel, which tells of the Son comedown from heaven yet Who is withal in heaven, light come into the world then manifesting God on earth. This is not less “the wilderness” than anything in the Epistle to the Romans: and “the thought of God” is as truly in both Rom. 5 and Rom. 8 as in John 3. In short the teaching is a string of discreditable and mischievous blunders. Hence “perishing” is in the wilderness (181), yet means not only to “apostatize” like Judas, a lot so exceptional, that there is another string also to the bow. It really expresses the everlasting perdition, whatever its shape, which befalls every unbeliever. And what more inept than the comparison (180), even before that, of Rom. 8 with v.— “what we are for God in the Spirit?” Surely if Rom. 5 is God fully known in grace superior to our sins, Rom. 8 is our place in Christ, superior to law, sin, and every other difficulty. But this book drags souls from divine truth to self habitually, instead of ministering Him Who alone acts on us in the power of grace by the Spirit.

Think too of the strange “idea” in 182 that “The only way in which you escape from the wilderness is in your own house. I don't think one's own house is exactly the wilderness, for it is a circle which God owns. The moment you are outside of your own house, you are in the wilderness”!!! Was there ever such puerility in a Christ-given teacher, or even a sane man? Who does not know that if typically we pass through the wilderness, which the world is to the new man, tents are an essential part of it, and that these become the pilgrim rather than the settled houses of Egypt? But what a conglomerate of thought or at least of words and figures, to claim for “our own house” so favored a circle! Would to God, our homes were more pilgrim-like, and more redolent of Christ!

But we come to more serious and systematic development of error in the use made of some later types in the book of Numbers.

“G. R. Does the brazen serpent answer to Rom. 8; 3?

“F. E. R. Quite so....

“J. S. A. And I suppose that although a person might be out of Egypt through the Red Sea, and. brought to God in that sense, he cannot enter into the purpose of God unless he apprehends the brazen serpent.

“F. E. R. No, the Spirit is the real beginning of life in the believer, ' The Spirit is life' (184)... God goes back to Adam (!) and the serpent, and sin is condemned in the flesh in the sacrifice of Christ, in order that God might impart the Spirit as life to man. You get the Lord's own expression of this in John 3.”

These heterogeneous “ideas” may please souls immature in the truth; but they indicate a mind caught by appearance, and at sea with a compass wholly out of order. For the book of Exodus furnishes the shadows of redemption and its consequences, up to God's dwelling in the midst. There we have not only the sacrifice of Christ in the Passover but God's action in power for His people in the passage of the Red Sea, Christ dead and risen. “The purpose of God” had been before them in Ex. 3:17, and vi. 4, 8; as they all celebrated in the song, Ex. 15:13-17. In figure they were truly and fully brought to God. Then come lessons of grace by the way and conspicuous among them the Bread of life come down from heaven marking out the true rest, and the gift of the Spirit in the living waters from the smitten rock fitting for conflict, though victory depend on the Mediator's intercession on high.

Is it not therefore certainly and manifestly in contradiction of scripture that one could not enter into God's purpose without the serpent of brass? For its object as the emblem of Christ crucified was to annul the power of Satan through the fiery serpents which bit those that loathed “this light bread.” And it was an absolute and immediate remedy to the look of faith, Aaron being dead just before: and those concerned seem not such apostates as Jude speaks of, but such as had not come out of Egypt nor passed through the Red Sea. They were a fresh generation requiring a new enumeration soon after, who have God's intervention for them against the enemy within and without, and hence too receive the Spirit's refreshing, as they had the emblem of Christ made sin for them previously. It was meet that God should grant all this for the generation about to leave the wilderness; as He had done for those who left Egypt for the wilderness.

But what a hodge-podge is made of “divine teaching” by these ill-assorted ingredients from Exodus and Numbers boiled together for a witch's caldron of poison! Yet not a soul among his British companions or his American friends raised a note of warning! If the progress of audacious error is alarming, the silence of men in the party who must see more or less through Satan's deceits seems more distressing still.

If we turn to the fuller light of the N. T., the violence done to revelation is extreme. For a twofold reason is given in the opening of Rom. 8 why there is no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus, itself a wondrous expression of divine favor. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus freed me from the law of sin and death.” This was not only life eternal but in its risen power: God could not condemn one so liberated. But there is more. “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God, having sent his own Son in the likeness of flesh of sin, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us that walk not according to flesh but according to Spirit.” As God already in Christ's cross condemned sin in the flesh, not merely sins but sin, He is not satisfied only (as the old divines were wont to put it) but glorified therein. Thus on neither score can condemnation fall. The sins of the believer are forgiven in virtue of Christ's bearing them on the tree; and the sin in the nature also has already been condemned there to God's glory. The believer in both respects stands clear, in order to righteous practice in loving God and man, as he walks in that life which he has in Christ according to which the Spirit enables him.

No Christian doubts the part played by the Holy Spirit in new birth: but how can anyone overlook the plain truth that, when the apostle discusses the further working of grace in the verses which immediately follow, not a word here implies that “the Spirit is the real beginning of life for God in the believer, the Spirit of life'“? For F. E. R's aim is to deny that Christ now gives life, life eternal, and here in resurrection power, to the believer. This he deliberately discards as the beginning or indeed at any time in our actual existence till He comes; for “life eternal” he believes only in “the end” —an end of glory which can never come without its beginning in grace now. The apostle shows that it is no question of duty only, but of a new nature with its spiritual affections quite opposed to the flesh and its lusts which are enmity against God. The believer's relationship to God is in the Spirit, but grounded on having Christ for life and on being in Him. This is made clear even by ver. 10: “But if Christ [be] in you, the body is dead because of sin, and the Spirit life because of righteousness.” Christ already in him as life warrants him to disallow the body as a guiding power, that the Spirit may act in that life and be life practically. For thus only is sin excluded and righteousness produced. As no Christian doubts that the Son quickens in communion with the Father, so he holds that one is thus also born of the Spirit. God in the fullness of His being acts in this operation of His grace. And here we learn how the Spirit is the immediate energy in the inner man all through. But to pervert it (as heterodoxy usually avails itself of a scripture difficult to many, in order to deny Christ as the present giver of eternal life), O what a sore grief to Him who is sent here to glorify Christ, and should receive of His and report accordingly!

Is it not blindness to say as in p. 185, after Rom. 5 and 8:3, which is said to answer to the brazen serpent, that “you have not yet got to eternal life, but it is life Godward in the wilderness?” As we have seen, the very verse (Rom. 8:10) abused to put forward the Spirit, in exclusion of Christ's gift of life eternal, refutes the unbelief, and makes “Christ in us” the antecedent to the Spirit's power in making it good in our practice. But more: the Lord's application in John 3 proves that the life given forthwith to such as looked on the serpent of brass answers to “eternal life,” and not to an imaginary different and inferior life meanwhile. Scripture never speaks of Christ giving the believer any life but His own life eternal. F. E. R's doctrine is a fraud of dangerous consequence from every point of view. Can a faithful man doubt that the Holy Spirit, far from accepting F. E. R.'s error in pretended honor to Himself, resents it as a profane slight on the Son of God and the Father's love?

If it were really meant that the life we have in Christ may in some disclose little beyond a pilgrim character, whilst they ought to have a heavenly character also as occupied with Christ glorified on high, one would accept its truth as long confessed and prized. This however is in no way his “idea.” He fancies life eternal to mean neither the one nor the other: he asserts it to be “a purpose of God,” and “a promise” to the believer, but in no case his present and known reality, and less still admits it to be the life of which all Christians live. His notion that “the Spirit is life,” to the exclusion of eternal life in Christ now given, is a wicked falsehood, and beneath not only every Christian teacher, but any Christian whatsoever. It is possible indeed that he was beguiled by his own misapprehension of the difference between the heavenly life and the earthly (or pilgrim) life in a practical sense, whether of Christ or of the Christian. Such a misunderstanding of one truly taught of God may have been the enemy's snare into his own systematized error. But if any one a dozen years ago doubted what he meant, there can be no real excuse now. The reader of this volume has abundant and decisive proof. Who with the fear of God can now say that there has been no false system, nor false doctrine at root? To deny it at this time of day would be party-spirited will and obstinacy unworthy of Christ.

No doubt mistake on the side of these who were right in the main weakened their testimony and gave a seeming aid to the adversary. For all ought to have seen that there are two principles and directions for the life Christ communicated, figuratively the wilderness, and Canaan. The heavenly ways and the wilderness walk are quite distinct. It was so even for Christ, where all was perfection. But this raises no uncertainty as to the unity of His life, any more than as to the life eternal now given to us. It affords no real cloak for the error, which positively denies the communication here and now of eternal life, and only admits the gift of the Spirit (56 et passim). For it is foolish and evil perversion of Rom. 8:10 to exclude our having at present eternal life in the Son, under the plea that without it “the Spirit is life.” Even verse 2 had clearly joined Christ with the Spirit, like the verse tortured into the contrary. For what means “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,” if not that? What God joined together, let not man venture to sever.

Further, what Christian taught of God does not see that in Rom. 8 it is a question, first in 2, of delivering power in the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and, next in 10, of the Spirit as power inwardly in order to walking in the Spirit? Think of confounding all this with being born of the Spirit, or with the gift of the Spirit! Yet this is a root-error throughout the volume; as if one could be born of the Spirit without life, or have life imparted to the believer which was other than life in the Son, life eternal. What a return to old ignorance, if one conceive that the experience of Rom. 7 could be that of a soul not born of God! Yet as clearly it is one without the Spirit of liberty. But F. E. R. is on every side wrong; and the worst is, that it is a departure from light into darkness on the foundation as well as the privileges of Christianity.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Number of Lot's Daughters; Pharoah Perished in the Red Sea?

Q.-Gen. 19:14-16. Is it correct, as often assumed, that Lot had only two daughters of sorrowful memory?—A Disciple.

A -It would seem that besides the two maiden daughters in his house Lot had others with his sons-in-law outside, whom he sought in vain to save from the doomed city. In the “Introductory Lectures on the Pentateuch” this oversight is said to have been made. That the confusion has been often made by excellent men is of no weight against the simple force of the word.

Q.-Ex. 14, 15. Is there substantial ground for doubting that the Pharaoh of Exodus, Menephthah, perished with his host in the Red Sea? I am aware that Sir G. Wilkinson (Ancient Egypt, i. 54) so thought, and that the Rev. Professor Rawlinson follows him (Hist. of Anc. Eg., ii. 336).—A Disciple

A.-We are not limited to the writings of Moses. The Psalms are no less divinely inspired. If the language is only general in Exodus, Psa. 136:15 is explicit, that Jehovah “overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea.”

TITUS & PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth, 2/-THE REVELATION 2/-.
LIFE ETERNAL, 2d.

THE DAY OF ATONEMENT, a New Edition in Preparation.

Publisher

LONDON

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Jacob: 2. Meets Rachel

Jacob, strengthened by his dream, pursues his journey to the land of his kindred. The first phrase is an uncommon one; the nearest to it is used of the priests in quitting the channel of the Jordan for Canaan (Josh. 4:18), which hardly confirms the alacrity ascribed to it here.

“And Jacob went on his journey (lifted up his feet), and came into the land of the sons of the east. And he looked, and, behold, a well in the fields, and, behold there, three flocks of sheep lying by it; for out of that well they watered the flocks, and the stone on the well's mouth was great. And when all the flocks were gathered there, they rolled the stone from the mouth of the well and watered the sheep, and put again the stone on the well's mouth in its place. And Jacob said to them, My brethren, whence [be] ye? And they said, Of Haran [are] we. And he said to them, Know ye Laban son of Nahor? And they said, We do know [him]. And he said to them, [Is it] well (peace) with him? And they said, Well; and, behold, Rachel his daughter cometh with the sheep. And he said, Behold, [it is] yet high (great) day; [it is] not time that the cattle should be gathered together: water the sheep, and go, feed [them]. And they said, We cannot till all the flocks be gathered together, and they roll the stone from the well's mouth: then we water the sheep. While he was still speaking to them, Rachel came with her father's sheep, for she kept them. And it came to pass when Jacob saw Rachel daughter of Laban his mother's brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother's brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother. And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice and wept. And Jacob told Rachel that he [was] her father's brother, and that he was Rebekah's son; and she ran and told her father. And it came to pass when Laban heard the tidings of Jacob his sister's son, that he ran to meet him, and embraced him, and kissed him, and brought him to his house; and he told Laban all these things. And Laban said to him, Thou [art] indeed my bone and my flesh. And he abode with him a month of days” (Gen. 29:1-14).

How strange that pious eyes of old and to our day should see in Jacob's foregoing journey and arrival in Haran a type of Jesus, Son of God and Heir of all things, despised and rejected of men, Jesus leaving heaven's glory to become a wanderer in the world, to accomplish redemption, and to espouse the church to Himself! Here evidently it rather typifies a contrast with Isaac, only son of his father, the dead and risen bridegroom of her that was fetched by Eliezer's guidance, the bride that must pass through the desert to be His bride in the heavenlies. Here it is one that leaves the land of promise after the saddest failure, but not without blessings in grace, with Jehovah assuring him in the dark night of His care, and not to leave him till He do so with His hand what His mouth had spoken. Jacob does not rise above the house of God on earth, the gate of heaven but not glory on high; and his vow, and anointed pillar, and tithe, and hopes, are all in unison with Israel, yet a prince with God here below. He is a type at most of the earthly side of the Lord; which tradition and theology, not discerning, have lowered so as to narrow the truth. These, seeing only the church position, have reduced the Lord's relationship accordingly, and appropriated Israel's place to the loss of the Christian's, as well as to the denial of the predicted blessings of the Jewish people as the head of the nations on earth under His coming reign.

Jacob is characteristically here under God's providential care, even when we hear only of the shepherds of Haran; and Rachel appears and Laban follows. It is His sure but unseen and unnamed direction. Yet we may remark the difference from Eliezer's distinct prayer of faith and immediate worship in chap. 24, also from God's prompt answer, and from the bride's ready response and journey to join him whom unseen she trusted, and for whom she forsook all her existing ties of nature.

Here it is a touching scene, and the quick emotional outburst of Jacob's nature is in keeping, and even Laban's. But the deep communion with God, when it is the type of calling the bride for heaven, and the entire absorption of heart in the risen bridegroom's glory, are as wanting here as they are indelibly apparent in the unique episode of Isaac and Rebekah.

Priesthood: 28. Poor Leper

Here, as elsewhere, appears the gracious consideration of God, not for the poor only, but also for what is so represented typically. Jehovah at least does care for such as have no earthly resources; and this is attested in the strongest way when they suffer from an extreme evil which leprosy was and figures. Does He not compassionate the poor in faith, due in general to defective teaching?

“21And if he [be] poor, and his hand be not able to get it, then he shall take one lamb a trespass offering, a wave offering to atone for him; and one tenth part of fine flour mingled with oil for a meal offering; 22 and a log of oil, and two turtle doves or two young pigeons, as his hand may be able to get: the one shall be a sin offering, and the other a burnt offering. 23 And he shall bring them on the eighth day of his cleansing to the priest unto the entrance of the tent of meeting before Jehovah.

24 And the priest shall take the he-lamb of the trespass offering, and the log of oil, and the priest shall wave them a wave offering before Jehovah. 25 And he shall slaughter the he-lamb of the trespass offering; and the priest shall take the blood of the trespass offering, and put [it] upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and upon the thumb of the right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot. 26 And the priest shall pour of the oil into the priest's left hand, 27 and the priest shall sprinkle with his right finger of the oil that [is] in his left hand seven times before Jehovah. 28 And the priest shall put of the oil that [is] in his hand upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot, upon the place of the blood of the trespass offering. 29 And the remainder of the oil that [is] in the priest's hand he shall put upon the head of him that is to be cleansed to atone for him before Jehovah. 30 And he shall offer one of the turtle doves or of the young pigeons, of what his hand was able to get; 31 of what his hand was able to get the one a trespass offering, the other a burnt offering with the meal offering; and the priest shall atone for him that is to be cleansed before Jehovah. 32 This is the law [for him] in whom [is] the sore of leprosy, whose hand cannot get what is for his cleansing” (vers. 21-32).

The allowance of grace here is solely for the falling short on the eighth day; and it is here where poverty is now and long has been found. Few rise up to the riches of God's grace in its Christian form and fullness. But the principle must be maintained if the right measure is deficient. If unable to take two unblemished he-lambs and one like ewe lamb, with three measures of fine flour, with oil for the oblation, and a log of oil besides, the poor leper was to take one lamb with one deal of oil mingled for the oblation, with a log of oil. This was indispensable for rich or poor alike. The priest began with the lamb slain for a trespass offering, and not a sin offering simply, still less a ram of consecration of sweet savor. Such was the blood sprinkled on each characteristic organ of his body; nothing other or less was permitted. The defilement must be felt and met adequately. Intrinsic cleansing by blood over the living water to be sprinkled did not suffice.

There is judicial cleansing in the sprinkled blood of the trespass offering, which is the leper's consecration to God, suited to the new creation, and hence applied to the renewed mind, as for work, and for walk. Then and not till then, for poor as for rich, is the unction from the Holy One. Not life only nor redemption or rather purification by blood which dedicates to God, but divine power is figured by the oil which follows the blood; and this oil is completely sprinkled before Jehovah anterior to putting it on each member of the poor leper, and the rest poured on his head. For the priest did all as punctiliously for him as for the richest. But two turtle doves, or two young pigeons, such as he could get, were sufficient, one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. His poverty must not hinder his full cleansing and acceptance.

Thus what to the superficial reader seems strange if not tiresome repetition is in reality the witness of God's rich mercy and His loving the poorest with great love. But such a scripture ought also to be a serious guard from that levity which modern revivalism accentuates, though it has ever been the snare of those who are carried away one-sidedly with the freeness of grace to forget its fullness. In reaction from a systematic putting under law as a preparatory course for due reception of this gospel, they confound conversion with salvation, and as it were argue the interested soul to believe and say, I am saved! I am saved before the soul has any genuine sense of sin before God. Those who are strong have no need of a physician but such as are sick; and if the wounds are deep, it is well if they be probed without haste to cover them up. Repentance is most important, lest a crop of such faith arise as James 2 refuses to own. Consider the Prodigal in Luke 15.

The jailer, though speedily and truly converted (Acts 16), was not proclaimed as a saved soul there and then; nor does scripture ever speak with the hurry-scurry so popular among many excellent persons and ardent evangelists. What Paul and Silas said was, Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. So the pious and prayerful Cornelius had to hear words whereby he should be saved, and his house. No doubt when he received the Spirit of adoption, he was duly enabled to know that by grace he was saved as a continuous fact. It is well if the preacher is not precipitate, that the work in souls be deeply laid and sure. It is not for forgiveness only but for deliverance, and communion with God, yea with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.

Day of Atonement: 13. Azazel

Azazel, or the People's Lot (Concluded)

Some of my hearers may remember the teaching founded on the bullock, and perhaps wonder that the scapegoat seems applied to the same purport. Let us look for a few moments how the truth is told us. We all begin standing without, just like Israel; we who believe were no less guilty of sins and iniquities. The bullock is seen when we come to the knowledge that we are made free of entrance into the sanctuary, and so can as priests draw near where God is. This is very far from being our apprehension when first, however truly, awakened. The soul then feels itself without the sanctuary, and cries for mercy, while owning itself a just object of divine judgment. Such is the state to which the two goats apply. Not only do we plead the blood as vindicating God on the one hand, but need the remission of our sins on the other to give us assurance that they are gone.

But are we left there? Not so. Christ is gone into the holiest of all. Are we, now like Israel, waiting for Christ to come out? This is the type strictly for them. The second goat depends on the high priest come out of the sanctuary, to the unspeakable relief of the people who cannot in any sense enter within. When any one presses the literal accomplishment of the scapegoat, it must be Israel. They are outside now, and will be so up to that day. But the Lord Jesus will leave the heavenly sanctuary and will come with power, glory, and blessing. Are we in any such position as Christians? Certainly not, when we bow to the full efficacy of His blood. The gospel brings us far more than the comfort of the second goat to the people without. We give thanks to the Father Who made us meet for sharing the portion of the saints in light (Col. 1:12). Through Christ we have access, whether Jew or Gentile who believe, by one Spirit unto the Father (Eph. 2:18). Even those who were once afar off are become nigh by the blood of Christ (13).

The Holy Ghost, as already come out of the sanctuary, makes us know this while Christ is within; so that we may await Christ's coming, not to announce remission of sins, but to change our bodies into conformity with His own, and to present the church to Himself glorious. Such, beyond controversy, is Christianity, and the Christian hope. Through the Holy Ghost now come we draw near within, where Christ is. When Christ quits heaven and appears to bless His people, the Holy Ghost will be shed on all flesh at the same, and a second, time. The blessing of Christianity is that we know Christ while He is in the heavens. This is where the application of the bullock applies to us in all its force; though one must always begin as poor sinners, where Israel ends, with the two goats.

Proverbs 14:28-35

NEXT follow maxims public and private of great weight.

“In the multitude of people [is] the King's glory; but in the lack of people [is] the ruler's downfall.

One slow to anger [is] of great understanding; but the hasty of spirit holdeth up folly.

A sound (or, tranquil) heart [is] the life of the flesh, but envy the rottenness of the bones.

He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker; but he that honoureth Him is merciful to the needy.

The wicked is thrust down by his evil doings; but in his death the righteous trusteth.

Wisdom resteth in the heart of the intelligent; but [what is] in the inwards of fools is made known.

Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin [is] a reproach to peoples.

The King's favor [is] toward a wise servant, but His wrath to him that causeth shame” (vers. 28-35).

To have a numerous population is the king's glory; but David made it his pride, and persisted in a tainted public measure, notwithstanding the earnest protest of his chief servant, a mere worldling, to his own sin, shame, and chastening in the very point of his glorying. Yes, David who owed everything to God's favor, not to an arm of flesh! But a dwindling people prepares for a ruler's destruction.

Again, it is a sure sign of a great understanding morally to cultivate slowness of anger, though never to be angry before the Lord evinces total want of right feeling in presence of evil. How slow was He Himself, yet could and did He kindle to God's glory. The hasty of spirit only exposes his own folly.

Then again a sound or placid heart is a general healing power, just as envy rots even the bones, a corroding evil without doubt.

And what is it to oppress the poor, but to reproach Him that made him and his lot? Whereas he honors the faithful Creator that shows compassion to the needy.

It is his own evil that expels or thrusts down the wicked, while even in his death the righteous retains his confidence. Even if a feeble believer be before us, there is no moment in his life so happy as his departure to be with Christ. Gloom on the other hand is unbelief.

The intelligence here commended began with the fear of Jehovah, and grew by hearing and gaining wise counsels which fools despise. Wisdom accordingly rests not on the tongue merely but in the heart which prizes it.

In the foolish, even when deeply sounded, is nothing to make known but lack of sense. Jehovah, God, is nowhere within such a spirit.

On the other hand it is not only a man but a nation which righteousness exalts; and righteousness is a just sense of relationship to God and man, the very reverse of absorption in our own interest which ere long ruins those blindly devoted to it. Sin is a real reproach to peoples as well as to men.

It is also no small contribution to national wellbeing that the king should not forget but heed and honor a wise servant, no less than frown on him that causes shame.

Gospel Words: the Prayer of the Disciples

Are you a disciple of the Lord Jesus? Are you born of the Spirit? Are you a child of God entitled to say Abba, Father? Such were they, and no others, whom the Lord taught to pray thus: Our Father that art in the heavens, Sanctified be thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done as in heaven also on the earth, Give us to-day our sufficient bread, and forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors, and bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. If you are a disciple as they were, you too can pray thus, even if like them you could not say that you have in Christ redemption, the forgiveness of your trespasses (Eph. 1:7). Such too was necessarily their state then, for Christ had not yet suffered for sins. But it ought not to be yours now; for the atoning work is done. If then you believe on the Lord Jesus, be it known to you, that through Him is (not promised, but) proclaimed to you remission of sins, and in Him is every believer justified from all things (Acts 13:38, 39). You have not appreciated the alphabet of the gospel, if you know not that once purged you have no more conscience of sins.

While in this unformed condition, born of the Spirit but not resting on redemption known as yours (and therefore not yet having the Spirit of adoption, Gal. 4:4-6, Eph. 1:13), you do well to pray as the Lord taught His disciples waiting for the Spirit (Luke 11:1-3). When the Paraclete was given, they entered into peace and liberty, far beyond their then state (Rom. 5:2, 1-11; 2 Cor. 17, 18); and so may you prove when thus subject and obedient to God (Acts 5:32). Nevertheless, though the standing of a Christian will lead you to pray in the Spirit according to the new relationships, how blessed ever is that which the Lord here taught! Do you really know what He meant? Many fail in this. Let us weigh His words.

It is in the First Gospel we hear of the Father who is in the heavens. The aim was to raise the eyes on high of Jews who were used to wait for God to display His glorious power on earth (Isa. 25:9; 31:4; 35:4. &c.), as He did in measure since the day of redemption from the old house of bondage. Now He is made known as the One who makes His sun rise on evil and good, and sends rain on just and unjust, yet with special favor to His sons.

The petitions are seven, and divide into two classes; the first three are of righteousness, as the last four are of grace. This is an order intrinsically due to God, and proper for saints. If lost sinners as such were contemplated, all must begin with sovereign grace. But of this we hear not in the so-called sermon on the Mount, but such grace shines appropriately elsewhere.

1. And how right, even our hearts feel, is the opening petition, Sanctified be thy name! It is the foremost desire of the renewed, however young in faith. Without this made good, there can be nothing good.

2. Thy (not My) Kingdom come, the Father's Kingdom (Matt. 13:43) where the heavenly saints shine forth as the sun in risen glory, the dearest object of His love here as Father, Who will have them there with and as Christ, through Whom alone it could be.

3. Thy will be done as in heaven also on the earth. This is at the same time the Son of man's Kingdom, Who will send His angels to gather out of it all offenses and all that work lawlessness (Matt. 13:41). It is the earthly things of God's Kingdom, as the other the heavenly (John 3:12), Christ being Head of the church and over all things (Eph. 1:10, 22).

Then come the petitions of grace.

4. Give us to-day our sufficient (or, necessary) bread. Thus are they taught to begin with confessing dependence for ordinary wants, as the apostle called us to be content with food and raiment.

5. And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. For indeed all saints are bound to judge self and confess sins; as an antecedent spirit of forgiveness is imperative. See Matt. 18:35, Luke 17:3, 4.

6. And bring us not into temptation. So the Lord impresses on the disciples; for He ever knew their weakness as none else did yet. Luke 22:46. To “endure” temptation is as blessed, as “entering into” it is full of danger.

7. But deliver us from evil in general, if not from the evil one in particular. This was not the sifting, or temptation, deprecated in the clause before, which grace may put us through for good, as we see in Peter; but the power of the enemy in drawing into sin against God. The proper desire was to be kept from the evil, or, if one fell, to be restored from it. Grace in no case fails, if a disciple alas! did. Deliver us from evil.

The doxology is an ecclesiastical accretion and therefore uninspired. Luke was led by the Holy Spirit to omit the special title (2), the earthly Kingdom (3), and the final clause (7), as not so much called for in the case of Gentiles.

Reader, can your state admit of your adopting the prayer for a disciple of Jesus? How sad to use it lightly and untruly?

1 Peter 2:21-23

The place of suffering is enforced for the Christian, to the special comfort of Christian servants, by that of Christ Himself.

“For to this were ye called; because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you a model that ye should follow up his steps; who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth; who when reviled did not again revile, when suffering did not threaten, but gave over to him that judgeth righteously” (vers. 21-23).

The world's relations to the saints, whether servants or not, is made unequivocally plain. So it was even for the apostles. “I have given them thy word, and the world hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:14.) “If the world hateth you, ye know it hath hated me before [it hated] you. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own, but I chose you out of the world: therefore the world hateth you. No bondman is above his Lord: if they persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also (15:18-20).” If it be trying as it surely is, how great is the moral honor of “such association with Christ!” “For to this were ye called.” God allowed, overruled, and used it for the good of His children here below.

Earlier still, and more widely, had the Lord made known His will, God's will. “But I say to you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to those that hate you; help those that curse you, pray for those that use you despitefully. To him that smiteth you on the cheek offer also the other; and from him that taketh thy coat forbid not thy coat also. To everyone that asketh of thee give; and from him that taketh away thy things ask them not back; and as ye wish that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. For if ye love them that love you, what thank (grace) have ye? for even sinners love those that love them. And if ye do good to them that do you good, what thank have ye? for even sinners do the same. And if ye lend [to them] from whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners that they may receive back as much. But love your enemies and do good, hoping for nothing back; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be sons of [the] Highest; for he is kind to the thankless and wicked. Be ye therefore merciful even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:27-36).

It is Christ practically, and the manifestation of the Father's character reproduced in His children. Nothing less palpable or more absurd than to expect such a character in fallen man as such, that is, in the world; nothing less is what the Lord looks for from those that are His. Who is sufficient for these things? Our sufficiency is from God. Do not doubt Him, nor allow to unbelief that these are bygone things. They become and bind the Christian at all times. And so we read here, “because Christ also suffered for you.” Was this to dispense with our suffering? On the contrary He suffered for you, “leaving you a model, (or, copy) that ye should follow up his steps.”

The saint needs an object from God to form our souls and fashion our ways. And He sets before us Christ. What or who can compare with Him? Flaws were in the best of saints at their best, think of Peter, Paul, John. Christ “did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth.” Christ “when reviled did not revile again; when suffering, did not threaten, but gave over to him that judgeth righteously.” Who among his most bitter foes that sought every occasion ever convicted Him of sin? He always did the things that pleased His Father, and never once did any will but His, the lowliest of men, yet above the highest. For there is nothing so lowly as obedience; nor is there anything so pure and morally elevating as ever obeying God. He and He only was “His righteous servant,” He absolutely and perfectly.

It has not been shown as far as I am aware that the word rapa admits of the reflexive sense, good as it would be in itself, that is, of meaning “gave himself over.” Hence various modes of supplying the ellipse have been proposed. But why should it not be rendered, though a little rugged, as it seems used, absolutely? So we find in Mark 4:29, where there seems no need of rendering, “is brought forth” or “provided.” Why not “should permit”? See Pind. P. v. 4; and Demosth. 1394. 23 even for the aorist; which A. Buttmann oddly denies. The present, &c. are common as in Herod. vii. 15; Xen. Anab. vi. 4, 34; Isocr. 106 C.; Polyb. xxii. 24, 9, as given by Liddell & Scott.

Life Eternal Denied: 2

IT would be tedious to analyze “The things before God” (pages 198-207). But there is the like confusion, instead of the truth, in what is fantastic-ally entitled “the world to come” (pages 208-225) and its continuation (226-242), the submerging of Christianity under Jewish expectations, just as in the denial of life eternal as a known and present reality for our souls in Christ. Take the statement that “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has properly reference to the world to come” (208, 9). Now where is the Christian of spiritual intelligence and candor who can fail to discern that this is no casual slip but error down to the foundation of revealed truth? It is the surest self-evidence that he who holds and utters such a view was not taught of God as to either the present or the future; and this in what is and must be the innermost of all, the true relation of God to each according to His word. “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” has no proper reference to “the world to come.” His only reference properly, if we bow to the word, is now to the saints and faithful in Jesus Christ, though of course they will enjoy Him forever. The error is complete on both sides. The proper title of God in reference to the world is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that blessed us already with every spiritual blessing in the heaven-lies in Christ, but Jehovah, El-Elyon or the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, according to the beauteous type of Abraham and Melchisedek in Gen. 14, so predicted in the Psalms and the Prophets.

Nowhere does scripture warrant the faintest hint that God's relation to the world will be “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ;” which is His exclusively given relation even now to those who compose the church. No Papist, no Protestant, within the scope of my reading, ever erred so scandalously, not even B.W.N. in his Thoughts on the Apocalypse or any other of his most erroneous writings, though he shared the vulgar ignorance that all saints from the beginning to the end compose the church. F.E.R. learned better through Brethren; and therefore his error is the less excusable, because it is the more inconsistent. Alas! what makes it hopeless, as it is, is his consistency, rather than his inconsistency. He dares, after professing the truth in both respects, to contradict revelation in both; he robs the Christian now of his most cherished relationship shared with his risen and ascended Lord, and bestows it improperly and with reckless ignorance on “the world to come.” All the effort of J.S.A. or J.P. to palliate it (209) is in vain. None ventured to expose or even oppose the twofold lie against the truth.

Again, weigh the words in page 210: “Every thought enumerated in chapters 1-10 (Heb. 1-10) connects itself with the world to come.” Now had it been said that there are points of connection through the Epistle to the Hebrews with “the world to come” (beyond the text in chapter 2 which openly speaks of it), no one could fairly dispute it. But the grand central truth, which governs its teaching through more than those ten chapters, turns those bold words into dust and ashes. Christ's session at God's right hand after having made for Himself (if not also “by Himself”) purification of our sins is from first to last characteristic for the Christian now, and does not connect itself with the world to come. Any one versed in the truth could disprove it in detail from each one of these ten chapters and indeed from all. But, not to heap up counter evidence, it suffices to allege the indisputable fact of the teaching throughout, that sacrifices are now consummated and closed for us Christians in His one offering. Hence even every tyro in prophecy knows that it will not be so for “the world to come;” as for example Ezekiel (43.-46.) proves for Israel, and Malachi (1:11) for the Gentiles.

In these revised notes, after ample time for reflection, there is the issue to every eye of what deliberately and systematically reverses apostolic teaching of a fundamental kind. For in the Epistle from which it is sought to show that “all is viewed in relation to it with the world to come,” the wilderness with the tabernacle and its antitype is ever the ground, not Canaan and the temple as then and there according to the prophets. Our position as Christians ever looking on as sufferers in full assurance of hope is the express aim of its teaching; not “the world to come” but the holiest relationship [not union here] with Christ in heaven itself which contrasts with that world. It is the better light of God's presence on high, the “heavenly” soon to be our actual portion. We are Christians, not Jews anticipatively or the Israel of God, as Christendom fancies; and our time, if this be meant (211), is the eighth day, not the seventh. So the Lord by His word (in John 7:37 et seqq.) would have us enjoy now in the Spirit. But these judaizing errors flow from the fatal root-error of denying to us the known present possession of life eternal.

In the notice of Heb. 11 according to the new school, we are told that since “sin came in saints were being instructed in some way or other in detail as to the world to come. In Abel we see the principle of the world to come, that is acceptance by sacrifice. Then in Enoch we get translation and in Moses the destruction of the world power” (211). Did ever a narrow and prejudiced Puritan convey anything paltrier? In Abel it was really a question, not of the world to come, but of righteousness from and of God, as it was testified in Enoch the next case for heaven and eternity. Noah might as to this bear such a view in the world after the flood; but what God's word actually says is that he condemned the world, instead of inheriting it, and became heir of the righteousness that is according to faith. No doubt the pilgrim fathers are said to be heirs of the same promise; but it is carefully shown that they all sought a better country, that is, a heavenly, the city that hath the foundations. Must one tell these darkened brothers, who formerly needed it not, that “the world to come” means the habitable earth to come, and does not include the heavenly side of the scene? The Epistle, while owning it habitually and in this chapter, was written to set their eyes on things above where Christ sits. This book retrogrades below the “ways” of old. Lastly what halting poverty of application only to get in Moses the destruction of the world-power! Why not point out, in blessed type, the overwhelming downfall of Satan's power and ourselves brought to God by the death and resurrection of Jesus? Yet no one denies the outward analogy when Israel's foes are destroyed by-and-by.

One of the pupils remarks that “It is not that they were delivered at the moment, but they were waiting for the One who delivered them” (213). Now scripture (1 Thess. 1:10) puts “our deliverer” from the wrath to come, as the most expressive form of conveying their abiding rescue. So said our Lord in John 5:24 speaking of the last crisis of that coming wrath (cf. Rom. 2:5, 16), the believer “cometh not into judgment.” It is a present and assured exemption. Another adds from his teacher that “we do not need Christ as our righteousness for this world. We need practical righteousness here, Christ is our righteousness in view of the world to come.” Well, if we have not got eternal life now, and thereby communion with the Father and with His Son, this might be; but just think how its denial degrades His life both now and by-and-by! A third has found out the error of taking (Col. 1:12) as heavenly, the inheritance of the saints in light! “That is not heaven", says J.S.A., “but the world to come”! How deplorable the descent of error!

It may help him to learn that the word which deceived him is not κληρονομίας (inheritance) but κλήρου (portion or lot). It is far above the “world to come.” Even “inheritance” in Eph. 1 rises higher than the earthly horizon. Let him unlearn this folly and use this scripture, as they were all wont to do. How evidently one lie about a vital truth unsettles, vitiates, and falsifies many more! Would to God that no saints might “grasp these thoughts “; for they are a grievous perversion, and can only defile and destroy. A soul less an adept did cite 1 Cor. 1:30 for Christ made to us of God wisdom and righteousness now. Yet F. E. R., after admitting it, said “I don't think it is in relation to this world, but to the world to come(!)” It was written to the saints here and now; and has no more to do with “the world to come” than the rest. “The age to come” attached to “the world to come.” Neither contemplates heaven. This prattle is one tissue of blunder on blunder. No sound and well-taught man can truthfully deny it; and I trust that none such out of party zeal may have the hardihood to palliate it. They are likely enough to cry out about my tone and spirit, as once against J.N. D. because he did not mince his words when his soul fired up against outrage done to Christ or the truth. He was not at all animated by fleshly enmity or feeling, which I too disclaim. Is there to be no righteous indignation?

We can see in pages 220, 221 that neither J.S.A. nor O.O.B. could give up without a protest the certain if mysterious truth of Eph. 6:12; but F.E.R. showed himself alert to lower, too, all he could. “I don't think the rendering is quite right (I). We wrestle against the spiritual things or influences of wickedness in the heavenly places (I) We don't wrestle against the wicked spirits (1:1) We have to do with the effect down here. There are influences which are abroad in Christianity. We have escaped one evil, but may fall into another.” “We don't wrestle against wicked spirits” says this adversary of the truth, ever bold against God's word when it is plain. “We have to do with the effect down here,” says F. E. R. But the apostle says we have to do with the sources up there. The express aim is to assert that our wrestling is, not against blood and flesh which are down here, but against principalities, against authorities, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against “spiritual [hosts or powers] of wickedness in the heavenlies.” This I venture to affirm is the right rendering; and it is dead opposed to “things or influences,” which sense in the context is nonsense; for this would-be renderer himself means “influences which are abroad in Christianity” [? Christendom], and can hardly mean to call the evil spirits “things” on high. The apostle speaks here solely of spiritual beings of subtle energy and malice banded against us; and all the more seriously, because they rule the world's darkness from that heavenly elevation by their wiles as quasi-deities; he does not speak of “spiritual things or influences” in the heavenlies, but a man as far as possible from being an apostle, for he contradicts the true one. Nor does he seem to be aware that infidelity and rationalism are as real if not rampant in Popish lands as in Protestant, though the latter are generally more open and outspoken.

The reading ends with a few vague, obscure, and scarcely intelligible remarks on eternal life; but there is nothing definite enough to call for any notice further than the mistake of putting resurrection, instead of the Son, for the coming out of that life (225). How all these “thoughts” belittle Christ, and becloud the truth Whose work is it to do either? Not the Holy Spirit's certainly.

Passing by not a little worse than worthless in the last reading as in those before, we may now consider in its continuation (220-242) some of the more shocking errors. Take this in concurrence with J.S.A. (page 227).-” F.E.R. Every point in the Epistle [Hebr.] holds good for the world to come.” Such a sentiment is worthy of a Jew masquerading as a ritualistic clergyman. He saps the transparent truth of the Epistle; for as it proves the “better thing” than even the fathers looked for in the fulfillment of promise, the surpassing difference of Christianity is almost everywhere made plain. The lowest object in God's purpose, the habitable earth to come (ἡ οἰκουμένη ἡ μέλλουσα), is abused to swamp the far more commanding and distinctive truths of the Epistle.

It is utterly false that “every point in the Epistle holds good for the world to come.” Israel and the nations shall see the King in His beauty, and their hearts muse on the terror of His day begun on earth. But not even the most spiritually intelligent among them can look by faith on the Son seated on the right hand of the Majesty on high when He had made purification of sins (Heb. 1). Nor will they behold Him crowned with glory and honor in heaven, as we do when we see not yet all things put under Him (Heb. 2). For though it is a citation of Psa. 8, the Epistle shows that Christians have the excellency, which Thomas had not, of having believed without seeing. Then again is it no point of vantage that Christians are “partakers of a heavenly calling” (Heb. 3) while the millennial saints have an earthly one? Nor will it be theirs to suffer being tempted, like Christ, yea, to endure, and reign with Him, as 2 Tim. 2:2 says, whereas they are reigned over, having had no such gracious experience. And the rest of God (Heb. 4), is there no difference in enjoying it on the habitable earth to come, or with Christ above?

In all the similar and deadly thrusts of B.W.N. at our heavenly privileges, I remember none so sweepingly pernicious as these “thoughts” of F. E. R. palmed on the unwary as the truth of God. Surely “an enemy hath done this “; for one might easily go through the Epistle and prove that in every salient point it ascends and associates us with Christ, in contrast with the descent to the world to come. But, even again, to cite (the same page) “we which have believed do enter” as our anticipation of it ought to disgrace a child on the outside seats of a meeting-room. For it is really “a promise,” and not our anticipation by faith, as ranters preach, but a simple fact that we enter there (viz. at Christ's coming), not that we have in any sense entered in; in the same context, as ever in the Epistle, we are as yet and only passing through the wilderness. No: this is the reverse of divine teaching, and wholly opposed to the truth accepted and taught by every instructed person among brethren. Surely they are not all traitors to it now!

“This brings in the House of God, for the truth of the House of God is not literally fulfilled in the present time, it points on to the time to come” (page 229). What a discovery! One might have expected a due appreciation of what is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being a corner stone for God's habitation in the Spirit, though it be not literal, and no saint need deny or grudge the future house in the land of Israel. But will that house of visible glory be comparable to a living God's church, pillar and ground (or basis) of the truth? Truly this abuse of “the world to come” is letter, not spirit; and a like abuse pervades the volume. Christianity is here debased. How very largely it is “I think” and “I suppose” and “quite so” we all can see; and alas! how many are content to remain “by this wonderful system” bereft of the truth! Consider the absurdity of counting it (page 234) “a great mistake to think that Christianity is one thing, and the world to come another”! Christianity not another thing from the habitable earth to come! One might excuse such ridiculous error in a pulpit rhapsody from a preacher to whom that earth is an unknown land, or who is a spiritual babe.

But is it honest to allege that F.E.R. can plead either excuse? He poses as the burning and shining lamp in the obsequious company of several who do not think meanly of their lesser degrees of light. Is it not a stern duty, for any loving the truth who can, to expose so shallow and self-complacent a pretender? For where is “Christianity” or “the world to come” in the admirable group of Heb. 12:22-24? Does he identify “Zion” with the one, the heavenly with the other? If so, he only demonstrates the same darkness into which he has fallen by yielding to his own ideas. We can hardly conceive that he found either in the “myriads of angels,” or in the “spirits of just men made perfect.” It would be blasphemy to identify them with God or with Jesus, and folly to do so with the church of firstborn ones (which is neither Christianity nor the heavenly city), or with the blood of sprinkling. Christians these are without doubt.

But Zion, though the most exalted spot of the millennial earth and the embodiment of royal grace as its principle, is a very small part of the habitable earth to come; and the city of a living God, heavenly Jerusalem (distinguished from David's city, the earthly one), is the glory above this world, for which the patriarch waited (Heb. 11:10, 16), not the new Jerusalem seen by the last Seer, the symbol of the Bride, the Lamb's wife herself, not of the glory which is to be the seat of the elders who believed of old. Thus self-evidently this heavenly city is not Christianity, and as clearly distinguished from the assembly of those associated with Christ as first-born ones.

The order of Melchisedec does apply now, in that Christ like him is the one sole priest without predecessor or successor; but the exercise of His priesthood now is after the pattern of Aaron in the sanctuary and His intercession founded on sacrifice, in contrast with the blessing and refreshment of Melchisedec for the world to come. F.E.R. shows he is a bungler following the tradition of Christendom, not scripture, when he says (page 232), “It is King and Priest, Jesus crowned with glory and honor, and at the same time saluted as High Priest.” Heb. 2 has not a word on His kingdom, which is not come till the seventh trumpet of the Revelation, long after the rapture, and only announced a little before His appearing. It is not “at the same time.” The soi-disant teacher is a forgetful professor, and a pretentious dreamer. As almost all in fellowship used to know better, so he must have been drinking the waters of the veritable Lethe from the dark regions. A King in righteousness by and by is not grace reigning through righteousness as now: none but a hopeless ignoramus could say so. But it is far worse; for it indicates, as far as the truth is concerned, a wicked heart of unbelief in departing from a living God. Even he once learned better when at school, and apparently grateful for sound teaching.

Page 236 has again the ridiculous disorder of the new covenant, purgation, reconciliation, and sanctification, directly opposed to what the Epistle indicates, as a child may see. How Satan must enjoy such nonsense greedily swallowed by persons who once seemed to love the truth, and the sad sight of grave men deterred from their allegiance to the Lord in not clearing His name and word by fear of consequences Think too of such trash as the comment (page 237) on 1 Cor. 6:10! “F.E.R. I think every man is set apart in the mind of God (I) before he is justified.” Brethren, is not this a falsification of this text? “Washed, sanctified, justified,” you used to know, is a blessed existing fact, whatever the difficulty of such as have not learned the truth of setting apart to God before justification, as also in 1 Peter 1:2. If it is a childish but mischievous suggestion to say that “the old man [is] gone in the death of Christ” (ib.), it is too plain that the truth largely “is gone” from F.E.R. Just think that his answer (page 238) to What is the Minister of the sanctuary? should be, “Christ is Head of the body, the Church, and has the place of Minister of the sanctuary. He presents the saints to God; He takes the place of Head;” and this is interpreting the Epistle to the Hebrews!

Other remarks follow which in an average saint might have seemed strong; as in 240 where F.E.R. says to W. M., “Yes, but you see we are now going in so that we may be qualified to come out. W.B. I never saw that before. F.E.R. Well, it is a very good thought “[!!!] Whatever may be felt at such self-applause, all sober Christians must agree that it was sad for any to remark (241), “I think that word ' will ' declare it, in the second clause of John 17:26, is what has been misleading to many of us.” No, no: the misleading is from another source. But I do call the attention of every saint just after that to the atrocious verdict of F.E.R.: “Eternal life is realized only in the Assembly; no one touches eternal life except in that connection(!)” This is an unmitigated lie of Satan. Scripture never speaks of it in that connection. It is strictly an individual privilege, and was as it is realized in each Christian apart from the assembly. Their corporate communion begins and goes on in the given Spirit. Such a statement betrays a soul not taught of God as to the assembly any more than individual Christianity. It is wanton opposition to scripture; and what must one conclude from his saying (page 242) that “the proper connection” of life eternal is with the world, the habitable earth, to come? Has he ever done more than read to talk about John's Gospel and First Epistle? Is it not there we find eternal life applying to the Christian now, there only assured and applied in the fullest and deepest way? Never is it there connected with the habitable earth to come, which is a prophetic “connection” and not “the proper one;” nor is it “in association” that we get it as a present thing, but individually by faith in the Son of God. “You are out of death” by His death and resurrection, as His coming will prove. As to our souls, we are risen with Him now. To deny this by talking of earning one's living and providing for the family now is like a creature raving.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: 1 Timothy

Chap. V. Divine Design. 42A. the First Epistle to Timothy

That the pastoral Epistles should have a common character distinct from those to the saints is easily understood; and that each has its own peculiarity is a plain matter of evidence to the attentive reader. The difference is conspicuous in the two letters to Timothy; for the first is as careful to insist on order as the second is to provide for a state of disorder, that the godly might even then have divine directions for their walk, bound as they were, and we are, to take account of so sad a change. That to Titus comes in character between the two extremes.

1. “Paul, apostle of Christ Jesus according to command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, to Timotheus, genuine child in faith; grace, mercy, peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.” The prefatory words, as usual, give a clear insight into the scope of what follows. The apostolic title is as important for authority here as for the truths of the gospel and of the church to the Roman and to the Corinthian saints, to the Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians. “According to command” assimilates this letter and that to Titus, while it differentiates both from the second Epistle to Timothy. “God our Savior is also very notable here and to Titus, bespeaking the universal testimony of God's grace in the gospel, and strongly contrasted with Judaism. God in love goes out actively to man in the death of the Mediator. Christ is the hope, and unfailing if cherished. The exhortatory injunction to Timothy was first and foremost to guard the truth from all alien teaching, and specially fables and interminable genealogies which are such as yield questionings rather than God's dispensation that is in faith (3-7), the end of it being love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and unfeigned faith.

These then are the substantial blessings of the gospel, and missed by such as turned aside to vain discourse, wishing to be law-teachers. There was the early plague of imagination, and of legalism which assails grace as antinomian while itself tending to that evil, whatever its own contrary claims. It is not that the lawful use of the law is denied, which is to convict lawless and insubordinate persons. The gospel alone witnesses of Christ to save sinners (of whom the apostle specifies himself as first) to whom, in his ignorant unbelief, mercy was shown—Christ's whole long-suffering (12-16). This draws out his praise, after which he repeats the injunction laid on Timothy, that he might war the good warfare, maintaining faith and a good conscience. For such as put away the latter make shipwreck of the former; of whom he holds up Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom he had delivered to Satan for their dishonor to God (18-20). How practical and personal it all is! And what is truth but a sham and a shame if it be not so?

2. Here we find the public attitude of Christianity. All should breathe of loving goodwill toward man and the chiefs of the world, even if heathen and persecuting. “I exhort therefore first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings be made for all men; for kings and all that are in authority,... for this is good and acceptable before God our Savior, who wisheth that all men be saved and come unto full knowledge of truth. For there is one God, one mediator also of God and men, a man Christ Jesus who gave himself a ransom for all, the testimony in its own times; to which I was set preacher and apostle (I speak truth, I lie not), teacher of nations in truth and love” (1-7). Grace rises above all natural thoughts, feelings, and ways, and calls on those who believe to bear a living witness of “God our Savior,” Who is willing to save all that bow to Jesus, the ransom for all. Such is the testimony; and now that the cross on man's side proves the guilt of all, Jews and Gentiles, the same cross on God's side proclaims salvation to all that believe.

Paul was herald of this grace, but moreover apostle in full authority, and teacher in patient wisdom, that even besotted Gentiles might believe and know the truth. Yet reverence and divine order become those who profess the truth. “I will therefore that the men pray in every place, lifting up pious [or, holy] hands, without wrath and disputation.” All the faithful were holy brethren; and it was no longer the question of a Jewish sanctuary any more than of a Gentile high place. They were free and invited to pray elsewhere. The women were to cultivate modesty and discretion, instead of fashion and finery, with good works their true ornament. To learn is their place, not teaching, nor authority, but quiet subjection; for which he cites the case of Eve, who, deceived, brought in transgression, whatever mercy may do even in her chief natural sorrow.

3. Then Timothy has directions for the local charges of bishops (or, overseers) and deacons. “Faithful is the saying: if one is eager for oversight, he desireth a good [or, right] work.” The requisite qualities (2-7) are moral or spiritual, rather than the possession of an express gift. Free from reproach, husband of one wife, sober, discreet, orderly, hospitable, apt to teach; not quarrelsome over wine, not a striker, but gentle; not fond of money; ruling his own house well, having children in subjection with all gravity (for how could one command respect in God's house who had it not in his own?). And again, not a novice, nor one destitute of a good report without. All this is of so much the more moment as it has been slighted habitually by the greatest systems down to the least. But we cannot wonder where the office itself is turned to ecclesiastical and even worldly show. Those to be entrusted with the diaconate are briefly described in 8.13, and in this case the women or wives, who might be useful or a hindrance.

Occasion is given, not here to a doxology, but to a solemn presentation to that church in which the apostle, Timothy, elders, and deacons, and indeed all saints, each called in his special place, have to walk. “These things I write to thee, hoping to come to thee rather soon; but if I delay that thou mayest know how one ought to behave in God's house, which is a living God's assembly, pillar and support of the truth. And confessedly great is the mystery of godliness: He who was manifested in flesh, was justified in Spirit, was seen of angels, was preached among nations, was believed on in the world, was received up in glory.” Godliness depends on and is the fruit of the truth in Christ, the secret no longer hidden but revealed; which as a whole, therefore, is in ways wholly distinct from and above a Jewish Messiah reigning in visible power, but known as we Christians know Him. Compare 2 Cor. 5:16-18.

4. With this the apostle draws a dark contrast. “But the Spirit speaketh expressly that in latter times some shall fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons by hypocrisy of legend-mongers branded as to their own conscience, forbidding to marry, [bidding] to abstain from meats which God created for reception with thanksgiving by those faithful and well acquainted with the truth; because every creature of God [is] good, and nothing to be rejected if received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified through God's word and prayer” (1-5). Asceticism is no more Christian than moral laxity, though it assumes a fairer form. It is a pretentious assault on the Creator and Preserver of man by setting up a superior sanctity, which ends in turpitude against nature. Monachism is unconscious war against God. Timothy was called to be a good servant of Christ Jesus by laying the contrary good teaching of benign and faithful providence before the brethren, and avoiding what he calls profane and old wives' fables. For piety or godliness is profitable for everything, having promise of the present life as well as that which is to come; our God is Preserver of all men, especially of the faithful. He must not be deterred by such as objected to his youth, but meet the reproach by an example in word, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. Reading, exhortation, and instruction are enjoined till he came. The gift that was conferred on him he was not to neglect, but to be diligent in these things, and wholly in them, that his progress might be manifest to all. A divided heart ruins the service of Christ. Self-vigilance, too, is imperative, to save both himself and others.

5. Here we have the proprieties of that work, which cannot be slighted without danger and harm. An elder he was not to rebuke but exhort as a father, younger ones as brethren, elder women as mothers, and younger ones as sisters, with all purity (1, 2). Widows were to have special and careful consideration (4-10), and younger ones to be shunned, in which case suited directions are laid down (11-16). Elders or bishops were to rule, and those who ruled well to be counted worthy of double honor especially those laboring in word and teaching: a scripture important to bear in mind: as it is also to receive no accusation against one, save with two or three witnesses. Those that sin should be convicted before all, that all the rest too should fear. He adjures Timothy solemnly to observe these duties without prejudice and without favor, cautious against haste in sanctioning others, lest it might compromise him; he even deigns to counsel liberty where his scruples might injure health, before he closes the warning he had begun, lest he should unwarily be a partaker of other men's sins.

6. Christian slaves are not forgotten, as to whom grave and gracious counsels are given, in the face of different teaching, which is exposed sternly, though the last clause of verse 5 is a spurious accretion. Godliness or piety with contentment, the reverse of making it a means of gain, is great gain. For as we brought nothing into the world, neither can we carry anything out. Having food and covering, we will be, or let us be, content therewith. How true that those who will be rich fall into temptation, and a snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts, such as drown men in destruction and perdition! For the love of money is a (not exactly “the”) root of every evil, after which some too eager wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows. Timothy is then urged, as God's man, to flee these things and to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, meekness, to combat the good combat of faith, to lay hold on eternal life, according to the good confession he confessed. Then follows a deep and lofty injunction which crowns this Epistle, and urges his keeping it spotless and irreproachable till the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which in its own seasons the blessed and only Potentate shall show, the King of those that reign and the Lord of those that rule, Who only hath immortality, dwelling in light unapproachable; Whom none of men hath seen or can see, to whom be honor and might everlasting. Amen.

Thereon Timothy is told to charge the rich to rest, not in uncertain wealth, but on the living God; to be rich in good works, laying up for themselves a good foundation for the future, that they may lay hold of what is really life. Timothy, in fine, is to keep the entrusted deposit, avoiding profane vain babblings and oppositions of falsely named knowledge. How trenchantly the apostle speaks before he wishes him grace!

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: 2 Timothy

Chap. V. Divine Design 42B. the Second Epistle to Timothy

The second Epistle to Timothy assumes a deeper character because of the grave disorder of a general kind which was before the eyes of the Holy Spirit. The regular means would not meet that which already and most seriously disclosed departure from God. Hence in the address it is no longer “according to command,” &c., but “by God's will according to promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus,” anticipating in measure that on which the apostle John falls back for the last time. Individual fidelity is the more required, yet in no way giving up but maintaining the divine association of saints.

1. The value of unfeigned faith rises before the apostle's heart in this last word of his to his beloved child, to whom he again wishes grace, mercy, peace. He thanks God whom he serves from his forefathers in a pure conscience, with increasing remembrance of Timothy and his tears, and longing to see him that he might be filled with joy. He speaks even more decidedly of the faith which dwelt first in Timothy's grandmother and in his mother, as in his child also. He puts him in mind to stir up the gift of God in him through the imposition of the apostle's hands, and bids him not be ashamed of the Lord's testimony, nor of Paul His prisoner, but suffer evil with the gospel according to God's power. He it was who saved us with a holy calling not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace that was given us in Christ Jesus, before everlasting ages, but now manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, annulling death as He did and bringing to light life and incorruption through the gospel, unto which Paul was appointed herald and apostle and teacher of Gentiles. For this cause he was suffering thus, but not ashamed; “for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to guard for that day my deposit.” Hence he says, “Have an outline of healthful words which thou heardest from me in faith and love that is in Christ Jesus; the good deposit guard through the Holy Spirit that indwells in us.” Scripture alone is reliable, as afterward expressly said, not human tradition, of all things the most uncertain. Timothy knew the cowardice of many—that all those in Asia, specifying two, had deserted Paul. How different Onesiphorus, for whom and whose house he asks mercy, because he often refreshed him, and when in Rome the more diligently sought him out when a prisoner, besides his loving service in Ephesus.

2. Faithful as Timothy had been, the apostle is most earnest, “Thou therefore, my child, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things thou heardest from me among many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men, such as shall be able to teach others also. Thou therefore take thy share of suffering evil as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one on service entangleth himself with the businesses of life, that he may please him that enlisted [him]. But if one also contend [in the games], he is not crowned unless he have contended lawfully. The laboring husbandman must first partake of the fruits.” These maxims need only to be correctly represented to carry their weighty sense. It was no rite, but truth which had to be communicated, yet suitably an earnest devotedness is pressed, and subjection to the Lord's will and, as the laborer, first to share the fruits. “Remember,” says he, “Jesus Christ risen from the dead, of David's seed, according to my gospel, wherein I suffer evil unto bonds as a malefactor; but the word of God is not bound.” Royal rights gave Him no exemption. On the contrary, death was His portion, and what a death! Him Paul followed and imitated as far as this could be, as he urges on all in verses 11-13, and on Timothy to put them in remembrance of these things, instead of wordy fights worse than profitless. His earnest zeal cut straightly the word of truth, warned by two others whom he names as samples who had strayed in asserting the resurrection as past, overthrowing faith under so spurious an exaggeration.

This gives occasion to an instruction of great and general value. “Nevertheless the firm foundation of God standeth, having this seal, the Lord knoweth those that are His; and, Let everyone that nameth the Lord's name depart from unrighteousness.” From individual comfort and responsibility he goes on to corporate condition and duty. “Now in a great house are vessels, not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and of earthenware, and some to honor and some to dishonor. If one therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel to honor, sanctified, serviceable for the master, prepared unto every good work. But flee youthful lusts, and follow after righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” If the Lord's secret is with Himself, responsibility is mine if I call on His name; I am bound to have done with iniquity. No presumed usefulness, can justify my persevering in wrong. But does not God's house abound in anomalies? Am I to leave it? No, I dare not cease from the public profession of the Lord's name with all the baptized; but I am here to purge myself from the vessels to dishonor in that house, and instead of isolation to follow every Christian duty with those that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. It may cost much but it is plain and obligatory in all times and places. And while moral care is ever incumbent, He claims my soul also, with a peaceful and gentle bearing, “in meekness instructing those that oppose if haply God may give them repentance unto acknowledgment of truth, that they may wake up out of the snare of the devil, taken as they are by him, for His will.”

3. Next comes a solemn warning of the outlook in Christendom, for many would expect progressive good on earth. “But this know that in the last days difficult (or, grievous) times shall be there. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, blasphemous, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, uncontrolled, fierce, haters of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, pleasure-lovers rather than God-lovers, having a form of piety [or godliness] but deniers of its power; and these turn away from.” One might have shrunk from a course so peremptory, had the apostolic charge been less plain. It was direct to Timothy, but for every Christian also. The evil was at work even then, and the apostle severely characterizes not only the corrupt misleaders, like Jannes and Jambres, but the misled as silly women laden with sins, led by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to right knowledge of truth.

As the false or senseless teachers have their limit set, Timothy is told how he had closely followed Paul's teaching, course, purpose, faith, long-suffering, love, patience, persecution, sufferings. Such is the ministry of Christ the Lord, with persecution endured, and the Lord delivering out of all! What is more, the apostle assures that all who desire to live piously in Christ Jesus shall be persecuted, but wicked men and impostors shall advance for the worse, deceiving and being deceived. How sad, yet how true! What is the resource or safeguard for Timothy and for all saints? “Abide thou in those things which thou didst learn and wast persuaded of, knowing of whom thou didst learn them [they were no mere traditions of unknown source]; and that from a babe thou knowest the sacred letters [those of the Old Testament] that are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus. Every scripture [of New Testament or of Old] is God-inspired, and profitable for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for instruction that is in righteousness; that the man of God may be complete, furnished thoroughly unto every good work.”

4. Not less solemn is the apostle's direct charge. “I testify earnestly before God and Christ Jesus that is about to judge living and dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word, be instant in season, out of season; convict, rebuke, encourage with all long-suffering and doctrine. For the time will be when they will not endure sound teaching, but according to their own lusts they will heap up to themselves teachers, having an itching ear, and will be turned aside unto fables. But be thou sober in all things, suffer evil, do evangelist's work, fully perform thy ministry.” Be it observed that Christ's appearing, not His coming as such, is immediately connected with His Kingdom. He comes to receive His own to Himself and for the Father's house; He appears to establish His kingdom, and all shall see Him, and then in the same heavenly glory. “For I am already being poured out, and the time of my departure is all but come. The good combat I have combated, the course I have finished, the faith I have kept: henceforth is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me in that day; and not to me only, but also to those that love [have loved and do] His appearing.” Here again, as His coming is the expression of sovereign grace, His appearing is the display of His righteous remembrance of faithfulness, and, of course, of the want of it.

Then the apostle bids Timothy be diligent to come unto him quickly; he valued his loving presence, and knew that Timothy reciprocated it. He speaks of Demas with grief. Whatever he might be as known to God, he deserted the apostle through love of the present age. Crescens and Titus had their work, and only Luke was with the apostle. He wished Timothy to take up on his way and bring Mark with him. There indeed he had joy, if sorrow over Demas. For Mark, says he, is useful to me for ministry. He had no longer Tychicus whom he sent to Ephesus. How interesting in these ministerial matters, to have the apostle—while writing an inspired pastoral epistle—telling Timothy to bring the cloak which he left behind in the Troad with Carpus, and the books, especially the parchments! Hence we learn of the Christian liberty the apostle exercised as to these outward things of body and mind. He preferred to have a cloak brought than to buy another, and he asked for his books there, which had their interest or use for him, though looking for death he knew not how soon. He would not so speak of the scriptures. If he put special stress on “the parchments,” or unwritten material of a costly and durable nature, was it to have his Epistles correctly copied and multiplied?

Next, he alludes to the hostility of Alexander, the coppersmith, not in a prayer, but in the grave conviction that the Lord would render to him according to his works; for he showed much evil against the apostle, who warns Timothy also to beware of him. He pathetically names how all deserted him on this repeated inprisonment when his first defense came on; but the Lord stood by him, turned it for all the Gentiles to hear, and delivered him from most imminent danger, as He surely would from every evil work, and preserve him for His heavenly kingdom. He wishes salutations to his old friends Prisca and Aquila, and to Onesiphorus' house. He tells of Erastus at Corinth, and Trophimus left sick at Miletum; for a sign of healing (as the rule) did not apply to a Christian, who came under the Lord's government. He gives the greeting of Eubulus, Pudens, Linus, Claudia, and all the brethren; he prays that the Lord should be with the spirit of Timothy, and grace be with him and others there.

Scripture Query and Answer: Genesis 19:8, 12, 14

Q. & A.-Gen. 19:8, 12, 14. An American friend writes wondering at the oversight in Lectures on the Pentateuch (76) where Lot's daughters are spoken of as brought out without “their unbelieving husbands.” It is clearly new to him that there is any question possible. But it is a fact that very competent persons agree with the Vulgate that the two daughters were only espoused and still under the father's roof, not yet taken to their future homes. Hence the Hebrew well bears the marginal reading of the Revisers, “were to marry” in ver. 14; for it is literally “the takers of.” The A.V. agrees with the Sept. If these be right, it would of course imply other married daughters who perished in the judgment that befell Sodom. Bp. Christ. Wordsworth accepts the Latin version unhesitatingly. But enough is said to show the question.

TITUS & PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth, 2/-THE REVELATION

LIFE ETERNAL, 2d. LIFE ETERNAL DENIED, part 1, 2d.

Published

LONDON—T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly

Jacob: 3. The Marriages of Jacob

IT is well to bear in mind that Jacob, however vigorous, was no longer a young man, being seventy-seven when he arrived in Haran. There he must bow to the divine discipline which had already forced him to leave his father's house, and the late unhappy influence of his mother. So it is with each of God's children. Grace is sovereign in calling even the most untoward; but they pass under a moral government which takes notice of every fault, that they may become partakers of His holiness. Compare John 15 and 1 Peter 1:15, 16.

“And Laban said to Jacob, Because thou [art] my brother, shouldest thou therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what [shall be] thy wages? And Laban had two daughters: the name of the elder [was] Leah (Weariness), and the name of the younger [was] Rachel (Ewe). And the eyes of Leah [were] tender; but Rachel was beautiful of form and beautiful of countenance. And Jacob loved Rachel, and said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel thy youngest daughter. And Laban said, Better [that] I give her to thee than [that] I should give her to another man: abide with me. And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they were in his eyes a few days, for his love to her. And Jacob said to Laban, Give [me] my wife for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in to her. And Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast. And it came to pass in the evening that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to him; and he went in to her. And Laban gave to her Zilpah his maid-servant [for] maid-servant to Leah his daughter. And it came to pass in the morning that, behold, it was Leah. And he said to Laban, What [is] this thou hast done to me? Have I not served with thee for Rachel? Why then hast thou deceived me? And Laban said, It is not so done in our place, to give the younger before the first-born. Fulfill the week of this one; and we will give thee the other also for the service that thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years. And Jacob did so, and fulfilled the week; and he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife. And Laban gave to Rachel his daughter Bilhah his maid-servant for her maid-servant. And he went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet seven other years” (vers. 15-30).

It is no small contrast to remember Isaac the heir, the son abiding in his father's house, and the honored servant Eliezer sent to represent him and his father with suited equipage and Costly gifts for the bride. Here the outcast wanderer has nothing to recommend him but his relationship and his service. Nor was Laban slow to discern the value of so capable a man for interests dearer to him than all other considerations. So the bargain was soon struck, and the warm offer of Jacob instantly accepted. But when the full time of service for his bride arrived, the crafty uncle, under all his show of the wedding-feast to Jacob's honor, felt no scruple in the cruel deceit of substituting Leah for Rachel, the object of his heart from the first.

Then followed the humiliating temptation of this younger daughter offered on like conditions of long service, which to Jacob seemed but a few days, for his love to her. But we must not measure this case any more than others in Old Testament times by the light which the Savior cast on marriage as on everything else. Yet it is refreshing to notice what He could draw from what was instituted at the beginning, before sin entered to throw into confusion the ways of God, by those manifold lusts of the flesh which war against the soul.

Here it was Jehovah dealing with Jacob that he might judge himself, and learn in his own experience the hatefulness of yielding to deceit, even if it were to gain the birth-right or the blessing over a profane brother, who cared only for himself and never had God as a living object before his soul.

Priesthood: 29. Leprosy in the House and Its Cleansing

Lev. 14:33-53.

What we have seen is leprosy in the man and his raiment, and the cleansing of the leper. There is this further case, rightly reserved for the end, leprosy in the house. The preceding regarded the person, and his immediately surrounding circumstances. Here we have to look at the assembly typified, not of course in its full heavenly aspect in union with Christ, but in that which is formed on earth by the Spirit's indwelling. It therefore fittingly pointed to the land, not to the wilderness. Neither relation could be before Pentecost.

“33 And Jehovah spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 34 When ye come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession, and I put a leprous plague in a house of the land of your possession, 35 then he whose house it is shall come and tell the priest, saying, It seemeth to me like a plague in the house; 36 and the priest shall command that they empty the house before the priest go to see the plague, that all that [is] in the house be not made unclean; and afterward the priest shall go in to see the house. 37 And he shall look on the plague, and, behold, the plague [is] in the walls of the house, greenish or reddish hollows, and their look [is] deeper than the wall, 38 then the priest shall go out of the house to the entrance of the house, and shut up the house seven days. 39 And the priest shall come again the seventh day, and he shall look, and, behold, the plague hath spread in the walls of the house, 40 then the priest shall command that they take away the stones in which the plague [is], and they shall cast them out of the city in an unclean place. 41And he shall cause the house to be scraped within round about, and they shall pour out the dust that they scraped off, out of the city in an unclean place. 42 And they shall take other stones, and put [them] in the place of those stones: and they shall take other mortar, and shall plaster the house. 43 And if the plague come again and break out in the house, after he hath taken away the stones and after he hath scraped the house and after it is plastered, 44 then the priest shall come, and shall look, and, behold, the plague hath spread in the house, it [is] a corroding leprosy in the house; it [is] unclean. 45 And they shall break down the house, the stones of it, the timber of it and the mortar of the house, and shall carry [them] forth out of the city to an unclean place. 46 And he that goeth into the house as long as it is shut up shall be unclean until the even. 47 And he that sleepeth in the house shall wash his raiment, and he that eateth in the house shall wash his raiment. 48 But if the priest shall come in and look and, behold, the plague hath not spread in the house, after the house hath been plastered, the priest shall pronounce the house clean; for the plague is healed.

49 And he shall take to purge the house the two birds and cedarwood and scarlet and hyssop; 50 and he shall kill one bird in an earthen vessel over living water; 51 and he shall take the cedar-wood and the hyssop and the living bird, and dip them in the blood of the bird that was killed, and in the living water, and shall sprinkle the house seven times; 52 and he shall purge the house from the defilement with the blood of the bird, and with the living water, and with the living bird, and with the cedar-wood and with the hyssop and with the scarlet; 53 and he shall let go the living bird out of the city into the open field; and he shall atone for the house, and it is clean” (vers. 33-53).

Literally, as the Israelites dwelt in tents, and had no proper houses till they entered the land of promise, it is clear that the provisions here laid down could not apply while they were in the wilderness. But the typical force does apply to Christians while here below, because there is in Christ association with heaven also before going there themselves. It was not so while Christ was with His disciples, who were living stones indeed but not yet builded together. “Upon this rock,” said He, “I will build my church.” But men build too since His ascension; and hence there is room for what defiles and corrupts, as well as for what is precious and holy. There is collective evil as well as individual; and consequently God insists on purity in that way no less than this. The allowance of evil is the plague spot for the assembly. Holiness becometh, not the believer only, but “thy house, O Jehovah, for evermore.” Any evil may enter from time to time, none too flagrant or deadly; but if judged according to God and put out, the saints prove themselves pure in the matter.

It is altogether different when known evil abides in the midst. Then it is the leprous plague in the house. But even then it is “the priest” who is looked to in order to pronounce. He is over the house of God. Man is apt to be hasty and unreliable, whether lax or severe. Christ never fails, and makes His judgment felt by the spiritual, and knows how to warn in the Spirit all concerned. If the defilement be removed by the adequate means prescribed in His word, it is well: the house is again recognizable, though the atoning work of Christ is just as needful for it as for the sinner. But if the evil remains despite the scriptural measures to extirpate it, there is nothing for the faithful but its demolition. They must at all costs and in the most absolute way abandon what is incurably unclean. There is most solemn responsibility here in the Lord's name. Compromise is fatal.

Is it not striking and instructive to see how completely the truth of the leprous house is ignored by all who fail to recognize the church or assembly as taught in the New Testament? One need not quote names or books; this would be invidious indeed, where all is a blank or worse.

Day of Atonement: 14. Concluding Remarks

These then were the special offerings of the great Day of Atonement; and the difference is clearly given by the Spirit of God between the position of those who can enter the sanctuary, and that which Aaron secured for the people outside by the dismissal of the scapegoat.

After both were done, when Aaron came into the tabernacle of the congregation, he “put off the linen garments which he put on when he went into the holy place and left them there.” Then he washed his flesh with water in the (or, a) holy place, and put on his garments, that is, his ordinary attire, and came forth and offered his burnt offering, and the burnt offering of the people, thus making atonement for himself and for the people; when he also burnt on the altar the fat of the sin offering (vers. 23-25).

Now these burnt offerings were in no way a specialty of the Day of Atonement. Hence it is observable that at this point he divested himself of the garments of holiness, which the high priest did not put on except for this single occasion. It has been already adverted to as helping to explain the difficulty some find in Heb. 2:17. They have indeed involved themselves in much needless trouble; for the proper call and salutation of the High Priest was after resurrection and ascension. Then He perfected became to all that obey Him author of everlasting salvation, named or addressed by God as high priest according to the order of Melchisedec. But it is no less plain that the high priest was to expiate the sins of the people; and, as this clearly was by an atoning sacrifice, the difficulty for some is, how to conciliate a propitiation made by His blood with an office exercised in risen glory above. The answer is, that what the high priest did on the great Day of Atonement was as peculiar as of the deepest moment. Yet he was not acting in his ordinary functions as the high priest. His proper place was in the sanctuary.

It is matter of common knowledge too, that when an Israelite brought a burnt-offering or a peace-offering or a sin-offering, it was the offerer that laid his hand on the head of the victim. In every offering by fire to Jehovah, where death intervened, as the offerer identified himself with the slain victim, so the priest sprinkled the blood afterward. It is a mistake that the priest slew the victim. It was the offerer. The priest's part began when the animal was slain. It was in sprinkling the blood where his functions entered. But Christ deigned to fulfill even this and none less than He.

Now in what special light did the high priest stand on that day? Not at all as the high priest in his habitual glory; not even as an ordinary priest in the sanctuary. The high priest identified himself, first, with the sins of his own house, and subsequently with those of the children of Israel. Thus he stood that day more as a representative, taking upon himself what God directed for the putting away of sins, than according to the dignity of his ordinary duties. This may be illustrated by the distinctive dress during the characteristic acts of that day, as it is stated clearly enough in the text referred to. “Wherefore it behooved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to atone for the sins of the people.” For this and more He partook of blood and flesh.

Again the apostle puts it thus in Rom. 8:3, “God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” This is remarkable phraseology. Adam was not made “in the likeness of sinful flesh.” Adam was certainly made of flesh and blood as to his body, which on his fall became sinful. Our Lord Jesus, on the other hand, was certainly not a fallen man, not a partaker of sinful flesh and blood. Not only would it have ruined His person, but thus He could not have been a due offering for sin. Had there been the smallest taint of evil, He would not have been “the Holy One of God,” nor could He have offered the most holy sacrifice for sin, nor could He have borne our sins. He must have died for His own condition; He could not have suffered vicariously for others. The necessity for the expression of the Spirit is apparent. God sent forth “His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin,” &c. There exactly is the truth; and no single-eyed Christian could fail to see and believe it.

Proverbs 15:1-7

The chapter opens with the great moment of our words in a variety of ways, under the controlling sense of Jehovah's eyes, or indifference to Him.

“A soft answer turneth away fury; but a grievous word stirreth up anger.

The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright; but the mouth of fools sputtereth out folly.

In every place [are] the eyes of Jehovah, keeping watch upon the evil and the good.

The healing of the tongue [is] a tree of life; but perverseness therein [is] a breaking of the spirit.

A fool despiseth his father's correction; but he that regardeth reproof becometh prudent.

In the house of a righteous one [is] much treasure; but in the revenues of a wicked one is trouble.

The lips of the wise disperse knowledge, but not so the heart of the foolish” (vers. 1-7).

In the first case fury is presupposed. As this dishonors God and misbecomes man, a soft answer disarms it. On the contrary a grievous or mortifying word excites anger. Christ is our example, into whose lips grace was poured, and, when reviled, He reviled not again. Yet who so withering to the proud and hypocritical (Matt. 23)? Who so unsparing even of an apostle when a stumblingblock (Matt. 16:23)?

Next, wisdom is requisite for the tongue in order to use knowledge aright or make it acceptable; whereas what can be expected from the foolish but to sputter out folly? Such is the contemptuous rebuke. They should escape censure if they held their peace.

But there is a far mightier and worthier principle to guide wise or foolish, the realizing of Jehovah's eyes, which without an effort act on every place, beholding the bad and the good.

How cheering to those that are wise! How solemn for the foolish evil-doer!

Then benignity, or healing, of the tongue, is a fruitful source in a world of death. How many pitfalls does it not save from, and rough places smooth? But perversity or crookedness in the tongue is provocative of griefs and wounds without end. How truly a breaking of the spirit!

God ordered the parental relationship to regulate the family; and as a father is responsible to instruct his children, so is he a fool who ignores his responsibility and despises that instruction. To regard reproof, though painful to self-love, is to get prudence. It is not confined to a father's reproof, and where incurred, to heed it is a real gain morally.

A righteous man secures much treasure, not in himself alone, but in his house; for it brings far better than much of this world's goods. A just sense and carrying out of relationship to God and man is the righteousness here intended, and never fails of blessing, even in the midst of trials however keen. On the other hand what can the revenue of a wicked man be but trouble that disturbs and denies godly order and comfort?

Again, the lips of the wise not only exhibit and use knowledge but disperse it in a world where it is as needed as rare. What a blessing to others Far beyond the lavish giving of silver and gold, which might bring with it a curse. But the heart of the foolish, to say nothing of his lips, has nothing of the sort to bestow.”

Gospel Words: Grace in Practice

There is nothing that comes before the eyes of men which strikes them more than the meek, lowly, thankful spirit which endures a wrong. The natural man resents, and, if he can, avenges everything of the sort. You might as well tell him to feel otherwise, as to walk in the air a mile or a foot above the ground. To the disciple such grace is a principle of his new life. It is what in its perfection he has beheld in Christ, and what suits his Father who is in the heavens and looks for the reproduction of His own character in His sons. Retaliation is here reversed and uprooted.

“Ye have heard that it was said, Eye for eye, and tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, Resist not evil; but whoever shall strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And to him that would go to law with thee and take thy coat, leave him to take thy cloak also. And whoever will impress thee one mile, go with him two. To him that asketh thee give, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not away.

“Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies, and pray for those that persecute you, that ye may be sons of your Father that is in the heavens; for he maketh his sun rise on evil and good, and sendeth rain on just and unjust. For if ye should love those that love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the tax-gatherers the same? And if ye should salute your brethren only, what beyond do ye? Do not even the Gentiles the same? Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

It may be personal lawlessness, an unjust suit, or a hard law; but the disciple of Christ is taught by the Master to bow. What is a brutal insult compared with truly representing Him? Consistency with Him is far more than one's coat, and cloak to boot. Instead of begrudging the service pressed for one mile, add another to please Him who would have us walk by faith, not by sight, still less selfishly. Luke, who was led to note not the legal side but unauthorized violence only, omits the impressment, and inverts the stripping by letting the plunderer take the inner garment as well as the outer, the Lord no doubt exhorting to both. Nor did He end here, but bade the disciple give habitually to him that asked; for what had not he himself received from the divine Giver beyond all he asked? The object of countless and rich mercies, was he to turn away from one that would ask or borrow?

But the Lord goes farther in His next utterance. Whatever was said of loving one's neighbor and hating one's enemy, His word to His disciples was and is, Love your enemies, and pray for those that persecute you. So too the Epistles insist on those that bear His name. In the Gospel of Luke rightly stand the clauses, Bless those that curse you, do good to those that hate you, and pray also for those that use you despitefully. These enlarge the grace which disciples are exhorted to show to hostile men of the world; and from thence they were imported into the copies of Matthew by scribes who were prone to assimilate. The inspiring Spirit was pleased through him to urge loving our enemies, and praying for our persecutors, which last pertained to Jews pre-eminently, because of their hot and proud religious prejudice in the flesh.

Such love and piety, to be of value, must be no mere form but a living reality, that they might be sons of their Father in the heavens; for such is their place of dignity. And what a pattern He sets! For He makes His sun rise on evil and good, and sends rain on just and unjust. What rich grace in the first comparison, and what faithful goodness in the second!

Nor was the Lord content with the pointed reference to His Father and our Father, to His God and our God. He would make them ashamed, as His disciples, of not rising above the practice of Jews and Gentiles. If they loved those that loved them, did pot the odious tax-gatherers the same? If they greeted their brethren only, the scorned Gentiles did also the same. This was altogether beneath the Christian according to Christ. “Ye shall be therefore perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” A lower standard of feeling and conduct was to the Savior intolerable.

Have we such confidence by grace toward God? Assuredly we have no competency as of ourselves: but our competency is of God, according to the spirit of the new covenant, not of the old. The grace of Christ alone suffices the believer. If you reject Him, you are lost. Flee to this the only refuge, if you would be saved; flee to Jesus now, ere the House-master shuts the door, when “Lord, open to us” will be in vain. Then will He judge strictly, instead of saving as He does now in all grace; then will He say, I know not whence ye are: depart from Me, all ye workers of iniquity.

1 Peter 2:24

At this point the apostle turns from the more general reference to the Lord's sufferings for us, the peerless example of un-repining love and unswerving yet patient righteousness in a world of evil, to that which stands alone from all before and after in the expiation of our sins, here expressed in terms of extreme simplicity. In atonement Christ had no companions and no followers.

“Who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live to righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed (ver. 24).

Both our text and the Epistle to the Hebrews (ix. 28) make certain the strict sacrificial sense of ἀνήνεγκεν (“bore”) when connected with the object, “our sins." So joined, this is the simple and sole sense of the word. Such too is the regular, if not invariable, employment by the LXX, as any Scholar may satisfy himself. The notion of a pregnant sense “bringing up to,” and “bearing on” the tree, equivalent to the altar, is as certainly a mistake as anything can be. For to express the former, the usage is προσφέρειν or προσάγειν, as opposed to ἀναφέρειν. Thus we read in Lev. 1:2, 3, 5 (as in the corresponding cases), with the distinct term ἐπιτιθέναι which answers to the latter in 9. The same fact occurs in Lev. 2:1 compared with 2, as in 16 ἀνοισει is given, the exact term instead of its substitute. Compare also Lev. 3:1 with 5; 6, 7, 9 with 11, and 12 with 16. The Hebrew is always exact, and does not warrant the weak confusion of the LXX. in 14. The due distinction reappears in Lev. 4:1 contrasted with 10, though the high priest himself was in question; and so for the whole congregation, 14 with 19; again the ruler, 23 with 26; and one of the people, the simple ὀίσει is used in this case, and the proper ἀνοίσει in the other. In the intermediate mixture of sin and guilt, as well as the full guilt-offering, there is at least no violation of the usage, though other terms displace the latter; and so it might be shown from Genesis to Ezekiel that ἀνήνεγκε (“bore”) expresses the final sacrificial act, and not the preparatory “bringing up” which also some have sought to attach to it. This, as we have seen, has its own distinct and appropriate expression.

Our apostle and the still greater one to the Gentiles cite Isa. 53:12; which stamps these words of the Septuagint with divine authority. Heb. 9:28 has the deeper use of exhibiting in the same verse the exact distinctiveness of the two words (προσφέρειν and ἀναφέρειν), which many scholars have confounded, and incomparably more who were far from being scholars. In the Epistle to the Hebrews is no wavering, as in the Septuagint though generally correct. Both terms are used with strict accuracy, as for instance Heb. 7:27 for the closing act, and ix. 14 for what preceded it. Heb. 11:17 beautifully shows the proper word in the great trial of Abraham's faith, and with the added exactitude of the perfect and imperfect tenses, of which none perhaps but the inspiring Spirit would have thought, but which when revealed is appreciated by every Christian who understands it.

Does it surprise any reader that so plain a point should be proved so elaborately? Look at the margin of the A.V. and especially of the Revisers. And who does not know. the bitter zeal of too many in our own day to found, on the gross ignorance of that mistranslation, the dangerous misconception of Christ's work involved in Christ's bearing “our sins in His body to the tree?” To translate competently one must know a great deal more than a grammar and a dictionary; one needs to consider the varied usages of the language as modified by its application, and especially the scope and requirement of the context. Who but a tyro could write, “It is the same word that in the verse before us is rendered on, that in the following verse is rendered to, ‘Ye are returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of souls.' This, then, we apprehend, is the apostle's statement, ‘He himself bare our sins in his own body to the tree.'“ The blunder led him and many another to the utterly false doctrine, that Christ “as really, though not so obviously, bare our sins when he lay a helpless infant, in the manger in Bethlehem, as when he hung, an agonized man, on the accursed tree.”

O foolish theologians, who bewitched you? One may not expect all to read the Greek Testament with intelligent and reverent care, especially if persons doubt that “every scripture is inspired of God.” A single word of the text before us upsets bushels of essays, sermons, and expositions. The dark and perilous hypothesis would require the imperfect tense to give continuity of bearing our sins, which men have imagined and reasoned on. It is the aorist, on the contrary, which above all shuts out relative duration, continuity, repetition, or action commenced and not accomplished. Here it is a simple fact of the deepest moment for God and man, for time and eternity.

The hypothesis is incompatible, not merely with the word used by the Holy Spirit here and everywhere else, but with the broadest and most solemn facts which the most unlettered of believers, taught of God, receive with awe and adoring gratitude. What meant that supernatural darkness which in the hours of broad daylight wrapt up the cross from a certain point? What the cry of Him who had ever, in the fullest enjoyment of love, said “Father,” but now “My God, my God, why didst thou forsake me?” Had He not, when His baptism might have raised a question, received the testimony of the Father's absolute complacency in Christ as His beloved Son? How strange bearing up our sins in His body to the tree! Undoubtedly Christ did never so profoundly glorify God; but His bruising, His stripes, His being made sin and curse, were they all while He was enjoying His Father's love? His suffering for our guilt and God's face, shining at the same time! If He had been all His life bearing our sins, He must all His life have been abandoned by God who cannot look on sin with the least allowance. But no: Isa. 53:6 attests that Jehovah laid our iniquity on His Anointed when He hung on the tree: nothing more characteristic of the atonement, or more opposed to the perfectly enjoyed communion of His life.

Christ's work on the cross, then, is here before us, the answer of divine grace to man's need and danger, and the base of divine righteousness; but this last was left for another, Paul, to treat formally and fully. The practical aim was that which fell to the fervor of Peter, “that, being dead to sins, we should live to righteousness.” Both apostles delighted in these wondrous antitheses which gave glory to God and to the Lord Jesus, His Son.

The word ἀπογενόμενοι, “being dead,” is so uncommon in the N. T, that this is its only occurrence. It occurs in the best classic authors, and answers to our “deceased,” rather than the ordinary word for “dead.” This the apostle Paul used for the privilege into which the Christian is let in order to know his deliverance from sin, as distinguished from the remission of his sins. The further privilege he treats from chap. v. 12 of his Epistle to the Romans to the end of chap. 8. It is too often confounded with what goes before, though it is clearly a grave question of the Christian's state which arises generally for the soul when he knows his sins forgiven. But our apostle speaks of “having died to sins,” which is quite another thing from Paul's doctrine. It is simple and practical (having done with sins), as was his province generally. It is true that the word sometimes means “having taken no part in,” and “being absent or aloof from “; but the context of any correct writer always suffices to fix what is intended. Here it proves that death spiritually is meant, because it is that we may live to righteousness. No other sense would apply here. It never implies “being freed from,” as some have said. The apostle adds a gracious encouragement as the result already achieved by Christ and given to the believer, for which he borrows the language of Isaiah, in the same chapter but a different verse, yet as exclusively descriptive of Christ's expiatory sufferings: “by whose stripes ye were healed.” Strange paradox, but no less blessedly true! It is literally the weal or rising left by the lash which many a slave knew well. How comforting to the Christian, slave or not, who rests with assurance, not on the puerile use made of Pilate's unprincipled indignity (whatever general custom might be pleaded in excuse) to the Lord of glory, but to that which God wrought for the ungodly through the ignominious but glorious death of His Son.

Life Eternal Denied: 3

The reading on “Fellowship and the Lord's Supper” opens with the effort to draw the contrast between the coming together and the Assembly: the former in connection with our life down here; the latter having it in association with Christ (243). There is the usual fog of thought and phrase; not mystery, for this is God's revelation, but mist wrapping things up in dark ideas. “I think the supper is introductory in the assembly; the supper rallies the saints, and they come together in assembly to eat the supper: it is what is immediately before us in coming together, but as introductory to the assembly” (244). What does this mean? The Supper “is introductory in the assembly,” and yet “introductory to the assembly “, both in the same sentence, and each incompatible with the other, How can the same thing be introductory “in” and “to”? The mystification is increased by the care taken to show that “fellowship may exist even if we never come together” without the least pains to explain what sort of fellowship is meant. The enemy's aim is helped on by leaving high-sounding words in entire vagueness. Truth is not stated or even sought, save that 1 Cor. 10 is referred to for “fellowship” insisted on, without any “coming together.”

Now what true-hearted saint can fail to discern that this is the letter that kills, not the spirit that quickens? Here is what the apostle lays down in real and refreshing contrast with that vain and unprofitable idealizing. “I speak as to intelligent ones, judge ye what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not communion of the blood of the Christ? The bread which we break, is it not communion of the body of the Christ! Because we the many are one loaf, one body, for the whole of us partake of the one loaf.” In 1 Cor. 11 it is the authoritative order of the Lord's Supper where the coming together of the saints is in season and place to eat it. Here, where the object was to preserve from all taint of idolatry without and not from internal disorder, he even begins with the cup and ends with the one loaf as symbolizing the one body of Christ. Hence there was no moment here to speak of our coming together, but think of the folly of forgetting it is strictly presupposed! We have here as to cup and loaf the expression of our most intimate association with Christ, more so even than in chap. 11. It is not merely fellowship with one another, but also the communion of Christ's body and blood.

But we come next (245) to the still more solemn and most fatal error as to 1 John 1:1-4; for the effort is to confine the fellowship there to the apostles, or to omit the best. This troubled O. O. B. and no wonder.

No soul of the least intelligence doubts the special place of the apostles and prophets as inspired vehicles of Christianity; and here the beloved disciple treats of truth and privilege made known, second to none. The apostles' function is perverted to deny the selfsame fellowship to the Christian. Those heard, saw, contemplated, and handled; for this was manifested, and to many beyond them. But they had seen, and were witnessing and reporting to the saints generally, as none others could with like certainty and power, the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to them. To what end was this testimony and report? Expressly that others, Christians, also might have communion with them. “Yea, and our communion (says John) is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ; and these things write we to you that your [or, our] joy may be filled full.”

Due honor to the chosen witnesses; all praise to the Father and the Son made known in the Incarnate Word, the eternal life that was with the Father manifested. But even the witness and the report of the apostles came that the saints everywhere should know that they share the most essential boon grace bestows, the present possession of eternal life. No otherwise can there be communion with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. This communion is enjoyed in having life eternal. The way is this, and there is none else. Satan never more audaciously assailed “the proper Christian privilege.” Others in general may have been feeble, doubtful, and dark. F.E.R. is his deadly instrument, striking at its principle.

The reason why limitation to testimony is spoken of is because thereby life eternal as ours now in the Son is wholly denied. Thus and thus only had the apostles fellowship with the Father and with the Son; and they in the power of the Spirit communicated the truth of Christ to us, that we having the same eternal life as they should enjoy the same divine fellowship. There is many an inconsistent thing said in these readings; but the most awful feature is the consistency of the error with itself and its power of perverting other things to subserve and confirm the capital error. In my judgment only an evil spirit could effect such con catenation of falsehood and impose a gloss of truth so persuasively on unwary souls.

Observe how smoke from the pit darkens the truth of God: “If anyone will take the trouble to read the first four verses of John's epistle he will see that they are an introduction, in which the apostle shows their title to address us. Then it goes on to say this then is the message which we have heard of Him and declare unto you.” Such a remark proves fundamental ignorance of this scripture; for these verses, far from being a mere assertion of apostolic title, are the foundation laid for all that follows. What proof could be more complete, that this system leaves out the revealed manifestation on which depends the gift of life eternal to the apostles, as well as to the saints for whom their testimony was written, as well as that divine fellowship which follows?

“These things write we to you that your joy may be filled full” refers not to “the message” subsequently sent, but to that manifestation of which the opening speaks, the pillar on which depends all grace builds up. It is utterly false that John begins with the lowest point. This is the spiritual blindness generated by the enemy. He begins with Him fully and intimately manifested, Who was the eternal life with the Father, but afterward a Man as truly as the witnesses, though infinitely more; and what they had seen and heard, they report to other believers also, that they too may have that fellowship which they themselves had with the Father and His Son. And this is the truth to fill with joy, which is evaded and annulled by F.E.R. and his school. For it is plain that many besides himself are caught in the net of the fowler.

Very far is “the message” in the rest of the chapter from being that grace. It follows the true beginning in 1-4; and consists of tests in varied forms of the deepest wisdom and interest, applied to false profession under the name of Christ. The pretension to life is put to the proof by God as light, in whom is no darkness at all by the three “if we say” (6, 8, 10). The first two verses of chapter 2 are an appendix completing all by the provision of grace for any so blessed, if there should be a sin. But the deadly lie betrays itself by denying fellowship in heaven, because of the wildly false hypothesis that fellowship is in a scene of contrariety. If persons born of God can so think and talk, does it not show how far such can wander from the truth?

But this too is sad consistency with the statement in page 116, “I think eternal life refers to earth, I don't think that we should talk of eternal life in heaven.” Were it one demented who blurted out such folly and falsehood, one could compassionate. But no; it is a man with his wits, energized by will to undermine the most precious privileges of Christianity under the darkening work of the great enemy. If eternal life be not now given to be our life, and its best fruit communion with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ, Christianity is unknown in its positive and proper character. But if and as it is our sure and present joy, where are F.E.R. and his echoes? That both the life eternal, and the divine fellowship thence, are our portion in God's love by faith in a scene of contrariety is most true, though denied by this dismal system; nor is there ground to doubt that they will be perfectly known and enjoyed in heaven and forever. It is distinctly affirmed in the “eternal” life, and the fellowship results unfailingly by grace.

Next (250 &c.) we find a quantity of truly small talk, as in the previous readings, unfounded and unedifying and indeed injurious: but we may skip these trifles now as before. But in 260 we arrive at words which manifest alienation from God's mind very plainly. “R.S.S. Does not the more blessed part of the meeting come properly after the breaking of the bread? F.E.R. The supper is introductory to the assembly; and that is the reason for finishing all that is formal at first. Passing round the bread and the cup and the box are so far formal; you cannot help this, but it is a great thing to be free of it, so that you may be prepared for the assembly in its proper character."!!! Surely no reverent believer will bear lightly such a profaning of that which is the very heart of true worship, as is the solemn calling of Christ to our remembrance. Can it be that the great thing which ordinarily follows is the speaking of one or more? And the same pair add yet more clearly to the same effect of irreverence and presumption. “R.S.S. Is the first part of the meeting what you do, and the last part what the Lord does? F.E.R. Yes, It is the cup we bless and the bread we break. The Lord never does that again. And then the presence of the Lord is realized; He has His place, and we are conscious of Him as Head.” “If the Supper is over it is over. If you get hymns and thanksgiving after, it is worship in connection with Christ as the Minister of the sanctuary. He leads the praises.” “We are risen with Christ and quickened with Him, and therefore are priests.”

Can words disclose more clearly men who have broken loose from God's word? This never hints at such splitting in two the gathering for the breaking of bread, that is, the Lord's Supper? Least of all, does it sanction any such slight put on the saints in sharing the bread and the wine for remembrance of Christ. There is no part, no time, so profoundly near or deep in the meeting; and the contrast of what goes before with what follows is a myth. The Lord does not come into the midst at the Supper, nor does His word justify such words as you cannot help the formality of passing round the bread and the cup and the box, and a “great thing to be free of it,” or again that “when the Supper is over” it is “worship in connection with Christ as the Minister of the sanctuary.” It is letter work and theorizing with little reality and not a little contempt for the Lord's Supper. And where does scripture connect the Christian priesthood with being risen and quickened with Christ? It is random and sensational effort or mere dogma.

So in One Spirit and one body (263), the Lord and His death are lowered to a means: “the subject leads on to the assembly.” Where is such an “idea” in scripture? In this page the error grows bolder still. “F.E.R. You cannot call Him to mind as dead, but as One who is living, Who did die.” This is to destroy the force of the Lord's repeated words, Do this for remembrance of Me; which is simply, expressly, and exclusively recalling Him to mind in His death, His body given, His blood shed. It is in no way looking up to Him as alive again for evermore and glorified. This is a present joy, not at all His remembrance: His headship or our risen state are not what should then occupy the heart. The argument about the Duke of Wellington is beside the mark. Christ's love in dying for us, for the remission of our sins, is His alone; and Him thus would He have us call to mind. His being made known to the two disciples in the breaking of bread, though it was not His supper, is not “curious” but most instructive.

Further, the contrast (268) between the Corinthian saints and the Hebrews in the Epistle is utterly contrary to scripture and facts. They were alike short of being “perfect” or full-grown Christians; and their state distressed the apostle according to both Epistles. He speaks of falling away or reprobation, and warns solemnly of such an end. Nowhere have we the body of Christ more unfolded than in 1 Cor. 12, save on the still more elevated ground taken for the Ephesians; the practical interior of the assembly on earth is given in 1 Cor. 14. The Epistle of the Hebrews richly treats the heavenly calling and gives the key to the Jewish shadows, and more; but it is silent on the great mystery as to Christ and as to the church.

Again, how incorrect to say that Matt. 18:20 has to do “with prayer, not discipline!” In fact it lays down the great governing assurance of His presence in the midst of even two or three if gathered together unto His name, including both discipline (18) and prayer (19), as well as a larger range not limited to those aims. This may seem a comparatively small mistake; but does it not expose the folly of so unfit a person assuming, or accepted, to “correct” “what is defective or erroneous?” See page 5.

One can hardly conceive a greater muddle of speculation than the theory advanced on spurious authority without a tittle of scripture for a progress from the Lord's supper to the assembly, and thence for some to the sanctuary. As throughout, it is confusion of things which differ, and here of the Epistles to the Corinthians and to the Hebrews (270-280). How loose too to say that “if a man is a believer, he is a Christian!” Cornelius is a sample of genuine piety by faith before Peter was sent with words whereby he and his house should be saved. So indeed it had been for Peter and the rest when they received the same gift from God. No doubt all such had been born of the Spirit; but sealing with the Holy Spirit of promise is essential to the new relationship. The error is owing to denying the difference of having life eternal and receiving the Spirit, an error shared with all the uninstructed in Christendom. Only in F.E.R. and his companions it is departure from all that was fully believed, and I hope is still believed by not a few who connive at this painful declension and incredulity. Faith in the gospel of salvation goes far beyond faith in Christ's person. How misleading to say “you may accept the truth of these chapters [presumably 1 Cor. 11 and 12.] and never enter into the reality of the calling, that is, of the sanctuary and the service of God In chap. 15 the apostle deposits tee truth of the gospel with the Corinthians! and in the second epistle he brings to them the new covenant and reconciliation !! So they could not as yet enter into the calling of God !!! (281).” Contrast with it what the apostle says to the Corinthians (i. 26-31). No doubt they were shallow; but this is a sadly common complaint. Is it necessary to refute falsehood so palpable? Was there ever among brethren such a bungler in print? and with pretension so unbounded, yet unrebuked?

The same dark departure appears throughout “Things Unseen” (283-304). Truth, well known comparatively, on Heb. 12:18-29, is set aside, from first to last, yet with a superficial gloss suited to deceive. Speaking of Mount Zion, he says, “I don't think there is the idea of sovereignty in grace so much as in mercy.” Why? Was it his pleasure and Satan's plan here, to oppose one in particular to whom God's children are pre-eminently indebted? to repay his own debt by the vain contradiction that characterizes much through this wretched book? He refers to Eph. 2:4-6; to Ex. 33:19 (where divine mercy occurs), and to the fact that the mass of the people in Indianapolis were not present. But how does all this support his correction of J.N.D.'s “defective or erroneous terms”? The truth is that “mercy” in no way characterizes Jehovah's choice of Zion; nor yet grace only, but royal grace in view of David, and of his greater Son and Lord. This makes it the most honored seat on earth and clothed with the principle of such grace in contrast with Sinai or law.

Next he is equally astray as to “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb. 12:22), which like other untaught men he will have to be the church, with of course his correction. “I think the idea presented is [not God's revelation to himself, but] according to the work of the twelve, especially according to Peter” anything to change and differ. Now there are plain and solid and unanswerable grounds to disprove the general thought, to say nothing of the futile specialty. For first, the epistle speaks fully and 'distinctly of this very city (as none can dispute) in Heb. 11:10, 16; 13:14. By a suited figure it is the designation of heavenly glory, for which the patriarchs waited. But they never awaited the church of God, Christ's body and bride, either in its present condition or in that which is to be. The mystery in all its parts was then hid in God. Secondly, the context itself refutes “the idea.” It is not the truth. “The church of the firstborns enrolled in heaven” is given as a fresh object in its due place within this group (ver. 23).

We may leave the childish talk, and turn to the object subjoined, “To an innumerable company [or myriads] of angels, [not “to"] the general assembly.” Here we have baseless speculations imported from Rev. 21:9 et seqq. which does present the bride, the Lamb's wife, symbolized as the holy city, new Jerusalem: not the heavenly glory where she is to be, but herself. The only one of these vague remarks worth a notice is the strange fancy that “God's providence may in a way appear to be against His people; but angels are not the providence of God, but agents employed for His people” (288)! Is this to “correct” the belief that they were and are so used in His providence?

Then comes the notable idea that “the church of the firstborn which are written in heaven” is “another aspect,” Paul's work here, as the former Peter's. O brethren, is it come to this, that even the least of you should be so readily and madly deceived? Can you have entertained for a moment this double of the church? Separated too by “myriads of angels,” universal gathering as they are, and wholly distinct? Once you were not so easily taken in; but now that you have so soon forgotten the sound teaching of so many departed to be with Christ, you are become the prey of folly and imposture; and silence pervades the better sort, lest the truth should lead to a universal explosion. O why do you not trust the Lord, clear His name, save your own souls from blighting errors, warn the deluded, and deal with the deceivers? If all fail to deliver others, deliver your own souls from His dishonor.

Having demonstrated the false teaching thus far, I have no wish to occupy the reader with lesser points, though it is sad to think even F.E.R. could not see an incomparably higher reference of the firstborns than to those of Israel. The truth is that it beautifully agrees with Heb. 2:12, and means the assembly of persons thus associated individually with the Firstborn, an aggregate, not a unity, in accordance with the Epistle. Nor need we discuss the curt and unsatisfactory remarks on the other objects in this group of glory, which are far from a just explanation. All is poverty-stricken as well as untrue. And you who know it, and are one lump with all, hold your peace Is there not even a watchman to blow the trumpet? How different of old what pity for mere weakness and ignorance! What hatred of presumption in divine things! What intolerance of error! Now you seem looser within your borders than the loosest you used to loathe. Beware too of hypocrisy. You still profess veneration for Mr. Darby as a great expounder of “divine teaching.” Yet none but a simpleton or a knave can fail to discern that this deplorable book undermines his witness in all that is here pointed out and in much more that it would be a wearisome and needless task to expose. Are you now, through desire to hold together at all cost, imitating those with whom we have had “no communion”? They would be ashamed of much which here and till now passes as “great blessing” among you.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Titus

Chap. V. Divine Design. 43. the Epistle to Titus

There does not appear to be enough of external marks to decide when the apostle wrote this Epistle to his genuine child and fellow-laborer. But internally we may gather that it was after the First Epistle and before the Second to Timothy, with which letters it has closer links of connection than with any others. For on the one hand it treats like 1 Timothy of official government; on the other it speaks like 2 Timothy of the hope of life eternal which the God that cannot lie promised before times everlasting. As in the former it is our Savior God who commands; it is not the law, but faith of His elect, a common faith.

I. “Paul, bondman of God, and apostle of Christ Jesus according to faith of God's elect and acknowledgment of truth that (is) according to godliness in hope of life eternal, which the God that cannot lie promised before times everlasting, but manifested in its own seasons, his word in a preaching wherewith I was entrusted according to our Savior God's commandment, to Titus genuine child according to a common faith: grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior” (vers. 1-4). Truth according to godliness is to be acknowledged. National or birth privileges, so prized in Israel as in the world, vanish before a revealed and believed Christ, in whom was life eternal before all ages, but now in virtue of His word preached in its own due time, as authoritatively entrusted by a God of saving love to the apostle, who writes to Titus with his usual Christian salutation. “For this cause I left thee behind in Crete that thou mightest thoroughly set right things remaining, and appoint city by city elders, as I directed thee: if one is unimpeachable, husband of one wife, having children faithful, not accused of excess or unruly. For the overseer must be unimpeachable as God's steward, not self-willed, not passionate, not a wine-sitter, not a striker, not a base-gainer: but hospitable, loving good, discreet, just, pious, temperate, holding to the faithful word according to the doctrine, that he may be able both to encourage with the healthful teaching and to rebuke the gainsayers. For there are many unruly, vain-speakers and beguilers, chiefly those of circumcision, who must have the mouth stopped, who upset whole houses, teaching what they ought not for the sake of base gain. Said one of themselves, a prophet of their own, Cretans, always liars, evil wild beasts, lazy gluttons (or, bellies). This witness is true; for which reason rebuke them severely, that they may be healthful in the faith, not heeding Jewish fables and commandments of men turning from the truth. All things (are) pure to the pure, but to those that are defiled and faithless nothing (is) pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. God they profess to know, but in works deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and for every good work worthless” (vers. 5-16).

Thus we see that elders (not gifts) required apostolic establishment, direct or indirect; and that moral weight was sought, and a good report in themselves and their households, to cheer those who valued healthful teaching and to rebuke adversaries. For already disorder was at work largely, and evils had entered within like the world's without. Epimenides is cited as a prophet, not of God but of their own, frankly and unsparingly denouncing what Titus was to rebuke severely, helped on as it was by Jewish professors who set Jewish fables and human ordinances before them, not the truth. Thus man and his deceits cover impurity, while our souls are purified by obeying the truth unto unfeigned brotherly love. To the pure all things are pure; to the defiled and faithless is nothing pure, yea, both their mind and their conscience are defiled. Professing to know God only aggravates the case of those who deny him in their works, being loathsome in themselves, disobedient to God, and for every good work reprobate. What a picture of the Christian confession before the first generation passed away! How like that which we have to face to-day! There is yet more now and worse.

II. Titus, however, was not only to ordain elders, such as the apostle describes, and to so carry out the moral government which the Lord enjoins suitably to the need of souls; he is instructed also in his own charge to the same end. Hence his duties are laid down toward elder men and elder women, young women and young men. Bondmen have a large place: and it is after dealing with them that the apostle speaks so grandly of the saving grace of God that appeared for all men, and its all-important teaching for such as received it meanwhile and await the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. Separateness and zeal for good works become those redeemed to Himself, a people purified. He was to deal out exhortation and rebuke with all authority. “But speak thou the things that beseem the healthful teaching, that elder men may be sober, grave, discreet, healthful in faith, in love, in patience; that elder women in like manner [be] in mien beseeming sacred things, not slanderers, not enslaved to much wine, teachers of comeliness, that they may train the young women to love husband, to love children, discreet, chaste, home-workers, good, subject to their own husbands, that the word of God be not reviled. The younger men in like manner exhort to be discreet, as to all things affording thyself a pattern of comely works; in the teaching incorruption, gravity, sound word not to be condemned, that he who is opposed may be abashed, having no evil to say about us; bondmen to be subject to their own masters, to be well-pleasing in all things, not gainsaying, not purloining, but showing all good faithfulness, that they may adorn the teaching of God our Savior in all things. For the saving grace of God hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, having denied ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live discreetly, and righteously, and godlily in the present age, awaiting the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all lawlessness, and purify for himself a people for his possession zealous for comely works. These things speak and exhort, and rebuke with all command: let no one despise thee” (vers. 1-15).

Here we learn how momentous it is, that those who are the objects of God's grace in the gospel should be to its praise by a walk in every relation of this life formed, strengthened, and guided according to Christ; and how inconsistency or disorder in these respects gives occasion for the enemy to blaspheme. How touching is that grace which is developed in its rich and direct bearing immediately after the exhortation as to slaves! Beyond doubt it was for all the faithful, and for every relation among them; but how considerate our Savior God's care to tell it out at that point in the chapter! The law of God was imposed on one people; the grace of God appeared with its saving character to all men, as it teaches “us” who believe that, having denied ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live discreetly as to ourselves, righteously towards others, and godlily in the highest respect. Nor is this all; but awaiting the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. And how assuring for the heart to remind us here, that He gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for Himself a people for His own portion, zealous for works good and comely!

III. But there are other relations more external which are not overlooked. The self-will which breeds emulation and strife in the homes and in the assembly, is not less disorderly, evil and destructive in the world. “Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to revile no one, to be uncontentious, gentle, showing all meekness toward all men.” It was not so always in our case. Grace it is that made the difference in us that believe. “For ourselves too were once senseless, disobedient, going astray, slaves to various lusts and pleasures, spending our time in malice and envy, hateful, bating one another. But when the kindness and the philanthropy (or, love to man) of our Savior God appeared, not from works in righteousness which ourselves did, but according to his mercy he saved us through washing of regeneration and renewing of Holy Spirit, which he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior; that, justified as we were by his grace, we should become heirs according to hope of life eternal. Faithful [is] the saying and as to these things I would have thee insist that those that have believed God be mindful to maintain comely works. These things are comely and profitable to men; but foolish questions and genealogies and strifes and legal contentions shun, for they are unprofitable and vain. An heretical man after a first and a second admonition avoid, knowing that such a one is perverted and sinneth, being self-condemned” (vers. 1-11). It is sect-making, heterodox or not.

How mighty and worthy of admiration is the goodness and the special affection of our Savior God that appeared in Christ! What a constrast with man's philanthropy, which might be in Jew, Heathen, or Islamite, and either gives a little out of its abundance, or compounds for sins by a superstitious and self-righteous poverty to enrich the priesthood! The Christian was proved in himself utterly evil and ruined, when God's love wrought in saving goodness according to His mere and sovereign mercy: wherein He saved us through washing of regeneration, which totally changed our state from that of fallen Adam to the risen Christ, and renewal of Holy Spirit, not only in a sinless life given which loves holiness, but in the Spirit's power which He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior. But thus it could not be till He wrought redemption and was glorified; and thus it was that, being justified by His grace as well as purified, we should be heirs according to hope of life eternal. “Hope” it is, for that life has not its full consummation till the body is as instinct with it at Christ's coming as the inner man is already by faith; and only thus has hope its glorious fruition. The apostle would have Titus occupied with these things, which deliver from evil and give us communion not only in the good and comely ways of divine mercy, but with God Himself. The conscience too is exercised that there might be moral conformity in good or comely works, the fruit of love, shunning the idle and barren speculations of Gnostic philosophy and legalist battles, where peace with God is unknown.

But there is another evil to be avoided, not only “heresy,” as a split from the unity of the Spirit is called (see also 1 Cor. 11:19, Gal. 5:20), but any sanction of him who is self-condemned in leaving the church of God. “When I shall send Artemas or Tychicus unto thee, be diligent to come unto me at Nicopolis, for there I have decided to winter. Zenas the lawyer and Apollos zealously forward, that nothing be lacking to them; and let ours also learn to maintain comely works for necessary wants, that they be not unfruitful. All that are with me salute thee. Salute those that love us in faith. Grace [be] with you all” (verses 12-15). Paul desired the presence of Titus, but not at the expense of the saints and the work in Crete whither he was sending his fellow-laborers, Artemas or Tychicus. But jealousy of other workmen not so connected was alien to his heart; nay, he would have all learn to maintain comely works to help on this and other fruitful ways for the necessary wants. He gives the salutation of all, and wishes it to those who dearly loved them if in faith, and that grace should be with all, which all needed.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Philemon

Chap. V. Divine Design. 44. the Epistle to Philemon

Here we have a letter of marked distinctiveness, placed after the pastoral Epistles though clearly written about the time when the great communications were made to the saints in Philippi, Ephesus, and Colosse. Its occasion was the return of Onesimus, a runaway slave, now a Christian brother, to his master Philemon; which calls out by the Spirit the most admirable application of grace and truth in Christ. It stands in full contrast with law, and exemplifies the gospel in its practical power and effect, turning a once worthless man's wrong into the exercise of divine affections in consonance with redemption, the holy fellowship of the faithful, and the deep and delicate proprieties withal of their social relations.

“Paul, prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timotheus the brother, to Philemon the beloved and our fellow-workman, and to the sister Apphia and to Archippus our fellow-soldier, and to the assembly at thy house. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and [the] Lord Jesus Christ” (verses 1-3). Each word and the entire scope alike express grace, not official authority. It is as Christ's prisoner Paul introduces himself, as farther on he appeals. Timothy figures simply as “the brother.” Philemon is addressed as “the beloved” according to his known character (ver. 1), and honored as a fellow-laborer in the Lord's work. And what is most unusual, his wife is associated in the address, not “the beloved” as in the A.V. and the later copies, but “the sister” as in the ancient and best MSS. That she should be addressed was most fitting in the circumstances, and the mode is no less becoming. Next is Archippus, designated as “fellow-soldier” in sharing the conflicts of the truth, and lastly the church at Philemon's, which the apostle includes in the address to fill up the communion his heart desired with the usual benediction.

From verse 4 he lays the ground for his appeal with thanksgiving. “I thank my God, always making mention of thee at my prayers, hearing of thy love and the faith which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus and unto all the saints, so that thy fellowship in the faith may become effective in acknowledgment of every good work that is in us Christward. For I had [the true reading] much joy and encouragement over thy love, because the bowels of the saints have been refreshed through thee, brother.” He puts forward Philemon's love, but in no way omits to add his faith, so that his sharing in the faith might work every good, “not in you,” which though true is commonplace and feeble, but “in us” according to the best authorities, that is, in other Christians from Paul to Onesimus as regards Christ, owning his joy and cheer in what Philemon had been shown to be in refreshing the affections of the saints.

Then in the body of his letter (8-20) he tenderly presses his suit. “Wherefore, having much boldness in Christ to enjoin on thee what is fitting, for love's sake I rather exhort, being such a one as Paul, aged and now too prisoner of Jesus Christ, I exhort thee for my child whom I begot in my bonds, Onesimus, that was once of no use to thee, but now of use to thee and to me, whom I send back to thee in person, that is, mine own bowels; whom I would have kept with me, that for thee he might minister to me in the bonds of the gospel. But apart from thy mind I wished to do nothing, that thy good might not be as of necessity but of willingness. For perhaps for this reason he parted for a time, that thou mightest have him back forever, no longer as a bondman, but above a bondman, a brother beloved, specially by me, but how much more by thee, both in flesh and in the Lord. If then thou holdest me as partner, receive him as me; but if aught he wronged thee or oweth, put this to mine account. I Paul write with mine own hand, I will repay: that I say not that thou owest me besides even thyself. Yea, brother, I would have profit of thee in the Lord: refresh my bowels in Christ. Being confident of thine obedience I write to thee, knowing that thou wilt do even more than I say.”

“But withal prepare me also a lodging, for I hope that through your prayers I shall be granted to you Epaphras, my fellow-prisoner in Christ Jesus, saluteth thee; Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, Luke, my fellow-workmen. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ [be] with your spirit.”

The apostle in no way denies or forgets his position, but he prefers to exhort for love's sake, on one side as Paul the aged and now also prisoner of Christ, on the other for his child begotten in his bonds, Onesimus. Grant that he was once a useless slave to Philemon, was he not now of good use to both Philemon and Paul, and sent back to his master himself, as it were Paul's very heart, though he would have kept him with himself to do him service on Philemon's behalf in the bonds of the gospel? Only apart from Philemon's mind he would do nothing, that his good might be of free will, not of constraint. And how beautiful the turn that grace gives! “Perhaps for this reason he was parted for a time, that thou mightest have him back forever, no longer as a bondman, but above a bondman, a brother beloved, specially by me, but how much more by thee, both in flesh and in the Lord.” So simply is it urged in all its power that one can but repeat rather than explain. Then follows the point of fellowship. “If then thou holdest me a partner, receive him as me; but if aught he wronged thee or oweth, put this to mine account. I Paul write with mine own hand, I will repay: that I say not to thee, that thou owest me besides even thyself.” For it would seem that Philemon too was indebted to the apostle for receiving the truth.

“Yea, brother, I would have profit of thee in the Lord,” he says, referring to the name of Onesimus, “refresh my bowels in Christ.” Would he refuse to Paul what he had done hitherto to the saints in general, as in verse 7, “Being confident of thine obedience I write to thee, knowing that thou wilt do even more than I say”? Who can doubt that Philemon would receive Onesimus lovingly and set him free to the joy of all? But it is on no ground of human rights, or natural benevolence, but showing him “the kindness of God,” the grace of Christ, the fellowship of the faith. It is the counterpart of the riband of blue on the fringe of the garment, the heavenly ornament in our character on earth, grace governing in our relationships here below, as it reigns in God's dealings with us for eternity.

Scripture Query and Answer: Genesis 12:1

Q.-Gen. 12:1. The A.V. renders this, “Now the LORD had said to Abram,” &c.; the R.V. has “Now the LORD said,” &c. The difference involved is great. Which is correct? A DISCIPLE.

A.-No doubt if we merely look at the Hebrew, there is room for discussion, for its tenses were modified by the context; and in fact versions ancient and modern differ. But happily for all who are humble enough to value a divinely furnished aid, we have Stephen in Acts 7:2, 3 making it certain that the appearing of Jehovah, when the call was given in the words cited, was not in Haran but in Mesopotamia. Here the call came, which was only partially verified in Abram while Terah lived; for the latter was quite content to dwell in Haran. But after his death the power of Jehovah's call revived in Abram's heart. “So Abram departed as the LORD had spoken unto him.” “And they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.” The spiritual mind will feel that the difference between the A.V. and the R.V. is that between truth and error; and that the error is due to confidence in the bare view of the letter, which slights not only what the context implies but the invaluable help of the inspired N.T. interpretation. But this is decisive for believers, while it furnishes fresh fuel for skeptical criticism.

Jacob: 4. Leah and Her Four Sons

The righteous government of Jehovah is clearly seen here also. Jacob was grossly wronged by Laban in what must deeply touch a man's heart, and Leah was beyond doubt a consenting party to the cheating breach of the marriage compact as to Rachel. She might and ought to have told Jacob the unworthy trick her father was playing by her means. But God would have His servant Jacob learn more deeply in his own wounded affections the vileness of self-seeking deceit; and hence He permitted what He would use for chastening and good in the end.

“And when Jehovah saw that Leah [was] hated, he opened her womb; but Rachel [was] barren. And Leah conceived, and bore a son, and called his name Reuben (See! a son); for she said, Because Jehovah hath looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me. And she again conceived, and bore a son, and said, Because Jehovah hath heard that I [am] hated, he hath therefore given me this one also; and she called his name Simeon (Hearing). And she again conceived, and bore a son, and said, Now this time will my husband be united to me, for I have borne him three sons; therefore was his name called Levi (United). And she again conceived, and bore a son, and said, This time will I praise Jehovah; therefore she called his name Judah (Praise). And she ceased from bearing” (vers. 31-35).

It will be observed that it is not Elohim here, but Jehovah, God in special relationship and moral dealing. He looked on the sorrowful and despised wife, and gave not to Rachel but to Leah, the comparatively “hated,” the consolation of a son. Rachel happy in her husband's love was left barren! We can notice how the firstborn loomed in the mother's eyes, and how much she counted on the call to Jacob's heart. But Jacob was slow to forget the wrong done him about Rachel, or to feel his own wrong to Leah. Nor was it only that Jehovah looked tenderly on her aggrieved spirit, but she acknowledged Jehovah's compassion in the matter. Jehovah, said she, hath looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me. This seems premature: we hear as yet not a sound of it on his part.

Again however she has a son, and says, Because Jehovah hath heard that I am hated, He hath therefore given me this one also. The even stronger expression of her husband's alienation does not weaken but renew her sense of the favor Jehovah was showing her; and as with Reuben, so now the naming of her second son bespeaks it: Jehovah heard as well as saw. We do not learn of any relaxation on the offended man's part: he had his Rachel. And again she bore him a third son, and said, Now this time will my husband be united to me; for I have borne him three sons. Therefore was his name called Levi. It is not as before that she called it. All seems more vague and in a lower key here; and Jehovah is not named. But He never fails; and again she bore a son, and said, Now this time will I praise Jehovah; therefore she called his name Judah. Never do we hear of her soul rising so high; the sorrow-stricken woman breaks forth into praise of Jehovah; and her fourth son bears it in the name she gave him that day. Yes, of Judah came according to flesh the Christ, Who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.

There can hardly be a plainer warning of the danger to which even pious men are exposed in treating of types than that of the excellent Dr. J. Lightfoot with his vast Rabbinical learning. His knowledge of divine truth was too slender to warrant it. Like others in that day and in almost every other, he was superficial in gospel truth, ignored the Spirit's presence and the church's union with Christ on high, and His coming again to consummate God's counsels for heaven, earth, and all creation, being also utterly wrong as to the restoration of Israel in that consummation. Hence he held that “Leah and Rachel are figures of the two churches; the church of the Jews under the law, and the church of the Gentiles under the gospel: the younger the more beautiful, and more in the thoughts of Christ, when he came in the form of a servant; but the other, like Leah, first embraced and taken to wife."

A deeper acquaintance with scripture would have avoided such mistakes. For Rachel represents Israel, Messiah's first object of love on earth. But this fails by no fault on His part. And He has Leah, who thus, represents the intervening call of the Gentiles during Jacob's servant state and mighty sorrows, when “more are the children of the desolate than of the married wife, saith Jehovah” (Isa. 54:4, cf. Gal. 4). In due time the barren one bears Joseph who typifies Christ rejected and exalted, but making Himself known to His brethren at last; and also Benjamin, the only one born in the land, son of his mother's sorrow but of his father's right-hand, bringing millennial power before us, as Joseph does its blessing.

Priesthood: 30. Leprosy Summed Up

The subject concludes with a general summary. “This [is] the law for every sore of leprosy, and for the scall; and for leprosy of raiment, and for houses; and for a rising and for a scab, and for a bright spot, to teach in the day of uncleanness, and in the day of cleanness; this [is] the law of leprosy” (vers. 54-57).

God is intimating to us thereby how sin permeates the person, the immediate environment, and the collective or corporate responsibility. It is not only destructive but defiling, so that no earthly cleanness can avail: only Himself according to His word, and through Christ's holy sacrifice. We who believe are bound to spare it not in any degree or in any respect. There is a divine provision of grace to which He calls us to conform. Our own opinion or that of other men is nothing. Having a great High Priest, passed as He hath through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, we are therefore to hold fast our confession. For we have not a high-priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one that hath been in all points tempted likewise, sin excepted. Let us therefore approach with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and find grace for seasonable help. But more too, where sin has wrought its evil way, and not infirmities only, there is not only a Savior of the lost; the believer has, we have, an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

Hence it is unwise as well as unholy and unbelieving to shrink from the humbling truth. For God commends His love to us, in that when we were still sinners Christ died for us. If upright by grace, let us not deceive ourselves, but submit to the light of God in which the true character of all things is exposed: for that which makes everything manifest is light.

But we must not be hasty, nor trust our own thoughts. We have to do with the most accessible of priests. Neither Aaron nor any other was comparable to our Lord Jesus. If willing to judge ourselves thoroughly according to His word, we are all wrong to despair or exaggerate. If there be a common danger of self-love and shirking full self-judgment, there may be an occasional tendency to exaggeration which is not the truth. We need Christ to secure it; and so grace has given Him. And it is ours, whether about ourselves or about others, to confide in the unerring judgment which He knows how to make us feel. For He is not dead but alive again forever more, and ever lives to intercede for us in our weakness. It may not be any sore of leprosy, but the scall. We may err too as to raiment or the house. It may not be more than a rising in the flesh that alarms us, or a scab, or a bright spot; for to judge according to the reality we are not competent without Christ. And if we trusted to our judgment, it might soon prove not only hasty but unrighteous. He works in us by His word and Spirit; so that we can, if dependent on the Lord, look for His grace in the day of uncleanness and in the day of cleanness. The two conditions are found now in the evil day. We still wait for the good day of His manifested presence and power for the world to come, the habitable earth; when at least the dweller in the land shall not say, I am sick: the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity. Righteousness shall then reign.

The Day of Atonement: 15. Concluding Remarks

So as sacrifice for sin He was sent, but therefore simply in the likeness, not in the reality, of flesh of sin; though as really man born of woman as He was God. It was in that likeness, because He was born of a woman who, though a virgin of David's house, not less than any other human being had flesh of sin. How then was the difficulty to be solved? By divine grace and power, through His conception by the Holy Spirit, our blessed Lord was, though as truly a man as any other, the sharer neither of human taint, nor, if one may so call it, of that attainder which had fallen on the race through sin. This was effected, as Luke 1 lets us know, by the power of the Highest overshadowing the virgin Mary; wherefore her Son was called the Son of God. Indeed it was absolutely essential. He must derive His flesh and blood really from His mother; but, by that miraculous power which wholly exempted His humanity from all spot or motion of evil, He in the truth of our nature was made like unto us in all things, sin only excepted from which He was clearly void both in His flesh and in His spirit. From that moment when the virgin was declared to be about to conceive and in due time become the mother of our Lord, a total immunity from sin was secured for Him: “A body didst Thou prepare for Me” (Heb. 10). Otherwise the sin-offering could not have been worthy of God, or efficacious for man. “It is most holy,” was the voice even of the law respecting it: how much more was this true of Christ? Still He was in the likeness of flesh of sin, because His mother was certainly of sinful race like others, unless you prefer tradition or superstition to God's word.

Thus is seen how impious is the heterodoxy introduced of late, the so-called immaculate nature of the virgin. Rome predicates of her what is only true of Him, the natural result of the idolatry of the mother so much more prominent and popular, in fact, than worship even of the Father and of the Son, from Whom they stand at a distance and in dread. It is the Bona Dea of heathenism in a christened shape, which exactly suits those who know not God, if not those also who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. To the simple Christian the enemy there betrays his hand. But the Lord Jesus did take blood and flesh, as it behooved Him, when He became a man, in all things made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation (or atonement) for the sins of the people. Clearly this was by His death. What other way could be than by the shedding of His blood? Consequently to suppose that a fresh and subsequent work was in heaven, after death and before resurrection, is to depart from God's word, and expose yourself to danger as well as delusion. Whatever be the ordinary place of the high-priest, it is not so when expiation is made in the raiment of linen. According to its force, it very suitably described our Lord as the Holy Offerer and offering for sin.

Very differently is our Lord viewed when in heaven He was crowned with glory and honor. Aaron exceptionally wore the holy garments of linen in the most holy place. The reason is that propitiation had to be effected on the only day when he could enter the holiest of all; and when he did so enter, he wore the unusual garb that indicated his undertaking the work of atonement, whether for his own family or for the children of Israel generally. Is not the difficulty some find in the verse happily anticipated by the type? Beware of the one-sidedness that will not hear of our Lord as High Priest in any sense or exceptional purpose, until He went on high for His proper function before God. You must however allow this latitude, unless indeed you deny propitiation on the cross.

Whilst the N. T. is clear that propitiation was by the High-Priest, it excludes all supposition that it was only to be accomplished by our Lord's going to heaven, The work was done and finished, when He was “lifted up.” This may not have been strictly on the earth, but it was before He went to heaven. It was when He was crucified, when man poured on Him the deepest scorn and hatred. Then did God give Him to accomplish that work whereby, from all eternity, His grace had designed to save the guiltiest, making it the ground of His righteousness. Without this sacrifice God must have simply destroyed, or in saving forfeited, His character and word. By the cross of Christ He can love, as He has judged, to the uttermost, and thus maintained all—yea, won a fresh and everlasting glory. For what else could God do for sinners? Or how preserve His rights intact, if He without the cross of Christ simply, forgave sins?

If God had acted on our sins, it could only have been as Judge, and He must have destroyed all the sinners. On the other hand, if God had only acted according to the love of His nature, it must have been giving up that equally in His nature which detests and must punish sin. Thus but for Christ and His cross all had been ruin, and confusion, and dishonor. Without it God's moral glory had been totally undermined, and the salvation of the lost impossible. But in Christ God would neither destroy the sinner nor make light of the sins. Hence He gave His Son to be a propitiation. This propitiation was through His death and blood-shedding. This alone suited either God or lost man. This alone accounts for the prevalence of sacrifice—no doubt debased and corrupted among the heathen; but in itself it pointed to “A sacrifice of nobler name, And richer blood than they.” This Satan endeavored too successfully to falsify, as he loves to seize everything for evil. The meaning of it, however, was never seen fully till the Lord came and died on the cross, wherein was not the mere shadow but the very image. Directly the Lord died atoningly, it was the true propitiation which God had prefigured, and thenceforward has before Him as an accomplished fact in all its value.

After the peculiar work of the day was done, Aaron divests himself of the garments of holiness, puts on his ordinary clothing, and going forth offers his burnt-offering and that for the people. These might have been offered by others on any other day: but on that day the high-priest was, in all that was of moment, the actor exclusively, though it might be no longer a specially characterized offering. It represented the Lord Jesus by the eternal Spirit offering Himself, without spot, unto God. The two Burnt-offerings were for himself as well as for the people (ver. 24). From Lev. 1 as well as here, we find the Burnt-offering was to make atonement; but this of course only in a general way. It did not express the peculiar solemnity of the great Day of Atonement. When an Israelite brought the offering in the fullness of his heart, to express his sense of dependence on the goodness of God, it always had an atoning character. God could not accept an offering without blood to make atonement. Neither faith nor the true God slurs over sin. Hence, where all went up to God, acceptably, as it was invariably offered on the brazen altar—the first point of approach between God and man, the Burnt-offering had an atoning character.

There is another notable fact here: “The fat of the sin-offering shall he burn upon the altar” (ver. 25). This was reserved for the altar of God, though the slain goat and the bullock were offered for sin, The fat of the Sin-offering was not consumed with the carcass outside. The blood, we have seen, was carried into the holiest. What could be a more remarkable indication? It witnessed to the perfect acceptance of Him Who deigned to be a Sin-offering, however cast out by man and judged by God. If the Antitype, the One Whose love identified Himself with bearing our sins, must experience in His person death and judgment—like the goat and the bullock burnt outside the camp—the fat (which, had there been any intrinsic defilement would have been the first to show it) was burnt upon the altar of acceptance. How strikingly this testifies to the inward purity of our Lord Jesus He was altogether righteous and holy, not in acts only but in nature. Then, after mentioning that he who let the goat go must wash his clothes and bathe his flesh in water before returning to the camp (ver. 26), it is laid down that the bullock and the goat, whose blood had been brought into the sanctuary for atonement, were to be carried forth, and burnt in the fire, skin, flesh, and dung, without the camp (ver. 27), whilst he that burnt them must wash his clothes and bathe before coming into the camp (ver. 28). Here we are not left to our conjectures about the meaning. In the Epistle to the Heb. 13:11-13 the apostle gives us invaluable light. “For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high-priest for sin, are burned without the camp.” There can be no question that under this shadow lies a weighty principle and practice too for us. What is the connection with Christ? “Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach.” The application is as sure as the duty; for there is no call so near the Christian's heart as association with Christ practically.

The Jews were God's chosen people within “the camp,” the ground-plan of the Epistle being the wilderness, and not the holy land. This position characterized them in contrast with the Gentiles, from whom they were separated. What access they had to the sanctuary was merely through the priests and the high-priest: and we have often seen how distant, occasional, and precarious this was; for the law made nothing perfect. Yet they, and they alone had on the earth the title of God's people. This was in the wilderness marked by their having a camp, wherein was the tabernacle where God dwelt in the holiest. But the law kept the people rigorously outside that sanctuary. The way into the holiest was not yet made manifest; now it is by Christ and His work for us, for the veil is rent.

Gospel Words: Treasures on Earth or in Heaven?

Christ beyond all others knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man, for He Himself knew what was in man. He seeks treasures on the earth. It may not be gold or property. It may be pleasure or power or position. Some set their heart on fame in letters or learning, in science or art. Some court poetry, oratory, or philosophy. The bar and the bench, the army or the navy, civil government or politics, philanthropy or even the pulpit ordinarily, fire the ambition of others. These objects and all akin which attract the heart of man are treasures on the earth, and beneath the faith to which the Christian is called—faith in God unseen and eternal. “Love not the world,” wrote His inspired servant,” nor the things that are in the world. If any one loveth the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the vain-glory of life, is not of the Father but is of the world, And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever” (1 John 2:15-17). Listen to the Savior's words on the more prevailing snare “Lay not up for you treasures on the earth where moth and rust consume, and where thieves dig through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust corrupteth, and where thieves dig not through nor steal. For where thy treasure is, there will be thy heart also.” The treasures in heaven are the things that are above, where Christ is seated on the right hand of God. On these things we are to set our mind, not on things that are on the earth. For we died with Christ from its best things, the rudiments of the world which Israel had as their religion; and our life is hid with Christ in God. His cross closed all such shadows and ordinances; and therefore is the world crucified to the Christian, and he to the world. If he is truly Christ's, he is heavenly as united to Christ, though he is still on earth, and bears the image of Adam the earthy till He comes. Be not moved by the unbelieving sneers of those who try to lower as other-worldliness your true objects. These are far above the world, or the habitable earth to come, blessed as it will be when Christ and His saints reign over it. Our proper portion is in heaven and with Christ there. Be not cheated out of that which is revealed to you by the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven, on which the Epistles enlarge beyond what the disciples could bear when their Master was here, as. He Himself tells us (John 16:12). The wisest of mankind is no judge of what God wills for His children now. The New Testament is as clear as possible that He would have His own not of the world; indeed our Lord declares that they are not, even as He is not. And as it is written, Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man, whatever things God prepared for those that love Him: them God revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. These are treasures which the Lord calls us to lay up for us in heaven. And nothing can harm them, like earthly treasures by corruption or violence. Do not say that such an aim is beyond the believer. It would be assuredly, if there were not the grace of God to enable. But we have Christ as Head above, from Whom all the body, ministered to and united together by the joints and bands, increases with the increase of God. His grace suffices one in the most crushing circumstances. And if we have such an Advocate on high, we have One no less divine to work in us here below that we may be strengthened in the inner man. Thus could one of old boast of weaknesses, never of sins, that the power of Christ might tabernacle upon him.

If you urge that you have doubts about your soul, how can you pass this day without settling that question before God? He sent His Son for you, that you might live through Him, and that He, the Lord Jesus, might die for you—yea, for your sins. Let it be your need, your guilt, your ruin, looking to God in the name of the crucified Savior. Jesus never said Nay to one that, feeling his sins, appealed to Him. God the Father would have you thus honor the Son, who declares solemnly: Verily, Verily, I say to you, He that heareth My word, and believeth Him that sent Me, hath life eternal, and cometh not into judgment, but is passed out of death into life. Verily, verily, I say to you, The hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that heard shall live.” Be not faithless then, but believing; trust His grace that all else you lack, as you surely do, will be given in the like love. It is His joy to bless the believer.

The Responsibility of Disciples

It is to be remarked that in this part of the Gospel of John we have, not the sovereignty of grace toward us which saves, but our individual responsibility consequent on our known relationship with the Father as we walk in this place. Christ is looking for their walk as disciples consequent on their position as clean by reason of His words. “He that hath my commandments, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father; and I will love him and will manifest myself unto him.” This is the order. It is not, “We love Him because He first loved us;” but “He that loveth me shall be loved.” He first puts us in a place of favor, and then follows the consequent responsibility.

There is not of course any question of uncertainty as to salvation; but He has put us into a certain position as saved, in which through grace we are to glorify Him. The path in which He enjoyed His Father's love was a path of unclouded joy, and it was a path of undivided obedience. He here shows His disciples, if they are to walk in the light and favor of His countenance, they must walk in the same path as He did Himself. We should so walk that we should have Christ's joy fulfilled in us.

To one or two details connected with this I wish to refer. When I speak of an unclouded joy belonging to my place in heaven, it is another thing. We are simply perfect if looked at in Christ in heavenly places. Here He looks at Himself on earth, and we are also seen on earth; and it is as here below that He would have His joy remain, and our joy full.

Christ here takes the place of the true vine in which Israel had totally failed. His disciples were the branches, and He looks at them to bear fruit down here. All through the chapter He puts our responsibility first. He says, “He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit.” He calls on them to abide in Him, in order that He may abide in them. If we look at chap. 17, the order is reversed. There it is “I in them” first. It is not here a question of safety or of God's keeping them to the end, but entirely one of fruit-bearing. We are called in the active reverence of our hearts to stay continually with Christ; to abide in Him; to draw continually from Him in active diligence of heart. In this passage the words “I in you” are the consequence of our first abiding in Him. “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in me.” “He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit.” That we may bear fruit is what He is thinking of here, and so be truly His disciples. “Herein is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit.”

“If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” By abiding in Christ I get guidance of heart; for then the words of Christ direct all my thoughts. Here I also get the power of abiding. Completely depending on Christ, and His words abiding in me, I can ask what I will, for it will be what He wills; and it shall be done. In this there is such dependence on Christ and living with Him, that my mind and will and thoughts are formed by Christ's words; and I have full power to ask what I will. He was constantly looking to and living on account of His Father; and with Him it was always perfect fruit-bearing; and we are His disciples if we follow Him in the same path.

“As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you.” It is not here simply the eternal love of the Father to the Son, but divine love to one walking in this world, whose word was, “I do always those things that please him.” This was a love that took up the disciples as walking down here. He could put them in the same relation to Himself that He was in to His Father. “Continue ye in my love.” They were walking here on earth in that blessed relationship which He Himself had known. He wants us not only to abide in Him and get strength, so as to bear fruit to His and the Father's glory, but that we may abide in the continual uninterrupted sense and enjoyment of His love. He gives Himself as our example; “as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love.” Need I say how He abode in it? “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love:” it is still our responsibility—obedience to Christ's words. It is not here a question of the Father loving the Son, as from eternity the Beloved One; but He is seen walking in this world in a path of perfect obedience, and abiding in Him. If there is in us a spirit of simple obedience to Him, we abide in His love. If we do a thing because He said it, we abide in His love.

“These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain (abide) in you.” He had no joy from the world; He had perfect joy in the Father. His joy was in bringing forth fruit to the Father's glory. He thus shows us how in fruit-bearing we can have joy and blessedness down here. “That your joy may be full “: this is what He wants us to have—fullness of joy. It is not from the world, but the kind of joy He had. It is His desire that we should have His own joy: “that my joy should remain in you, and that your joy should be full.” So it is to the heart that walks with and abides in Him. If we have joy, it is His joy; if reproach, it is His reproach. It. is His, whatever it be, to him that walks in the blessed consciousness of being in the same path that He had here. Nothing else will do for the devoted heart. We ought not to be content without it—without the sense that we are abiding in His love, keeping His commandments and walking like Him, in the fullest enjoyment of the Father's love, taking His words as our guide; and abiding thus in Him He puts this confidence in us. But it is all connected with responsibility.

“This is my commandment that ye love one another as I have loved you.” If we look at the love of Christ for them, we see that it was above all the wretchedness of the poor disciples—above their every failure. When I am not above a thing, it acts on myself; but when entirely above it, I can think for it all as well as with it. The Lord, being above all the failure and wretchedness, could, if a right feeling, feel with His disciples; if an infirmity, He could feel for them. He can enter into it all in a divine way, because He is above it all. His word to us is, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” By clinging close to Christ, and learning of Him, we can love in the same kind of way in which He loved; and in this way we can recognize anything good and of Him in our brethren, and learn to esteem others better than ourselves. This is what He looks for in us: it is impossible unless we abide with Christ. What a path was His here! There was no such an isolated man as Christ; and yet never was one who felt for others as He did.

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends; ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.” He does not speak of His being the friend of sinners here; He speaks of their being His friends if they did what He commanded. It is still our responsibility; and He treats them with perfect confidence. The true disciples He treats with the confidence of being His friends; otherwise it was betraying the confidence of His Father in telling His secrets. If I go to a person on a matter of business, I merely tell him my business, and have done with him; but if I go to a friend, I can tell him all that is on my own mind, even about what does not concern him at all, having full confidence in his love and his interest in what concerns me. “Henceforth I call you not servants but friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.” Whatever I have had in my heart I have told you. What a place He sets us in! How we ought to hate ourselves for the constant way in which self hinders us from this blessed place of enjoyment! But what a comfort to the restored soul it is to find that, when we have learned totally to distrust ourselves, Christ strengthens and trusts us! Consider those three questions to Peter, Lovest thou Me? When Peter replies, Thou knowest, Lord, that I love Thee, He puts confidence in him and says, Feed My sheep, My lambs. But until all that is in us is humbled, He cannot confide in us. How could He, when we cannot trust ourselves?

“If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” Here we have the source of the world's hatred. Not only is it our walk for which the world dislikes us, but for the place Christ has chosen for us, “out of the world,” that we might be His own, a people for His own possession. It is because the disciples are Christ's that the world cannot bear them. We should let our light shine forth, our confession of Christ be so distinct, that the world might know to whom they are to reckon the good works—that we belong to Christ. We must take that place as thus confessing Christ here. He takes us to be His disciples, and we walk upon that ground. Of course there must be consistency on it. He looks for this; and so does the world! Whatever would not suit Christ does not suit the Christian. We should not take that name to dishonor it. He has called us out to go with Him. How far are our hearts prepared to take our place before all the world and say, I am Christ's; I belong only to Him? If in reply they ask you what right you have to take that place, and say, We too belong to Christ, you can ask them to come and take their place with Him: else how could you own them as His?

What we desire and look for is to abide in Christ, and to bear fruit to His glory and the Father's. It is a lowly but blessed place; one of entire dependence upon Him, for apart from Him we can do nothing. May we know its exceeding blessedness for His name's sake. Amen.

J. N. D.

1 Peter 2:25

The need for the healing given to believers here recurs— “For ye were going astray as sheep, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (ver. 25).

The description admirably suits those who from among the Jews repented and believed the gospel. It is substantially true of sinners like ourselves from among the nations. For as the Good Shepherd said, Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall be one flock, one Shepherd. Such were the means which sovereign grace employed and made effectual for gathering to Christ.

Few indeed are the Epistles which do not present our previously lost condition. Rom. 1 in its latter half is an awful but exact picture of the Gentile world under Greek letters and Roman polity. The heathen remains, in poets, in dramatic and other classic writings, demonstrate it in its actual and unconscious vileness, which the apostle but touches with a holy hand. Rom. 3 brings the moral ruin home to the Jews from their own law, psalms, and prophets: that every mouth might be stopped, and all the world become as it was under judgment to God. And hence, as man universally had no righteousness for God, the absolute need of God's righteousness for man if any were to be saved. The redemption that is in Christ Jesus by grace laid the ground for this justifying righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ, as it is written, toward all, and upon all those that believe. For there is no difference: all sinned; and God is showing His righteousness at the present time of the gospel, that He should be just Himself and justify him that has faith in Jesus.

In 1 Cor. 1 Jewish pretension to signs of power and Greek to wisdom are alike crushed by Christ crucified; who is to those called, both Jews and Greeks, God's power and God's wisdom. Man as he is cannot inherit God's kingdom. The Corinthians ought to have been the last to forget their shameless depravity. And these things, sad to name, were some of the saints, as the apostle reminded them; but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in (or, by) the Spirit of our God. 2 Cor. 5 might furnish a bright testimony of the same grace to the morally dead and the unreconciled; and other apostolical writings are full of like mercy to sinners. But those records suffice to prove the activity of divine love in Christ toward a guilty world. The sad fact is as true of Gentiles as the Lord told the Jews, “Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life” (John 5:40). All the evil is on man's side; the goodness is wholly with God, as the Lord Jesus fully shows. “Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37).

The straying sheep returned unto the Shepherd and Overseer of their souls. They were His, the Father's gift to Him. The Son loved them and proved His love to them at all cost to Himself: and the Father loved them as He loved the Son: a love beyond the creature's conception, yet assured by Him who is the Truth.

They did well to return to Him whose love is beyond all other love. Glory will prove and display it before the wondering world, as the Lord told them (John 17:22, 23); and the apostle attests it also for that day as a matter of retributive righteousness (2 Thess. 1:10). But His love is as fully set on them and made known to them now for the joy of faith and the strengthening of their souls; only unbelief can doubt it, a great dishonor to Him and loss to us. O what a Shepherd and Overseer is Jesus!

Who can measure the descent, if the sheep are content to return, not to the divine Shepherd Whose the sheep are, but to the church even were it ever so true according to God's word, to articles or symbols however sound, or to pious devices to fan the embers of faith and love in their souls? No, we have Him given us of our God and Father, Who once died for our sins, and is now alive again to tend and watch over our souls in His undying love, with all authority given to Him in heaven and upon earth; that we may please Him in a world of darkness as

He always did the things that were pleasing to the Father. Nor does He for a moment fail if the sheep should fail, as they will surely do if they be not dependent and obedient. Yet all are sanctified by the Spirit unto His obedience, not to that of a Jew under law, but to that of Jesus, conscious of the Father's love. For this is our portion. Yet if negligent or worse, let us not doubt His grace, but humble our hearts and sit in self-judgment on ourselves. “He restoreth my soul; He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.”

Life Eternal Denied: 4

“THE Kingdom as connected with the Church” (Plainfield), beginning at p. 305, betrays the usual desertion of scripture for human imagination, and is fundamentally erroneous. The truth is reversed in the remark, “if you make much of the assembly you make much of Christ.” The assembly wholly depends on Him. Facts too sadly prove that the church may be cried up extravagantly and sinfully to the disparagement of Christ. She answers to the true Eve of the Last and heavenly Adam; she owes all to union with Him. It is a precious truth to know this as our portion in God's sovereign grace; but the one safeguard is to cherish that Christ is “all,” the all: without this, that He is “in all” is often a danger. Those who ignore the assembly are quite wrong, dishonor God and His Son, overlook and misapply a large part of scripture, losing their full joy in the love of Christ a relationship so wondrously near and glorious. But those who teach the error that the mystery is the assembly, instead of the truth that it is CHRIST and the assembly, are inexcusably disloyal, ungrateful, and vain. All she is or has is from His love; and to make Christ the all is God's way to keep her from pride and shipwreck. The actual state of the church is its undeniable proof; and such will be the issue of those who make much of her to exalt Him. She thus becomes an idol. “Children, keep yourselves from idols.”

In the next page we are told that “the institution of the Kingdom of necessity brings in the assembly,” of course without a word of scripture. But scripture is explicit that it is false. The Kingdom, as our Lord speaks of it, is the Kingdom prepared from the world's foundation (Matt. 25:34); but those who were to compose the assembly God chose in Christ before it.

And this is no casual feature, but an essential difference. Neither the Kingdom nor any other institution necessitates the assembly, which is a part though but a secondary part of the mystery, not told to men but hid in God, which the Kingdom was not but just the contrary. The O.T. saints as a whole anticipated the Kingdom exultingly; but not one knew the purpose of God for Christ's glory as Head over all things to the assembly. The thought is a return to the old lack of intelligence from which the truth better known was blessed to saints fallen asleep, and to some who still survive and await the coming of the Lord.

Then what can we expect from one who, being asked in p. 307 what are “the elements of the assembly,” answers, “the Spirit in this chapter [1 Cor. 12]. In the next chapter it is love, which is the heart of the assembly; and in chapter 14 the important point is the mind!” Is this meant for a climax? It is an anti-climax and seems a woefully inadequate summary: and if “mind” be so important, how strange that so poor a specimen should be presented! But leaving this we have in pp. 308, 9 the strange quotation of Col. 1:27 for “the great importance of the church.” Surely any simple saint might rather have said, the all importance of “Christ in us, the hope of glory;” this is not to depreciate the assembly, but it maintains the homage to Christ which is His due, and ought to be our chief joy.

Indeed throughout this page the misuse of scripture is remarkable, as generally throughout the volume. How is this? What has brought about so marked a change? What struck me near sixty years ago was the spiritual intelligence of unlettered souls in the just application of God's word. Here almost all is random and vague, if not erroneous. Think of citing 1 Cor. 12:3 to show that the Spirit “came here to effectuate the Kingdom”! and John 14:17 to make one body! It is certain that the former is a guard against evil spirits; and that John, even in treating of unity, speaks of its family character, never of the body.

The rest of the colloquy is so trivial or such a repetition of errors already pointed out that we may turn to p. 321 where it is taught that “the Holy Ghost never comes where there is not light “; and Eph. 1:13 is quoted as the basis of scripture for it. This led one to suggest that “faith is light,” which was assented to. It is the old story; not a word about life, though our Lord Himself so often assures that “he that believeth hath everlasting life.” Now “light” is equivocal. The apostates in Heb. 6 had been once “enlightened” and had tasted of the heavenly gift, yea had been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, tasted the good word of God and powers of the coming age, yet fell away. They were not born of the Spirit; they had not life eternal. Anything short of this comes to naught; and this is the aim of a passage so solemn. It was not Paul's function to dwell on life now, but given to John; yet he does fully show in this very connection the necessity of believing, not only in Christ's person but in His work, in order to receive the Holy Spirit. One must have heard the gospel of salvation. It is after this the believer is sealed. The unction follows the blood on the cleansed leper, as in the type here alluded to. But life is ignored, which precedes peace by the blood. Thus as to the great truth of a new and eternal life now communicated, all is confusion and error. Here as ever is the evasion or denial of eternal life as a present possession by the faith of Christ, and known through the Spirit. Again, “Peter was sent to enlighten Cornelius.” Why is scripture so systematically ignored? Peter never speaks of mere enlightenment in the case, when challenged by the Christian Jews of Jerusalem; he says in Acts 11:14, that he was to tell Cornelius “words whereby he and all his house should be saved.” This goes beyond light or even life to salvation assured, and is based on Christ's death and resurrection. Cornelius was not a natural man, nor were his prayers and his alms a lifeless form but acceptable to God. He was already born anew, a dependent, God-fearing, and pious man, like Job or other O. T. saints. But he needed to hear the word of truth, the gospel of his salvation; and this went forth on the accomplishment of Christ's work. Then God's salvation came, instead of being “near to come” (Isa. 56:1), and His righteousness was revealed, as it is now and not before. Without this, as the fruit of Christ's work, the Holy Spirit could not be given; but as Cornelius and the rest were hearing, the heart-knowing God bore them witness; and they received the Holy Spirit as the Jewish saints at Pentecost. The work as well as the life of Christ are the due basis for the gift of the Spirit. “They were enlightened first, and then the Holy Ghost was poured out” is superficial and unsound, leaving out our essential life in Christ, and His work received by faith.

To F.L. it was admitted that “the divine work of new birth is always there first": but it is one of the incongruities of the system to allow it, and to deny life eternal. What life but this is communicated when one is begotten or born of God (1 John 5:1-4)? Not but that in John 3 wisdom shone, in the language of vers. 3 and 5 as compared with verse 15; but it is folly and error to deny life to one born anew, and to doubt that it is life in Christ, life eternal. Think too of one so unenlightened as to say (p. 322) that the blood of Christ is “light, because it is the blood of Christ that reveals God to you!” Where does scripture say anything of the sort? What it teaches is that “the life (not His blood) is the light of men” (John 1). “The true light was that which, coming into the world, sheddeth light on every man;” it is Christ Himself. But the title to become children of God required much more, even to believe on His Name, on God's revelation of the Lord Jesus. His blood lays the basis for showing forth God's righteousness, which is quite another question.

Here too are the old vagaries about the Kingdom and the covenant (323), and the false statement, “that John 3:16 is not the beginning of the gospel;” though the Lord declared it to Nicodemus before His Galilean ministry commenced. It was not merely “in view of eternal life,” but that the believer should have it. Eternal life will be the great blessing in the day of the Lord; but the wonder of Christ dead, come, risen, and glorified, is that the Christian has it now, and knows it both objectively and consciously. Its denial as a present thing is one of F.E.R.'s fatal errors, the denial so far of Christianity.

When one not fully poisoned said (in the same page) “the blessing is heavenly,” F.E.R. boldly answered, “No, I think the blessing refers to earth,” qualified afterward “by the introduction of heavenly things upon earth.” But what confusion! especially when 1 Cor. 12 is mixed up with it. For when the time here spoken of does come, the manifested blessing will be in the highest degree heavenly, and in a rich but incomplete degree on earth.

Pp. 324, 325 tell us that “Christ has not taken David's throne, but He is at the right hand of God.” But this is flatly to contradict what was taught in p. 32, “then David's throne is really the throne of God. You could not understand this well from the Old Testament, but in the New find that David's throne is God's throne.” The truth is that the N.T. really refutes any such confusion, as we have seen already. So too in p. 155 it was false to say, “He has received the Kingdom,” and still more to quote for it, “We see Jesus crowned with glory and honor.” This is the present exaltation of our Lord in heaven; yet where does one word of scripture warrant the rash error that “He has received the Kingdom,” but has not yet returned? On the contrary Daniel predicts in his chap. vii. the uprising of the Beast and the blasphemies of the last horn which domineers it, before he tells us of dominion and power and glory and a Kingdom over all peoples, etc.; given to the Son of Man. Again Rev. 11 is explicit that not till the seventh Trumpet sounded could it be said that He took His great power and reigned.

What sad ignorance, if it was not still more lamentable opposition to what has been heretofore fully believed among brethren of any intelligence! What means this retrogradism? And why such unwonted toleration of error? Here too the fundamental error reappears, “In the coming age eternal life comes in,” which is thus made only dispensational. Dead silence on what Christ gave when here and still gives in richer power, eternal life now the believer's portion for his soul, which he falsely says “you can only touch (!) in association with Christ; the fact is not yet brought to pass.” Alas! the fact really is, that F.E.R. contradicts not only the apostle John but our Lord and Savior, the Son of God, and His present known gift of life eternal, which is beyond all dispensations, and promised before time began.

Next we have Reconciliation as connected with the church (326-345). “In many minds the idea connected with it is extremely indefinite,” says he; and his “idea” follows, that “where distance was there is complacency.” Is this definite? Complacency really was with Christ, where no distance was. Reconciliation has quite another force. It is that change, not in God but in us, when we are brought by Christ's atoning death into God's perfect favor and settled therein.

The grace and truth came in Christ. God was in Christ reconciling the world. Man would not be reconciled, but crucified Him; and God therein made sin Him who knew no sin, that we might become God's righteousness in Him. Thus was reconciliation made effectual for all who believe. But it is untrue that its principle (p. 330) is “No longer I, but Christ living in me.” Life in the Son of God, as living it now by the faith of Him, is in no way reconciliation, though both are our accompanying privileges. That it is the same in principle is truly and “extremely indefinite,” and false too; and to say that “you are reconciled by being removed” is not the truth but new barbarian theology. God reconciled us in the body of Christ's flesh through death.

It is puerile and vain exposition to say (331), “You can understand how Christ is the beginning in that connection.” Not so; in Col. 1 Christ is the beginning, first-born from out of the dead, as adding a second first-born. He was firstborn of all creation; and to be the suited head of the church, He was firstborn out of the dead (15-18). Then we have the two reconciliations; not only the purposed reconciliation of the universe, but the already effected reconciliation of Christian saints (20-22). The order here stated is only confusion. Here is repeated the old mistake, so profoundly wrong, of simply presenting the world to come, the habitable earth really then, instead of (what scripture so plainly says) “all things, whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens.” Can there be a grosser fault in a teacher than leaving out what is there revealed and bringing in what is not? Again is it not poor work to drag in here Aaron and his house from another part of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in order to illustrate Christ's relation to the saints in Colosse where He is set before us as Head of the body? And again what has the ministry or minister of the sanctuary to do with the truth revealed to the saints in Colosse? It is the crudest perversion of the Lord's right paths that I ever remember to have seen; and it is habitual.

Then in p. 354 comes fresh speculation without scripture: “I don't think we shall address one another in heaven.” What is the value of such fancies as these? Souls want the truth God has revealed. But admitting the need of viewing things in spirit as in heaven, it is remarkable that the chapter before us looks at the saints on earth, as its distinction from Eph. 1. It is not you in Christ on high and in the glory, but “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Thus these notes of readings meddle presumptuously with what one has not seen (Col. 2:18), and muddle what God has given for all His saints to profit by.

But we may omit such like thoughts; and come to the serious slight of God's word apparent in page 340. “Suppose I am thinking of the scripture, ' Holy and without blame before Him in love,' I cannot enter into it by accepting a statement; I can only enter into it by being it.” The words of men are “statements,” and if only such they are powerless. But consider what it means so to estimate the word of God, which faith appropriates. It is the more grave here, because he thinks that being reconciled, and presented “holy, unblamable, and unreprovable” before God go together. Yet the one is God's reconciliation of us through Christ's death, and the other is our being thus holy and blameless in love. What more incongruous, or more suited both to build up presumption in the self-confident, and to destroy the peace of the self-judging? Is it only in virtue of our new and divine nature that we could be thus spoken of, we in Christ and Christ in us? If this was intended, it should have been explained. Here all is in the air. But we who believe are to enjoy the wondrous truth God gives us of our place now in Christ, soon to share its glorious result. We are saints according to God's own nature; we are sons according to the good pleasure of His will, who reveals Himself to us as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and blessed us in Him. His word is no barren “statement,” but the means of His grace through faith in Christ to introduce us into every blessing.

With F.E.R. contrariwise it is love that appropriates the Head, instead of His love in all its unfailing fullness appropriating us (Eph. 5). What cloudland! yet no Christian would minimize our love created by love in Christ. First and last this scheme is mischievous. According to it one may have the faith of eternal life, but not the thing; one may have a “statement” of the blessed place in Christ grace gives to faith, but this does not make you to be what is said. Faith, like the word, is powerless, as if the Father, the Son, and the Spirit took no part. “You must be the thing itself in order to be before God according to that,” whatever this ambiguous oracle may mean. It seems mere self-righteousness, like the Pharisee standing and praying thus to himself, “God, I thank thee that I am not as the rest of men.” Who thinks we enter into Christian blessedness “by accepting a statement”? Who doubts of any door so good and sure as through Him Who is the way, the truth, and the life? His words are spirit and are life.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Hebrews

Chap. V. Divine Design. 45. the Epistle to the Hebrews

The distinctive character of this Epistle is at least as plain and as important as that of any other. It is expressly anonymous; for he who wrote it, though himself an apostle, did so as a teacher, resting its authority on the Old Testament, supplemented by the Son of God come, and deigning to be Apostle in the highest sense and rank. This gives a divine and heavenly character to the communications, which were to Israel, represented now by a believing remnant, and sanctified for glory with Him on high, till the new age arrive, when the then remnant shall become a strong nation, and the new covenant formally and fully comes into force with the two houses of Israel as such. Then the Lord Jesus, Who was Apostle and Prophet on earth, and is the Great Priest in the heavens and above them, shall reign as King not only in Zion but over all the habitable earth. It may be observed that even this Epistle, like the rest, says nothing of that royal position so amply revealed by the Old Testament Prophets. It dwells on the present and intermediate place of Christ above, and thence passes to the heavenly calling of the saints.

Chapter 1 opens with His personal glory as Son of God, abundantly attested by the Psalms and the Prophets; as chapter 2:5 and onward follows with His glory as Son of Man, according to Psa. 8, in answer to His work of redemption, qualifying Him to be a merciful and faithful High-Priest as none else could be. Hence in chapter 3 the believers, addressed as holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling out of the chosen nation, are exhorted to consider Jesus the Apostle and High-Priest of our confession, before Whose worth, dignity, and power, Moses and Aaron were but shadows. The saints, like Israel, are passing through a wilderness of temptation and danger. Profession may be only profession, and thus many not only slip but fall and perish. Living dependence on God is essential; and the beginning of confidence to be held fast firmly unto the end. Unbelief is the great snare. Chapter 4 pursues this: we, who have believed are not in God's rest of glory but going on to it. Adam did not enter, though God sanctified the sabbath as its sign: Joshua did not lead into it, but only into a Canaan that typified it; for long after David spoke of it as still future. Meanwhile we have to fear even seeming to come short; and we need to give diligence, for the time still calls for this. The rest remains. And God has provided two invaluable means to bring us through: His word (answering to the apostleship), and Jesus the Son of God, a great High-Priest before God as He went through the heavens. Thus we may approach the throne of grace with boldness, that we may receive mercy and find grace for seasonable help.

In chapter v. the Aaronic priesthood is compared to show the incontestable superiority of Christ's. He Who erst commanded learned obedience, not only as man, but in suffering beyond all. Perfected through death and resurrection, He is addressed or saluted of God as High-Priest after the order of Melchizedek. The danger for the saints here is of remaining babes, instead of growing to full age (perfection) by receiving the solid food of Christ. Chapter vi. solemnly warns against not pressing on to this status of majority, lest, even after great privileges were known, the mere elements expose to falling away and irretrievable ruin. But the writer was persuaded better things of those who had shown life in love, as he desired for them full assurance of hope, for God had laid indefectible ground for strong consolation. Then chapter vii. expands the surpassing excellence of Christ's office as Melchizedek priest, not in exercise (this is set forth as Aaronic), as it will be, but in its order; for He answers fully and now to what His prototype was in figure, His being one sole intransmissible priesthood in contrast with Aaron's order.

Chapter 8 gives a summary of the aforesaid, and adds the greater excellency of Christ's ministry as Mediator of a covenant better than the Mosaic; not man's failing to obey, but God's effectual work in grace, the very title of “new” writing death on the old. In the earlier verses of chapter 9 is shown that under the law the way into the holies was not yet manifested: man could not go in, as God had not come out. Christ has verified both. In Him God came out, in Him man is gone in. How transcendent is the Christian's blessedness who reaps the fruit of both by His sacrifice and priesthood! In this chapter the fact of a testator and “testament” is turned to good account (vers. 16, 17); everywhere else it is “covenant,” as the context proves. Christianity is not man tested, but God who has wrought for His own glory in saving grace toward man. Chapter 10 applies the blessing fully to those who believe, and this on the basis of Christ's one perfecting sacrifice. Hence He sat down in perpetuity at God's right hand as He has perfected in perpetuity the sanctified. Why wonder? It is God's will, Christ's work, and the Holy Spirit's witness. The believers, with whom the inspired writer joins himself, are exhorted to act now on these precious privileges in verses 19-25, and warned of the peril of apostasy in slighting or abusing Christ's sacrifice by sinning willfully, as they were in chapter 6 of not going on to full growth. But they are again reminded of better things, and told not to cast away their confidence, though they had need of endurance. It is not all the truth that the unjust are justified by faith (Rom. 4:5); for “the just shall live by faith.”

Hence in chapter 11 we have the roll of faith differently but invariably displayed in God's noble army of confessors long before Israel, of whom the Lord Jesus is the Leader and Completer (chapter xii. 2). As to chastening, they were neither to despise it nor to faint under it. The danger here is failing from, or lacking, the grace of God (i.e., losing confidence) through unbelief in His love; and Esau's profanity stands as a beacon. Then we have a grand contrast of what Israel came to at Sinai, with our having come by faith to the entire scene of blessing flowing out of Christ and His redemption: first Zion the highest point of royal grace on earth; then the heavenly city, not the old but new Jerusalem; next the indigenous dwellers on high, myriads of angels, all their assemblage; further the assembly of firstborns enregistered in heaven; and God Himself Judge of all; then we come down to the spirits of just men made perfect (the Old Testament saints), and to Jesus with fullest mercy and joy for the earth as Mediator of a covenant that is not only “new” but as “fresh” as ever; and lastly to the blood of sprinkling in contrast with Abel, whose blood brought curse, this Christ's everlasting blessing. He changes even a warning into a promise to faith. But let us have grace by which to serve God acceptably with reverence and awe. For our God is a consuming fire.

Chapter 13 closes the Epistle with urging that brotherly affection abide, hospitality, and kindness to sufferers; that marriage be honorable in all (or, every way), and conduct be free from love of money. Next, departed guides are to be remembered; but if they were gone, Jesus is the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever. Hence they were to be set against various and strange doctrines. Grace confirms the heart, not meats which profit not devotees even. Jesus that suffered without the gate, Whose blood avails within the holiest, is the key of the Christian position. “Therefore let us go forth to Him without the camp, bearing His reproach.” The middle place, beloved of Judaisers and philosophers, is the place of apostate Jews, and now of effete Christendom. “By Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually;” yet sacrifices in doing good have also their real place. Next, living guides are to be obeyed. This is their use, to lead others who might not readily see the path of Christ. They shall give account, not of the souls led, but of how they led them. No one valued the prayer of saints more than he who here asks it, after his first imprisonment and before the second. With Timothy set at liberty he hoped to see them again. How suited is the prayer in verses 20, 21, not only to them and the writer, but to this Epistle! It seems to be beyond just question what Peter in his second Epistle refers to (3:15), as written by Paul to Christian Jews, to whom Peter addressed both of his (1 Peter 1:1, and 2 Peter 3:1).

Scripture Queries and Answers: The Five Wise Virgins

Q.-Matt. 25:1-13. Since believers are the bride, whom do the five wise virgins represent? They went in to the marriage feast as guests only. When the bridegroom came, was he not accompanied by his bride? was he not taking her to his home at the end of the feast given at her father's house? S. de G.

A.-The Lord in this parable presents not the church as such in its unity, but Christians as an aggregate going out to meet Him in figure; and hence He depicts them as the nuptial cortege. “The bride” would not have answered His purpose at all, but the maidens, foolish and prudent, so as to be emblematic of professors through Christendom's state and at His advent. The possession of the Holy Spirit is the crucial test. All had gone asleep; but at midnight grace sent forth an awakening cry, which wrought, even on the foolish, to arise and trim their lamps. But when the Bridegroom came, only those ready could enter in; for they alone had the unction from the Holy One which could fit any to have their portion with Him. The object here was not to fix attention on the bride, but on the individual responsibility of the Christian to await Christ's coming duly. Mere profession gives no title to go in with Him to the feast. There must be oil in their vessels; and the foolish, active as they were (“earnest” as men say), had none. The bride is nowhere in this scene.

Scripture Queries and Answers: The Flesh in Us

Q.-Why in the Feb. B. T. the censure on saying “the old man is gone in the death of Christ?” C.

A.-Because of so speaking as to ignore the flesh still in us. This is a very real danger, because it oversteps the truth; especially as most confound “the old man” and “the flesh.” And we know that, however delivered and blessed the saint may be here, the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh (Gal. 5:17). The more precious the truth (and it is precious to know that our old man has been crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be annulled), the more important not to go beyond the word. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” The terms “gone,” “removed,” &c., are liable to convey what is unscriptural and misleading, and in particular where no careful guard accompanies the term. “They that are of Christ Jesus crucified the flesh with its passions and its lusts.”

Scripture Queries and Answers: Acts 26:22-23

Q.-Acts 26:22, 23. This text is urged to set aside the apostle's distinct assertion of a mystery hidden from the ages, and not in other generations made known to the sons of men, as it hath now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets (clearly and exclusively those of the N.T. so called, Eph. 2:20). Kindly explain: on the face of it such an allegation arrays one scripture against another, which must be of the enemy. What then did the apostle mean before Agrippa? Surely not to contradict what he wrote to Ephesian saints? X.

A.-The context of each proves that both declarations are perfectly true, and therefore in divine harmony. For in the Acts he defends his public testimony in preaching the gospel and the kingdom of God, both of which rested on the basis of Christ's death and resurrection, and, as he said of the righteousness of God now manifested, “witnessed by the law and the prophets” (Rom. 3:21). But to the Ephesian and the Colossian saints the time was come to open out the mystery of Christ in His exaltation to the heavenlies, God summing up the created universe, all things in the Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth; and the saints, now called (Jewish and Gentile naturally), united to this heavenly Head as His one body. As he tells us in 1 Cor. 2:6-10, he did not preach this wondrous truth to the Jews any more than Gentiles, nor even to immature saints. God's hidden wisdom in a mystery he spoke only to the perfect or full-grown, which was then and is now far from being true of all believers. Hence, as the Jews arraigned him for his public appeals to themselves or others, the passage in the Acts in no way clashes with what he avowedly taught only to full-grown saints, of which they knew nothing and to which the apostle made no reference. The inference, confidently drawn to deny that he taught the new revelation characteristic of the N.T., is entirely at fault, and betrays fundamental ignorance of what every full-grown Christian ought humbly to learn.

Scripture Queries and Answers: The Temple Described in Ezekiel

Q.-Will the temple described by Ezekiel have a veil? W.F.

A.-It was a slip in the Jan. B.T., p. 11, to say so. The future temple will have double-leaved doors, instead of a screen and a veil then renewed. Yet the sons of Israel and even the prince have no entry into the house—only the priests. There is no question of going within. Still the differences are marked and instructive. There will then be no evening lamp; for Jehovah their light is forever risen upon Zion. No candlestick is needed more, but the altar within is Jehovah's table; and no high-priest ministers. There is no Pentecost more; for is already consummated in the church. There is no feast of trumpets; for the people have been already summoned and gathered; and there is no atonement-day longer; for the work was done, and they had truly afflicted their souls when they looked to Him whom they pierced. The Red Heifer disappears. But the Passover abides the memorial of redemption, and the Tabernacles will mark their place and blessing. The altar of holocausts has an absolutely central place, though of course outside the sanctuary; for seven days atonement is made for it; and on the eighth onward the priests offer Israel's burnt-offerings and peace-offerings. Sabbaths and new moons are still celebrated as witnesses of rest come, and Israel's regaining their place. No table with the twelve loaves is seen, for Israel were themselves before Him; no candlestick, for the True Light was seen. In the Holiest is no sign, no ark needed: Jehovah fills it alone. Outside is no laver to cleanse for entry; but from within the sanctuary issues a river, not merely to gladden the city of God, but to go without, dividing when there to east and west with life-giving fertilizing power, expressly naming the east or Dead Sea, and the west or Mediterranean, but not yet absolute blessing; for an exception is kept up in the marshes given to salt. Still the city's name is Jehovah-Shammah, Jehovah there; yet the millennium is not eternity.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Gathered to the Lord's Name

Q.-If gathered to the Lord's name, on what principle in the present disorder and ruin of God's house should we receive a Christian from a denomination or sect though he were desirous of abiding there? R.M.

A.-The principle is, “as Christ also received us, to the glory of God.” If there be a known cause of sin and shame, we ought to refuse: not so did Christ receive us. Even when we had much to learn of the truth in detail, (50, 60 or more years ago), a firm stand was made by faithful men against such as trifled with fundamental truth. I remember in those days a fervent Wesleyan, who had learned “the blessed hope” and was morally driven out of that society by their opposition to that truth; yet was he rejected in his wish for communion in the Lord's supper, because he denied the personality of the Holy Spirit, too common even then. But it is of comparatively late years that the fatal tidal wave of heterodoxy has been overflowing Christendom, as to Christ's person on both sides, everlasting punishment of the lost, and God's inspiration of scripture. This actual and growing condition compels all who fear God to reject such as either hold these grievous errors or, what is if possible worse, make light of these evils and insist on their title to go on where these destructive lies are taught. No matter what they plead, they disqualify themselves for true communion of saints, if they also claim indifference practically to such God-dishonoring errors. It is awful to think that some who were at least associated long with men faithful to Christ are now looser than the loose. For they faithlessly swamp the truth and holiness of God to receive Christians so called, no matter how defiled now. All of these may not be equally bold and careless; but there is no path so dangerous as, under heat for some and opposition to others, departing from known and cherished truth, and slighting those servants of God to whom they owe no small debt of love. Ere long, if grace do not deliver, they will hate their testimony more and more, and the light in them will become darkness; and then how great the darkness!

Where it is a known saint in an orthodox though sectarian position, yet in no way exercised about it, it appears to me still our privilege as of old to receive such an one in the Lord's name, who desires to remember Him with us in the breaking of bread. But he needs adequate testimony and comes under discipline like others. Of course bargaining on either side would be intolerable. How many simple ones of spiritual feeling, though far from intelligent, having once enjoyed His presence thus, have inquired and learned His will, and never returned to man's devices! The easygoing are such as retrograde, and so do the stiff and narrow; when they come to see that Christ is not therein, reaction may ensue.

Advertising

TITUS & PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth, 2/-

THE REVELATION 2/-.

THE Loan's PRAYER, a New Edition, 3d.

THE FEASTS or JEHOVAH, a New Edition, 6d.

LIFE ETERNAL, 2d.

LIFE ETERNAL DENIED, parts 1 and 2, d6c., 2d. each.

EZEKIEL'S LAST PARABLE, by Mrs. Bevan, cloth, 2/6.

Publisher

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Jacob: 5. The Wives and Their Maids

Though revelation of and from God is the essential difference of scripture from all other writings, there is much more of the utmost value. We have man as he is, as nowhere else: the truth is told us that we may know ourselves as well as God. Hence the interest and importance of inspired light in what the proud selfishness of man's mind is prone to despise as mere domestic jars. To the believer they not only are full of salutary instruction but suggest the witness of divine concern and compassion, in what must all be manifested before His holy eyes to Whom we shall give account of the things done in the body whether good or evil, yea of the hidden things of darkness and the counsels of hearts. Assuredly no flesh shall glory; and it is well and wise to learn it now, that according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.

“And when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and she said to Jacob, Give me children, or else I die. And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel; and he said, [Am] I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? And she said, Behold, my maid Bilhah; go in to her, that she may bear on my knees, and I may also be built up by her. And she gave him Bilhah her bondmaid as wife; and Jacob went in to her. And Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. And Rachel said, God hath judged me, and also heard my voice, and given me a son: therefore she called his name Dan (Judge). And Bilhah Rachel's bondmaid again conceived and bore Jacob a second son. And Rachel said, Wrestlings of God have I wrestled with my sister, and have prevailed; and she called his name Naphtali (my Wrestling). When Leah saw that she had ceased to bear, she took Zilpah her bond-maid, and gave her to Jacob as wife. And Zilpah Leah's bondmaid bore Jacob a son. And Leah said, What fortune! and she called his name Gad (Fortune). And Zilpah Leah's bondmaid bore Jacob a second son. And Leah said, With my happiness; for the daughters will call me happy I and she called his name Asher (Happy)” (chap. 30:1-13).

One understands too well, too sadly, why Rachel should view her own childlessness and her sister rich in children with chagrin. Self wrought and blinded her to her sister's lack of Jacob's heart of which she had the monopoly. It was envy, that base feeling which cannot endure another, even a sister's, having what she had not; and this broke out in unreasonable and impious repining to her husband, as if her barrenness were his fault. No wonder that his anger resented her unworthy state in his rejoinder, Am I in God's stead Who has withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? But he yielded to her proposal, and takes Bilhah that she might obtain children by her maid. Had not honored Sarah done the like? Yes, but through Ishmael its fruit did it not issue in the expulsion of both Hagar and Ishmael? Was this encouraging? How different from Hannah the sorrowful under Peninnah's provocations, or even the high-priest's misjudgment! She broke out into no unseemly murmurs against her husband, but wept and prayed and vowed to Jehovah, and was heard of the God of Israel.

It is the striking difference of the N. T. from the Old that perfection was only established when God spoke, and wrought also, in the Son. The law made nothing perfect, though a divine witness to what was coming and the measure too of human righteousness on earth. And the Lord was able to vindicate on Jehovah's part that, if Moses in view of the people's hardheartedness allowed them even to put away their wives, from the beginning it was not thus. Male and female made He them. Christ alone represented God adequately, and as Son the Father; and this in man, God and man in one Person. This is all to God the Father's glory.

But of old God permitted what was far from His mind, as we see here, till He makes all things new. Jacob was not Jesus, nor was any other, though a man of faith. Jesus is Himself, not a man only, though this He was completely and perfectly, but true God, no less than the Father.

The names Rachel gave the sons of Bilhah expressed the state of her soul, and toward her sister. Dan and Naphtali do not tell us of grace, but of satisfaction in gaining points of strife on her own part. Leah was drawn into the snare and through Zilpah would equal that advantage. And the names she gave Zilpah's sons, Gad and Asher, though not reflecting the contention which governed Rachel's spirit, by no means rose to the level of faith she had shown in naming her own sons. But it is the prerogative of God, while every wrong has its effect among men and its judgment before Himself, to cause all things to work together for good to them that love Him, the called according to purpose. He at least is good and does good, whatever man has to mourn.

Priesthood: 31. Flux in Men and Its Defilement

In 2 Thess. 1:8, when the Lord appears in vengeance on guilty living men, the Gentiles are distinguished as those that know not God, the Jews as those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus. It was the privilege of Jews to have God in the world entering into every need and difficulty, every responsibility and danger, as the Gentiles had not. They had even the visible sign of His glory in the tabernacle till their apostasy. Hence they had Him enjoining what was due to His presence in their midst, although in a way altogether inferior to that enjoyed by the Christian and in the church.

But earthly and temporal as it was, it accounts for such requirements as we read here and elsewhere. We have had its application to human birth (in chap. 12) and (in chap. 13) to sin in the life, as a deadly and defiling thing, a living death, which necessitated exclusion from tent, camp, and worship, and (in 14) the striking means required for cleansing him when cured without telling us how cure could be. Here we have other and lesser sources of defilement on which we may say a little. They indicate the sad and shameful effects of sin.

The principle is a great one. All is judged, even for fallen man, according to His presence who deigned to dwell there. A human standard, if indeed any pretended to have it, was well enough for a heathen. An Israelite was to submit to the God of Israel regulating the entire life, public and private, of His earthly people. Impossible, if Jehovah were their God and they His people, to evade those terms. Piety would welcome them with heart and soul.

So it will be finally under Messiah and the new covenant when He will write His law in their heart; and they shall know Him from the least to the greatest, for He will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. Alas! they, ignorant of their sin, had at Sinai forgotten to plead His promise, and even taken their stand on their own obedience; so that ruin soon befell them, and all went on worse and worse, till there was “no remedy” on that footing. Then came the rejection of their only hope. A brighter day awaits them when their heart turns to the Lord (2 Cor. 3), and He will save them with a divine salvation.

“1 And Jehovah spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 2 Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, If any man hath a flux from his flesh because of his flux, he [is] unclean. 3 And this shall be his uncleanness in his flux: whether his flesh run with his flux, or his flesh be closed from his flux, it [is] his uncleanness. 4 Every bed whereon he that hath the flux lieth shall be unclean; and everything whereon he sitteth shall be unclean. 5 And whosoever toucheth his bed shall wash his raiment, and bathe [himself] in water, and be unclean until the even. 6 And he that sitteth on [anything] whereon he that hath the flux sat shall wash his raiment, and bathe [himself] in water, and be unclean until the even. 7 And he that toucheth the flesh of him that hath the flux shall wash his raiment, and bathe [himself] in water, and be unclean until the even. 8 And if he that hath the flux spit upon him that is clean, then he shall wash his raiment, and bathe [himself] in water, and be unclean until the even. 9 And what carriage (or saddle) soever he that hath the flux rideth upon shall be unclean. 10 And whosoever toucheth anything that was under him shall be unclean until the even; and he that beareth those things shall wash his raiment, and bathe [himself] in water, and be unclean until the even. 11 And whomsoever he that hath the flux toucheth without having rinsed his hands in water, he shall wash his raiment, and bathe [himself] in water, and be unclean until the even. 12 And the earthen vessel that he that hath the flux toucheth shall be broken; and every vessel of wood shall be rinsed in water” (vers. 1-12).

Man is not as God created him; he is fallen: and here we read how God instructed the Israelite of old to judge his state. It was not nature, but nature ruined and unclean; so are its unclean emotions. They are tainted and defile. So Jehovah spoke to Moses and Aaron. The physical uncleanness speaks to us of a deeper evil. So the Lord taught even the multitude: “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth the man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth the man” (Matt. 15:11). And when Peter, feeling Pharisaic opposition, asked more, the Lord replied, “Do not ye understand that all that entereth into the mouth goeth into the belly and is cast out into a sewer? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth out from the heart; and those things defile the man. For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, theft, false witnessing, blasphemies: these are the things which defile the man.” The outside satisfies those who have not faith and count God as themselves. But God will have us take account of the humiliating truth, if the uncleanness flow out, or even if suppressed within by night or by day (3, 4) as to things or persons (5-12). Every case demanded purifying. To the Jew it was water; to us the washing of water by the word, the water that flowed from Christ in death, to which the apostle who saw bears record in Gospel and Epistle.

Our word of confession is due to God; but Christ's word has virtue in it through the Spirit and His own advocacy. Thus is communion maintained. To be born again and forgiven is not enough. We are brought into divine fellowship, and all that is unsuitable in us God will have us to judge. It would be hard if He had not provided all that sustains or restores. It is careless or unholy, now that He is at all the charge for our blessing, if we avail not ourselves of it conscientiously. Vigilance as well as dependence on Him and the heart's submission to His word with confidence of His love in Christ are ever needed. Weak, exposed with such a nature, and a subtle foe to take advantage, we are only kept by God's power through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

The Day of Atonement: 16. Concluding Remarks

The cross of Christ brought in a complete contrast with these two most marked circumstances in the position of Israel. On the one hand the Christian is invited and emboldened, as sprinkled by blood from an evil conscience and washed with pure water, to draw near into the holiest of all; on the other, the Christian is equally exhorted to go forth unto Christ without the camp, bearing His reproach. The two extremes now meet in the believer—I do not mean as Christians walk, or as they say; but as Christians ought to believe. The meeting is solemn. If you are a Christian in deed and in truth, you are washed or loosed from your sins in the blood of Christ. You will not be one whit cleaner in the eyes of God when you reach heaven than now; for Christ is dead, risen, and glorified. This is a matter of unsophisticated faith; there is nothing which can possibly add to what Christ has done and God has accepted on your behalf. If you look at this or that brother, you may see your own faults, exaggerated perhaps in your eyes. This ought not to be so; we ought rather to count them better than ourselves. But alas! the same flesh, which makes us indulgent to our own faults, makes us sharp on the faults of our dear brethren: so little do we walk in the power of grace by faith. Falsehood we are bound to abhor.

If God's word governs our thoughts, we find ourselves, in this Epistle, among the holy brethren partakers of a heavenly calling. We are of the true house of God, the family of the High Priest, and later on are invited to draw near into the holiest of all. On what ground could any soul possibly enter within, if his sins were not completely gone? If they are not so now, what is to blot them out another day? Christ would not take His seat on high till all was settled for everyone who should believe (1:3). From this the apostle reasons and appeals. If repetition were needed, Christ must often have suffered: whereas the whole force of the doctrine is His work and death once for all. Indeed the same emphasis appears in the First Epistle of Peter. He “suffered once for sins” (chap. 3:18). Nor is it only that He once for all suffered, but that we are cleansed once for all. We are purified in conscience according to the power of that one sacrifice, by which He dedicated a new and living way through the veil. The unity of the sacrifice is true only for us in Christ. I speak of such alone now, of those who draw not back to perdition but believe to the saving of the soul.

But along with the drawing near into the holiest goes the call to go forth to Christ without the camp. Let us seek no place of honor on this earth, no means of reputation, no seat of ease, no outward distinction. The Jews might fairly once have looked for all these; through unfaithfulness they have lost all. But Christians, instead of being promoted in their stead, are called to join Him Who suffered without the gate. They were not called to take the place of “the camp” when the Jews forfeited their standing. Before the Jews lost their place and nation openly, those of them who by grace became Christians were exhorted to draw near within, even if they had been Jews; and now, being sanctified by Christ's blood which makes them free of the sanctuary, they are also called to go without the camp. His reproach is glorious.

The Christian is a man who is not of the world; he is of Christ for heaven, now called to draw near where He is. The two truths flow together; and what God has thus joined, let no man sunder. What right is there given to any one of access into the holiest of all, unless along with it there be God's call to follow Jesus Who suffered without the gate? If you value your title to draw near within the sanctuary, shrink not from going forth to Him without the camp. Is it not in both respects your place, and your only right place, with Him? Let us be in our faith with Christ, both inside the veil and outside the camp.

Christendom has reversed all this. In theological eyes it is rank presumption to draw near into the holiest while we are here on earth. Is not this really the unbelief of Christendom? But Christ gives us entrance into the sanctuary as the common privilege of His own. It is open to every Christian whether Calvinist, Arminian, or Episcopalian, if orthodox. Yet it is well to avoid all such parties, for they lead their votaries into shortsighted views of God; and there is precious truth which in these disputes is apt to be overlooked. The word of God looks far beyond man's disputations. We may well be suspicious of ecclesiastical cliques, no matter what or where they are; and my experience is that those who know much are no better in their spirit and objects, if not worse, than those who know less. Surely, brethren, we ought to be above quarrels, if we have got the truth of God. And have we not Christ so known as to put shame on such manners? He that hath an ear, let him hear. Let Christ's honor and will be our “one thing.”

Let us seek earnestly and humbly and as before God to profit by all this, and guard against every snare by cleaving to Christ and the truth in a spirit of grace. If any prefer controversy and self, let them. One may be grieved thereby; but, as all know, there is nothing so powerful as a good example. As I have often said to some that found us narrow, faulty, or what not, Why do not you by your fidelity show us a more excellent way in carrying out God's truth? Nobody will say that it is acceptable to Him for any merely to criticize, while going on with what is known to be wrong. If we have walked so very poorly, why not do better yourselves? Why not help instead of carping? Be thou faithful.

Certainly these are great realities—access into the holiest, and companionship with Christ outside the camp, while we are still on earth. If we own these both to be God's call to us, are we to join in language or conduct which denies them? Are we to be dragged down by custom into Levitical worship which leaves the worshipper outside? Are we free before God to forget and forego the truth of Christ every time we worship? Do you ask who do so? Forgive my saying that I should like to see the Christians who do not “serve the tabernacle,” as this Epistle calls it, instead of making good in faith their own proper privileges.

The fault does not only belong to this or that particular denomination; does it not attach to all? I do not wish to be personal; but is it not really the kindest service possible to urge weighing what we say in worship with what God teaches? If you receive His word about it (and it is as plain as it is deep and comforting), cleave to the truth with all your heart. Is this too much to ask of a believer? Why should you, my beloved friends, be playing at see-saw between truth and error, between what you know to be acceptable to God and what people in Christendom have slipped into? Every one naturally likes the camp. To the natural man “the holiest” is one extreme, and “without the camp” is another. To be in the camp, with a priest for the sanctuary, is the via media so pleasant to the eye and to the mind. They are thus in the acceptable place of the world, the religious world, not of course the merely profane. Such was just the position the Jews occupied of old. It was out of this middle place that the apostle called the Christians, not only to draw within the rent veil, but to go forth without the camp; and both apply now as ever since the call was made.

Again, let me ask you, was the cross of Christ a respectable thing? Was it really so regarded when He suffered without the gate? One might rather ask, if ever there were greater scorn put upon anyone. The two robbers that were hanged had far greater consideration than the Lord of all. Ah! beloved of God, your place on earth is this place of scorn. If you truly enjoy the nearness of the sanctuary, it is the obligation of faith to go forth to Christ without the camp. When the blood was brought into the holiest, the bodies were burned without the camp. This is a distinct connection of divine truth. The deduction is that we should have communion with our Savior in both ways. Have Him now for your joy in heaven; where you are to be with Him in eternal joy. Therefore the little while that we are on this earth, be not ashamed of His rejection. Shrink not from the call to be with Christ outside. There is the doctrine, and the practice follows. I do not dwell at greater length on it now, because there are other moral principles of great value to lay before you from this fruitful chapter; and time fails for all.

The next thing that the Spirit of God brings before us is, “And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you (34).” We do not hear this about any subordinate matter. The Day of Atonement stands thus distinctly to itself and separate in dignity from all others; “In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, ye shall afflict your souls and do no work at all, whether it be one of your own country, or the stranger that sojourneth among you (29).” The first point insisted on, and most evidently, is the affliction of the soul. Atonement was not to be a matter of mere joy lest it should degenerate into lightness. Where is an act of God so searching.

As we are considering this, let me show you how readily man slips into these errors. In Acts 2:41, we have all read, as the effect of the truth which the apostle was preaching, “Then they that gladly received his word were baptized.” It may be new to some though to many of you more familiar, that the word “gladly” has no sufficient authority to stand there. Reflect for a moment what it means for one newly converted “gladly” to receive the message. Such a word has not the appropriate link with an occasion so solemn as souls brought to God out of darkness. Do not conceive for a moment that there is any wish to cloud the joy of the believer; but our Lord instructs us that it is a bad sign when the first effect of the truth entering the soul is gladness. Deep self-search and humiliation are incomparably better proofs of a true work of God there. Compare Luke 8:13.

Proverbs 15:18-25

GOD is the God of peace, and Christ will be Prince of peace when He shall have taken His great power and reigned. Meanwhile He has made peace through the blood of His cross, that the believer should have peace with God, and walk in the spirit of peace, whatever the turmoil of man. Nor need one wonder that man, in the misery and selfishness of sin unjudged and unforgiven, should be swift to speak and swift to wrath.

“A furious man stirreth up contention; but one slow to anger appeaseth strife.

The way of the sluggard is as a hedge of thorns; but the path of the upright is made a causeway.

A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish man depiseth his mother.

Folly is joy to him that is void of heart; but a man of understanding maketh his walk straight.

Without counsel purposes are disappointed; but in the multitude of counselors they are established.

A man hath joy in the answer of his mouth, and a word in season, how good it is!

The path of life [is] upward for the wise, that he may depart from Sheol beneath.

Jehovah plucketh up the house of the proud, but He establisheth the border of the widow” (verses 18-25).

Whence come wars and whence fightings among you? asks James the Just. Is it not thence—from your pleasures which war in your members? Ye lust and have not; ye kill and are full of envy, and cannot obtain; ye fight and war; ye have not because ye ask not. Ye ask and receive not because ye ask amiss that ye may spend it in your pleasures. How truly a furious man stirreth up contentions! Whereas one slow to anger not only gives no occasion to strife, but appeases it. Peacemaking begins in the heart bowing to God in Christ through grace, and characterizes the spirit and walk.

The slothful fear a painful obstacle in their way, put off their duty, and seek not grace for seasonable help, if it were even a real difficulty or trial. The upright see a plain road, because the eye is single in obedience.

So in family life a father's heart is gladdened by a son who begins and goes on in the fear of the Lord. A foolish one shows what he is by despising her who bore him and watched over his years of weakness, who wastes his strength on himself or what is no better.

Again, how sad yet certain it is that folly is joy to the senseless heart! Not even a brute lives so despicably. A man of understanding looks up and walks straight with purpose in his heart.

Hence the importance of counsel (22), for where there is none purposes are disappointed. It is wise to be swift to hear; for in the multitude of counselors purposes are established. Self-confidence is a sorry guide.

Thus too one learns to help others, when speech is well considered, timely, and sought for. “A man hath joy (not pride) in the answer of his mouth.” Others too reap the profit, as he desires; for “a word in season, how good is it!”

Nor does the good end in this life; for “the path of life is upward for the wise, that he may depart from Sheol beneath.” The end is life everlasting, as all saints knew, though none could forecast that life now quickening the soul here below. This Christ revealed as clearly as a future hour when the body shall be instinct with the same life at His coming.

Jehovah is righteous and good in His ways; for He will pluck up the house of the proud who scorn Him, and will establish the border of the widow whom He compassionates in her sorrow and defends in her weakness and exposure.

Gospel Words: Christ Came to Fulfill

From the outset of His ministry our Lord was careful to affirm that He came not to dissolve but to make good divine authority in the law or the prophets. In both He was predicted as the One on whom all blessing depended. He only could deliver sinful and seduced man. He was to be the sacrifice which would justify all previous offerings to God, and render their just interpretation, and furnish their efficacy. Fulfillment of a prophecy is the same word; but the context here points to a larger scope.

The law and the prophets testified to man's, unrighteousness and to God's righteousness (Rom. 3:21). But they could not do more. Christ came, not to enfeeble or undo them as His blind enemies thought, but to make good that divine testimony which left the sinner without excuse and gave what God only in His grace could supply. It was far more than even pious men conceived, a mere making up, by His obedience of the law, what men failed in. This had merely been man's righteousness accomplished by Him for the unrighteous. Here too He has done incomparably more and better. He laid the basis in His obedience unto death. for God's righteousness, that God might be just and justify him that believes on Jesus. For He who knew no sin glorified God in being made sin for us, that we might become God's righteousness in Him. Hence God's grace is enhanced, not frustrated; for if righteousness is through law, then Christ died gratuitously. But it is not so: never was anything else contemplated or revealed but that the believers rest their hope on His death.

God took care therefore that promise should long precede and exist independently of it, as the apostle argues in Gal. 3. This at Sinai Israel in their self-confidence overlooked. Instead of asking for the unconditional promise of grace they undertook to stand on their own obedience. As no sinful man can subsist on such a condition, the law written on stones, even when brought down a second time with types of mercy accompanying, could not but be a ministry of death and condemnation (2 Cor. 3:7-9). For them it is said in the reading of the old covenant the veil remains unremoved; and the veil is more than on the face, being upon their heart. They did and do not look to Christ, law's end for righteousness to everyone that believes. They strove to stand on a mixture of law and grace, which only adds to the sinner's condemnation, because the added grace increases his guilt if disobedient. But we look on the glory of the Lord with unveiled face and are transformed to the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit, Who testifies to Him in the glory of God as the fruit not only of His person but of His work. And so the apostle preached the gospel of God's grace and of Christ's glory, as he had been converted.

The Epistle to the Hebrews told the Christian Jews that the “new” covenant of which Jeremiah bore witness held out under Christ a better covenant. It did not, like the old at Sinai, depend on Israel as the party on whose fidelity blessing depended. All hung for the new covenant on the Lord's sovereign grace. “Because this is the covenant that I will covenant for the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: giving my laws into their mind, I will also inscribe them on their hearts; and I will be to them for God, and they shall be to me for people. And they shall in no wise teach, each his fellow-citizen and each his brother, saying, Know the Lord; because all shall consciously know from little of them unto great of them; because I will be merciful to their unrighteousnesses and their sins, and their lawlessnesses I will remember no more” (Heb. 8:10-12).

This was no real way to set aside the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them to God's glory and for man's salvation and blessing. Christ filled up the gap between God and the sinner for him who believes on Him. The law pointed to Him as the coming One who alone could restore the balance which the creature's evil had disturbed by weight overwhelming to all but the Savior. He alone could by redemption win and give the blessing which God's nature loved to bestow and God's counsels assured in due time. But all this and more Christ was by His word and Spirit bringing in a new and divine life by faith into the soul, before the day arrives when He will transform our body of humiliation into conformity with His body of glory according to the working of His power even to subdue all things to Himself. It was not mere addition, as if the law and the prophets were not intrinsically complete and perfect for the end God proposed; but He is throughout assumed and predicted as essential to give the blessed result. “For verily I say to you, Till the heaven and the earth pass, one iota or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all come to pass” (vers. 18).

So even the N. T. speaks of filling up the gap otherwise left in it by the revelation of the mystery of Christ's headship on high and the church united to Him as His body. And the apostle in Col. 1:25 tells us of the stewardship of God given Him thereby to complete His word. For this was a secret hidden from ages and generations, and quite distinct from the kingdom, the new covenant, or the inheritance of Abraham's promise. It was a promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel and God's eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord (Eph. 3:6, 10).

O dear reader, look you by faith to Jesus, the sole accomplisher of what you most want and of infinitely more—what glorifies God and gives the believer a wondrous part in it all. Look not to yourself save to condemn yourself; look to Him who secures from all condemnation which you must otherwise dread. May your heart learn how truly Christ is all. This no man is willing to do, until he is brought to the decided conviction before God, that he is lost, and that in him (that is, in his flesh) good does not dwell.

1 Peter 3:1-6

The apostle does not exhort the masters, as we find in the Epistles to the Ephesian and the Colossian saints; but he addresses wives and husbands in the next place, without speaking in particular to children and parents. The relation of wives, as of domestics; was one of subjection.

“Likewise, ye wives, [be] subject to your own husbands, that even if any are disobedient to the word, they may be gained without word through the behavior of the wives, having beheld your chaste behavior in fear; whose adornment let it not be the outward one of plaiting the hair, and of wearing gold, or of putting on apparel, but the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible of the meek and quiet spirit which is in the sight of God very precious. For thus also heretofore the holy women that hoped in God adorned themselves, being subject to their own husbands; as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose children ye became, doing good and not being afraid of any dismay” (vers. 1-6).

It is easy to understand, that, as with servants, so with wives, Christians who stand in the subject place might and must find frequent difficulty with heathen or Jewish superiors to whom they were so near. For the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; and it is provoked by what is of the Spirit in those whom they command. A Christian wife cannot give up a conscience toward God in matters of right and wrong; again she has objects of faith dearer to her soul than life which claim her allegiance and observance, in public as well as private ways utterly repugnant to unbelievers of every sort.

All the more is it incumbent on such believing wives as are bound to unbelieving husbands, that they should be truly and sedulously subject to their own husbands, wherever it is compatible with doing the will of God. Even in the O. T., where such unions existed, the wife was under obligation before God to be subject; whatever the rigor that the law required, whatever the horror inspired by idolatry. The eyes of Jehovah, they knew, were toward the righteous and His ears open to their cry. The face of Jehovah was against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.

But the N. T, greatly strengthens the believer's heart by the then revelation of the grace of Christ far beyond what could act of old. Not only does it fortify to suffer both for righteousness and His Name; it encourages faith by the sovereign grace which saved ourselves to look to our God and Father on behalf of others who need it no less than we once did. And if He sought and saved me, a lost sinner, may I not the more from standing in so close a relationship pray for my husband dark and dead as he is?

Here too the apostle gives a wise caution. The less spiritual Christian is too apt to forget the ways of divine grace in bringing ourselves to God, and to regard conversion as the simple effect of the truth, overlooking the various workings of the Spirit to give the word a root in the heart. The unbeliever as such slights the word and has no conception of its power when by the Spirit Christ is thereby revealed to the soul. The practical bearing has immense weight with one ignorant of God and of himself. But his conscience can value greatly, gentleness, lowliness, patience, obedience in another and especially that other his wife. He is well aware how unreasonable and unkind he has often been to her; yet she has borne it, and never complained, never reproached, but been as loving and dutiful as ever. He is forced to feel that there must be something that makes the difference in her faith which he often mocked. Hence is pressed “that even if any are disobedient to the word, they may be gained without word through the behavior of the wives, having beheld their chaste [or, pure] behavior in fear.”

It is not meant that one can be begotten of God without the word: 1 Peter 1:23 forbids such a thought as decidedly as James 1:18 and many other scriptures. But the moral weight and the gracious way of the wife tell on the hard husband; and he is won to hear, so much the more because she does not preach to him, as he calls it. How many have been thus gained to hear the gospel the day will declare. The modest purity he knows and values much, and this in fear, not boldness or self-confidence, but tempered by the dread of offending God or her husband. For here it seems put with all generality.

Next he turns to the external habits of a Christian wife, and urges the avoidance of frivolous and sumptuous ornaments. Some may deride this: but it is their carnality or worldliness which governs. Has not the Christian to please Christ and do all things in His Name? Our bodies are to be presented a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God; and we are not to be conformed to this age with its changing fashions of luxury and splendor, whatever station may be ours naturally. Christ is dearer, nearer, and more than all. And the Christian wives are not exempt. Their adornment is not the outward one of dressing hair, nor wearing gold things, or putting on dress, which are alien from Christ and a shame to saints. The real ornament is the hidden man of the heart which He sees, in the incorruption (for outside all is corruptible) of a meek and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is of much price. None of these showy objects is so, nor could all Ophir buy it.

Therefore Peter was led to speak of ancients witnessing for God in this respect. “For thus also heretofore the holy women that were hoping in God adorned themselves accordingly, being subject to their own husbands; as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose children ye became, doing good and not being afraid with any dismay.” On God their hope rested, not on themselves. Sarah stood at the head of these pious matrons of Israel; but though not alone (for there were not a few saints of like spirit), she was far from forgetting the true ornaments that became saints.

Favored as Christians were by Christ and redemption come, the wives now ought not to fall short either in moral adorning or in subjection. Sarah obeyed her husband and reverently addressed him (Gen. 18:12); she was not carried away by the common ground for vanity, though she had beauty more than most. Her children such wives now became as were doers of good and not frightened by any scare from propriety. Why should they be who know that Christ's Father is their Father, and Christ's God is theirs? Why be perturbed since He sent His servants to comfort them with the same peace He gave them? The enemy works by fear; God by His love in Christ against every source of alarm.

Hence as another wrote, even before love was fully manifested, when it was simply hoped for with confidence, souls “from weakness were strengthened, became mighty in war, made armies of aliens give way. Women received their dead by a resurrection; and others were tortured, not having accepted deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection” (Heb. 11:34, 35).

Life Eternal Denied: 5

Not the unbelief and heterodoxy alone of the novel school, but its folly stands plainly in “Divine Teaching and its End” (pp. 346-356). “Risen with Christ is God's mind in regard to believers,” and so I might go on. “Eternal life is the expression of His pleasure in Christ risen,” etc. But how is this in a system which wholly denies life eternal to believers as an existing fact of His grace? Risen with Christ, it is said, we are; but how could this be if believers have not even life in the Son now? Is “in God's mind” a loophole to escape the acknowledgment that it is already a real thing in the spiritual realm? If F.E.R. means so, simple souls are deceived into thinking that the error is exaggerated, and that he is really orthodox in this; if he does not mean it, it only adds error to error, as if life more abundantly could be in Him risen without life eternal being possessed in Him even before His resurrection.

But “risen with Christ” goes beyond having life eternal, as the Lord told the believer he had when He was here below. It is a fresh privilege which none could have till He was raised from the dead. For this is the way the apostle Paul was inspired to reveal it. Christ is seen as dead and raised up from out of the dead and set at God's right hand: not Christ quickening now, and raising by-and-by, true as this is; but God raising Him by His mighty power, and ourselves who believe quickened and raised together with Him by the same power. If we possess not now eternal life in Him, still less can we be said to be quickened with Him, raised up together, and made to sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. The system betrays its absurdity inherent and evident. The two truths, eternal life now given and ourselves risen with Christ, coalesce in the Christian, but are set aside by this destructive error: and “the consciousness of eternal life” (p. 347) cannot be unless you have it now. The consciousness is false unless we have it in our souls in the most real sense.

The Epistle of John begins with eternal life in the Word of life, that we may have through the apostles' witness that fellowship with the Father and with the Son which they had. This is left out in any real sense here as elsewhere. F.E.R. says it begins with “Christian fellowship,” meaning the fellowship we have one with another in ver. 6. But this leaves out the foundation and fullness of grace conveyed in vers. 1-4, on which depends our true relationship to the Father and the Son. It starts with the holy tests due to God and His nature, which follow in vers. 510, after which comes the resource of grace, if the enjoyment of our proper place and blessed fellowship be interrupted by sin. Hence even here the “Father” reappears (ii. 1), whereas it was “God” in the interval. How shocking the blindness which wholly omits our fellowship with the Father and with His Son, reducing our privilege to “fellowship one with another”!

There is nothing deeper or higher in all the Epistle, instead of its beginning with an elementary stage, whence it rises all through to the climax of “He is the true God, and eternal life” in chap. v. 20. It is a wretched fallacy, a real disorder, a flat untruth. For it is the same true God and eternal life at the end as the Word of life at the beginning, the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to the apostles. But therein is, what is not in any part of chap. 5 nor indeed elsewhere in the Epistle, such a fullness of love expressed as our sharing with the apostles the fellowship with the Father and with His Son. This is altogether and systematically explained away. To what spirit can we attribute this? Not surely to God's Spirit, but to “the spirit of error,” of whose working the Epistle so solemnly warns us.

Undoubtedly there is immense force in the impressive close which the Spirit gives to the Epistle in chap. 5:18-21. But the notion of steps leading up from a lowly start to the greatest height of blessing is a complete misconception, even where the truth may be clearly seen. But, true to the unfailing character of this book, falsehood surreptitiously takes its place: and all that the system allows is “carrying us into the scene and sphere where Christ is Who is the true God and. eternal life” (p. 356). For, even then it is not eternal life possessed, only looked forward to in hope. Yet the Lord had declared that He gives (not “shall give” merely) life eternal to the believer, who has it, distinct from but ending in the resurrection at last, not objectively only but subjectively as “our life,” and consciously too as in John 5:13. What monstrous unbelief to doubt such ample testimony.

The same blind insubjection to scripture is seen in “What marks the fathers” (p. 348). F.E.R. says it “is that they had judged the world systems in the death of Christ.” No doubt they had; but that is what is rather attributed to the “young men” distinctively. Wholly different is what the apostle himself says (ii. 13): “I write to you, fathers, because ye have known Him that is from the beginning,” that is as manifested here; and this is simply repeated in ver. 14; whereas he enlarges on the “babes” and the “young men.” It is not a truth, but a Divine Person Incarnate showing the Father and declaring God; not His giving life merely, but Himself (the eternal life before time) come as man among men, exercised and displayed in every matter small or great, in word and deed. It is not the world judged in His death, but Himself, the True God, yet also a living man in all lowliness, and obedience, and with all love and holiness, yet in all the inscrutability of the Son. “From the beginning” (ἀπ'ἀρχῆς) is contradistinguished from the outset (ἄνωθεν) in Luke 1:2, 3, and should not be confounded; but why notice such mistakes? F.E.R. has a fatality of error, and seems raised up to contradict, undermine, and destroy as far as he can, what God-taught men labored to instill into the faithful for much more than a half-century before. “The consciousness of eternal life” (p. 150), if you have it not, is absurd and self-contradictory; the steps of progress are a fiction of his mind.

Turn we now to another chapter of blatant crudities, “Eternal Life in connection with the church” (357-375). There is the old reiteration of the only order “morally possible” (1), the Kingdom, new covenant, reconciliation, and life eternal, all falsely said to be in Rom. 5 which speaks only of the last two, here misrepresented. For even the last is but eternal life at the end, here and throughout abused to exclude eternal life at the beginning, though it be one of the most distinctive truths and important boons of the Christian as a known present possession.

P. 359 says that “the Church brings us to the truth of eternal life.” What does this mean? It is so vague that it might bear many explanations, not one of them consonant with scripture, either in the final sense which the O. T. recognizes as well as the N., or in that present sense on which Christ insists as His gift now, as He too will effect the other at His appearing. In both cases it is Christ, and not the church. F.E.R. says the church, where God's word points to Christ alone, whether at the first advent or the second. There is not an effort to cite scripture, as indeed not one word bears it out. Are not such baseless assertions from Satan? John's Gospel and First Epistle are the inspired authority for the truth of eternal life as a present gift to the believer; and neither even once speaks of “the Church.”

Here at any rate the present is in view, for “quickened with Him” is referred to; and “the whole body is, in that sense, in the life of Christ; He is the Spirit of it.” How unscriptural the language! and this to avoid and deny that the believer has life eternal! The truth is that “quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses,” is another way of regarding God's work of grace: not the Son quickening dead souls by giving them life eternal on faith, but God raising Christ out of the dead, and quickening and raising those who believe with Him. This is an advance on John 6 which teaches life eternal given in the days of His flesh, but emphatically in His death: here it is in resurrection power with Him. The error is that this is allowed according to Col. 2 but the life is denied to be eternal life according to John 6. What other life does Christ give believers? How quickened with Him, if not life eternal? It is really saying and unsaying. He adds in the same page, “Eternal life does not take you off the earth,” though admitting that “the truth in Eph. sets the saints in heaven.” Did they lose life eternal when seated there? Was there ever a more absurd scheme? It is a mania of contradicting what scripture teaches, and what brethren have hitherto believed and taught without a dissentient voice. And now—?

It is flat opposition to our Lord's plain assurance in John 5:24, 25; 6:35-40, that “you cannot get to eternal life except either by resurrection or the setting aside of death” (whatever this last means).

If God sets death aside, as in the millennium, then eternal life comes in.” Not a word of Christ giving it to the believer when He was here (to say nothing of believers previously), though no doubt to none without His death whenever it came, as it was before God for all His own when unknown. “On the other hand, we reach eternal life by reaching resurrection.” What does “reaching” eternal life signify? Not having it: for this is wholly denied. And it is for those who accept the oracle to find out. It is one of the numerous ambiguities throughout these Notes; so that weak persons are deceived to think F.E.R. does not deny the present gift and possession of life eternal, and the strong who know better shut their ears and hold their tongues. Do they flatter themselves that they thereby escape responsibility? Where is their faith working by love?

Passing over questionable and false assertions of no less moment, we hear again (362), “I don't see any meaning in its [eternal life's] application to heaven.” What an egregious statement to one who weighs 1 John 1 to 5:20! We have it communicated to us here: else we do not belong to Him at all; and by the Spirit as power we enjoy. So too are we transformed by beholding God's glory in His face on high, and await His coming to have the same life completely, even for the body, when He will take us up to the Father's house. Christ is eternal life, and on receiving Him we receive eternal life, but only receive it in full when conformed to Him for glory. No doubt it is superior to death, and the believer on Christ, though dead, shall live; but so little has it “to say to death” in itself, that everyone who lives and believes on Him shall never die (John 11:25, 26). For we shall not all sleep, but we shall be all changed. So universally false is every detail. When we go from this earth, eternal life cease or have no longer force (363)! If these men were Jews, one could comprehend. As to it all F.E.R. judaizes, and renounces the special Christian truth, not only of life eternal now but of its only completeness at Christ's coming for and in heavenly glory. A more shocking delusion and antagonism to plain scripture, who can find?

Leaving lesser thoughts, we take up what is said of 1 John 1:2. Every true-hearted person accepts the simple but momentous truth that the life eternal was with the Father before it was manifested to the chosen witnesses here below. There was the source and the home proper to it; and there is that life eternal now. And if we have that life, we have it in Him above. This gave the true meaning of “the sphere.” Life eternal is hers said to be with the Father before the manifestation on earth. It was in its own eternal sphere. Now we have it truly, but in a wholly different sphere; but we await His coming to have it completely where He was and now is. “The world to come” will only know it in a partial and imperfect way, where righteousness reigns, and power suppresses evil; yet there evil is and will break out openly when the wicked one is let loose to call it forth. But this error-loving book lowers the being and gift of the life eternal with the Father to “a moral statement,” which is false; and “an abstract way” applicable to us ("true in Him and in us”), which is also false, for this becomes only true in us “after He rose from the dead.” And again, “in the assembly you are risen with Christ.” What fumbling in the dark! And when one asked “the significance of the term, you touch eternal life” (not the terms of scripture where it is unknown, but a nonsensical invention), the answer of gloom came forth— “Your soul comes into contact with what is outside of death, that is, Christ Himself and the saints looked at as risen with Him; we are called to priestly service and that is where I understand the soul touches the reality of eternal life.” Q. Cannot we touch eternal life outside of the assembly, individually, I mean?” F.E.R. “I don't think so!”

Can there be a more melancholy exhibition of departure from the divine faith of a Christian? F.E.R. owns some sort of a life, but not eternal life. Not only is the individual believer denied, though our Lord affirms it of him, but “in the assembly you are risen with Christ” (a rare utterance of folly), you have not life eternal—not even those on whom the Lord breathed His risen life in the Spirit; you only “touch” its reality And the reason why so little is known about eternal life is “because so little is known about the assembly!!!” Can aught be a more shameless slight of the Son of God? Is it not the voice of Babylon? And J.S.A. asked, “If he is going to die, how can he say he has actually got eternal life?” F.E.R. “It is an enigma to me” (p. 374). Has the enemy cheated these men, not only of divine truth, but of common sense? Did not Christ die, Who was and is the eternal life? Why should one's having life eternal in the soul preserve one from death of the body? So of 1 John 5:13 F.E.R. says, “You are conscious of it—but not as a possession(!).” Can there be a stranger or falser notion? One might have a thing and not be conscious of it; but how be conscious that you have eternal life, and not possess it? It is indeed a delusion.

The last reading (376-396) and the last address (397-406) call for few remarks, though full of the same or kindred errors as we have noticed. But as we have seen the utmost violence done to the truth in leveling down eternal life for the Christian to a Jewish measure, and hence denying its present reception, so here we have Abraham's blessing leveled up to the height of life eternal, as indeed it appeared earlier. Naturally the usual vagueness prevails; yet there is no thought of Abraham having life eternal: but “I think the blessing of Abraham will be eternal life... You get it, I think, in Psa. 133; There the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.'“ How simple divine revelation would be, if one could solve deep questions so easily! Because Jehovah promised, “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed “: and the Psalm speaks of the blessing, even life for evermore, therefore it is the same thing! Q.E.D.

Rash assertions are repeated on the scriptures, especially “It is no good sending out Bibles if, there are not preachers.” Is this from God's Spirit or from another? 1 John 4:1. Again in regard to certain things which have come out in this country as to eternal life, “the difficulty was that the limit of scripture was transgressed: the moment you get beyond the limit of scripture you are a transgressor.” Pretty bold this from F.E.R. Had all brethren transgressed scripture in affirming, on the word of the Lord, that the believer has life eternal, till all was set right by the audacious denial that any believer possesses it now? And how are those who know he is a transgressor, not only in this but almost every Christian truth, content to wink at the evil?

This declension, this high-minded departure from what once characterized, is of a piece with the denial of life eternal, not in the Jewish future form, but in its incomparably higher Christian privilege.

That will be when Messiah comes to reign. This was when the Son came, all the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Him bodily. No one doubts the blessing then, life evermore for Israel and the nations. But O! what blindness to the True God and eternal life, not only in the person of Christ when on earth, but shining out more brightly still when He died and rose! And this in giving eternal life to the believer now, so that he has it, and comes not into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. Apostasy from this essential Christian truth is a horror. Christ's words in John's Gospel are so clear that one can only impute their rejection to the deceiving power of the old serpent.

It is the distinctive character of the N.T. to reveal in Christ God come down to earth, and later Man in Him ascended up to heaven. The O.T. in its brightest aspect is predictive in type and shadow, in promise and prophecy. The N.T. starts with the Promised One come (Matt. 1) and in Luke 4 proclaiming, To-day is this scripture [Isa. 61, as far as He read] fulfilled in your ears. His death in rejection led to the Light shining brighter far in His resurrection. It was life abundantly to those who had it already, bound to tell others of life eternal. But the Holy Spirit, both in His action on believers and in oral teaching as well as the inspired writings which followed, wrought as the Spirit not merely of prophecy but of present communion, a fountain within springing up, and rivers of living water flowing out. As He sealed the Son of man, He sealed the believers; and this not merely as having life and light but in virtue of Christ's work. In Him is the Yea; wherefore through Him is the Amen for glory to God by us. But it is the unbelieving rejection of this present power and fullness of blessing in Christ, which alike denies the actual possession of life eternal and the unspeakable value of the scriptures, especially of the N.T. so called. It is accomplishment we have now, not merely “promise “; it is the thing promised before the world began, brought to light by the gospel and enjoyed in the power of the Spirit.

This is in keeping with the slighting of the “living oracles” in p. 125. Like rationalists, J.C. said, “the word of God is in the scriptures;” like Quakers, F.E.R. evasively replies, “Christ is the word of God;” but he too can scarcely be unaware that what he added is just the unbelieving phrase of higher criticism at home and abroad. “The scriptures are more the record of it, than the thing itself.” Every word proceeds out of the mouth of God. They are spirit and life to man sin-sick and indeed dead. They feed the soul as well as quicken it by ministering Christ through the Spirit. They cleanse our feet when defiled, in answer to Christ's advocacy. Time would fail to tell the manifold blessings, which the scriptures confer, though surely not apart from Christ and the Holy Spirit. This unworthy belittling is the precise opposite of what pleases God, or what Christ exemplified.

It is nothing to the purpose that when Paul spoke to the elders in Acts 20, the New Testament was not yet written. Those whom God inspired to write it in due time communicated in the Spirit the same truth from Pentecost which was afterward written by the same Spirit. If we have not the living apostles and prophets, faith is beyond expression grateful for the written word. This, even in a partial shape, our Lord teaches us to set before His oral testimony because of its divinely given permanency: “If ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?” It is all the more sad that such thankless unbelief should emanate from companions of men of God conspicuous for Bible love and scriptural intelligence and self-sacrificing devotedness beyond any of whom we read since post-apostolic times. O how fallen, fallen, such followers!

Let two remarks on the address suffice. “Those who minded earthly things” does not mean the grossness of “unsubdued flesh” (404), but rather flesh religious, seeking its own things, without living association with Christ on high. Alas! it is and has been ever since the religion of the day. They are enemies, not exactly of Christ, but of His cross. It is a fair show in the flesh, not its corrupt or violent working.

Equally 1 John 3:2 is turned upside down. “It is not that I see Him to be like Him, but I am made like Him in order that I might see Him” (408). Faithful to his mission F.E.R. seems to have no pleasure so prized, or so frequent, as contradicting scripture. The apostle says just the reverse. “We shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.” To be made like Him first is to have no cause, or at least not the divinely assigned cause for it. What fatality and perversity of contradicting scripture!

F.E.R. Heterodox on the Person of the Christ

IN F.E.R.'s Notes of Readings in America little said on the Person of Christ demands animadversion: But as deep unsoundness thereon has elsewhere appeared, tainting all else as it must, a brief notice is here given.

Like B.W.N. he does not deny the true deity or the perfect humanity of Christ. But the mind of man readily overthrows the truth of His Person otherwise. So Mr. N. did by his teaching that distance in Christ's relation to God was involved in His birth of woman. Still more boldly does F.E.R. assail the common faith of God's elect. This he knows quite well; for he denies that its truth “consists in the union in Him of God and Man.” I am content to denounce his own form of denial as a lie against the truth. He has trusted his mind in trying to explain the very point of the Son's inscrutability. The question is not simply of the divine and eternal personality of the Word, but of Him incarnate. The truth no less clearly revealed is that He became flesh, Christ Jesus Man henceforward, as surely as also God from everlasting to everlasting.

It is to the unity of the two natures in His Person that he objects, and in very revolting and contemptuous terms, where reverence and self-distrust were pre-eminently called for. Yet he knew that he was not only opposing but striving to put shame on the confession of every saint who has written on it, as far as is known through all the church of God, to say nothing of every teacher esteemed among Brethren. Here are his words (7 Dec. 1893)— “Where the idea of unity of a person is got from I know not. It seems to me perfect nonsense. The idea of person does not bring in the thought of either parts or unity. A person is that person in every variety of relations he may enter. No one would accuse me of dividing the person of the Queen because I said that in her home life she was seen distinct and apart from what she is as Queen. It is two totally distinct ideas coalesced in one person, but which can be separately presented and apprehended.”

Now who does not know that a person among men consists of both parts and unity? There are spirit and soul and body; and yet they constitute the person. There may be temporary dissolution of the outer tie by death; there will surely be their unity in one person for eternity. But for the true believer Christ's Person is distinguished from every other by the infinite fact of God and man united thus. These are in Him forever indissoluble, though no saint doubts that He is Son of God and Son of man. Whatever His profound emotion in spirit, whatever the conflict when He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat became as great drops of blood, that Man was inseparably God; and as from His conception, so fully in His death and resurrection. Thus had His every word, work, thought, and suffering divine value. It is not the Son alone, but “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever.” The man Christ Jesus is not only the one Mediator, but the true God and eternal life; the sent Servant, and the “I am"; Christ of the fathers as according to flesh, yet He that is over all, God blessed for evermore. Amen.

Deny the unity of His person, of the Word become flesh; and all the truth of His life and death dissolves, His atoning work thus being utterly subverted; on which depends not only man's salvation, the reconciling of the creature, and the new heavens and earth, but the moral glory of God in view of sin, His counsels of grace as to Christ and the church, and His triumphant rest in men for all eternity. Think of the Queen or any other human being adduced to solve the great mystery of godliness! What have various relations or differing conditions to do with the divine and the human united in one sole Person, the Christ of God, the knot which man's wicked wit and will dare to judge, and essay to untie to his own destruction? Truly “fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” where saints love to believe, prostrate themselves, and adore. To F.E.R. IT SEEMS PERFECT NONSENSE!

Brethren, have you ever heard of a Christian who did not thus confess Christ? Hare is one called a brother, and claiming to teach, who utters his scornful unbelief of Christ's Person in terms which must have insured his expulsion with horror from all fellowship of saints in former days. Who has a doubt that then it would have raised an impassable barrier? Only of the Lord Jesus could such a unity be predicated, for in Him alone were the two natures forever united. F.E.R. talks of the Queen! and “two totally different ideas coalesced in one person!” Yes, it is not truth, but “ideas” for F.E.R. Is this to “abide in the doctrine of the Christ”?

It is to join Apollinarius of Antioch (the son). He too made the Logos simply form Christ's Person, as F.E.R. does, and was therefore justly branded as an antichrist; so Nestorius was for dividing the Person; and Eutyches for confusing it: all of them, strict Trinitarians. For if the Logos had not been united to the soul as to spirit and body in the Christ, Christ was not and is not very Man as well as very God. Without that union there must have been two distinct personalities, the divine and the human. It is the union of both in one Person which alone secures the truth according to scripture. F.E.R. with shameless self-confidence vaunts his idea, which is plain heterodoxy. He does not “bring the doctrine” of Christ. The Son did not change His Person, but took up manhood into unity, and this in soul as in body.

In some such way deadly false doctrine befalls such as venture to pry into what is only known to the Father and immeasurably above man's ken. The Apollinarian heterodoxy prevails largely at present; as the error which led to it is a relic of heathen philosophy, accepted by early Fathers such as Clement of Alexandria, and exceedingly common among “thinkers” now as at all times. It pervades Franz Delitzsch's Psychology and its English analogue, The Tripartite Nature of Man. They (and F.E.R. follows them) make the self-conscious “I” or individuality to reside in man's spirit. But scripture abundantly proves its seat to be in the soul. The spirit is inner capacity as to which man is responsible to God; but the soul is that in which he is so; and the body is the outer vessel which displays the result, whether by grace for God's will or by self-will in Satan's service. To the soul belongs the working of the will, and now also since the fall the instinctive knowledge of good and evil; so that one is enticed into fleshly lusts which degrade man, as well as into reasonings of the spirit and every high thing that lifts itself up against the knowledge of God. Hence we read of soul-salvation or “salvation of souls.”

The error falsifies the truth in human things and yet more in divine. F.E.R. has fallen into Satan's trap in the most solemn of all truths through morbid self-confidence, and the mania of correcting every body by the standard of his fanciful ideas. He has imagined for the Christ a being, Who, if God, is certainly not complete man. For in his theory the soul does not enter Christ's personality which is exclusively the Logos. Thus he bans that unity of the two natures which every saint hitherto confessed to be in Christ's Person. He was already wrong as to man's person; for like the philosophers he follows the error of the heathen, and ignores the teaching of scripture which points to “the soul” by many plain and irrefragable proofs. But the awful weight of the falsehood lies in his audacious rising up against faith's mystery of Him Who was manifested in flesh (the body prepared for God's Son), not taken up as a condition but united with Himself indivisibly to all eternity for God's work, ways, and counsels. If we rightly say condition, it is that of humanity sustained by Deity in the Person of the Christ.

Beyond doubt the union of God and man in one Person is the wondrous and unfathomable One revealed, not for our comprehension, but for unquestioning faith, love, and honor as we honor the Father. He is thus at once the weary man and the only-begotten Son that is (not “was” merely) in the Father's bosom; the Son of man here below that is in heaven, and the “I am” on earth threatened by the Jews with stoning because He told them the truth. He must have been the Logos to have been what He was here as man. His soul was united to the Logos: else the Person had been doubled or severed, and He could not be true and complete man. He cried, Let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt. There was His holy will; and it was right to lay it before His Father, but in entire submissiveness to His will and glory; of which none but a divine Person was capable. It was not therefore the Logos superseding the spirit, still less the soul, but perfectly associated with the soul in His one Person. He was true man and true God in the same indivisible Person. In Him dwelt and dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

Yet it is deep pain to feel compelled to speak out plainly, on such a theme not only before others liable to stumble, but in the sense of one's own danger of offending against God's word in defense of what is dearer than life, and far beyond man's thought. Indeed some may be surprised to learn that it was most distasteful to say anything more. A warning I did give in 1890, and a brief leaflet, when the Weston-super-mare Notes disclosed the impious libel against the Lord, that, “Becoming a man, He becomes the Logos.” Many hoped that it might be but a slip; but if so, why was it not confessed in sackcloth and ashes? Understanding that it has been defended since, what must one fear? At any rate when the volume unasked for was sent me, not a page was read for years. At length having dipt into it, I perceived an astounding progress of unabashed evil. Even then I intended no more than a short paper on “Life Eternal,” and another on its denial as a present gift. As one read on, it seemed a duty to expose unsparingly the system of error in general. This may account for a lack of due order through enlarging the original design.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Sheol

Q.-How are we to understand Sheol in the O. T. as in Jonah 2:2? also Num. 16:33? If a place of punishment, how is it in Psa. 16:10?—Earnest Inquirer.

A.-There is vagueness as to the unseen in the O.T. The gospel only has brought to light life and incorruption. But we never do find Sheol or Hades associated with joy or blessing like Abraham's bosom or paradise. Consistently therewith Psa. 16:10 teaches that Jehovah would not leave Messiah's soul unto Hades, any more than His body to see corruption. To leave in seems the force of neither Hebrew nor Greek in the correct text; and early superstition made much of the error, revived widely in our day. The Revisers are right in Psa. 16:10, wrong in Acts 2:27, 31.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Reconciled to God

Q.-Do Luke 14:17, Rom. 10:9, and 2 Cor. 5:20 refer to the gospel? Do saints need to be reconciled to God? and what is the bearing of Matt. 18:20? J. H. K.

A.-The three texts cited together are unequivocally the glad tidings for those not yet saved, though no doubt in inspired writings addressed to saints. For they need a standard that the message of grace be kept intact and unclogged. The notion that saints, and especially of the church of God, require to be reconciled is an outrage against the truth, and a virtual denial of the gospel. Whoever teaches thus is an impostor. As to the last text, the Lord puts His presence in the midst of those gathered unto His name as the general principle, whether for discipline in ver. 17, binding or loosing in 18, prayer in 19; and in 20 it might be for any legitimate purpose wider still, even if there were but two or three thus gathered to the only true and gracious center.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Greek Words for Eternal

Q.-What is the difference between ἀΐδιος (in Rom. 1:20 and Jude 6) and αἰώνιος, the much more frequent word for “eternal”? The learned authorities seem to have nothing to say. B.

A.-Though both are derived from «el (the latter strengthened, as the Stagirite tells us, by the participle of being, e.;y), the usage of the N. T. helps us to discern. These are the only two inspired occurrences of the former; and they are external, as compared with the deeper associations of the latter. The passage in Romans does not rise above what the natural mind might and ought to know, His invisible things apprehended through the things that are made, both His everlasting power and divinity (not His Godhead properly, which dwelt and dwells in Christ), so as to make them inexcusable if they turn to idols. The second of the two words is applied to the eternal God who reveals Himself in Christ and through the gospel as well as the church, as e.g. in chap. xvi. 26 of the same Epistle. But again the “everlasting chains,” in which He has kept and keeps the apostate angels under gloomy darkness, points to the judicial action of His power, not to His nature or His gracious counsels which befit or require the other word.

Advertising

TITUS & PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth, 2/-

T H E REVELATION 2/-.

One Body and One Spirit, revised... 2d.

THE LORD'S PRAYER, a New Edition, 3d.

THE FEASTS OF JEHOVAH, a New Edition, 6d.

LIFE ETERNAL, 2d.

LIFE ETERNAL DENIED, parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 2d. each.

EZEKIEL'S LAST PARABLE, by Mrs. Bevan, cloth, 2/6.

Publishing

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly

Jacob: 6. Leah and Rachel Again

There is a twofold lesson in these divine sketches, which eludes the erudite unbelief which sits in judgment only to despise, and remains in really self-satisfied ignorance. For they present, to the life, the humbling history of the ancestor of a people destined to be God's possession for the earth by His own choice, spite of these petty ways. They also let us into the secret of that grace in God which rose above all that was immeasurably detestable to His nature in light and love, and even looked on to Him who was to come of this very family, the Christ that is over all, God blessed forever, as truly God as His Father. It may well be doubted if such glorious hopes were then before the two wives, as the pious Bishop Patrick credits them with; but we are assured that such halo as this did faith give to many a Hebrew matron, grounded on the promises to their fathers, and stretching on to Him who should appear to make them all good. Besides, was there not food for reflection in that Moses was inspired to write these things down imperishably for their children throughout ages and generations, too sorrowfully like those from whom they sprang? And for us who come in on their downfall and before their restoration, for us who inherit better blessings as joint-heirs with Him who is glorified in heaven, and is coming to take us into the same glory on high, is there not abundant profit for our souls? The flesh never changes for good: in it good does not dwell. If we live, it is by the faith of the Son of God: and Christ it is, not the old self dead to God, that lives in each Christian.

“And Reuben went out in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field; and he brought them to his mother Leah. And Rachel said to Leah, Give me, I pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes. And she said to her, Is it little that thou hast taken my husband, that thou wilt take my son's mandrakes also? And Rachel said, Therefore he shall lie with thee to-night for thy son's mandrakes. And when Jacob came from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, Thou must come in to me, for indeed I have hired thee with my son's mandrakes. And he lay with her that night. And God hearkened to Leah; and she bore Jacob a fifth son. And Leah said, God hath given me my hire, because I gave my bond-maid to my husband; and she called his name Issachar (There is hire). And Leah again conceived, and bore Jacob a sixth son; and Leah said, God hath endowed me with a good dowry; this time will my husband dwell with me, because I have borne him six sons. And she called his name Zebulun (Dwelling). Afterward she bore a daughter and called her name Dinah (Judged). And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb. And she conceived and bore a son, and said, God hath taken away my reproach. And she called his name Joseph (He will add); and said, Jehovah will add to me another son” (vers. 14-24).

No veil is cast over their deplorable unbelief and self-seeking, no excuse for their superstitious trust in the efficacy of love-apples, just like other Syrian women given only to the vanities of the heathen. It is clear that Rachel profited nothing by the child Reuben's discovery; but that God pitied Leah who sought to share her husband's affection, and bore him now a fifth son and a sixth, besides a daughter. But how strangely low Leah's state in regarding Issachar as her hire from God, because she gave her bondmaid to Jacob; and in calling Zebulun from her fond hope that her husband's love would prove abiding. Nor did the daughter's name indicate any higher view, being akin to that of Dan.

Rachel at length, as we read here, becomes the occasion of refreshment for the heart in the considerate tenderness of God's ways; Who, after her long humiliation because of her unworthy self-seeking, was pleased to pity her and give her a son so earnestly desired. Then she said, God hath taken away my reproach; for notwithstanding her lofty bearing she was sensible that she was under chastening. The name she gave her firstborn is striking; for Joseph means He will add. As she said, Jehovah will add to me another. Her faith saw in Joseph the promise of Benjamin. Never before had she reached this level of expectation. For the mouth tells the secret or certainly the abundance of the heart. God—Jehovah—was now before her. Yet how little she knew that Benjamin would be Benoni, of his father's right hand, of his mother's sorrow; for his birth must prove her death. How much better to confide in unfailing love and wisdom than to set the heart on any object!

When Messiah takes up repentant Israel for everlasting joy and blessing under the new covenant in the last days, how will not the children ponder these early annals of their progenitors, so long reproduced in their own history of painful failure under the law How sweet to their hearts to recognize that their blessing and glory, under Him whom alas! they long despised blindly, are all and only of divine mercy.

Priesthood: 32. The Atonement for Flux

It is of great importance and instruction to see how Israel were taught to regard these loathsome experiences according to their relationship with Jehovah. Other nations were occupied with second causes. They were taught that, as God had to do with them in these marks of humiliation, so had they to do with Him. And He condescended to signify His sense of their defiled condition by entering into every little detail of their movements by day and of rest by night, so as to impress them with what sin had brought on the guilty. Their wisdom was to heed these lessons, if strangers to Him despised His word and them also for submission to it.

When the day of Jehovah comes, how will they not rejoice in what grace will give them! Israel will then sing, “Bless Jehovah, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits; Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; Who healeth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; Who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies; Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.” As His earthly people they will enjoy the reversal of their old uncleanness, and infirmities, along with soul blessing and external power. As heavenly, the Christian is called to suffer now, yet knowing himself one spirit with the Lord, and awaiting His coming to be with Him in the mansions of the Father's house, as well as to share His exaltation over all things. The contrast is great: God has provided concerning us some better thing, not only than Israel's millennial place, but even than the elders who receive the promise in that day, though they will be perfected together in that day of blessing on all sides.

“"And when he that hath a flux is cleansed of his flux, then he shall count seven days for his cleansing, and wash his raiment, and bathe his flesh in living water, and he shall be clean. “And on the eighth day he shall take two turtle-doves or two young pigeons, and come before Jehovah unto the entrance of the tent of meeting, and give them unto the priest. “And the priest shall offer them, one as a sin-offering and the other as a burnt offering; and the priest shall make atonement for him before Jehovah for his flux” (vers. 13-15).

Still more distinctly does the recognition of Jehovah rise when the flux ceased. A complete term ensued for his cleansing. His clothes were washed, and his flesh bathed in running water. Thus only did he become truly clean. Then on the eighth day he took an offering, expressly in other cases adapted to the poor in Israel, but here for all alike, when any were to be cleared from this defilement. He took to him two turtle-doves or two young pigeons, and came before Jehovah unto the entrance of the tent of meeting, and gave them to the priest. And the priest was directed to offer them, small as they were with all due reverence, the one as a Sin-offering, and the other as a Burnt-offering. Nor was the offerer to doubt of the issue: the priest shall make atonement for him before Jehovah for his flux.

How fitting that the day of resurrection should be the epoch of deliverance! Thenceforward the defilement was a thing of the past. If we need to feel the days of shame over uncleanness, God would have him who rests on Christ both for his own sin and for Christ's acceptance to enter into the joyful assurance that all is clear. But on the face of the ordinance while we have what typifies the washing of water by the word, which only the Holy Spirit makes effectual by recalling Christ to us, nothing avails without the one great sacrifice. And this is both to efface the evil and to impart full acceptance in all the worth of Christ. What grace is in God to turn what is so humiliating into a deepening sense of what His work secures to faith!

The Day of Atonement: 17. Concluding Remarks

Hence one cannot but feel that the modern fashion of singing the gospel, in an elaborate solo or perhaps a very lively “service of song,” seems singularly unapostolic and a dangerous innovation. The levity of it is most opposed to the whole spirit of the Day of Atonement which suggests the remark. What is the soul being brought to God by the gospel, but the present application of that great Day to such a one? Look at the contrast between the word of God and the prevalent style in our day. Perhaps it may be hitting rather hard some who are near and valued for their work's sake. While wishing to be as far from personality as possible, I yet mean to set aside unsparingly anything which is contrary to God's word; and if brethren complain of not being let alone, surely so much the worse for them. After all it is much better to try all by the word, lest the truth of God be sacrificed to human zeal and popular ways. How will it stand at the latter end? Surely it is a great boon to be delivered from mistake that we may do the will of God.

The history of this word “gladly” really is that it comes from another part of the Acts of the Apostles (21:17). It is a word occurring but this once in the N. T. and rightly applied to receiving beloved servants of the Lord. This curiously illustrates how a word, sometimes a clause, gets occasionally where it ought not. We can understand how brethren who saw the apostle with other servants of the Lord would gladly receive them. One feels how proper this was for men who were at rest and peace with God. But in Acts 2 souls were first brought face to face with their sins, and this in the presence of God. Did not solemnity become them at the most important epoch of their lives? It is not questioned that, whatever may be the difficulties, the result will be joy and peace; but we are speaking now of the process, and of the proper, legitimate, and desirable effect of the word of God in dealing with souls submitting to it and for the first time taking their stand as confessors of Christ as individuals in the light.

Further, one may notice how one part of the scriptures tallies with another. When the Israelites, with the blood sprinkled on their doors, were eating the body of the lamb, was it with the blowing of trumpets or the striking of cymbals? Do not fancy that they did not sing at other times. Only two chapters afterward we find the song of Moses, and of Miriam, &c., with their timbrels. They sang on the Arabian bank of the Red Sea, but we hear of no song when they first celebrated the Paschal night. They ate the body of the lamb “with bitter herbs.” What does this mean? Certainly not “gladly” receiving His word. They did indeed receive His word, but with deep solemnity and self-judgment. It was in the due sense of their sins; and sin is not a matter to sing, smile, or talk lightly about. No wonder that the fruits of the work, on our modern lines, are so unlike apostolic simplicity and depth.

It seems dangerous to invite souls to gladness not merely for the unconverted, but those ostensibly under conviction of sin and in the process of conversion, souls that you seriously charge to receive God's word. Is it not true then that what answers to one type or another, as well as the plain account of scripture, is the need of solemn dealing with the conscience? For one must be inwardly cleared before God, in order that the heart in due time may go out with freedom of affection. Until the soul is set at large by faith in the work of Christ, it is not rightly fitted for sharing the expression of joy. Still less is it advisable to reason or persuade souls into believing prematurely that they are saved. Thus is the conscience injured, as well as the grace of the Lord. It would make internal dealing quite superfluous, and substitute a call to the affections, instead of ministering Christ's work of atonement to the burdened spirit. The proper thing is that the conscience first be awakened and cleared: then the affections have their suited work and expression afterward.

Thus exactly was the way of the Lord with the woman of Samaria, who was at first without self-judgment. Christ knew that she had no husband, and by His word her sin was laid upon her conscience, and in this way she was truly brought before God. It was the same with the prodigal. There was no gladness till after he met his father, though enough hope in his mercy to draw him on. Not that there was not misery, but conscience was made to work within him. Therefore it may be fittingly pressed, as an urgent duty, that care be taken, not only in preaching but in the service one sanctions, that there be no departure from the plainly revealed will of God. It is for Christians to carry truth out, not merely in this or in that, but in everything. With the atonement God's word insists on the afflicting of the soul. Not that doubt or distrust can be ever right or tolerable. Anything of the kind differs wholly from humiliation before God. To cherish questions or fears is rather to hinder than to help on the afflicting of the soul, which should surely be real; and of this there can scarce be too much where the heart is looking to Christ and His atonement. The more this is rested on, the more can you praise God for the truth which humbles, and for His grace in that precious blood which cleanses from all sin. The name of Jesus for saving the soul ill consorts with levity of spirit or fleshly excitement; and the expression of joy does not surely befit the moment when God is bringing His all-searching word to bear on the heart as well as the life in His sight.

But this is not all. There was another thing which was particularly bound up with the Day of Atonement: not only “ye shall afflict your souls,” put also “do no work at all.” Is not this injunction remarkable at such a time? It was not a question whether it was the usual sabbath or not. The Day of Atonement peremptorily excluded man's works in that connection. It is impossible to deny that work is a most weighty part of a Christian's duty. Our Lord was always doing the work that the Father gave Him to do; as every Christian is called to do the good works which God afore prepared that he should walk in them. The Christian is not made to be only a meditative being with heart and mind pondering the truth. This is all-important in its place; but he is called to dependence yet diligence, to obedience and even energy in serving the Lord. But the energy should always follow the meditation. Let the activity flow out of that which passes between himself and God. It is a dangerous thing, when God is showing the evil of sin and His atonement by Christ for all who believe Him to turn aside into merriness of heart. The soul at such a moment should be afflicted, instead of being transported by music and singing, by a solo, or a choir, or any form whatever of exhilaration.

When one can rest in faith, rejoicing cannot but be. The singing of saints is quite another matter. What more proper when filled with the Spirit than to speak to one another in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs? This wholly differs from introducing music to soothe or stimulate; the soul whom the Spirit would exercise in self-judgment. Among happy saints it is a question perfectly settled: the outbursts of thanksgiving and praise may well fill up the ordinary life of the Christian. But the first injunction to which God calls in the presence of the Day of Atonement is grief of heart because of our sins, though God is covering them with the blood of propitiation.

Connected with this is this second call to no work of man on that day. Had our works been as good as alas we had to own them bad, how suitable for us to rest before the infinite work of the Savior in atoning for sinners! “Lo, I come, to do Thy will, O God.” “By which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” What has God's will not done? In the perfection of His sacrifice it has not only blotted out our sins, but set us apart to God as a settled fact. Sacrifice and offering, holocaust and sacrifice for sin, are all swallowed up in that one offering. By one offering He has perfected forever them that are sanctified. What more is needed by man? What more could God do rightly for us in our present pilgrimage on earth? Therefore, as the just mark of recognizing that it was all His work, unmixed with anything on our part, His people, and even the stranger sojourning among them, were forbidden all manner of work on that day. “It is a sabbath of solemn rest among you, and ye shall afflict your souls; it is a sabbath forever” (ver. 31). No levity of heart on the one hand, and on the other no presumptuous adding of their works to the great atoning work which was then wrought and made known to the people of God.

Look at the apostle Paul. There we have a man who afflicted his soul, and eschewed all merit on his part, though found blameless as to righteousness that is in law. His was a case of deeply wrought conversion; he was so, absorbed that he neither ate nor drank for three days and nights; so filled was he with the sense of utter sinfulness as well as with the truth of God's atonement in Christ. Blinded with excess of light, he had no room for another person or other works. Self was profoundly judged. He was completely shut up to Christ's glorious Person and the triumph of grace reigning through righteousness, which God had revealed to his once proud but now afflicted soul.

It is allowed that conversion may be real where every trait is feebler. The jailor in the prison at Philippi was one who soon emerged from his overwhelming horror after he received the Lord Jesus. We may hope he got well through the perils of the wilderness, and have no reason to doubt it. But still his was a case very different from the apostle's; and it is not hard to discern a considerable difference in the way in which people are brought to God, as a general rule. There was affliction, but ere long rejoicing on the jailor's part and his whole house. Not that he did not truly repent, for we may be sure he did. In every true case there is the afflicting of the soul; but if there be not a deep searching of heart, the affliction soon passes. Ordinarily the heart rebounds, and one gets ere long occupied far more with the joy of the good things grace has given. A deeper self-judgment casts one on Christ, yet more than on the deliverance from evil, however truly this may be felt before God.

Passingly we may notice that some are charged with not enough valuing the Old Testament; but assuredly this can scarcely apply to such as give it the importance we here claim and enforce. We believe it to be of God, no less divinely inspired than the New. It is true you have in the Levitical institutions only the shadows, but also most instructive dealings of God, promises, and prophecies, besides examples for good and warnings of evil, all fruitful indeed. You cannot safely and profitably read Exodus or Leviticus without the full light of the New Testament; but the believer accepts the word as a whole. The sacred letters (2 Tim. 3:15) throughout were written by the Holy Ghost. Thankfully, humbly, one accepts all as good for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, as also for comfort and admonition. So what has been brought before us at this time is not without holy and serious import, as in an important way it bears on the habits growing up during this degenerate day in Christendom.

Proverbs 15:26-33

Outward as was the life of an Israelite compared with that of a Christian, which had its first pattern and fullness in Christ Himself, God did not leave His people without the light of deeper things. So we find here in the first maxim, and not less may we discern elsewhere on fitting occasion.

“Evil thoughts [or, devices are] an abomination to Jehovah; but pure words [are] pleasant.

He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house; but he that hateth gifts shall live.

The heart of the righteous studieth to answer; but the mouth of the wicked poureth out evil things.

Jehovah [is] far from the wicked; but he heareth the prayer of the righteous.

That which enlighteneth the eyes rejoiceth the heart; good tidings make the bones fat.

The ear that heareth the reproof of life shall abide among the wise.

He that refuseth instruction despiseth his own soul; but he that heareth reproof getteth heart [or, sense].

The fear of Jehovah [is] the instruction of wisdom; and before honor [goeth] humility” (vers. 26-33).

It is sad enough when evil appears, and we cannot but recognize it. But evil thoughts without a ground for them are the deepest offense to Him before Whom all is manifest, and Who would have His people simple concerning it, and confiding in Himself. Pure words contrariwise are pleasant not to Him only but to all save the wicked.

Greed of gain troubles every one with whom it comes in contact, and especially those nearest him that indulges it, his own house. He that hates gifts, instead of looking out for them, has chosen the good part. It is the path of faith, pleases God, and awaits another, a better, day.

Our answers need divine wisdom, for around us is an evil world; and neither Law, Psalms, nor Prophets failed to warn of a nature prone to evil, though only the gospel pronounces us lost. Hence the need for the righteous that the heart should study to answer, lest a wrong or deceitful word should provoke a hasty word or elicit no better. Where fear of God controls not, from the mouth of the wicked flows a stream of evil things.

As the wicked has no thought of Jehovah, so is He far from such; but how precious and sure is His ear in listening to the prayers of the righteous!

Even before as well as after this, how much, how constantly, He supplies words of goodness to cheer and guide! Thus are the eyes enlightened from above and the heart rejoiced: good tidings make the bones fat, as is said here, without any counterpart of evil to warn.

And so it is in the next adage. Very great is the blessing to the love that welcomes, instead of disdaining, the reproof of life; it ensures abiding among the wise. Otherwise it is an easy thing to turn, and turn again, to folly.

On the other hand, great is the danger and the sin of refusing instruction; but he that hears it even in the painful form of reproof acquires heart, which is surely better than silver and gold.

Then the fear of Jehovah is the instruction of wisdom. What can exceed or equal its gain? With it goes humility, and from it honor; as we read in the instructive trial of Job who had to unlearn every good thought of himself, and in the humiliation of his friends who trusted in their evil thoughts, based on appearances, and unrighteous. Thus let him that glories glory in the Lord.

Garments White and Head Anointed

We take these words spiritually, as an exhortation to personal holiness, and to personal joy. For God hath not called us unto uncleanness but unto holiness (1 Thess. 4:7). Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord (Heb. 12:14). They are not for such as are yet in their sins of scarlet and crimson (Isa. 1:18), but for those who, once in that guilty condition, have accepted the invitation there given, and are now white as snow. They have heard the Savior's voice (Matt. 11:28), and have laid their heavy burden down, “down at Jesus' feet,” and now rest in Him by faith through His all-atoning work. “And such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11). For both He that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are all of one; for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren (Heb. 2:11).

The great apostle says, For to me to live is Christ (Phil. 1:21). Alas! the inconsistency of many professing Christians has been since his day a cause of scorn and stumbling. Those outside read our daily lives, and are influenced more thereby than by what we say. The apostle could always point to himself: take an example among others from Phil. 4:9, Those things, which ye hath both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do; and the God of peace shall be with you. Weak as we are, by continually looking to Jesus, we may be strong. “My grace is sufficient.” Otherwise we walk as men, careless, thoughtless, watchless, prayerless, selfish, and worldly. Thus we defile our garments. Like “little children weak,” we often fall down. Is it not so? “And let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed, lest he fall.”

May the desire of all God's children then be for garments always white. White is an emblem of purity. Pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, to keep himself unspotted from the world (James 1:27). Let us hate even the garment spotted by the flesh (Jude 23). Spots are plain on a white garment. Hence the Lord counsels us “to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed” (Rev. 3:18). Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame (Rev. 16:15).

Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy word (Psa. 119:9).

The Lord not only washed all believers from their sins in His blood (Rev. 1:5), but He lives for us as our High Priest on high where He is also Advocate for one, if he sin. In John 13 we see Him rising from supper laying aside His garments, taking the towel and the basin, girding Himself, and washing the disciples' feet. What an act of humility and condescension on His part! But this is not all: “Know ye what I have done unto you?” His prayer to the Father was, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” “And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth” (John 17:17-19). He that is washed (or bathed) needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit. Washed from our sins in His blood once for all, we continually need the word applied by the Spirit to our walk and ways. For Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that He might present the church to Himself glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish (Eph. 5:25-27). By the Holy Ghost He brings home to every attentive believer His word, whereby we are led to confess the sins of our walk, when we fail in communion; and we obtain forgiveness of God our Father in His government of our souls day by day (Matt. 6:15, John 15:2, 1 Peter 1:17). So 1 John 1:9 is good for both saint and sinner. “Little children, these things write I unto you that ye sin not. And if any one sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:1, 2). Let thy garments be always white.

II. Let thy head lack no ointment.

Ointment, or oil, in the O. T. is typical of the Holy Ghost in the New. Kings and priests were anointed with oil: both are fulfilled in Christ. Such is the order in the N. T.: first quickening, then salvation, and with it the sealing and indwelling of the Holy Ghost. “After that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise” (Eph. 1:13). “Ye also as living stones are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ “; yea more “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 Peter 2:5-9). What true and constant cause for holy joy! Even in fasting the Lord says, Thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face etc. (Matt. 6:16).

Salvation then through the accepted work of our Lord Jesus Christ is meant to fill us with joy from above. “For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” For how long? Is it less settled and lasting than for restored Israel in the coming day? “And the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness, and assurance forever.” “These things I speak in the world, that they (His own) might have my joy fulfilled in themselves” (John 17:13). Was it for the apostles only to enjoy? The last was given to say to God's family, “these things write we unto you that your joy may be full” (1 John 1:4); as another had written long before when a prisoner in Rome, “Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be not anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:4-7).

Let thy garments be always white for His sake.

Let thy head lack no oil for our own portion in His grace.

May God bless these words of His more fully to the writer, and to all readers. T.

Grace in the Wilderness

Jer. 31:2

We are all familiar with the third verse of Jer. 31 with its precious assurance of the everlasting love of our God, but is there not a wonderful depth of meaning in the preceding verse, which will well repay searching out in our small measure?

“Thus saith Jehovah, The people left of the sword found grace in the wilderness: even Israel, when I went to cause him to rest.”

In that night of terror when Jehovah passed through the land of Egypt to smite the first-born of the Egyptians, His own people were spared on account of the blood of the lamb sprinkled on their doorposts. “When I see the blood, I will pass over you” was Jehovah's promise and the sword of the destroyer was not allowed to fall upon one of them: the weakest and the worst were as safe as the strongest and the best, because they were under the shelter of the blood which typified that of the “Lamb without blemish and without spot.”

They were a “people left of the sword” of divine judgment.

Again, when Jehovah had led them out of the house of bondage, and brought them to the shore of the Red Sea, and when, on looking back, they saw the host of Pharaoh behind them, and cried out in faithless fear, He did not forsake them. He divided the sea before them, so that its dreaded waters were “a wall unto them,” and they marched through dryshod. Their enemies were overwhelmed in the depths of the sea; but God's people stood on the further shore, and sung a song of deliverance. Pharaoh in his arrogance had boasted, “I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them,” yet the same God, Who had saved them from the sword of divine judgment, saved them also from that of the enemy.

But the wilderness lay before them now. One phase of God's dealings with His people was ended: they were “left of the sword “; they were “saved” (Ex. 14:30); but what about their future? Would He leave them to their own resources now that He had delivered them from judgment and from the power of the enemy? Alas, for Israel, if He had done so! No, praised be His name!” The people that were left of the sword found grace in the wilderness.” Moses tells us that “He (Jehovah) found him (Jacob) in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness” (Deut. 32:10). What was to become of poor Jacob there (for it is by the name of weak and erring Jacob that he is called in this connection, not by the princely name of Israel)? Jehovah had planted Jacob on the resurrection side of death and judgment, but He had not forgotten that he had the wilderness to go through with its trials and its needs; and accordingly “He found him there.” As the blessed Savior in a later day “found” the man whom He had healed of his blindness, and revealed Himself to him, thus meeting his spiritual as well as his bodily need, so Jehovah “found” the people whom He had delivered, and proved Himself to be sufficient for their every need till they reached the promised rest. We read that, having found Jacob in the desert land, “He led (or, compassed) him about, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye.”

O what grace did not God's people find in the wilderness! Psa. 105, which tells of His mighty deeds in delivering them from their enemies, tells also how in the wilderness “the people asked, and he brought quails, and satisfied them with the bread of heaven. He opened the rock, and the waters gushed out; they ran in dry places like a river.”

Until they so readily took upon themselves the responsibilities of law-keeping, Jehovah dealt with them in pure grace. They murmured at Marah, when the water was bitter; in the wilderness of Sin they longed for the bread and the flesh-pots of Egypt; and at Rephidim also, when they had no water, He gave it out of the smitten rock, but passed over the disobedience of such as went to gather manna in vain on the sabbath.

In each case He satisfied their desires, reproving them indeed, but inflicting not the slightest punishment, rebellious though their conduct had been. After the law was given, there was a change in His dealings with them. Manna and quails and water were given as before in response to their complaints; but Jehovah manifested His displeasure by fire and plagues and fiery serpents, which destroyed their thousands. Psa. 106 tells us that God “gave them their request, but sent leanness into their souls,” and Psa. 78 that “Jehovah heard this (i.e. their murmurings), and was wroth; so a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel “; also that, “while their meat was yet in their mouths, the wrath of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them, and smote down the chosen men of Israel.”

Still grace was mixed with law (as shown in Ex. 34:6, 7, and elsewhere), or not one of them could have entered the promised land. Surely Joshua and Caleb, the only two of the older generation who attained the goal of their journeyings, would gladly have owned that, though the former was the faithful leader of the armies of Jehovah, and the latter could truthfully speak of having “wholly followed Jehovah his God,” yet but for His sustaining and pardoning grace, they must have fallen in the wilderness like the rest.

And so it was a tale of grace from first to last: grace that delivered them from the sword, grace that sustained them in the wilderness, and grace that brought them safely into the promised rest at the end. For though they had plenty of hard fighting to do before they could settle down in the land of their inheritance, it was, after all, not their own efforts, but the grace of their God that brought them into rest: “When I went to cause him to rest,” and “Jehovah gave them rest round about” (Josh. 21:44).

Are not the three beautiful statements of our verse true of us also, and in a still more blessed way than of Israel? Our past, present, and future are all covered by the same unbounded, matchless, grace.

We have indeed been “left of the sword.” Grace has delivered us from the power of Satan, and from all fear of judgment to come, so that we can triumphantly sing:

“There is no condemnation,

There is no hell for me:

The torment and the fire

These eyes shall never see.”

Praise God that our souls are saved once and forever! And the rest lies before us, “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.” When our beloved Lord and Savior comes to take us home to Himself, then we shall be saved completely, body as well as soul, and conformed to His own glorious image.

But meanwhile there is the wilderness. God might have taken us home to the promised rest as soon as He had saved our souls, but He has not seen fit to do so. Meanwhile He is saving us all the journey through, our great High Priest being “able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25).

Do we not indeed “find grace in the wilderness” —grace for seasonable help. It is not grace mixed with law, as in Israel's wanderings from Sinai onward; “for ye are not under law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). It far transcends even the grace shown to Israel before the law was given; for it is grace founded upon that infinite Sacrifice of which the paschal lamb was but a feeble type.

Grace first provided the Sacrifice (foreknown before the world's foundation); and now in consequence of that Sacrifice, it can freely flow out to the vilest of sinners and the most needy of saints. It is grace too ensured to us by relationship; for “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God” (1 John 3:1). Surely as “children” we can the more count upon grace for every step of the way till we reach our Father's house.

The path is often steep and rugged, and the desert sands hard to plod through; but do not let us be tempted to leave them for a smoother path and pleasant lawns. It is “in the wilderness” we shall “find grace “; it is not promised us for “Bypath Meadow.” There are resources in our God to meet every difficulty. Nay, the greater the trial the greater the grace ready for us. “He giveth more grace” or, as the margin of the R.V. reads, “a greater grace” (James 4:6).

“In the desert God will teach thee

What the God Whom thou hast found,

Patient, gracious, powerful, holy;

All His grace shall there abound.”

Gospel Words: Thy Father in Secret

Here is a Christian principle, which our Lord puts in contrast with acting so as to be seen. What so suited to exercise and strengthen faith day by day, or to guard from that hypocrisy to which man is prone?

He first lays down the general principle, it would seem, in verse 1, and then applies it to alms in 2-4; to prayer in 5-15; and lastly to fasting in 16-18. Some ancients and moderns have been disposed to regard “righteousness” in verse 1, as equivalent to “alms,” as Rabbis and others were prone to do. But the better text and sense point to retaining the inclusive term “righteousness” in verse 1, under which fall the three duties that follow. For if applied there to “alms,” it is hard to conceive why the proper term for “alms” should be given in 2, 3, and 4. The different word in verse 1 points to the more comprehensive sense of “righteousness” or consistency in practice with our relationship. This is then shown to embrace three varied forms in which the disciple is called to do the Father's will in the pious course of life here below. Dan. 4:27 distinguishes mercy to the poor from righteousness; and I am not aware of any confusion of the two in scripture.

Verse 1 calls the disciple to righteousness surpassing that of the scribes and Pharisees, without which none can enter into the Kingdom of the heavens. “Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men to be seen of them; otherwise ye have no reward with your Father that is in the heavens.” Here is the large principle for Christian practice. Knowing Him as Christ has revealed Him to us, all acceptable service refers to Him. He is a living and true God whom we serve, and He refuses to share His glory with others. We walk by faith, not by sight. Can anything be more opposite to the ways of Christendom?

1. “When therefore thou doest alms, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be glorified by men: Verily I say to you, They do get their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right doeth, that thine alms may be in secret, and thy Father that seeth in secret will repay to thee” (2-4). If men walk in a vain show religiously quite as much as in the world, the Lord calls His own to shun publicity, and not merely this, but in His vigorous figure, that our own left hand may not know what the right does. The simple and essential aim is to do what we do to Him and His glory.

2. So it is with the prayer here enjoined. “And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they should appear to men. Verily I say to you, They do get their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father that is in secret, and thy Father that seeth in secret will repay to thee. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions as those of the nations; for they think they shall be heard through their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like them; for your Father knoweth of what things ye have need before ye beg of him.... For if ye forgive men their offenses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you [yours]; but if ye forgive not men their offenses, neither will your Father forgive your offenses” (5-15).

Here the same show before men in prayer is reprehended; nor this only, but the heathen folly of vain repetitions, and of much speaking. Lastly the Lord warns that an unforgiving spirit cannot hope to have its own offenses forgiven.

3. “And when ye fast, be not as the hypocrites, downcast in countenance; for they disfigure their faces that they may appear fasting to men. Verily I say to you, They do get their reward. But thou, when fasting, anoint thy head and wash thy face, that thou mayest not appear fasting to men, but to thy Father that is in secret; and thy Father that seeth in secret shalt repay thee” (16-18).

In fasting there is even more sedulous care to guard from any display of that self-humiliation before God which forms so great a part of it. The Lord would form in His own a spirit of living faith in having to do with their Father. Fasting is for His eyes, just like their prayer and their alms. Faith in Him that is in secret is thus in each way exercised. What a contrast with all that hitherto characterized a Jew!

1 Peter 3:5-6

Thus the apostle cites examples; and this from the earliest days of dealing with the called out pilgrims, which would have great weight with the Christian remnant of Jews.

Exhortation had been already given against all vanity and worldly show, but with due care that the outward apparel should express “the hidden man of the heart.” No doubt the open man of his house, the predominant partner, might enjoin and be entitled to her wearing jewels or other costly array in his sphere. But here women do not usually need a husband's command. Here the word is for their own conscience. For it is not only that God, in contrast with man, looks on the heart: His wondrous light into which He called us gives the Christian woman the highest standard, and thereby enables her by grace to judge all inconsistencies in the incorruptibility of a meek and quiet spirit. This, however foreign to human nature, would not be lost even on a hard and exacting husband, Jew or Greek; for such might be the lot of those addressed, and of course the former most frequently, either of them on the watch too often to spy the faults of a Christian. But under any circumstances such a lowly spirit, seen in all its perfection in Christ, is of much price in the sight of God; and this is of all things most consolatory to the tried if faithful.

Changes many and great have passed over the world. But this fidelity led in olden days when Israel's great progenitors dwelt in tents. Yet Sarah knew to her husband's shame that her beauty commended her to a court and a King's palace for a while, and royal gifts were lavished on him whose selfish fear exposed her to dishonor but for their Almighty protector. But thus aforetime also the holy women adorned themselves as became those whose hope was in God, instead of following the fashion of the world that fleets away. Sarah is singled out as obedient to Abraham, and paying him marked honor, notwithstanding the familiarity of wedded life, which too often has a contrary effect. This example is here set impressively before Christian wives.

But the terms employed are notable: “Whose children ye became, doing good and not being afraid of any dismay.” They were far from this in their unrenewed state. The Lord Jesus does not find, but makes, us what pleases God. Selfwill reigns in those afar from Him, with ready resentment of all wrongs that may be inflicted, and submission induced through fear, self-interest, or amiability at best. What a change is wrought by the faith of God's grace in Christ! Sanctification of the Spirit, setting apart to God in a new life now given, effects obedience, not legal but after the pattern of Jesus, and faith in the sprinkling of His blood. Thus did those Jewish matrons become Sarah's children in obeying and honoring, each her own husband. It was a divine duty imprinted on the heart by their Savior. Becoming Christians, they became Sarah's children in deed and in truth. They were not merely lineal descendants, like the unbelieving Jews whom the Lord in John 8 reproached as being Abraham's seed, not his children; else they would do the works of Abraham. They became Sarah's children, “doing good and not afraid of any dismay.” On this side is woman apt to be weak.

Is there a gentle hint here of the occasion when Sarah laughed incredulously, as she covertly heard Jehovah promise she should have a son (Gen. 18:10-15)? How graciously the Spirit speaks openly of her comely bearing at that same time toward her husband! Yet did He not spare her then, when she even denied her derision. Here He only records her good conduct, and calls her children to remember it: “doing good and being not afraid with any alarm,” as frequent a cause as any other of untruth. For sudden perturbation of any kind is unfaithfulness in women professing godliness. Failing in dependence on God and communion, they fear to own the truth under such pressure. Is not the caution here given therefore seasonable and salutary?

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: James

Chap. V. Divine Design. 46. the Epistle of James

The peculiarity of the Epistle before us is evident. The address marks it plainly and indelibly, “to the twelve tribes that are in dispersion.” The entire breadth of the chosen people is brought before us, and this in the largest spirit of faith; for in fact there was no such people since the Assyrians executed judgment on the idolatrous ten tribes, first rent away from Rehoboam. Faith did not give it up, as we see in the O. T. when Elijah testified for Jehovah against Baal (1 Kings 18:31; also 2 Chron. 30:1; and Dan. 9:7); and so we see in the apostle Paul (Acts 26:7). Here only it is the direct address of an inspired Epistle. It is expressly far wider than the apostle Peter's word inscribed to the “elect sojourners of the dispersion,” not only because these were limited to a part of Asia Minor, “Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia [proconsular], and Bithynia,” but still more deeply and restrictedly by the spiritual character notified, which excludes all but Christians like those contemplated in the great Epistle to the Hebrews.

Here it is not so, though such as had the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ are distinctly recognized (2:1); and the writer describes himself from the beginning as “bondman of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:1). But the peculiar condition that still obtained in Jerusalem is here supposed—at any rate till the Epistle to the Hebrews was written. The synagogue was frequented as yet (2:2), and the haughty bearing is not overlooked of the rich toward the poor: rich in a faith which they had not. Oppressive themselves were in a worldly sort, nay also disposed to blaspheme the excellent Name that was called on the heirs of the Kingdom.

Hence we see already the plain traces of an unreal profession of faith, which in the apostle John's much later Epistle appears in a yet more solemn guise. But James takes up its earlier shape when faith was becoming a creed, intellectual and traditional. So it naturally would where Christians abounded in close connection with their unbelieving brethren, not only in social but religious life also. For there seemed no such urgent reason to require separation as idolatry necessitated for the Gentile confessors among the heathen.

This goes far to explain the denunciations in chaps. 4, 5. The Epistle from its nature according to its address deals directly with open fleshly and worldly wickedness in a way unexampled among the other apostolic writings. Here it is in keeping with the direction of the writer; which is as singular in the N. T. as the book of Jonah in the Old. Both are exceptional, for the latter has for its object the testimony and mercy of God to a Gentile power in a circle of holy writ pre-eminently if not exclusively occupied with Israel; as the former is God's testimony still to the twelve tribes in a volume which opens and goes through with the incredulous Jews stumbling at the Stumbling-stone, and His message of grace sent meanwhile to the Gentiles who were to hear. Yet the end of the Lord is that He is full of pity and merciful; so that, as Old and New Testaments bear witness, all Israel shall be saved at His purging judgment, and the nations shall rejoice with His people, when the rejected Christ shall arise to rule as Jehovah, King over all the earth, as the like never was, nor shall ever follow, though absolute rest and righteousness will be the worthy result for all eternity.

Chap. 1 after greeting those in view calls them to count it all joy when they fall into various temptations or trials. This presumes faith practically, looks for patience or endurance as the fruit, and exhorts that it have a perfect work, that they might be perfect and complete, lacking in naught. But if any of them lack wisdom, let him. ask of God, who gives to all freely (or, liberally) and upbraids not, as He well might; and it shall be given to him. Hence he is told to ask in faith, as this is due to God, nothing in doubt. For the doubter is like surge of the sea wind-driven and tossed (for let not that man think that he shall receive anything from the Lord), a double-minded man unstable in all his ways (vers. 1-8).

In Christ alone here as everywhere else we see the perfection of patience and of communion with God. Present circumstances are of such small account, that the brother of low degree is to glory in his elevation by grace, and the rich in his humiliation, as passing away like flower of grass. No sooner did the sun rise with its scorching, than it withered the grass, and its flower fell, and the comeliness of its look perished: so also shall the rich fade in his ways. Emphatically therefore is it added, Blessed the man (not that stands high in the world but) that endureth temptation; for, having been proved, he shall receive the crown of life which He promised to those that love Him (9-12). Worldly feeling is in no way spared. We are called by glory and virtue.

Next, we are warned of a wholly different temptation from within. “Let none say when tempted, I am tempted of (or, from) God. For God cannot be tempted by evils, and himself tempteth none. But each is tempted when drawn away and enticed by his own lust; then lust having conceived beareth sin; and sin when completed bringeth death. Err not, my beloved brethren. Every good giving and every perfect gift is from above, cometh down from the Father of lights with whom can be [or, is] no variation nor shadow of turning. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a certain first-fruits of his creatures” (13-18). It is not redemption which is here applied, but the new life by divine and sovereign grace; and suitable practice is demanded earnestly.

Confidence in our Father is inculcated as well as dependence, no less than distrust in self; consistency too as now having by grace a new and divine nature, and watchfulness against our own lusts. Hence the word from 19 to the end of chap. 1. “Ye know [it], my beloved brethren; but let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath, for man's wrath worketh not God's righteousness. Wherefore, putting away all filthiness and abundance of wickedness, receive in meekness the implanted word that is able to save your souls. But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, beguiling yourselves: because if one is a word-hearer and not a doer, he is like a man considering his natural [or, birth] face in a mirror; for he considered himself and hath departed and immediately forgot what he was like. But he that looked into the perfect law of liberty and remained there, being not a forgetful hearer but a work-doer, he shall be blessed in his doing. If one think to be religious while not bridling his tongue but deceiving his heart, his religion is vain. Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, to keep oneself unspotted from the world.”

Who could possibly set forth more plainly truth so clear, pithy, and needed day by day? We want readiness in receiving from God, vigilance against haste of speech and the high spirit, to be consistent with our relationship to Him. Self-judgment greatly helps us to profit by the word which, meekly received, enters in power, and reproduces itself in action. Where it is merely hearing, all is forgotten speedily, instead of being blessed in one's doing. But where by grace the word fixes the heart's heed, it is a perfect law of liberty, and God's will is loved for its own sake and His. The tongue is bridled because it is ours; and its license is just the opposite of pure and undefiled service whether in active care for the sorrow-stricken, orphans and widows, or in true and holy separateness from the world which seeks self and slew the Savior.

Chap. 2 confronts the faith of our Lord—Lord of glory, with respect of persons. A graphic sketch of their synagogue, where the grandee was as honored as the lowly was despised, convicts them of partiality with evil thoughts (1-4). What a contrast between God's choice and promise, and the natural effect of wealth toward God and man (5-7)! The royal law was thus set at naught by such transgressions, yea, the whole law compromised; for whatever may be in this way, thus to offend in one point is to be guilty of all. And the law of liberty (the renewed soul going heartily as he was bidden) is alike right, given to enjoy mercy, while the judging spirit will meet the judgment it measures out (8-13).

This introduces the withering exposure (in 14-26) of faith boasting without moral reality. Such faith condemns a man instead of saving him. In vain are kind words without corresponding ways. If one say, Thou hast faith, and I have works, the answer is, Show me thy faith without works, and I from my works will show thee my faith! Need it be pointed out that Rom. 3-4 expounds how the ungodly is justified before God? Here it is the fruitless confessor condemned before man. The true point is, Show me. The demons believe; but there is no life, only ruin. Faith without works is idle; whereas the cases of Abraham and Rahab were works so truly of faith that without living faith they were evil. For at God's word one was ready to sacrifice his son, the other to betray king and country: faith quickened and transfigured them. From opposite sides, how blessedly the two scriptures agree!

In chap. 3:1-12 is a full warning against speech without dependence on God or His grace; and first in public teaching. “Be not many teachers, my brethren, knowing that we shall receive greater judgment. For we all often offend. If one offend not in word, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body too.” Bits in horses' mouths, rudders of ships, are small but of great power: so yet more with the tongue, more untameable than any animal of land, air, or sea. It is apt to be, not inconsistent only, but hypocritical.

Instead of things so unworthy, the exhortation is to show out of a good course of life one's works in meekness of wisdom, the reverse of bitter emulation and strife with the result of disorder and every other evil. But the wisdom from above (and what else is of moment?) is first pure, then peaceful, gentle, yielding, full of mercy and good fruits, uncontentious, unfeigned. And righteousness's fruit in peace is sown for those that make peace (13-18).

The contrast of wars and fightings is traced in chap. iv. to the self-pleasing and lust of the natural heart, and the corruption which flows from that friendship with the world which is enmity with God. “Think ye that the scripture speaketh in vain? Doth the Spirit that abode in us desire enviously?” Rather “He giveth more grace; wherefore he saith, God setteth himself against haughty ones and giveth grace to lowly.” Submission to God is urged, and resistance of the devil who will flee, but drawing near to God: all as settled things. Then we have the remarkable call to “sinners” for cleansed hands and purified hearts in humiliation before the Lord with true mourning and heaviness for His lifting up (1-10).

Evil-speaking one of another is next (11, 12) reprehended as judging the law and the law-giver; to judge it is not to be its doer, but setting up against God Himself. Like self-will appears in forgetting our entire dependence on God from day to day, and in the affairs of this life (13-17). The simple yet divine motto closes, “To him therefore that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” The law no doubt is generally characterized by what is negative, as Thou shalt not do this or that. Christianity, just as manifestly, by the positive exercise of doing good, the life of God in man. Here it is insisted on.

Chap. 5 brings in the coming of the Lord to warn the rich oppressors, and to comfort the suffering Jewish remnant that believed. The laborer awaiting harvest is made a homily of patience; and the prophets and Job still more (1-11).

Profanity is denounced, prayer prescribed to the evil-entreated, singing to the happy. Again, we see how the elders intervened where any fell under a sickness inflicted governmentally, and the sick one confessed such sins and was forgiven. Indeed the general principle is pressed of confessing one to another (not a word about this to elders even while there); and the value of fervent supplication of which Elijah was so signal an example. We also learn the privilege of restoring those who err from the truth or the right ways of the Lord, leaving it to shallow, hard, and proud men to pique themselves on putting away (12-20).

Scripture Queries and Answers: Matthew 18:20 Translation of Greek

Q.-Matt. 18:20. It has been recently stated that men like Mr. J. N. Darby sought to help out their interpretation [of this scripture] “by a quite unwarrantable change in the translation of the words εἰς τὸ ἐμὸν ὄνομα, which they rendered unto my name, and took to import a gathering to Christ's Name as a rallying point.” Is there any doubt of the right version? or any warrant for so evil an imputation? Μαθητής.

A.-None whatever for either: no true scholar could have weighed the usage and given such an opinion. The evidence is decisively for the change. The aim for opposing it is to set aside the ecclesiastical character of the context, on which the Lord has impressed it so indelibly, that almost all the jarring parties of Christendom recognize that character, though they naturally overlook a word which none of them heeds, and which does mean a living and exclusive center. Its denial is a very bold exegetical error; for any serious inspection of the Lord's words suffices to prove that the ease adduced had passed out of individual dealing to “the church” or assembly (not the synagogue). Then the Lord (18) strengthens this with His solemn averment of heaven's sanction of their binding and loosing (not the keys), and His gracious assurance of His Father's answer to the united petition of even two, Then He closes with the general principle for the worst of times (20) that He is in the midst, where two or three are gathered unto His name. The last promise is an invaluable guard against party work, as well as unbelief and the world. It speaks little to hearts which never had, or have lost, faith in His word or presence.

As to usage, the case in question quite differs from ἐπὶ τῷ ὀν. in ver. 5, where His name is made the motive, condition, or ground for receiving a little child, and εἰς would have been out of place. It is therefore strictly “on,” not “in “; and so in Acts 2:38 Peter bade repentant Jews be baptized, each of them on (ἐπὶ) the name of Jesus Christ for remission of sins; and they should receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. If they had repented, they were already born of the Spirit, as where real is invariably the case. Compare Matt. 24:5, Mark 9:37, 39; 12:6, 9. In Luke 1:5, 9 it shades into “after.” In Acts 10:48 the same Peter commanded the Gentile believers to be baptized in (ἐν) the Lord's name. See Mark 16:17; Luke 10:17; John 5:43 &c. It would have been just as possible and true to have said “on “; but it is not the same thought or expression as in virtue (or, in the power) of His name. In Acts 11:16 Peter speaks of the Holy Spirit's baptism, contrasted with John's, as ἐν Πν. ἁγ in the Holy Spirit, where ἐπὶ, on, would have failed, for ἐν means in the power of the Spirit Himself. In Acts 19:5 as in 8:16 the object proposed in baptism occurs, and here it is neither “in” nor “on,” but “unto,” Eig. The Revisers correct the faulty “in” of the A. V. but say “into” which is refuted by their own rendering of 1 Cor. 10:2 (where “into” would be improper), and by the A. V. of Acts 19:3. The Greek admits of either “unto,” or “into” according to context, which here requires the former. Water baptism does not imply more than “to” or “unto.” It is profession only; and the very aim of the apostle in 1 Cor. 10 is to insist that it might be without life. So in our Lord's commission in Matt. 28:19 it is baptizing “to” or “unto” the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It was baptism with water, and could not itself carry deeper. But the baptism of the Spirit has quite a different power, and effects incorporation, not “unto” merely as profession, but “into” one body, Christ's body. Dean Alford gave up “in” but argued for “into” invalidly, his views being uncertain here as too often.

In Matt. 10:41, 42 we have indeed the peculiar phrase of receiving a prophet, a righteous man, and a disciple, “unto” (εἰς) each's respective name, or as such. Here it is perhaps hard to avoid in English saying “in the prophet's name “; but it really means as aforesaid, and not what would have been imported by iv, in the power or authority of each, as in Christ's name or even without any preposition as in Matt. 7:22. But Meyer thinks that here “by” Thy name is preferable; and this may well be the just sense of a Greek phrase which differs from the rest, the instrumental dative.

Again, such forms as,ἕνεκν τοῦ or διὰ τὸ (or, ὑπὲρ τοῦ) ὀν. are indisputably “for thy Name's sake,” so that we need not say more.

In the A. V., &o. Phil. 2:10 is, we all know, rendered “at” the name of Jesus, a rendering on which a well known and pervading practice of superstition was founded. The Revisers here say “in” (ἐν). If right, it means as usual in virtue of His name all creatures shall bow.

In 1 Cor. 5:4-13 where putting out for wickedness is laid down peremptorily and perspicuously, it is in (ἐν) the Lord's name that the assembled saints were charged to act. It was ordered of God that the written word should enjoin excommunication, when no apostle was actually there, nor apostolic delegate like Titus, and no elders had yet been appointed. This abides as the inalienable duty, as does the divine warrant for the assembly's act, whenever the sorrowful need calls for this last resort. The Corinthian saints were light in various ways and had shirked or ignored what was due to the Lord, not even mourning that one so guilty should be taken away from them. The apostle insisted on purging the leaven out, in accordance with the sacrifice of Christ our passover; and the Spirit took care that as Christendom would show special disregard of this Epistle, it should be more impressively addressed than in any other, not to that assembly only, but coupling with it “all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, both theirs and ours.” Slight is therefore verily inexcusable.

As a matter of fact too, it was not till long after the Christians referred to had gathered, not as belonging to denominations, but simply as members of Christ, recognizing the one body and one Spirit according to the word, that the precise force of the Lord's word in Matt. 18:20 struck any. Believing in the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit since Pentecost, they had learned the immense value of every inspired word. Tradition had no place in their eyes. Since they accepted every scripture as God-breathed and profitable, they sought entire subjection to it as a living word, while declining either to claim more than they had or to substitute human devices in lieu of what they had not. Any scholar who looks into the text in question must allow that, unless there were an obstacle from our idiom in this particular case, “unto” must be the exact force; for “into” would be absurd, and 4 properly, not εἰς, means “in.” But, far from a difficulty, the context here favors nothing so much as the proper import of εἰς, gathered “unto” My Name as the central presence on which they all depend and confide.

It was thus and only then perceived to be a confirmation of their position, already founded on the revealed principles of God's assembly, modified as this must be by the ruin not less carefully fore-shown in the later Epistles and the Revelation, of which we are bound to take account, if we avoid that assumption which is so unworthy of Christ and so unbecoming in all that are His. How blessed to know that Christ remains as ever the center for even two or three gathered to His Name!

But it was received as certain truth, on the evidence of scripture better understood and independently of any ground other than the precise and full meaning of our Savior's words. Just so for many other truths of moment we have learned since: we acted on the little that we first knew to be from God and of God; for we need the Spirit as well as the word. “To him that hath shall be given; but from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken from him.” Nothing more perilous to man, nothing more dishonoring to God, than to give up what we once confessed and enjoyed as divine. Who can tell where departure once begun may end?

Scripture Queries and Answers: The Crucifixion in Mark and John

Q.-Mark gives for the Crucifixion the 3rd, 6th, and 9th hours of the Jewish day (our 9, 12, and 3); but how then are we to understand the sixth hour in John 19:14, and John 4:6, &c.?—T. H. L.

A.-Clearly in the same way throughout his Gospel, which looks on Jewish things as closed. Hence in ch. 1:39 the tenth hour would mean from the same hour of the morning as we count. In chap. 4:6 it was the usual time for women to draw water, as the seventh hour (52) would be the same time as with us of the preceding evening or possibly morning. So in John 18:28 it was early morn when the mockery of our Lord's trial went on; and no reason forbids Pilate's judging at our 6 a.m. (19:14). The actual 'crucifixion began, after all mockeries and preparations were done (including perhaps the trial of the two robbers) at the 3rd Jewish hour, as Mark (15:25) alone specifies, i.e. our 9 o'clock a.m. of Friday; the supernatural darkness at the 6th Jewish hour, at our 12 or noon; and the Lord died at the 9th Jewish hour and time, or our 3 p.m.

Pliny (H. Nat. ii. 77), Plut. (Quaest. Rom. 84), A. Gell. (Noct. Att. iii. 2), Censor. (de Die Nat. xxiii.), and Macrob. (Saturn. i. 3) clearly prove that the Romans computed the civil day as we do from midnight, and as John did. So Dr. Townson argues for a similar reckoning in Asia Minor. Rev. 1:10 shows a kindred departure from Jewish phraseology.

Fragment on Romans 5:21

Not only was it impossible that God could do anything that “sin” may abound, but if He had said where “the offense” abounded, grace did also abound, it would have confined it to those under the Law. But He was showing the contrary: that Christ's work reached out beyond to Adam's [race] in aspect and efficacy. Grace overrode the whole, though it might be rejected. J.N.D.

Is the Flesh Really Gone?

If they hold this, then indeed it is a mischievous error. I should not have to “reckon,” were I really dead; and the context makes it clear. “Reckon” (Rom. 6:11) is the estimate I form according to faith of my condition and standing, the estimate of my faith, not a statement as to the state I am in; and this is equally true as to “alive.” But the statement here is not that I have life, but that I so account of myself. But when he says, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that ye should obey it,” it is a plain testimony that it is not gone, or it would be a very poor conclusion. Besides are other passages, as that “the flesh lusteth against the Spirit,” and that, “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” J. N.D.

Jacob: 7. Jacob and Laban

We need not dwell on the incident that next claims our notice. As the marriage life of Isaac and Rebekah was very different from that of Jacob with his wives and their maids, so does the bearing of Abram toward Lot present a strongly marked contrast with that of Jacob and Laban. We are now in a far more cloudy atmosphere, though in the main Jacob was a faithful servant, and Laban deceitful and selfish. But God is not mocked, even in the day when evil is allowed to work its dark way till judgment return to righteousness.

“And it came to pass when Rachel had borne Joseph, that Jacob said to Laban, Send me away, that I may go to mine own place and to my country. Give [me] my wives for whom I have served thee, and my children, that I may go away, for thou knowest my service which I have served thee. And Laban said to him, I pray thee, if I have found favor in thine eyes: I have discovered that Jehovah hath blessed me for thy sake. And he said, Appoint me thy hire, and I will give it. And he said unto him, Thou knowest how I have served thee, and what thy cattle hath become with me. For it was little thou hadst before I came, and it hath increased into a multitude; and Jehovah hath blessed thee as I turned [lit. at my feet]; and now how shall I also provide for mine own house? And he said, What shall I give thee? And Jacob said, Thou shall not give me aught. If thou doest this thing for me, I will again feed and keep thy flock. I will pass through all thy flock to-day, removing thence every spotted and speckled one, and every black one among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats; and [such] shall be my hire. And my righteousness shall answer for me hereafter, when thou comest about my hire before thy face: every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats, and black among the sheep, let that be stolen with me. And Laban said, Behold, let it be according to thy word. And he removed that day the he-goats that were ringstraked and spotted, and all the she-goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white in it, and all the black among the sheep, and gave [them] into the hands of his sons; and he set three days journey between himself and Jacob. And Jacob fed the rest of Laban's flocks. And Jacob took him fresh rods of white poplar, almond, and maple, and peeled white stripes in them, uncovering the white which was on the rods. And he set the rods which he had peeled before the flock in the gutters at the watering-places where the flock came to drink; and they were ardent when they came to drink. And the flock was ardent before the rods; and the flock brought forth ringstraked, speckled, and spotted. And Jacob separated the lambs, and set the faces of the flock toward the ringstraked and all the black in the flock of Laban; and he made himself separate flocks and put them not with Laban's flock. And it came to pass whensoever the strong cattle were ardent, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the flock in the gutters, that they might become ardent among the rods; but when the flock were feeble, he put them not in: so the feeble were Laban's and the stronger were Jacob's. And the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and bondwomen, and bondmen, and camels and asses” (vers. 25-43).

Jacob was a man of faith, but failed in spirituality, and comes under the Lord's discipline that he might bear more fruit and better. As he had cheated at home, he suffered abroad, and at the hands of his mother's brother most of all. His patience under Laban's hardhearted wrongs testifies that he bowed to God. He could now bear to be lifted up by slow degrees. And the story of divine retribution here recorded is the turning-point.

Rahab's faith too was real and has the Spirit's attestation in the N.T. quite as distinctly as in the Old. But it is evident that, energetic as it was and in the face of the utmost peril, there was the manifest alloy of her old self which accompanied the precious metal. She did not hesitate to mislead. So here, whatever the gracious intervention of God for His injured servant, we could not conceive either his father or his grandfather adopting such an expedient as Jacob employed to acquire the fruit of his long and patient service that was due. Yet God condescended to use what without His power had been, if not in vain, but very partial.

Laban's covetous desire to profit by Jacob's strange bargain turned to the impoverishing of the self-seeking master, and the new and growing affluence of the long defrauded servant. Neither compunction appears on Laban's part for the advantage he had taken of his nephew, nor the least considerate affection for his daughters or their children. It was a righteous thing, as far as it could go in its way, to requite the evil-doer and recompense the sufferer. Nor can one fail to observe, at least as here it is pointed out, how peculiarly appropriate such a divine dealing was toward that one of the patriarchs who, more than any other, sets forth the chosen people. They derived their corporate name from him; their ups and downs were like his endless vicissitudes, failures, humiliations, to be turned at the end through divine mercy into everlasting blessing at the feet of their long rejected but then how endeared Messiah. They too become wrestlers with God and men, and prevail. Great indeed shall be the day of Jezreel. But it will be a greatness due to God's grace and mercy, and deserved only by Him Who died for them, as for us and all others, when they at their worst proved themselves His bitterest foes. Thus shall no flesh glory; but he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord,

Priesthood: 33. Other Impurities

There remains a still larger portion of these uncleannesses which divine wisdom did not scruple to notice, however humbling to men and women; for as we have had the one sex, so now follows the other. Jehovah would compel His people to feel that He takes account, not merely of sin as typified in its most destructive shape as well as in the very ushering into the world of a child, male or female, but of such impurities as are of a more ordinary nature and frequent recurrence, proceeding from men and women as they are, and connected with that which is lawful and necessary. If the latter was for the earthly people, Christians are entitled to read these outward ordinances in the spirit. To the pure all things are pure; but to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.

“16 And if any man's seed of copulation pass from him, then he shall bathe his whole flesh in water, and be unclean until the even. 17 And all raiment and every skin, wherein the seed of copulation shall be, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even. 18 And a woman with whom a man lieth with seed of copulation, they shall bathe in water, and be unclean until the even.

19 And if a woman hath a flux, and her flux in her flesh be blood, she shall be seven days in her separation, and whoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even. 20 And everything that she lieth upon in her separation shall be unclean; and everything that she sitteth upon shall be unclean.

21 And whoever toucheth her bed shall wash his raiment, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 22 And whoever toucheth anything that she sitteth upon shall wash his raiment, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the even. 23 And if it be on the bed or on anything on which she sitteth, when he toucheth it, he shall be unclean until the even. 24 And if a man lie with her at all, and the uncleanness of her separation come upon him, he shall be unclean seven days; and every bed whereon he lieth shall be unclean. 25 And if a woman have her flux of blood many days out of the time of her separation, or if she have the flux beyond the time of her separation, all the days of the flux of her uncleanness shall be as the days of her separation: she is unclean. 26 Every bed whereon she lieth all the days of her flux shall be to her as the bed of her separation; and everything on which she sitteth shall be unclean, according to the uncleanness of her separation. 27 And whoever toucheth these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his raiment, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the even.

28 And if she be cleansed of her flux, then she shall count seven days, and after that she shall be clean. 29 And on the eighth day she shall take to her two turtledoves, or two young pigeons, and bring them to the priest, to the door of the tent of meeting. 30 And the priest shall offer the one as a sin-offering and the other as a burnt-offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her before Jehovah for the flux of her uncleanness.

31 Ye shall separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness, that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle that is in their midst.

32This is the law of him that hath a flux, and of him whose seed of copulation goeth from him, whereby he is defiled; 33 and of her who is sick in separation, and of him that hath a flux; of the man and of the woman, and of him that lieth with her that is unclean” (vers. 16-33).

Through law is knowledge, right knowledge, of sin (Rom. 3:20), though Christ and the cross gave us it, as all else, still more and perfectly. And this was intended for Israel's good. No other people had God taking pains to show them where the race is through sin. No doubt it was a burdensome yoke: how could it be otherwise till a Savior was given to save from sins? Those who confided in God, feeling their utter defilement, voluntary and involuntary, looked according to His word for Him who should come, defeat at all cost the enemy, atone for sin before God, and bring in everlasting righteousness. Those meanwhile were objects of His mercy and gracious care. Such as felt only the present and saw no more than their uncleannesses, with sacrifices through the priest, rose not above the purifying of the flesh.

But the profit abides for those who through faith read Christ in what without Him are but ordinances of flesh (Heb. 9:9, 10). They can pity and deplore the unbelief which is shocked that a divine revelation should lay bare Jehovah's notice of the vile and offensive workings of our fallen nature. But here was at least a testimony, though by no means a complete and final one, to man's innate evil. Israel stood in a relationship to Jehovah which required the serious acknowledgment of the sad facts, but with a provision of His direction which cleansed them for the then present time, till grace and truth came in perfection.

How infinite His love and work who bore our sins in His body on the tree! His death has for faith completely effaced the evil and cleared the conscience; and His resurrection has given us a new life and place into which evil cannot come, which the Holy Ghost strengthens as we lean on Christ to walk as He walked, judging as flesh (to which we died with Him) every working of the old nature.

The Day of Atonement: 18. Concluding Remarks

But do not overlook danger from legality on the other side. Far am I from meaning that it was not an evil day in Christendom when people first sang, “That day of wrath, that dreadful day,” which the thought of Christ's return then awoke. Was this genuine affliction of the soul? It was little better than a frightful scare: God was unknown. There is a great difference between repentance and dread. Abject terror of soul may have exactly characterized mediaeval Christendom. High and low were frightened, and in their terror they gave up their acres or their labor in order to propitiate the God before Whose judgments they trembled in view of the day of the Lord. It was out of that spirit that many a grand cathedral arose with its truly dim religious light. It was not merely the great lords as well as crowned heads who contributed from their wealth or their spoils, but the poor workmen freely gave their skill and labor: a standing and striking testimony to the power of alarm in unenlightened people's souls. It had been the main weapon of heathenism, the sole moral element in which dark deceit was dread. So it was and is now alas! in fallen Christendom.

Not that one would exclude pious fear from that which works in those that hear God's word. It is right and fitting that the guilty should be alarmed when they hear of their sins, and of God's justice and sure judgment. How blessed to know that after the sins, and before the judgment, God did come down from heaven in the person of His own Son to work His unfailing atonement! Certainly there could have been no perfection in the work, if Christ had not been a divine person. It is all-important that our. Lord Jesus be acknowledged as God unreservedly. If the Word had not been God, if the Son not one with the Father, the Savior must have been incompetent for the work He undertook. But the Son came; the work was done and accepted; and all is changed. Before our Lord became the sacrifice, the righteousness of God might well fill the soul with deep anxiety: judgment must then take its course. But through Christ's blood, God is just and justifies the believer. How blessed that God justifies us!

That God was to judge the world, every Jew acknowledged. This could give no peace to the guilty. There must be resurrection of the dead, both of just and unjust. After judgment the lake of fire awaited the lost. The second death is not ceasing to exist. Indeed death itself is but the severance of soul from body. For the believer it is “to depart and be with Christ.” Even when a wicked man dies, he is in no way annihilated: his soul is severed from the body, and this is death. “All live to God,” if not to men. But when the second death comes, the wicked exist forever not only in soul but in body. Resurrection is not temporal being, like living in the world that now is; it ushers in what is final and unchanging.

This brings out the deep importance of the true atonement. Let me ask, Are your souls now resting on Christ and His sacrifice? In the gospel God is announcing to you Christ as the propitiation for the whole world. How awful for your own soul and body if you slight His message! Receive it from God, and may this be without the presumption of your works, but with true affliction of soul. If Christ thus suffered for sins, why doubt God's love, guilty though you are? The fact that He reveals Christ's atonement is the fullest testimony to God's mercy as well as justice. Is it not for sinners in their sins, in their transgressions, and in their iniquities? Do not these words of His cover all you have done? Does not Christ's work meet the worst that can be alleged against you? The Atonement-day was Jehovah's doing away man's evil for those that bowed to Him. Make no excuses more.

Rest your soul on the Savior and His propitiation; for there is none other holy, true, or efficacious. It is not merely that He has done the work, but He is the propitiation. John takes particular care thus to identify Him and the work. “He is the propitiation for our sins;” and therefore should we look to Him only for it. God forbid that you should look to yourself or to others! For what can others avail you for sin? What can the Virgin, the angels, or the saints, do for you in this stress? Were the church of God here below in its pristine unity, were the staff Beauty and the staff Bands unbroken (if one may apply figures from Israel), what could all the saints avail for saving your soul? God's church, if not man's, would tell you, by the lips of its members, what His grace in Christ did for each and all of them. But God tells you the truth in His word better than any of the uninspired saints ever preached. His word is intended to give you the sole unfailing decision any can now have on the matter. Here you have all you require in this single chapter, read in the light of Christ. It is admitted that none could make much of it without the New Testament. But have we not both Old Testament and New? Have we not divine light shining on the shadows of the past, so that the truth rises to view in all its unity and holiness, grandeur, simplicity, and with absolute certainty?

What about yourselves, who now hear the truth? May God bring you to Himself and fasten His own blessed word on your conscience. May you acknowledge the folly of your heart and the wickedness of your life. Is there anything really more evil in His sight than, with the scriptures read and heard continually, to be practically living without God and in despite of Christ? Begin then at once to hear God for eternity. Do not put it off for another day. If you never believed in Christ and His salvation before, may God give you to believe in Him that you may be saved now. Remember that with atonement goes true affliction of the soul; but no work of yours can be connected with that which He has wrought. When your soul's deep want is settled with God, there will be ample room and loud call for you to work, and unfailing joy to express. But the atonement is too holy and too solemn for man to be other than abased and prostrate before the God Who sent His Son to suffer for you. Bow to God then with affliction of your soul; and abhor the presumption of adding to it by work on your part. “They shall come, and shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that He hath done (it).”

The words just cited are the end of Psa. 22. First Christ most distinctively undergoes the sufferings of atonement, wherein He appeals to God at His necessary desertion, with the blessed results in the latter half. Its opening cry is so applied in the New Testament, as already pointed out. Every other thought deprives it of grace, not to say of meaning, and is altogether unworthy of the suffering Man Who was God. Psa. 40 is more mingled; but beyond dispute, in the light of Heb. 10, it puts forth Christ setting aside, not only sacrifice and offering but burnt-offering and offering for sin, by the oblation of His body once for all on the cross. His willing obedience unto death is the central truth, though in so doing God's will He graciously feels as His own the sins of the ungodly men whose substitute He is. Psa. 69 again points to Messiah on the cross, but in the aspect of His rejection by man, and by the ungodly Jews particularly, with the result of judgment on them, whatever the blessing for Zion. Psa. 88 again indicates Messiah's spirit identified with elect Israel, righteously feeling in grace all the power of darkness and death, yet crying to Jehovah day and night. Psa. 102 is Christ identified with the misery of Zion, and referring to Jehovah, Who owns the humbled One as Jehovah, no less eternal and unchangeable than Himself. Psa. 109 closes these marvelous oracles with Christ suffering from the treachery of the Jews, headed by Judas, and looking on to the son of perdition in the last days, when Jews and Gentiles again unite against Him to their everlasting shame, but the needy shall rejoice in Him forever.

Nor are the Prophets silent, any more than the Law and the Psalm though one need not now go beyond the clear, and deep, and full testimony of Isa. 52, 53. Even the rationalistic Gesenius, though he contends here for the prophetic body personified and rejected by Israel, confesses as the truth, both from the language employed and the habitual thought, not of that nation only but of all others, that an expiatory work runs through it. Yet while allowing the New Testament teaching to be based on it, he (poor man, wise in his own conceit) preferred the expiation should be by the suffering prophets for Israel's deliverance! But if expiation is admitted, none but an unbeliever can fail to see it in Christ alone. The Righteous Servant of Jehovah, Whom the Jews esteemed smitten of God, was really wounded for their transgressions, bruised for their iniquities: the chastisement of their peace was upon Him; and by His stripes are they healed. Jehovah laid on Him the iniquity of them all. For the transgression of His people was He stricken. He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. “Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise Him. He hath put Him to grief: when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in His hand. He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied. By His knowledge shall My Righteous Servant justify many (or rather, instruct the many in righteousness, cf. Dan. 12:3), and He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors; and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” Argument or even exposition is superfluous: save for men insensible to sin and indifferent to God, the truth of the Holy Sufferer is transparent throughout. It is “Jesus only.” We have seen His sufferings; but His glories are not visible as yet, however great some are in the heavens. The visible are to follow, as they surely will “in that day.”

Proverbs 16:1-8

The maxims here brought together fitly follow up the fear of Jehovah as the discipline of wisdom, and the path of humility before honor. Heart and ways are alike affected thereby.

“The preparations (or plans) of the heart [are] of man, but the answer of the tongue [is] from Jehovah.

All the ways of a man [are] clean in his own eyes; but Jehovah weigheth the spirits.

Commit thy works to Jehovah, and thy thoughts shall be established.

Jehovah hath wrought everything for his (or, its) own end; yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.

Every proud heart [is] an abomination to Jehovah; hand in (or, for) hand (or, certainly) he shall not be held innocent (or, go unpunished).

By mercy and truth iniquity is purged; and by the fear of Jehovah they depart from evil.

When a man's ways please Jehovah, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.

Better [is] a little with righteousness than great revenues without righteousness” (vers. 1-8).

Too well we know how readily the heart devises this way or that, and how constantly this fails to meet the difficulty. Happy he that waits on Him Who sees the end from the beginning, and deigns to guide aright when the need arises. Then one can speak the right words in peace, and humbly: but the answer of the tongue is from Jehovah.

The same reference to Him delivers from the bias that regards all the ways of a man as clean in his own eyes. Jehovah weighs the spirit: who but He? Dependence on Him and confidence in Him are indispensable to judge, as for all else.

What a comfort that it is He who bids one to commit his works to Himself (literally, roll them upon Him), “and thy thoughts (not merely thy works) shall be established” His goodness answers to our trusting Him with what is outward, and graciously establishes our “thoughts,” so apt to vacillate and pass away. How slow are even His own to learn the loving interest He takes in those that confide in Him!

Next is set before us the solemn truth, easily overlooked in the busy world of man, that Jehovah has wrought everything for His, or its, own end. Yet is anything more certain? It is not His reign, for evil abounds and the righteous suffer. Still His moral government is unfailing, whatever appearance may promise for awhile. The day will declare all. This is so true that He can add, “yea even the wicked for the day of evil.” How manifest all this will be in the coming judgment!

But even now He would have His people feel how offensive “every proud heart” is to Him; “an abomination,” and nothing less, to Jehovah.

Yet how common pride is, and how little do men believe that God hates it, and will judge accordingly? The Highest despises not any. Hence, whatever the seeming support or the delay, beyond doubt one who so lives shall not be held innocent.

The next word is striking as only to be understood aright when a brighter light shone. Even before then no believer would have allowed that the mercy and truth were on man's part to atone for his sins. It is in Christ and especially in His cross that they meet for the purging of the guilty and defiled. Anywhere else they are irreconcilable. Men plead “mercy” to escape the condemnation of “truth"; but if truth pronounce the just judgment of the wicked, what can mercy do to arrest the execution? The Lord Jesus alone bore the curse in all its truth, that the iniquities might be blotted out in the richest mercy. The grace of God appeared in Christ that His merciful remission of our sins might be His righteousness now manifested in the gospel. Truly by the fear of Him is departure from evil.

This it is which, by a new nature as well as redemption, teaches those who believe to walk so as to please God, worthily of His calling and kingdom. In spite of natural enmity, the fruit of righteousness tells on conscience, so that even adversaries are made to be at peace with them.

Plain it is then that even here “better is a little with righteousness than great revenues without right.” Much more when the veil was lifted by Christ to let in the light of the eternal day on the present scene of flesh and world, alike enmity against God.

Gospel Words: Lamp of the Body Is the Eye

That Christ is the Light, and the True Light, is a truth dear to every Christian. He coming into the world manifests every man. Rich or poor, simple or sage, false or faithful, not one escapes His all-searching light. Nor is there the least circumstance in the course of every day, any more than in what pertains to God, and truth, and morals, not for this life only but for eternity, that He does not set in the light of God. Only through Him do we see fully what God is, Satan, man, the sinner, the saint, heaven, hell, everything.

The disciples, as the Lord told them in Matt. 5:14, are the light of the world, as they are also the salt of the earth (13). They could be neither apart from Christ. It is He who thus assimilates them to Himself; the latter in His character of righteousness, the former in the quality of His grace, as already explained in Series xi. 4. In receiving Him by faith they receive a new nature, being born of God; hence there is both righteousness and love in their ways.

But here there is a further though connected truth of great value.

“The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body will be light; but if thine eye be wicked, thy whole body will be dark. If therefore the light that is in thee is darkness, how great the darkness”

It is a question not of the light, which is perfect but of “the eye.” Spiritual condition has an immense deal to do with the disciples seeing aright. Our recipiency and discernment, our actual judgment and our practice, depend on the state of our affections. The Lord presents the ready and effectual test. “If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body will be light; but if thine eye be wicked, thy whole body will be dark.”

Christ truly the object before one gives singleness of eye; and where He is simply and exclusively the “one thing” before the soul, the whole body is light. Difficulties vanish. The will of God becomes quite clear. I am surprised and ashamed to have had doubts here and uncertainty there. I recognize to my humiliation that I had been asleep in my ways and had to rise up from among the dead, and then only have Christ shining upon me.

Prayer alone does not ensure singleness of eye, nor yet suffices searching the word accompanied by prayer. There may be a fleshly film that dims the eye. We are too apt to think ourselves of importance for God when it is all of grace that He uses us in this way or that. We fail to appreciate our Lord's waiting on His Father, without taking a single step till He gets the word. Yet it is to His obedience that we are sanctified by the Spirit.

We are not like Jews with every point great or small religiously and in ordinary life, in peace or in war, personal, domestic, or social, all ruled by the statutes and ordinances, prohibitions and injunctions of law. Christ brought in the fuller and deeper obedience of a Son, and makes it by grace the believer's by the gift of life eternal and eternal redemption, with the Holy Spirit indwelling as power and personally also in us. But though thus blessed, there are still the three great enemies, the flesh, the world, and the devil, in the face of which we are responsible to please God as His children. We need therefore to pray, as the apostle did for the Colossians, to be filled with the right knowledge of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, to walk worthily of the Lord unto all well-pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and growing by the right knowledge of God (Col. 1:9, 10).

For this we need the eye single and the whole body light. How is this to be? The Lord tells us in John 15:7: “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done to you.” Habitual dependence on Him with confidence in His love is to abide in Him: without this all else is vain. But where we abide by grace, His words are needed to direct: for who is sufficient otherwise? and His Spirit is given to guide us thus. Only thus are we sure that we have His mind; for thus the eye is single and the whole body light. Then when we ask, we have our petition. O that so it may be and that we may be content with nothing less!

What is the issue, where other objects are allowed? The alternative is, “If thine eye be wicked, thy whole body will be dark.” How solemn the sentence, and how true! “If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great the darkness!” O look to God that it be not so with you, a disciple of the Lord!

See too the impossibility of the Light yours, of the eye single, save by genuine repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus. Doubt yourself, not God; and receive Him who in His grace came to receive you by faith, if you have not already done so.

1 Peter 3:7

The address to husbands is much shorter, as we can readily see and understand. Yet is there not a little for our instruction.

“Ye husbands, likewise, dwelling with [them] according to knowledge, awarding honor as to a weaker vessel, the female, as also fellow-heirs of the grace of life, that your prayers be not hindered” (ver. 7).

As the wife is called to subjection to her own husband, so is the husband to dwell with her “according to knowledge.” Thus the apostle reminds the Corinthian saints “we all have knowledge” (1 Cor. 8:1). It is characteristic of Christ to give spiritual intelligence which is far more. We do not await the day of the Lord to have divine light. We walk in the light as following Him who is the Light of life; we are already, all Christians, sons of light and sons of day; we are not, as we were, of night and of darkness. The Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true. Loved of Him we are to walk in the same love; light in the Lord, to walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. On the one hand we are to prove what is well-pleasing to the Lord; on the other, to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather also reprove them, exposed as they all are by the light, for that which makes everything manifest is light.

Favored as the Jew of old was, compared with the heathen (no matter how civilized or refined as in Greece and Rome), Christianity gave an immense advance. But as one apostle, who had inwardly all knowledge beyond such as boasted, insisted that if he had not love, he was nothing, so here our apostle implies its necessity for the husband's “dwelling together” with his wife. Hence to love their wives has the first and great place in the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians. To fail in such love is a breach of the relationship, and unworthy of a Christian. Alienation is a practical denial of the husband's place. Faults there may be, haste, forgetfulness, shortcomings; but love as elsewhere, so here in a position so near and tender and peculiar, should have long patience and be kind; be not emulous any more than insolent and rash, nor be puffed up, nor behave in an unseemly way, neither quickly provoked nor imputing evil, and rejoice not at iniquity but rather with the truth. Love does not change nor weary; but we need not here say more. Only we must bear in mind, in thus “dwelling together,” the need that it be “according to knowledge.” The vanity of our knowing, which puffs up, is contrasted with love which builds up.

And what a source of instruction is scripture for the difficulties of the home as well as of the way! Christ Himself, as the other apostle pointed out, is the Standard.

But a few words follow which deserve every attention. The husband, as having the place of authority, is exposed to the danger of presumption and lack of consideration. Hence the force here of “awarding honor as to a weaker vessel, the female.” The very fact that such is her nature as compared with his own is the ground of the Spirit's appeal to him who is given to be her protector. Has he never learned his own weakness before God, and proved that in the sense of it by faith is his power through the grace of Christ? His therefore it is, never to despise, but to guide and cherish her and this in no suspicious spirit but the watchfulness of love, and the grace that pays her honor. But to apply this definitely to “allotting an honorable subsistence” to the wife, as Dr. Doddridge contended, has no more claim to be God's mind than his similar use of 1 Tim. 5:17 for the elders.

Another consideration consists of a still higher plea— “as also fellow-heirs of the grace of life, that your prayers be not hindered.” Though the married estate is essentially of the earth, yet those here in view were the redeemed of God, His children. “And if children, heirs also; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.” Husband and wife, being Christians, are appealed to as in a relationship by grace which shall never pass away. When Christ our life shall be manifested, then shall they exchange the present exposure to sorrow and suffering in which we give God thanks, for that exceeding weight of glory, into which Christ has entered as our fore-runner, whilst we are waiting for Him. O dear brethren, recognize your blessedness, and count the heaviest trial but light affliction and momentary. Look not at the things that are seen but at the things that are not seen; for the things that are seen are for a time, but those that are not seen eternal.

Free Will: Part 1

The notion of it ministers to the pretension of the natural man not to be entirely lost; for this is just what it amounts to. All who have never been deeply convinced of sins, all those with whom this conviction is based on gross and outward sins, believe more or less in free-will. It is the dogma of the Arminian, of all reasoners, of philosophers; but it completely changes the whole idea of Christ and entirely perverts it.

If Christ came to save that which is lost, freewill has no more place. Not that God prevents man from receiving Christ, far from it. But even when God employs all possible motives—every one that is capable of exerting influence over the heart of a man, it only serves to prove that man will have none of Him. His heart is so corrupt, and his will so determined not to submit to God (however much it may be of the devil who encourages him in sin), that nothing can induce him to receive the Lord, and to forsake sin.

If, by liberty of man, they mean that no one forces him to reject the Lord, this liberty exists in full. But if it is implied that, on account of the dominion of sin of which he is the slave, and that voluntarily, he cannot escape from his condition and choose the good (even while acknowledging it to be good and approving it), then he has no liberty whatever. He is not subject to the law, neither indeed can be; so that they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

This is where we mostly touch upon the root in question. Is it the old man that is changed, instructed, and sanctified? or do we, in order to be saved, receive a new nature? The universal character of the unbelief of the present day is this: not formally rejecting Christianity as in former times, or rejecting Christ openly; but receiving Him as a Person (they will even say divine, inspired, but as a matter of dogma), who re-establishes man in his position as a child of God. The Wesleyans, as far as taught of God, do not say so: faith makes them feel that without Christ they are lost, and that it is a question of salvation. Only their fear with regard to pure grace, their desire to gain men, a mixture of charity and of the spirit of man, in a word their confidence in their own strength, makes confusion in their teaching, and leads them not to recognize the total ruin of man.

As for me, I see in the word, and I recognize in myself, the total ruin of man. I see the cross is the end of all the means that God had employed to gain the heart of man, and consequently that it proves the thing to be impossible. God has exhausted all His resources; man has shown that he is wicked, past recovery; the cross of Christ condemns man—sin in flesh. But this condemnation having been expressed in that Another has undergone it, it is the absolute salvation of those who believe; for condemnation, the judgment of sin, is behind us: life came out of it in resurrection. We died to sin, and are alive to God, in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Redemption, the very word, loses its force when we entertain those ideas of the old man. It becomes an amelioration, a practical deliverance from a moral state, and not a redeeming by the finished work of another. Christianity teaches the death of the old man and his just condemnation, then redemption accomplished by Christ, and a new life, life eternal, come down from heaven in His Person and communicated to us when Christ enters into us by the word. Arminianism, or rather Pelagianism, pretends that man can choose, and that thus the old man is ameliorated by the thing it has accepted. The first is made without grace; and it is the first step which truly costs in this.

I believe that we ought to keep to the word; but, philosophically and morally speaking, free-will is a false and absurd theory. Free-will is a state of sin. Man ought not to have to choose, as being outside of good. Why is he in this state? He ought not to have a will or any choice to make; he ought to obey, and enjoy it in peace. If he has to choose good, then he has not got it yet. He is without that which is good in himself, at any rate since he is not decided. But in fact man is disposed to follow that which is evil. What cruelty to propose a duty to man who is already turned to evil! Moreover, philosophically speaking, he must be indifferent: otherwise he has already chosen as to his will. He must then be absolutely indifferent. Now if he is absolutely indifferent, what is to decide his choice? A creature must have a motive: but he has none, since he is indifferent; if he is not, he has chosen.

But in fact it is not so. Man has a conscience; but he has a will and lusts, and they lead him. Man was free in paradise, but then he was in the enjoyment of good. He made use of his free-will, and consequently he is a sinner. To leave him to his free-will, now that he is disposed to do evil, would be cruelty. God has presented to him the choice; but it was to convince the conscience of the fact. In any case, man would have neither good nor God. That people should believe that God loves the world is all right; but that they should not believe that man is himself wicked beyond remedy (and notwithstanding the remedy) is very bad. They know not themselves, and they know not God.

Usually, when we speak of “free” and “can,” the absence of compulsion and the presence of power are confounded. Take a plain case to show what is meant. I say, “Everyone can come to the meeting,” meaning it is open to all: and I am told “It is not true for such a one has broken his leg and cannot come.” Thus when the Lord says, No one can come to Me, except the Father who sent Me draw him, it is not that God prohibits or hinders, but that man is so wicked in will and corrupt, that, unless a power outside himself act on him, he cannot come. He is never morally so disposed. Man is perfectly free to come now, so far as God is concerned, and invited to come—yea besought; and the precious blood of Christ is then on the mercy-seat, so that moral difficulty is removed by God's own grace as regards the Holy One receiving a sinner. In this sense he is perfectly free to come.

But then there is the other side, man's own will and state. There is no will to come, but the opposite. Life was there in Christ; but “ye will not come that ye might have life.” “All things are ready: come to the marriage “; but “they all with one consent began to make excuse.” Man does not wish to be with God. “There is none that understandeth; there is none that seeketh after God.” “Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? When I called, was there none to answer?” “The carnal mind is enmity against God.” The crucifixion of the Lord is the proof that man would not have God when come in mercy and relieving even every present misery. “For my love I had hatred.” “They hated me without a cause.” “Now they have both seen and hated both Me and My Father.” And the Lord gives the reason: whatever the love (and it was infinite and perfect), God is light as well as love, “and men loved darkness rather than light.” They reject a love that humbles their pride as they detest a light which awakens their conscience. Therefore we find, “As many as received Him, to them gave He right to become children of God, even to them that believe on His name; who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

It is simple nonsense to talk of freedom when applied to man's actual condition, if he is already inclined to evil, admitting him more than free to come, invited and besought by every motive, all made ready—but that which he will not, and no motive induces him. I have yet one Son says God; but this is over. To say, he is not inclined to evil is to deny all scripture and all fact. To make him free to choose, he must be as yet indifferent to, having no preference for, good and evil; which is not true, for evil lusts and self-will are there, the two great elements of sin; and, if it were true, it would be perfectly horrible. But there is more; when he (being converted) does will good, evil is present with him. How to perform that which is good he finds not. There is a law in his members bringing him into captivity to the law of sin which is in his members. No doubt (thank God) there is deliverance, deliverance in Another. But deliverance is not freedom, but what is effected and granted by Another, because I have learned by experience under divine teaching that I am not free and cannot free myself.

Hence in Rom. 6., where this question is treated in its roots, we are set free by having died with Christ, the Adam nature crucified with Him. Then he can say but not before, “yield yourselves “: a blessed and true principle when I reckon myself dead to sin and alive to God, not in Adam, but in Jesus Christ our Lord. This is resumed in chap. 8:2, 3. “The law of the Spirit of life.... made me free from the law of sin and death “; so that I was not free before I had Christ. And He adds, “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” Freedom is the fruit of deliverance by Christ. First in His death the old man, sin in the flesh, is dead for faith. I am crucified with Him, yet I have life by the power of the Spirit in Christ, and then I am free.

But the facts of man's state, and the scriptural history of his responsibility, put this matter on another ground altogether. That history will bring out more clearly the facts of his state. The purpose of God was always in the Second man, not in the first. The first promise also was to the Seed of the woman, not to Adam who was not that. The Seed of the woman was to destroy Satan's power, as Adam had succumbed to it. All promises are made to Christ, to Israel as a chosen people or to Abraham and to his Seed, none to man as such. But God began with responsibility, first in the first Adam, not with a purpose or promise.

This responsibility was fully dealt with in every way, after the fall, without law, under law, and after the prophets by Christ's coming in grace according to the word. “Having therefore one Son, His well-beloved, He sent Him also last unto them.” Thus man's responsibility was fully dealt with; and the Lord says, “Now is the judgment of this world.” Stephen sums this up, saying (Acts 7), “ye have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted and slain, who testified beforehand of the Just One, of Whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers? Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers, so do ye.” And he, full of the Holy Ghost, thereon goes to heaven; and earth's tale is told.

(To be continued).

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: 1 Peter

Chap. V. Divine Design. 47. the First Epistle of Peter

As the address in the Epistle of James differs from that of Peter, whose two Epistles are directed to the same Christian Jews, elect sojourners of the dispersion, in part of Asia Minor, so the character of both is most distinct, as may be now seen in the first of the two. They were as he says “elect according to God the Father's foreknowledge in [virtue of] sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and blood-sprinkling of Jesus Christ.” Thus does the apostle contrast their standing with Israel, who had only a fleshly and external separation to Jehovah, and were bound to obey the law under the sanction of the sprinkled blood of victims which kept death before them as the sure penalty in case of their disobedience.

The opening is like that of the Epistle to the Ephesians, yet with a marked difference from the first and throughout. Here it is not “with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ, according as He chose us in Him before the world's foundation that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love,” etc. It is, “Who according to His much mercy begot us again unto a living hope through resurrection of Jesus Christ out of the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, reserved in the heavens for you that are guarded by God's power through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1:3-5). It is not “the mystery,” but the “heavenly calling,” for saints who pass through the wilderness and await their heavenly inheritance at Christ's appearing; it thus far resembles the Epistle to the Hebrews. Exultation meanwhile should be, as grief for a little through varied trials which terminate at His revelation. But we love Him, though we never saw Him; and though we do not see Him, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, in distinctive contrast with Israel's faith and hope. We receive soul-salvation and wait for that of our bodies. The prophets predicted; the Holy Ghost now witnesses in the gospel; the Lord will be revealed to crown all in glory. Thus between the two room is made for the gospel and Christianity. We therefore, cheered by what is accomplished, gird up our loins in the Spirit, and hope perfectly for the grace to be soon brought (6-13).

Hence as obedient children, conforming not yourselves to the former lusts in your ignorance, but according to the holy One that called you, may ye be holy in all respects; because it is written, Be ye holy, because I am holy. And if ye invoke as Father Him that impartially judges according to the work of each, pass the time of your pilgrimage in fear, (not because ye doubt your deliverance, but) knowing that not with corruptibles, silver or gold, ye were redeemed from your vain course of life handed down from fathers, but with Christ's precious blood as an unblemished and spotless lamb, foreknown before the world's foundation, but manifested at the end of times for you that through Him believe in God that raised Him out of the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God (14-21).

The chapter closes with pointing out that having purified their souls by obedience to the truth to unfeigned brotherly love, they were out of a pure heart to love one another fervently, being born again not of corruptible seed but incorruptible through God's living and abiding word. It was not now a question of Israel's sons, but of God's. And as the new relationship was through His word received in faith, it was on the ground of His sovereign grace in presence of the total failure of His ancient people. Because all flesh is as grass, and all its glory as grass and its flower; but the Lord's word abides forever. And this is the word which was preached unto them. Relationships to each other among believers follow these to God and Christ; they are most excellent, intimate, and enduring (22-25). They might suffer but ought to be of good cheer.

II. Hence they were, putting away all malice, guile, hypocrisies, envies, and slanders to long for the pure milk of the word as new-born babes, that they might grow thereby to salvation, if indeed they had tasted that the Lord is good, without which all was vain. As we see, salvation here as elsewhere is viewed as only complete when glory comes; but as by God's word we were born again, so are we nourished. He is the Living Stone, rejected by men but with God elect, precious; and they coming to Him as living stones were being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Isa. 28:16 is cited; for the work of grace in Zion by-and-by is no less true for the believers now, to whom the preciousness belongs, while the nation stumbles in disobedience; whereas the faithful gain to the highest degree and are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for a possession, to set forth the excellencies of Him that called them out of darkness into His wonderful light. What Israel are to have when they believe is forestalled, and much more now (6-10). Christians as such are the sole priests whom the Lord now recognizes.

As pilgrims and sojourners they are besought to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, with their behavior seemly among the Gentiles, that wherein they slander them as evil-doers, they might, as witnesses, out of their good works glorify God in a day of visitation (11, 12). Christians are meant to be separate to the Lord, and ever waiting for Him and glory above, instead of being sown to Jehovah in the land, for great is the day of Jezreel.

Then he lays down submission to the powers that be, closing with a pregnant summary: Honor all, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king (13-17).

Domestics are next exhorted to subjection with all fear of their masters; and the Christian principle is enjoined, “If doing good and suffering ye shall endure, this is grace with God. Hence Christ in suffering every way and perfectly is set as model to us, who had gone far astray but now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls” (18-25).

III. Then wives and husbands are exhorted in the same strain of grace as objects of God's government at work morally (1-7). Finally, all were to be of like mind in sympathy, brotherly love, tenderness, and humility, not returning evil in deed or word, but contrariwise blessing in the sense that such is our calling and hope. The Psalms are freely used to confirm it, warning against self and assuring us of the Lord's care, even if we should suffer for righteousness. How blessed! We need not fear or be troubled, but should sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts, always ready to answer everyone that asketh a reason about the hope that is in us with meekness and fear, having a good conscience that, wherein they slander us a evil-doers, those may be put to shame that calumniate our good behavior in Christ (8-16).

Next he urges the manifest truth that it is better, if the will of God will it, to suffer well-doing than evil doing; for Christ also once suffered for sins, Just for unjust, that He might bring us to God, put to death indeed in flesh but quickened in Spirit, in [virtue of] which [ Spirit] also He went and preached to the imprisoned spirits, heretofore disobedient when the longsuffering of God waited in Noah's days while the ark was a preparing, wherein few (that is, eight) souls were saved through water; which figure also now saves us, baptism, not putting away of filth of flesh, but demand of a good conscience Godward, through Jesus Christ's resurrection, Who is at God's right-hand, having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being subjected to Him (17-22). The notion of Christ's descent to Hades after death and there preaching to saints, sinners, or angels, is a mere dream, not only without scripture but contrary to it, and irreconcilable with revealed truth. The passage refers solely to His Spirit preaching to the antediluvians through Noah. As they then disobeyed the word, they are in prison, awaiting the still more solemn judgment for eternity, so those must who refuse the gospel now preached.

IV. Christ suffering for us in flesh is here pressed on us, who also need it the more because of our having lusts, which He had not. The past surely should suffice those who are now renewed, and have lived with the unrestraint to which Gentile surroundings exposed. If now reviled, because they refused such vileness, those who did so should give account to Him that is ready to judge quick and dead. For therefore were glad tidings preached to dead also [of course while alive], that they might be judged according to men in flesh, but live according to God in Spirit. If they submitted to that judgment of themselves as guilty men, they emerged by faith with a new life whereby they lived according to God in Spirit. It is the other side of what the antediluvians experienced who disobeyed Noah's preaching of righteousness (1-6). They were dead men, who by faith bowed to the judgment of their condition and also laid hold of the promises to a life Godward.

This bringing before the apostle the end of all things as drawn nigh, he called the saints to be sober and watch unto prayers; to cherish before all things fervent love among themselves, because love, instead of bruiting abroad, covers a multitude of sins; to be hospitable one toward another without murmurings. Even as such received a gift, they were to minister it to each other, as good stewards of God's manifold grace: if one speak, as God's oracles; if one minister, as of strength which God supplies; that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, Whose is the glory and the might unto the ages of the ages. Amen (7-11).

In verses 12-19 the word is not to take as strange the fire among them that cometh for their trial, as though a strange thing happened to them; but in communion with Christ's sufferings to “rejoice; that at the revelation of His glory also ye may rejoice exultingly. If ye are reproached in Christ's name, blessed [are ye], because the [Spirit] of glory and the Spirit of God rests on you. This is the highest suffering in God's sight, not merely for righteousness, but for Christ. Let none of you suffer, he proceeds, as murderer or thief or evil-doer or as overseer of other's affairs; but if as a Christian, let him not be ashamed but glorify God in this name. Because (it is) the time for the judgment to begin from the house of God; and if first from us, what [is] the end of those disobedient to the gospel of God? And if the righteous is with difficulty saved, where shall the ungodly and sinful appear? Wherefore also let those that suffer according to the will of God commit their souls in well-doing to a faithful Creator.

V. The last chapter opens with exhorting the elders among them, himself a fellow-elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, who was also partaker of the glory about to be revealed, in exact keeping with the Epistle. Feed, says he, the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight not by necessity but willingly, nor yet for base gain but readily, not as lording over your allotments but being models of the flock. And when the Chie Shepherd is manifested, ye shall receive the unfading crown of glory. How every word shines with the light and love of God, yet how forgotten in Christendom! (1-4.)

The younger he bids be subject to elders, and to bind on humility toward one another; for God sets Himself against proud ones, but gives grace to the lowly. “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in season, having cast all your anxiety upon him, for he careth for you” (5-7). Again he says, Watch, be wakeful: your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour. It is not the wiles of a serpent here, still less the ruler of the authorities of the air, but the wilderness enemy. “Whom resist, steadfast in faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brotherhood in the world. But the God of all grace that called you to His eternal glory in Christ Jesus, after suffering a little, himself shall make perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle: to him [be] the glory for the ages of the ages. Amen.” Did not the apostle remember and apply Luke 22:32? No doubt he was carrying out his charge over the circumcision that believed in the sphere where Paul labored so much. And it is full of interest to note that the faithful Silvanus, the companion of the one, now conveyed this Epistle of the other, wherein he exhorts and testifies that this is the true grace of God “wherein ye stand, (or, in which stand).” Again “Mark my son” is now Peter's companion, quite restored to the confidence of the other apostle who had blamed him of old. “She that is joint-elect” appears to be the true force; but whether Peter's wife or another in Babylon whence he writes, we cannot say. He asks for a warm and holy greeting and peace too mutually, to “you all that are in Christ.”

Scripture Queries and Answers: Luke 23:43

Q.-Luke 23:43. In “Things to Come” for May, which I send, you will find a very dangerous paper on this text, practically undoing, as far as it goes, its testimony to Christ's work. If the robber's spirit did not go that day to Paradise, where did it go? The error opens the door to Purgatory or anything but the truth. O.P.

A.-It is a bold man who ventures to set aside on this text, not only the Authorized and Revised Versions, but every translation, ancient or modern, hitherto regarded as reliable; and for this to set aside the conviction of the great mass of the godly orthodox, not only in other churches so-called, but in his own English Establishment. For it is mere claptrap and party spirit to attack in particular those he calls Plymouth Brethren, because the O.B. Witness rejected his own “strange doctrine.” His notion is that Paradise “is never used in any other sense than that of an earthly place of beauty and delight.” Never but an earthly place! and this in full view of Rev. 21-22! And he dares to say that for “the intermediate state,” and Paradise as a part of it, “they have not a shred of scripture warrant! nothing but a mixture of Heathen and Jewish Tradition handed down and further corrupted by Pagans and Papists!”

Let us weigh his two arguments. 1. If the Lord had intended to separate “to-day” from the introductory clause, either the particle ὅτι would have been prefixed, as in Mark 14:30, or the passage would have been differently constructed, as in Luke 9:21, 22; 19:9. But this is decisively overthrown by the fact that, with the formula of our verse, in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke there is nearly an equal number where ὅτι is omitted as inserted, various readings causing a slight uncertainty. In that of John who uses the twofold “verily,” the ὅτι occurs for about half the cases which omit it. Clearly therefore there is no such rule as is alleged, and the deduction as to its absence in Luke 23 is unfounded. There is a similar usage in Hebrew and our own tongue, where “that” is often dropped, instead of being formally expressed.

2. Thirty-eight examples are pointed out in the book of Deuteronomy to justify taking “to-day” with “Verily I say unto thee.” Now not one of these has the smallest analogy with our verse. They are all due to the exceptional nature of Moses' pathetic charge “this day,” and of Israel about to cross the Jordan which was forbidden him What has that to do with the case before us? The resemblance is only in the word, not the least in the sense or context. It is not “a common Hebrew idiom used to emphasize and mark the solemnity of what was said,” &c. It is the peculiarity of Deuteronomy and owing to the then circumstances. On the contrary the Lord is replying to the earnest prayer of the robber, then repentant and believing: Remember me, when Thou comest in Thy kingdom. The testimony of His enemies in derision had through our Lord's words and bearing penetrated; but he knew that he would have to wait for the coming in His kingdom. The whole force of the answer of grace and truth is that “To-day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise “; and putting “to-day” in the first place gave it marked emphasis. What case in Deuteronomy ever approaches even a parallel? To talk of such dictionary or concordance work as this settling the question is more than ordinary illusion.

The aim of the enemy is to defraud the departing saint of his joy in looking for immediate entrance into heavenly blessedness with Christ, as the fruit of redemption. The very gospel of God is thus enfeebled and darkened. Meetness for sharing the portion of the saints in light is what the Father confers on His children, delivered from the authority of darkness, and peace made through the blood of Christ's cross. The worshippers, once purged, have no more conscience of sins. The basis of holiness too is shaken, and the growth of saints hindered. The poor robber's spirit went just as the martyred Stephen's: Christ's blood has the same perfect value for all that are His. Both slept to be with Christ. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit, cried the servant, as the Master said, Father, into Thy hands I commend my Spirit.

So Phil. 1:23 lays down departure and being with Christ as being very much better than remaining here, even though exulting with joy unspeakable and full of glory. It is not of God to let the hope of glory lessen this, because it would dishonor Christ and His work. If we fall asleep, we go to be with Christ; and where is He? He is not only in heaven, but in its brightest part. As Adam's Paradise was the brightest spot on earth, so this so-called Paradise; it is the Father's house in John 14. They are both figures, but figures of divine truth. To literalize either is folly. It is the blessed scene on high where God in love glorified His Son on accomplishing His work on the cross; and there the saints are with Him, they, it is true, waiting for the redemption of their bodies when He comes. But no joy or glory on earth will equal that which they will there have, then in their best form of being with Him, that they may behold His glory, entirely above the world, as He was loved by the Father before it was founded. This is far above the kingdom which the world will see “in that day.”

2 Cor. 5 tells us no less clearly of the condition of the Christian's soul after his death. “Now he that wrought us for this very thing (i.e., to be swallowed up of life) [is] God who gave us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore being always of good courage, and knowing that, while at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord (for we walk by faith, not by sight), we are indeed of good courage, and well-pleased to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.” This is not as Jews or Tradition-mongers conceived. But it is “the intermediate state,” the state between death and resurrection. It is a human term like the Trinity, and the thing in both cases, if not the word, is a clear truth of God. How unwise and unworthy to cavil at the expression! Why should any object, unless the sleep of souls or some worse error be held which jars with the truth? But if they live to God, after death and before resurrection, what is this but “the intermediate state” which the paper treats with unbelief and contempt. Is there a single sound Anglican who excuses him?

Then comes 2 Cor. 12 which explodes his delusion as to Paradise. For the apostle in verse 2 alludes to his rapture to “third heaven,” before he speaks of Paradise (ver. 4). Surely this is a supplied help to bind them together. It is no question, as he absurdly supposes, of “Paul caught away to that blessed time when this earth restored shall become again the paradise of God” (a sentence bristling with evident error), but of Paul caught up to third heaven and Paradise then. There Christ's Spirit went after death; there is He glorified now; there go spirits of departed saints, as the robber's did, and Stephen's, and whither we go if we depart this life.

But Rev. 2:7 completes our knowledge; for there shall we when glorified eat of the tree of life in the Paradise of God. The lost paradise of man is not restored. Grace always gives a better thing than what was lost; and the new and heavenly scene of glory is rightly distinguished as the Paradise of God. Rightly is its future aspect symbolized in Rev. 21:9-22:5. Think of imagining that the holy Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, is the earthly capital of Israel! Righteousness reigns in the Jewish city.; and the nation and kingdom that will not serve it, as Isa. 60 tells us, shall perish. But the heavenly city will be characterized by grace; and if the unfailing fruits of the tree of life in figure refresh the glorified, its leaves are for the healing, not wasting, of the nations. For that day will look on all things put under Christ's headship, the glorified on high and reigning with Christ, Israel and the nations on the earth reigned over and blessed under the King of kings and Lord of lords, when we shall reign with Him. It is the Father's kingdom for all above; and the Son of man's kingdom for the long rebellious earth, cleared by judgments, before righteousness reigns here below, when His will is done on earth as in heaven.

Alas! the writer so profoundly judaizes that he denies the heavenly Paradise of God as a falsehood, and will have it as the restoration of the paradise of Gen. 2 on earth. It is to renounce the Christian hope, and to mistake the Jewish one; for the words restrain glory to their land and holy mountain, instead of the vague dream of “this earth” becoming again the Paradise of God. It was never so.

The still worse improprieties near the beginning and at the end we can leave in silence and shame.

Scripture Queries and Answers: 1 Corinthians 9:27

Q.-1 Cor. 9:27. Is there any sufficient reason to lower the last clause, as Calvin does, by excluding the issue of ruin before God, and looking rather at failure in the fruit of service among men? In other words, does the apostle mean, not a “castaway” or reprobate, but merely disapproved for his work and disappointed of a special prize? Q.

A.-There ought to be no doubt that in the text, as in the context, the most searching and solemn warning is intended. Very great levity at that time prevailed in the Corinthian assembly: parties attaching themselves to favorite teachers, just as outside to the rival schools of philosophy; indifference to gross wickedness in their midst; keenness for their alleged rights carried into worldly law-courts; boasting of liberty in partaking of food which had been offered to idols; women forward in speaking; men turning the assembly into license for their speech; and questions raised, not only as to the marriage tie but such a truth as the resurrection of the body. They were too unspiritual to feel the dishonor done to the Lord by all this laxity. Hence it is that the apostle insists, not on preaching only but on our living to God soberly, justly, and piously as he enjoins in writing later to Titus. To make it the more impressive, without being personal, he applies the case to himself. “I therefore thus run, as not uncertainly; I so combat as not beating the air. But I buffet my body, and lead it captive, lest having preached to others I should be myself reprobate.” It is not service or fruit failing, but himself rejected by God. The use of the word is the same as in 2 Cor. 13:5-7. It has no other sense in the N.T. Even if softened down to disapproved, it means everywhere the total and final disapprobation of God. It is really lack of faith, fearing to face the plain and certain truth that an unholy liver, no matter how he preaches or what the resulting fruit, will assuredly be lost. Paul was as decided for devotedness of life as for sovereign grace in justifying the ungodly. Nor is there a greater danger for man and dishonor to God than to be zealous in preaching and loose in practice. This he follows up for Christians generally (not preachers only) in 1 Cor. 10 where he adduces the ruin of multitudes in Israel, as a warning to presumptuous professors of Christianity

Scripture Queries and Answers: 1 John 5:16-17

Q.-1 John 5:16, 17. Does this refer to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, as in Matt. 12:31, 32, Mark 3:29, Luke 12:10? or does the apostle speak of sin incurring the chastening of death without going farther? Q.

A.-Here is what he lays down— “If any one see his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask, and He shall give him life for those that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: not about that do I say that he should make request. Every unrighteousness is sin; and there is a sin not unto death.”

The apostle had just spoken of the boldness or confidence to which grace entitles the children of God who walk in obedience and dependence on Him, as having life eternal in His Son. It is so real and great that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us; and if we know that He hears us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of Him. Nor is it only in what concerns ourselves. His love would have us divinely interested in our brethren as His children, and cherishing like confidence in Him touching them. But there is a caution. He carries on a holy discipline; and where a lack in self-judgment is, He may not only send sickness but death as a chastening. We read in 1 Cor. 11:29-32 the plain fact, and the principle. Many at Corinth were falling asleep, because they did not judge their deplorable ways. This was a sin unto death in ever so many cases. Where the Lord is thus dealing, it would be lack of communion with Him to pray that such souls should live. When so judged, says the apostle Paul, we are chastened, or disciplined, by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world (which of course would be everlasting perdition). It is therefore as far as can be from the unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. It is the Lord's dealing with a soul guilty of what He cannot allow to go on, and therefore calls him away, but with mercy assured, although there be withal chastening righteousness. It is a sin unto death; and we bow to God, instead of interceding. It does not seem some peculiarly heinous sin which brings destruction from God, but a sin of such special dishonor in its circumstances that He thus visits it. Such seems to have been the lying of Ananias and Sapphira in a day of great grace.

F.E.R. Heterodox on Life Eternal, other Divine Truths, and above all Christ's Person, paper, lOd., limp cloth, 1/-.

Publisher

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published

Jacob: 8. Flight From Haran

Here we are in quite another atmosphere from that of Abraham or even Isaac. Kindred blood surrounds Jacob; yet what selfishness and deceit in the uncle, and at least planning to protect himself in the injured nephew! But God thwarted the covetous man and helped the long-suffering one. The result was abundance on this side and decay on that, which touched Laban and his sons to the quick: and their connection with Jacob soon came to a close, to his heart's relief. But how Weak the faith!

“And he heard the words of Laban's sons, saying, Jacob hath taken all that [was] our father's; and of what [was] our father's hath he acquired all this glory. And Jacob saw the countenance of Laban and, behold, it [wast not toward him as beforetime. And Jehovah said to Jacob, Return unto the land of thy fathers, and to thy kindred, and I will be with thee. And Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah to the field unto his flock, and said to them, I see your father's countenance, that it [is] not toward me as beforetime: but the God of my father hath been with me. And ye know that with all my power I have served your father. And your father hath mocked me and changed my wages ten times; but God suffered him not to hurt me. If he said thus, The speckled shall be thy wages, then all the flock bare speckled; and if he said thus, The ringstraked shall be thy wages, then all the flock bare ringstraked. Thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father, and hath given [them] to me. And it came to pass at the time of the ardor of the flock, that I lifted up mine eyes and saw in a dream, and, behold, the rams that leaped upon the flock [were] ringstraked, speckled, and spotted. And the angel of God said to me, in a dream, Jacob; and I said, Here [am] I. And he said, Lift up now thine eyes and see: all the rams that leap upon the flock [are] ringstraked, speckled, and spotted: for I have seen all that Laban doth to thee. I [am] the God of Bethel where thou anointedst the pillar, where thou vowedst a vow to me. Now arise, depart out of this land, and return to the land of thy kindred. And Rachel and Leah answered and said to him, [Is there] yet any portion or inheritance for us in our father's house? Are we not reckoned of him strangers? for he hath sold us, and hath also quite devoured our money. For all the wealth that God hath taken from our father [is] ours and our children's: and now what God hath said to thee, do it. And Jacob rose up and set his sons and his wives upon camels; and he carried away all his cattle, and all his substance that he had acquired, the cattle of his possession that he had acquired in Padan-Aram, to go to Isaac his father in the land of Canaan. Now Laban was gone to shear his sheep. And Rachel stole the teraphim that [were] her father's. And Jacob deceived (or, stole the heart of) Laban the Syrian, in that he told him not that he fled. And he fled with all that he had; and he rose up and passed over the river [the Euphrates] and set his face [toward] the mountain of Gilead” (vers. 1-21).

Truly Jehovah is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in loving-kindness. For when the words of Laban's sons and the looks of Laban himself disclosed their discontent (and no wonder), Jehovah told Jacob to return to the land of his fathers and to his kindred. Divine providence paid Jacob in some five or six years the wages of which Laban had defrauded him for twenty years. They really wanted to get rid of Jacob, but shrank from saying so: for after all what was Laban's substance before Jacob appeared on the scene? Jacob also was too timid to act openly, but, encouraged from above, calls Rachel and Leah into conference. He could truly say that if Laban showed the God of his father was with him; and that if he had sought to cheat him, God did not suffer his hurt. He refers to the recognition of Jehovah as became him, and recalls how God took away Laban's cattle and gave them to himself. Even Jacob was too like Lot, and far from Abraham's superiority to earthly gain. But He that had wrought to repay the servant his kinsman's injustice recalled Bethel to forgetful Jacob, bidding him depart and return to the land of his kindred. The two wives quite fell in. Their father had lost all hope of either love or respect on their part; so that they, low as their thoughts were, encouraged their husband to do as God directed. The moment was opportune. Laban was shearing his sheep, when Jacob without delay set wives and children on their camels, and stole away in hot haste with all his cattle and substance to go to his father's house in Canaan. Jehovah's compassion was clear and wondrous; but how mingled is not the other side? It is a lesson wholesome for us all, and will be so specially for Israel in the coming day.

How affecting is the mention of Rachel's theft! “And Rachel stole the teraphim that were her father's.” It lets us into the secret root of Laban's iniquity. The fear of God was not there. Personal and family idolatry is disclosed which so often accompanied the profession of the true God. But what can be more offensive to God than to make him a senior or a sleeping partner in a partnership of the gods? Think too of Rachel's stealing at all from her father's goods! It is a queer note of the good Non-conformist, Matthew Henry, that “we are willing to hope (with Bishop Patrick) that she did not take them away as being covetous of the rich metal they were made of, much less for her own use, or out of any superstitious fears lest Laban, by consulting his teraphim, might know which way they were gone. Jacob, no doubt dwelt with his wives as a man of knowledge, and they were better than so; but she might design hereby to convince her father of the folly of his regard to those as gods, who could not secure themselves, Isa. 46:1, 2.” This is all amiable but unwise. For we may gather the true reason from Israel, just after the solemnities of Sinai, bowing down to the golden calf “they made, which Aaron made,” and from Israel's history down to the captivity in Babylon. We are bound to believe the profane and evil infatuation of man's heart instead of imagining other things. Jacob was deceived at the time; but Gen. 35:2 proves that his house was not right with God in this respect, and that he too became aware of it.

Day of Atonement Appendix: 19. The Scapegoat and Modern Views Subversive of the Atonement

Appendix.-I. the Scapegoat

It is generally known that the Hebrew word so translated in the Authorized Version, but left by the Revisers untranslated, has been the occasion of keen debate among men of learning, Jews as well as Christians, though chiefly rationalists. Symrnachus gives ἀπερχόμενος, and Aquila ἀπολυὀμενος (or, as Montfaucon reads, ἀπολελυμένος); and the Vulgate follows, as did Luther in his day. Theodoret in his comment on the passage seems to have had no question but that the Seventy meant ἀποπομπαῖος as ἀποπεμπόμενος. But the learned S. Bochart (Hieroz. II. liv.) objected that their rendering is by a term in classical authors appropriated to the active sense of averting or turning away evils, answering to the Latin averruncus, though he for his part suggests quite a different version of the Hebrew. One of his arguments repeated by moderns, that “ez” is a she goat, not a male, Gesenius confesses is not so certain. Indeed the remark in the Thesaurus, as anyone may verify from Hebrew usage, is “prius caprum quam capram significasse videtur.” It is really an epicene, and so capable of application to either sex. Besides, Azazel is a compound, or which the more general designation sufficed with another word to define. This allowed, the natural formation of the word is obvious: Azazel means goat of departure. Nor is there real difficulty in identifying the people's lot with it: as the slain goat was for Jehovah, so the living one for a scapegoat. This is the express distinction of scripture in each case.

People are easily stumbled who for such reasons abandon the intrinsically simple, suitable, and holy sense, for alternatives of the most equivocal nature, if not absurd and profane. Thus not a few suggest that it is the name of a place, of which nobody ever heard; whereas the context supposes a meaning which all could understand at once. This is true only of the ancient and commonly held view. The advocates for place cannot settle among themselves whether Azazel signifies a precipitous mountain, to which the goat is supposed to be led, or a lonely valley which Deut. 21 probably suggested, though the case was wholly different. Besides, we have the place of consignment already and distinctly specified in ver. 10, which puts this sense of Azazel out of court as intolerable tautology; so Gesenius rightly argues on the latter supposition. “To a desert place, into the desert,” cannot stand; any more than the former supposition of casting the goat down a precipice, instead of letting him go free as ver. 22 requires. Tholuck, Winer, &c., contended for such a manipulation of Azazel as would mean “for a complete removal.” which Gesenius condemned very properly, both for its rigid character and for its incoherence with ver. 8; and therefore he preferred with many others the abominable sense of a demon or Satan! Hence the Septuagint has been cited as if ὁ ἀποπομταῖος must mean some evil genius of the wilderness, who had to be propitiated by the sacrifice of the dismissed goat! One can understand the apostate emperor Julian so sneering at scripture; but Cyril of Alexandria found no difficulty in understanding the Greek translation, as the plain English reader does the A.V.

For on the face of the chapter the two goats were taken “for a sin-offering” (ver. 5); and Aaron presented not one only but both before Jehovah at the door of the tabernacle (ver. 7); and lots were cast (ver. 8) that the whole disposal of each might be of Jehovah. Is it not blasphemy then to find such sentiments insinuated as would involve an unholy compact between Jehovah and Satan, not merely in the face of the entire law which forbade giving His sacred honor to His adversary, but this on the most solemn day of sacrifice and confession of sins in the Jewish year? Now ver. 10 is conclusive proof that the Seventy had no such profanity in their minds, any more than they convey it in their words. For though the word in heathen mouths had no better connection, the LXX show that they simply employed it to mean the God-appointed dismisser of the sins charged on its head by varying the rendering in ver. 10. There, instead of saying τὸν ἀποπομπαῖον, as would have been the natural form after their translation of ver. 8, they seem to go out of their way to guard themselves and the scripture in hand by changing the phrase to αὐτὸν εἰς τὴν ἀποπιητήν, “to send away for the dismissal” (not “the dismisser”). Symmaclius has here εἰς τράγον ἀφιέμενον (Origenis Hexapla, Field, ii. 194). It is certain from this comparison that the Seventy meant by ὀ ἁποπομπαῖος the goat that was sent away; which demonstrates therefore, notwithstanding their use of the word, that the notion of a caco-daemon did not even occur to their thoughts. To crown the evidence, weigh their version of ver. 26, “And he that sends forth the goat that has been set apart to be let go,” as Sir L. C. L. Brenton translates τὸν χίμαρον τὸν διεσταλμένον. Who can doubt that there was no unworthy superstition of an Averruncus, but just simply the second goat of departure? It may be added that Mr. Chas. Thompson, the American Translator (Philad. 1808), did not differ as to this from Brenton, save in being less correct, “And he that letteth go the he-goat which was sent away to be set at liberty,” &c., as he had rendered 1-azazel in vers. 8, 10, simply “for escape.” Neither of them allows the idea of the heathen daemon in any case.

The notion of Witsius, &c., is less offensive, as might be expected in pious men. It was that the goat sent away to the Averter indicated Christ's relation to the devil, whom He, however tried, did overcome. And Henstenberg sought to purge it so as to express in symbol that he whom God forgives is freed from the devil's power. But it is all an inexcusable departure from the simple truth of the type by an attempt to christen a heathen idea, which has no ground whatever in the original, and only a semblance in the LXX corrected almost immediately by the context. “When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive.” Such is the noble way in which was displayed, completely and forever, Christ triumphing over the evil powers, which had before seemed to triumph for a while: they were really vanquished and despoiled in His cross.

MODERN VIEWS SUBVERSIVE OF THE ATONEMENT

It may be helpful to notice briefly some prevalent speculations of our day which work banefully against the truth, and to the injury of souls.

We need not dwell on the virtual Socinianism which reduces the death of Christ to an example of love, or to a fidelity which stopped not short of martyrdom. His suffering for us was as unique as His person. Many have lived in devoted love, many have died martyrs, and on a cross too. How comes it that not one suffered as Christ, that He alone is an object of faith or means of peace? Because He, and He only, suffered for our sins. Quite as low do they go who make His death only a necessary step to His resurrection for assuring men of a future life and fresh pardon, either on God's prerogative, or on man's repentance, or on both. It is clear that, for vindicating God and the conscience, any theory of the kind scarce goes beyond heathenism. Such men neglect the true light which now shines with fullness of love in Christ. Righteousness and grace are alike lost by these thoughts; and Christ, far from being “all,” is reduced comparatively, and really indeed, to nothing for atonement.

(1) Beyond these in appearance is the scheme that, as our Lord ever went about doing good in grace and mercy, so His sufferings were endured up to death as a perfect manifestation of God in man. So Mr. Maurice on “Sacrifice,” who regarded the Son of God as the ideal man, the true root and eternal anti-type of humanity. But this is no more than philosophizing on Christ. As it obliterates the guilt and ruin of fallen man, so it accounts in no true sense or divine way for the sufferings of Christ at the hand of God. Guilt on the one hand is ignored, and God the Judge of sin on the other. Hence the infinite work of Christ is viewed merely on the side of love and self-surrender, not at all in the light of His suffering once for sins, that He might bring the believer to God. Thus the cross is regarded in its most superficial aspect. The judgment of God therein is wholly absent from the theory, no less than the deliverance and new status of the believer as identified with Christ risen from the dead, and seated at God's right hand in heaven.

It is true that Christ felt the sins of men with that anguish, with which only a perfectly pure and holy One could feel the sins of others, along with perfect grace toward themselves in His heart. But sympathy is not what is wanted with sins, or even with sinners as such. Suffering for sins can alone avail, and that by One Who is adequate to meet God in all His holy feeling and righteous dealing about sin. Sinners need a sufficient Savior, and a divinely acceptable salvation.

Again, union does not mean Christ becoming partaker of man's nature, though this was essential to save souls. The faithful now are united by and in the Spirit to Him glorified on high. The union of mankind as such with Christ is a fiction destructive of truth and holiness.

(2) The late Dr. J. McLeod Campbell, in his book on “The Nature of the Atonement,” betrays the like ruinous departure from revealed truth. He contends for Christ's “condemnation of sin in His own Spirit” as atoning, not His blood-shedding. Scriptural atonement is given up for one of purely holy and loving sentiment, altogether short of, and differing from, what the cross really means. For Christ is supposed to have atoned for men by offering up to God a perfect confession for their sins, and an adequate repentance! for them, with which divine justice is satisfied! as a full expiation made for human guilt! “Fatherliness in God originating our salvation: the Son of God accomplishing that salvation by the revelation of the Father.”

Here again, Christ suffering for sins, the Just for the unjust, has no true place, any more than the righteousness of God in answer to Christ's infinite suffering. It is a strange and vague substitution of Christ making a confession, “Which must, in its own nature, have been a perfect amen in humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man.” It thus evidently leaves out God arrayed against our sins laid on Jesus. All admit the love which brought Him down and carried Him through to the uttermost. But what was the meaning of the cup which His Father gave Him to drink? What of His praying in agony that, if it were possible, this cup might pass from Him? What, still more, of the cry on the cross, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” These were no merely sympathetic woes, which last He never prayed should pass from Him, but His unutterable suffering—yea, beyond all our thoughts—at God's hand, when His necessary hatred and judgment of sin broke forth even on His own Son made sin for us. Nothing but vicarious suffering for us from God can account for the profound feelings and language of our Lord when delivered for our offenses, and bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. It is allowed also that Christ in grace took up our sins and confessed them as His own, in His heart substitution for us. But to say that all the elements of a perfect contrition and repentance except! the personal consciousness of sin (the very element essential to repentance and contrition) were in Him, is to mistake the word of God, and foist in a fable.

As contrary to scripture is it to say that thus was accorded to divine justice that which is its due, and which could alone satisfy it. Was it not immeasurably more to be forsaken of God? This Christ suffered for us, if we believe Himself, on the cross. He poured out His soul an offering for sin. Isaiah says nothing short of this could satisfy divine justice, nor an adequate expiation be, unless our guilt were righteously borne as it was in His cross. Here again is the same swamping of necessary truth which characterizes the theory of Mr. Maurice. Like his it also blots out the essential difference which faith creates, Substitution is wholly gone in these efforts to show nothing but divine love to everybody. If in these solutions there were any adequate answer to the first goat, there is no recognition whatever of what the second conveys; but even as to the first, how poor is the notion of sympathy in the presence of God's judgment of sin in Christ's cross!

(3) Another human key has been offered whereby to escape the offense of the cross. The late Mr. Robertson (of Brighton) labored to make out that “Christ simply came into collision with the world's evil and bare the penalty of that daring. He approached the whirling wheel, and was torn in pieces. He laid His hand on the cockatrice's den, and its fangs pierced Him. Such is the law which governs the conflict with evil. It can be crushed only by suffering from it. The Son of Man, who puts His naked foot on the serpent's head, crushed it; but the fang goes into His heel.” Here again the same irreparable want appears. God is in none of these thoughts. It is not suffering for sins, but suffering from sinners only. The judgment of God is left out, sin being unjudged; and the grace of God does not appeal to or for sinners. How irreverent also to think and speak of Christ bearing the penalty of His “daring”! How grievous the lowering and the loss of truth which reduces all in Christ to “law"! It is a mere victim overcome of evil, instead of a divine sacrifice for us which overcame it with good, but at infinite cost to Himself even from God. Jehovah bruising Him becomes a mere figure, instead of being the deepest reality. Scripture is plain that His sacrifice on the cross was not merely by God's foreknowledge, but by His determinate counsel. Whatever part the Jews played in heart, whatever the lawless hands of Gentiles did, after all it was that which God's hand and God's counsel determined before to be done. “Jehovah laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.” Such was the baptism with which He must be baptized; such the cup His Father had given Him to drink. Thus only can we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins; as God set Him forth a propitiation through faith in His blood to declare His righteousness. Thereby is God just and the justifier of him that believes in Jesus.

In his Expository Lectures on the Epistles to the Corinthians, Mr. R. joins others of the school in basing all on the Incarnation, as if God then reconciled the world unto Himself and Himself to man. “Consequently everyone is to be looked at now, not merely as a man, but as a brother in Christ!” The passage on the contrary declares that, whatever God's loving attitude and overtures in the Incarnate Word, man was so evil and hostile that there was no way to bring him to God, short of His making Christ sin for us that we might become His righteousness in Him (2 Cor. 5).

(4) Hence all the efforts of such men as Dr. Young in the “Life and Light of Men” are vain. “The Jews sacrificed Christ—sacrificed Him to their vile passions; but as certainly (!) He did not mean to atone for their sins (!!), or to tender satisfaction to divine justice (!!!).” It is not a question of Jews or Gentiles, but of God's purposes and means. All scripture from beginning to end reveals the way of sacrifice to be not Abel's only, but divine. Of all that was done in faith the foundation lay before God only in the atoning death of the Lord Jesus. His inward sufferings were as perfect as real; but it is sheer unbelief to abuse them to the denial that God made Christ, Who knew no sin, to be sin for us. How false and bold then to say that “a true salvation is not escape from the consequence of sin, present or remote”! Undoubtedly salvation by Christ is far fuller; but it is rebellion against God to deny that remission of sins is included. “Without shedding of blood is no remission:” so says the N. T., as well as the Old.

Similar remarks apply to Dr. Bushnell's treatise on “Vicarious Sacrifice,” and “Forgiveness and Law.” His is another variety of atonement by moral power. What can be worse than to say that, in Christ made a curse for us, “the meaning of the expression is exhausted, when Christ is said simply to come into the corporate state of evil, and to bear it with us—faithful unto death for our recovery”? Is this to give “His life a ransom for many”? “He gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” “The chastisement of our peace was upon Him.” He bore the penalty of our sin, and by His blood purged our conscience to serve the living God. It is to reverse the truth, if His aim and way were, as Dr. B. says, “to bring us out of our sins themselves, and so out of their penalties.” Vitally needful was the vicariousness of His suffering for us, and not love only. Indeed love is incomparably more proved therein. Otherwise we have no more left than goodness and martyrdom, an example for us to imitate and reciprocate. “Hereby know we love, because He laid down His life for us.” “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as propitiation for our sins.” This is excluded by all these unbelieving theories. “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved through His life.”

Prof. B. Jowett, in his “Epistles of Paul” as elsewhere, has committed himself to rash and irrelevant utterances on this most sacred and momentous subject. His distinct tendency if not effort is to undermine divine authority and certainty in scripture; which if accepted would dissolve the truth of atonement as indeed of everything else.

Thus he writes in his second Vol. p. 549: “The Old Testament is not on all points the same with the New, for, Moses allowed some things for the hardness of their hearts '; nor the law with the prophets, for there were proverbs in the house of Israel ' that were reversed; nor does the gospel, which is simple and universal, in all respects agree with the epistles, which have reference to the particular state of the first converts; nor is the teaching of James, who admits works as a co-efficient with faith in the justification of man, absolutely identical with that of Paul, who asserts justification by faith only; nor is the character of all the Epistles of Paul precisely the same; nor does he himself claim an equal authority for all his precepts.” How grave the fault to avail oneself of points more or less true to upset the truth! And what can we think of his statement farther on— “Christ Himself hardly uses, even in a figure, the word sacrifice; never with the least reference to His own life or death.” And this, in the face, not only of Matt. 20:28, but of chap. 26:28! And what is the meaning of His giving His flesh for the life of the world? of His laying down His life for the sheep? of the corn of wheat dying and bringing forth much fruit? of His being lifted up from the earth and drawing all men unto Him? From the transfiguration we hear Him setting His death constantly before His disciples.

In his Essay on the Atonement which follows his Exposition, Mr. J. strives to get rid of the Levitical types of Christ's death on the ground of no such interpretation accompanying them. Now this really means, that, if true, we should have had the N.T. side by side with the Old: a notion which would blot out God's wisdom and will in various dispensations. 1 Peter 1:12 is in principle the inspired answer. Christ's coming and death for us, followed by the gift of the Spirit on His ascension, was the right time and way of plainly teaching all, which had been wrapt up in figure but not in uncertainty. When declared and seen to be the divine intention after 1500 years, the truth comes out only the more impressively as of God. And unbelief is proved to be not only blind but irreverent as well as absurd, in presence of such facts when Mr. J. adds, “It would seem ridiculous, to assume a spiritual meaning in the Homeric (I) rites and sacrifices; and although they may be different in other respects, have we any more reason for inferring such a meaning in the Mosaic (11)?” One might have hoped that even pre-occupation with Plato's reveries, diversified with relaxation over the Iliad and Odyssey, might leave room even in the most prejudiced mind to remember that the scriptures claim to be inspired of God; so that, even though they consist of two very distinct collections in wholly different tongues, for an earthly people and for Christ's heavenly body, there cannot but be one mind of God in all, either preparing for Christ, or at length revealed in Him fully by the one Spirit sent down from heaven. Now Christ's presence on earth was the stumbling-stone of the one, as the O.T. prophets declared beforehand; and His death of shame, yet in God's hand of eternal redemption, introduces the others. This also explains why He Who was the rejected Messiah, and the glorified Head of the church, did not Himself bring out His death, resurrection, and ascension glory, but left it to the Holy Spirit by the apostles and prophets of the N.T. Yet He said enough to prove that all was known perfectly: only the disciples could not bear to hear all whilst He was here, and the atoning work not yet accomplished. How then must one estimate Mr. J.'s words, “It is hard to imagine that there can be any truer expression of the gospel than the words of the Lord Jesus, or that any truth omitted by Him can be essential to the gospel” (Exp. ii. p. 555)? Had it been true that His death for our sins was absolutely left till it was in fact fulfilled and for the Holy Spirit to testify, how childish the reasoning! Alas! it is much worse: “A deceived heart have turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?”

(To be continued).

Israel Holy to Jehovah: 1

The great day of atonement occupies the entire chap. xvi. of this book. We see its relation to the feasts of Jehovah in chap. 23:26-32. But it also claims a distinct place, as Jehovah gave a special revelation with ample detail because of its independent importance, not more central in the book of Leviticus than in the ways of God, as shadowing that work of Christ on which, for a lost world as well as a people, all blessing depends, for Jews or Greeks or the church of God, for earth and heaven, for time and eternity.

Having already sought to expound that chapter by itself, however imperfectly but at least with simplicity and for practical use, I may now turn to the scriptures which follow, up to chap. 23., which may well call for a separate but briefer treatment. Each of these six chapters is devoted to divinely given regulations, to preserve the priests and the people of Israel from defilements to which they were exposed. It is not the offerings, as in Lev. 1-7, nor the priests duly established and failing (Lev. 8-10), or discharging their duties as to food, and the natural defilements and purification (xi.-xv.), ending with the day of atonement (xvi.). Here it is to guard priests and people from other defilements.

Let us now look into the portion before us.

“1And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying, 2 Speak to Aaron, and to his sons, and to all the children of Israel and say to them, This [is] the thing which Jehovah hath commanded, saying, 3 Every one of the house of Israel that slaughtereth an ox or sheep or goat in the camp, or that slaughtereth [it] out of the camp, 4 and doth not bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting, to offer [it] as an oblation to Jehovah before the tabernacle of Jehovah, blood shall be reckoned to that man: he hath shed blood; and that man shall be cut off from among his people, 5 to the end that the children of Israel bring their sacrifices which they sacrifice in the open field, that they bring them to Jehovah, to the entrance of the tent of meeting, to the priest, and sacrifice them as sacrifices of peace-offerings to Jehovah. 6 And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of Jehovah, at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and burn the fat for a sweet savor to Jehovah. 7 And they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to demons (or hairy ones, satyrs) after whom they go a whoring. This shall be an everlasting statute to them for their generations. 8 And thou shalt say to them, Every one of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, that offereth a burnt offering or sacrifice, 9 and bringeth it not to the entrance of the tent of meeting, to offer it to Jehovah; that man shall be out off from his peoples” (vers. 1-9).

When God set the world that now is after the flood on the new condition of responsible government in man's hand, it was preceded by sacrifice; and the sweet savor was so acceptable, that Jehovah said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, for the thought of man's heart is evil from his youth. The very evil of man is the occasion of grace shown by Him, the unchanging God, Who used man's evil to bring out what He is in Himself, and is therefore incomprehensible save to faith. God thereon laid down that life belonged to God, and that man was bound to own His claim by not eating the blood. This principle was acknowledged by the apostles, elders, and brethren in Jerusalem, at the very assembly which vindicated the liberty of Gentile believers, but insisted on the restriction under Noah.

Here however it is not God dealing with man, but Jehovah instructing His priests and people in their peculiar relationship to Himself. It is the thing which Jehovah commanded every man of the house of Israel and no others; and it is here imposed on their wilderness estate. Whoever there slaughtered an animal for food without the camp must bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting to offer it as an offering to Jehovah before His tabernacle. If not, blood was imputed to him; and because he shed blood without thus acknowledging Jehovah, his own life was forfeited: “that man shall be cut off from his people.” It was an abandonment of Jehovah, and a denial of the ground on which he stood before Him. If he partook of animal food, he was bound to own, what the Gentiles that know not God had forgotten, that life belonged to Jehovah; He demanded the confession of the truth every time one took an animal's flesh for his food. Nor this only; but as He enjoined, solemnly before His tabernacle. Though for food, it was their duty to bring such to Jehovah and the priest as sacrifices; not of course as a sin-offering, but as expressive of communion with Him, sacrifices of peace-offerings to Jehovah.

Nor was the priest to fail on his side, but to sprinkle the blood upon the altar of Jehovah at the appointed place, and burn the fat for a sweet savor to Jehovah. Hence the profane and selfish wickedness of Eli's sons at a later day in the land, not only morally but in contempt of the law, even in the formal sacrifices and that which was exclusively Jehovah's right (1 Sam. 2:12-25). As the people were not to count their part irksome but a privilege as Jehovah's people, so the priests were called cheerfully to sprinkle the blood and burn the fat on the altar. How due to Him! how happy and good for His people

It was a needed safe-guard against idolatry too. For so inveterate a snare for man is it to turn aside to strange gods, that even here Jehovah deigns to notice the danger for His erring people. “And they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to the goats (or, satyrs), after whom they go a whoring. This shall be a statute forever to them throughout their generations.” So now that we as Christians rest on the one perfecting offering of Christ, it is our place and joy, whether we eat or drink or whatsoever we do, to do all to God's glory, to do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to the Father through Him. It is not only in offering up a sacrifice of praise to God, but as not forgetting to do good and communicate (i.e., to share our goods with others); for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.

Verses 8 and 9 take in also the strangers that sojourned among the Israelites and denounce the evil of offering a Burnt Offering or a sacrifice except at the one divinely assigned meeting-place with Jehovah. How sad for any in professing to own Jehovah with an offering to disregard His goodness in giving a place, and but one place, of outward access to Himself How active and wily is the unseen foe in everything, and not least in the ostensible worship of God to put scorn on the good and acceptable and perfect will of God! So it was in Israel then: so it has ever been, and with not less dismal success, in the church from near the first till our day.

Proverbs 16:9-16

Here is given a fresh cluster of apothegms, in which we start with Jehovah as the sole power of directing the Israelite's steps, and of maintaining equity in daily life. But there is next withal a striking enforcement of the honor due to the king.

“The heart of man deviseth his way, but Jehovah directeth his steps.

An oracle is on the lips of the king; his mouth will not err in judgment.

The just balance and scales [are] of Jehovah; all the weights of the bag [are] his work.

[It is] an abomination to kings to commit wickedness; for the throne is established by righteousness.

Righteous lips [are] the delight of kings; and they love him that speaketh aright.

The fury of a king [is as] messengers of death; but a wise man will pacify it.

In the light of the king's countenance [is] life, and his favor [is] as a cloud of the latter rain.” (9-15).

The heart of man away from God is lawless; and, shaking off the restraint of Him to whom he belongs and must give account, is fruitful of devices. As he loves his own way, so he changes it according to the object before him, or, it may be, some passing fancy. Jehovah alone can direct his steps: but this supposes dependence on Him and obedience of His word, when it is His way, and not the man's own. So Moses (Ex. 33:13), when Israel forsook Him and bowed down to the golden calf, prays, Show me thy way.

Jehovah would have His people honor the king, especially in Israel; and to look for a wise and righteous decision. “An oracle is on the lips of a king.” It was no less a remembrancer to the king, that it should be said of him, his mouth will not err in judgment. How often alas! both king and people failed utterly. But a morning comes without clouds, When One of that very house shall rule over men righteously and in the fear of God; for man He is, though infinitely more. But David's house was not so with God, either when he lived, or after his death when succeeded even by the favored son who wrote these words. Judgment must act as well as sovereign grace, before Jehovah will make it grow. All honor to Him Who once for all suffered for sins, and has given us life eternal, and will reign righteously.

Properly subjoined is that equity in the least things which Jehovah will have. “The just balance and scales are of Jehovah; all the weights of the bag are His work.” If Jehovah showed His interest in instructing man aright, when it was even the details of the fitches and the cumin, of the barley and the wheat, and not in the sowing only but in their due treatment at the harvest, so did He feel for the constant administration of every day's exchange among men, to ensure right and guard against wrong. How much more does He feel their readiness to overlook sin and judgment for eternity?

Again would he set before all that to commit wickedness is an abomination not to Himself only but to kings. What a standing rebuke if the throne were not established by righteousness! What an exposure if the king indulged in wickedness himself, instead of abhorring it in others! It is throughout here assumed that the king recognizes his place before Jehovah as His anointed.

Further we hear that kings take pleasure in those who in their speech vindicate what is right. “Righteous lips are the delight of kings; and they love him that speaketh right.” Flattery is natural at court, but contemptible to him that rules in the fear of God. Righteous lips may not always speak agreeably; but righteous kings appreciate the man who cleaves to justice and sound principle.

Just as terrible is the wrath of a king. He holdeth not the sword in vain. That he is incensed “as messengers of death,” especially to such as have reason to fear. “But a wise man will pacify it. So we see in both Jonathan and David, who appealed not in vain to the monarch even though unjust in his anger.

On the other hand no less powerful is the effect of the king's favor after alienation. “In the light of the king's countenance is life, and his favor is as the cloud of the latter rain.” But what is any such privilege to compare with the place of stable nearness and grace which the believer even now enjoys through the Savior and looks on in assured hope of His glory! “Being therefore justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom also we have had the access by faith into this grace wherein we stand; and we boast in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:1, 2).

Gospel Words: Be Not Anxious

As the Lord charges His own to lay up for themselves treasures, not on earth, but in heaven, so does He forbid anxiety about their life here below, as His servant did about anything. He lifts our eyes above the seen present to the things unseen and eternal, whence He came and whither He was going, as He is coming to take us shortly. Here He deals with the believer's heart, and the snare of seeking to serve God and mammon which He pronounces morally impossible.

“For this reason I say to you, Be not anxious for your life what ye should eat and what ye should drink, nor yet for your body what ye should put on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body more than the raiment? Look at the birds of the heavens, that they sow not, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father nourisheth them. Are ye not more excellent than they? And which of you by anxiety can add to his stature one cubit? And why are ye anxious about raiment? Consider the lilies of the field how they grow: they toil not, nor yet spin; yet I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory put on like one of these. But if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, being to-day and tomorrow cast into the oven, how much more you, O ye of little faith? Be not therefore anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or what shall we drink? or what shall we put on? For all these things the Gentiles seek after; for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things” (vi. 25-32).

Anxiety as to the things which the present life needs is natural. All these things the nations of the earth seek after. In God they have no faith, as the Jews professed loudly, but in works denied. But the disciples had the heavenly Father's name now set before them as the One who is perfect in grace, making His sun shine on evil and good, and sending rain on just and unjust. How true this is! Yet who had affirmed it as a living principle but the Lord on earth, who also set it forth as a model for His own practically, that they might be sons indeed: an astonishing doctrine, especially for those, as they were, trained up in the legal ideas of the Jews. So their righteousness was to be, whether alms, prayer, and fasting, not before men but to their Father that sees in secret.

The name of their Father made anxiety about earthly and bodily wants a painful incongruity, and in particular about what kind the supply should be. From Himself the birds read them one lesson, and the lilies another. He nourishes each fleeting creature, He gives the passing flower its beauty. How much more did He care for His children? It was a touching appeal and carrying with it to every believer the conviction of irresistible truth. They were, they are, called to believe in His sustaining goodness. He never fails in His love: they ought not to fail in resting and counting on it day by day. If tried as to it, let them not doubt that it is for their good. It is impossible for God to lie. Are they to doubt His love Whom the Lord reveals as their Father? He who embraces the least objects of His care will act worthily of His love to the nearest.

Nor does the Lord spare them the humbling proof how little the anxiety of man avails. “Which of you by anxiety can add to his stature one cubit?” It was a very small thing if some would count it a very great addition. Yet even for this how powerless is man! Why then be anxious about a garment? The herbage of the field rebukes the vanity of a child of God; for as the Lord called their attention to the lilies, he pointed the moral by the plain fact that God clothed even these transient creatures, lower in the scale than the birds, with a beauty far beyond Solomon's array in all his glory.

Be not therefore anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or what shall we drink? or what shall we put on? Here the Lord urges two considerations which we do well to heed. One is to guard us against sharing the unbelief of those who do not even know God, How compromising to share the thoughts and feelings of the Gentiles! “For all these things the nations seek after.” The other is to assure the doubting heart. “For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.” Not one sparrow falls to the ground without Him: but of you even the hairs of the head are all numbered” (Matt. 10:29, 30).

Now are you, who read these words, a child of God by grace? Believe not such as say that all mankind are so. They deny the fall; they ignore sin; they oppose the solemn testimony of scripture, that, however favored by privileges, we are by nature children of wrath, even as others (Eph. 2:3). Believe not others who say that baptism quickens those dead in trespasses and sins. Christ quickens by faith of His word and the working of the Spirit. He is the Life, as He is the Way and the Truth. You have His words, not merely to instruct His own, but to show how the dead may live, yea have eternal life; for this it is He gives to those who believe. “Verily, verily, I say to you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life” (John 6:47). Why wonder? Is He not the Son, the I am? “He that believeth on the Son hath life eternal (or, everlasting): and he that is unsubject to the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). O sinner, beware lest this be your portion,

Free Will: Part 2

But it will be said, Yes, but the death of Christ has laid a new ground of responsibility. So it has, but by placing man on the ground that man is already lost; and that, when we were yet without strength, Christ died for the ungodly. There is none to will, none to understand, none to answer. We cannot give divine life to ourselves, nor beget ourselves to God. I am not questioning the door being freely open, nor the blood on the mercy-seat; but this is the final proof that man will not come when he can as regards God, and God has proved that no motives suffice to induce him. He must be born again, wholly afresh. The history of scripture is of God's using all means and motives, the result being the rejection of His Son, and judgment.

The case of Adam was somewhat different, because lust and self-will were not yet there. Man was not then a captive to a law of sin in his members. Sin was not there, nor was deliverance required. He was with God in innocence. Clearly God put no restraint on Him to leave Him and disobey. His obedience was tested. It was not a question of coming to God when he was already evil. The prohibition was a pure test of obedience, and the act was innocent if it had not been forbidden. There was as yet no conscience in the sense of knowing the difference of good and evil for oneself. He had only to stay where he was, and not disobey. There was nothing in him, nor of course in God, to hinder him; in this he was free. His fall proved that, not the creature was bad, but if left to himself, he could not stand firm. In this state so far from choice and freedom of choice being what he had to go right, the moment he had choice and will there was sin. Obedience simply was his place; if a question arose whether he should obey, sin was there. Choice is not obedience. The moment he felt free to choose, he had left the place of simple obedience.

Think of a child who takes the ground of being free to choose whether he shall obey, even if he chooses right! I deny that morality depends on freedom of choice. Man was created in a given relationship with God: morality consisted in walking in that relationship. But that relationship was obedience. There he was to continue simple, and happy, not to set himself free from God.

Christ abode in obedience. He took the form of a servant and came to do God's will. Satan in the temptation in the wilderness sought to get Him to leave this, to be free and do His will, only in eating when He was hungry. What harm was there in that? It was freedom and man's own will. But His answer is that man shall live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. There was no movement of His heart but from or by the will of God; and this is perfection. It is not a rule checking self-will which we alas! often need, but God's will the motive of action—of the action of our will. This is what is called in 1 Peter 1:2 the obedience of Jesus Christ, to which we are sanctified.

Man has therefore in one sense made himself free, but it is free from God, and thus he is in moral apostasy, and the slave of sin. From this Christ wholly delivers, and sanctifies us to obedience, having borne the penalty of the fruits of our free-will. How came I to have to choose? If I have, I have no good yet, and what is to make me choose it? The exercise of will or choosing was just man's sin, obedience is his place with God. He was created in good, and had not to choose it; now he loves sin, and has to be delivered from it. The principle that responsibility depends on the power of the responsible person is false, save so far as the alleged responsible person is in his nature such as to negative the claim. A stone cannot be responsible, nor even a beast, for moral conduct; because neither is in the relationship to which responsibility can attach. But obligation flows from relationship; and where the relationship exists which constitutes it, the obligation subsists: the power to fulfill it has nothing to do with it. The obligation gives a claim to the person to whom the obliged is responsible. I put the case—a man owes a thousand pounds; he is a spendthrift and has not a penny. He really has not power to pay: have I therefore no claim, and he no responsibility? This will not do. So Romans cut off their thumbs, and could not hold a spear, to avoid military service: were they not held responsible?

Man takes another ground of reasoning against God—that God put him into this place, or he was born in it; and therefore he is not responsible. This raises another point, that moral responsibility attaches to will, and not to power. We do what our own consciences condemn, because we like it. My child refuses to come when I call him to go with me. I am going to punish him because he would not. He pleads that he was tied or could not open the door. But I punish him, because he refused as to his will to yield to the obligation. I had a knife ready to cut what bound him, or a key to open the door. He by his will refused the claim. In a word responsibility flows from the claim on us arising from the relationship in which we stand. There is not a man in the city that would allow that he had no claim on a person who owed him a thousands pounds, because he had no ability to pay it. It has nothing to do with responsibility. Alas! we may lightly treat God so; as Adam said, “The woman that Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” If he pleads his sin as his excuse, God says, “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, Thou shall not eat of it: saying, cursed is the ground for thy sake,” &c. J. N. D.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: 2 Peter

Chap. V. Divine Design. 48. the Second Epistle of Peter

Not less characteristic of the great apostle of the circumcision is his Second Epistle. They are both occupied with God's moral government; but the former is in view of saints now suffering for righteousness, and for Christ, waiting for His appearing; the latter in view of false and corrupt teachers (chap. ii.), and of scornful philosophic adversaries (chap. iii.), alike unrighteous, who shall not fail to meet His judgment in that day. Both are eminently practical and hortative, redemption and new risen life being the basis in the one case, as Christ's purchase aggravates the wickedness in the other.

I. “Symeon Peter, bondman and apostle of Jesus Christ to those that obtained like precious faith with us by (or, in) righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.” These cited words of address are notable, distinctive, and instructive. He does not speak of their being reckoned righteous “through faith,” as many misunderstand, but attributes their receiving faith such as the apostle had to God's faithfulness to His promise. For there is always a remnant of grace among Abraham's seed, and of none other. So it had been in the guilty history of Israel; and so it was then, after the Jews rejected their own Messiah. And the dispersed share like precious faith with those who by grace followed Him intimately. If the blesser here, “our God,” became our “Savior Jesus Christ,” it is the more impressive; as undoubtedly He was not Messiah only but the Jehovah God of Israel. To “Grace and peace be multiplied to you,” he now adds “in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” The increasing stress called for it then and since.

Grace had already done so wondrously for them that he looks for growth accordingly and spiritual power (3-11). “As His divine power hath given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that called us by (or, by His own) glory and virtue, through which He hath given us the greatest and precious promises, that through these ye may become partakers of a divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust. Even for this very reason too bringing in besides all diligence, in your faith furnish virtue, Ain virtue knowledge, in knowledge temperateness, in temperateness endurance, in endurance godliness, in godliness brotherly kindness, in brotherly kindness love. For if these things be and abound in you, they make [you] neither idle nor unfruitful as respects the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ; for he with whom these things are not is blind, shortsighted, having forgotten the purging of his old sins. Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure, for doing these things ye shall never stumble; for thus shall the entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ be richly furnished to you.” In the full provision of grace he would confirm their souls, but this in order to earnest diligence and the supply of all deficiency; that instead of questions through habitual negligence and short-coming, they should enjoy an unclouded sense of their election and calling, and their anticipated entrance into Christ's everlasting kingdom be supplied along the way.

But, glorious as the kingdom will be, Christianity has higher things in Christ to which our apostle but alludes. In view of speedily departing he casts on no apostle to succeed, still less on an imagined apostolic succession as men say, nor any safeguard but the word of God, as did Paul also. No cunningly devised fable do we follow to make known the power and coming of our Lord, but were sanctioned witnesses (not αὐτόπται only but ἐπόπται) of His majesty, and heard the Father's voice utter His delight in His beloved Son. This made the prophetic word more sure, to which those addressed did well to take heed, “as to a lamp shining in a squalid place, until day dawn and the morning star arise in your hearts.” They were not to slight prophecy with which they were more or less familiar as Jews. But Christ now known by the gospel yields better and brighter things to which he encourages them; and he would have alive in their heart the heavenly light of the day of grace, and of Christ Himself the Star of Morning, the Christian hope before the day of Jehovah. Here they might be weak, as most have been even though not Jews previously. Prophecy is truly about the earth: our proper portion is with Christ in heaven. But they must not take prophecy of scripture as being of its own (or, isolated) interpretation. This might suit man's limitation; but God gave it as a whole converging on Christ and His glory. “For never by man's will was prophecy brought, but men spoke from God borne on (or, moved) by the Holy Spirit” (12-21).

II. Here the apostle sets out the ruin of the Christian confession by false teachers, as before it had been for Israel by false prophets. He allows no illusive hopes. Far from getting all the nations to the banner of Christ, there should be the “falling away,” the apostasy, and worse still (as we read in 2 Thess. 2). “They shall bring in destructive sects, denying even the Sovereign Master that bought them, bringing on themselves swift destruction” (1). The Lord Jesus bought, not the hidden treasure only, but the entire field, the world. He tasted death for every one. All are His not only by divine right of creation but by His death that purchased all with the utmost solemnity. This however does not mean redemption, which delivers the captive from the enemy, but simply that they are purchased. Believers are both bought and redeemed; all the rest are bought only, and among them those corrupters of whom the apostle speaks unsparingly as bringing the way of truth into disrepute. Their sure and exemplary judgment he confirms by varied instances.

“And many shall follow their licentiousnesses, because of whom the way of truth shall be blasphemed. And in covetousness with feigned words they will make gain of you; for whom the judgment from of old is not idle, and their destruction slumbereth not” (2, 3). The first witness of coming judgment he draws from sinning angels that were left till the Lord judges Satan at a later day; but God has already consigned them to pits of deepest gloom for that judgment. The next is the old world of ungodly on whom He brought a flood when He preserved Noah a preacher of righteousness. The third is the overthrow that consumed ungodly Sodom and Gomorrha when He delivered righteous Lot. Thus the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of trial and keep unjust men for punishment in judgment day, but chiefly those that go after flesh in lust of uncleanness and despising lordship (4-10).

A most energetic moral denunciation follows (1117) of their audacity and self-will, corruption, luxury and wanton licentiousness ensnaring unstable souls, and yet more. Forsaking the right way, theirs is the path of Balaam with no less folly; and for them the gloom of darkness is reserved. The plain proof is given from ver. 18 to the end of the chapter. Their high-flown words of vanity only allured and ensnared others into their own slavery of corruption, however they might promise liberty. Their last state of return to evil was all the worse for a knowledge that gave a temporary escape from the world's pollution. It was as a dog turning back to its own vomit, and a washed sow to rolling in mud.

III. This deals rather with scoffing unbelief of closing days against the promise of the Lord's coming. Peter would have them remember the words spoken before by the prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through “your apostles.” It was all foretold. Materialism would prevail, what is now called Positivism; not hypocritical corruption as in chap. ii., but philosophical or infidel materialism as the only truth and certainty (1-4). The apostle refutes it first by the inspired account of the deluge: things have not continued as they are from creation's start. The antediluvian world perished in the flood whilst the now heaven and earth by His word were stored up, kept for fire unto a day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men (5-7). He intimates what is no small thing for understanding the coming day of the Lord, that one day is with Him as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day; though accomplishing immense change at once, it also extends through a long period. And it is His grace in now saving, not slackness, that defers it. But it will come unexpectedly as a thief; in which (day) the heavens shall pass away with rushing noise, and elements with fervent heat shall be dissolved, and earth and the works that are therein shall be burnt up (8-10). It is still the day, its evening as it were, when this catastrophe shall come.

Hence his appeal to the saints. “All these things being thus to be dissolved, of what sort ought ye to be in holy ways and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, by reason of which (day) heavens being on fire shall be dissolved and elements in fervent heat shall melt? But according to his promise we wait for new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, as ye wait for these things, use diligence, spotless and blameless to be found by Him in peace; and count the long-suffering of our Lord salvation, even as our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him, as also in all epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which (epistles) some things are hard to understand, which the untaught and unestablished wrest, as also the rest of the scriptures, to their own destruction” (11-16).

How weighty the application to holy and pious and devoted service! and how interesting in more ways than one the reference to “our beloved brother Paul,” who, while he mightily explained the prophets, went so far beyond as to divine counsels, hard to Jews especially, which the ignorant and unstable distorted to their ruin. It is clear that inspired Peter calls his epistles “scriptures,” all of which were so misused. And more than that; he speaks of Paul's having written to the Christian Jews, as Peter also in both his Epistles. What can this be, but the Epistle to the Hebrews? Compare Heb. 12:26, 27: the one apostle referring to the morning, the other to the evening, of the same day of the Lord.

“Ye therefore, beloved, knowing beforehand, be on your guard lest, led away along with the error of the wicked, ye fall from your own steadfastness. But grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: to Him the glory both now and unto day of eternity. Amen.” All over it is Peter's fervor, but aged and mature, waiting for that death by which he should glorify God.

Responsibility and Grace

From the beginning man, trusting the enemy rather than God, was alienated from God; and the two questions, Where art thou? (Gen. 3) and What hast thou done? (Gen. 4) showed where man was as the consequence. Responsibility put fully to the test up to the rejection of Christ. Then, God glorified in righteousness, His love, and the counsels of His grace from before the foundation of the world have been manifested. This puts the gospel in a very special place, and then shows the connection of responsibility and sovereign grace with great distinctiveness.

Moreover there is no longer any veil over the glory of God. His wrath is revealed from heaven; but also the glory of God is revealed in the face of Jesus Christ, witness that all the sins of those who behold it exist no longer before God. All that God is morally is fully revealed and established. We know Him according to that glory, and our relationships with God our standing before Him are founded on it. We are transformed from glory to glory according to that image, for we can look upon it. It is the proof of our redemption, and that our sins no longer subsist before God. We are also renewed in knowledge after the image of Him who created us; we are created according to God in righteousness and holiness of the truth; for according to that glory He shined in our hearts in order to show out the glory of Christ in the world. We are like a lantern: the light is within, but it is to shine without: dull glass (the flesh in us interferes) will prevent the light from shining as it should. Thus that which is given us becomes inward exercise. The treasure is in an earthen vessel; and it is necessary this latter be only a vessel—that we should be dead, in order that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

It is not only a communication of what is in Christ, as knowledge; but if it is real, we drink of that which makes the river. It is a communication of that which exercises the soul, makes it grow, and judges the flesh in everything, in order that we may not mar the testimony which is thus committed to us. In Christ Himself the life was the light of men; and the light that we receive must become life in us, the formation of Christ in us, and the flesh be subjected to death. “Death worketh in us” says Paul, “but life in you.”

This is the history of ministry, of true ministry. What we communicate is our own; it enlightens us, but works in us morally. The glory of Christ is realized in us; and all that does not suit Him is judged. Now flesh never suits Him. The death of Christ put an end to all that was Paul. Thus the life of Christ acted from him in others, and nothing but that. This is saying a great deal. In this respect there may he progress. For as to my position before God, I reckon that I am dead; in order to live, death works in me. There is the vessel, but it must be only a vessel, and the life of Christ acting in it and by it. If the vessel acts, it spoils all. In reality we live; but we must always bear about death, in order that the glory of Christ, the image of God, may shine for others. But all the glory of God is revealed; there is no longer any veil over it on God's side, if it be veiled, the veil is on man's heart through unbelief. Truth of all importance! Under the law man could not go in; nor did God come out. Now He has come out, but humbling Himself to bring grace. Then, the work of redemption accomplished, He has gone in, and there is no veil over the glory.

Responsibility there must be and always ought to be. But the first man was the responsible man, and his story ended at the cross, though each has to learn it personally. Our standing is in the second, Who charged Himself with our failures in responsibility (Himself perfect in every trial in it), but laid the ground of perfect acceptance before God. Lost on the ground of the first, we are before God on the ground of the finished work of the second man; not children of Adam as to our place, but children of God, and made the righteousness of God in Christ. Before the cross and up to it, responsibility was developed; after it righteousness was revealed, and the original purpose of God, which was in the last Adam, could then be brought out. This opens what was purely of God, which we have mainly in Ephesians, though elsewhere: and conduct is the display of the divine nature as in Christ. This last is a blessed part of it. The study of what He is, is surely the food of the soul: His Person, His work, may carry us deeper in the apprehension of what God is, for it was met there; and we worship and praise. But with Him we can walk, and know and learn that none is so gracious as He. What will it not be to see Him as He is. J. N. D.

Scripture Query and Answer: Mystery

Q.-Rom. 16:25-27. Does this mean that the “mystery” in question had been already revealed in the prophets of the O. T., though only now understood? or that it was absolutely “hid in God” (Eph. 3:9), not in the scriptures? It is all-important to have the truth clear.—INQUIRER.

A.-There is no question of various readings for the critic, or of disputed grammar for the scholar. All are agreed on the text and the construction. Faith, with an eye single to Christ, and self-will judged before God, alone can decide what the apostle intended. It is clear that the apostle does not mean to unfold the “mystery” here, but looks to an only wise God to establish the saints according to his gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ according to revelation of a mystery, as to which silence had been kept in everlasting times. But now it was manifested, and by prophetic scriptures made known according, to the eternal God's command, for obedience of faith unto all the Gentiles. It was written in due time by the apostle.

To gather the true sense, we have to take heed to a quite new phrase, never employed when “the prophets” are certainly referred to Next, he declares that “a mystery had been kept in silence,” σεσιγημένου. How can this last term bear the interpretation that it had been of old expressed in what God wrote through the prophets? If it had been then revealed in the scriptures, silence had not been kept about it, or as the A.V. has it “kept secret,” which is substantially right. God had never as yet spoken or written of it to man. So, as the query points out, the apostle affirms in Eph. 3 that it had been hidden in God, in evident contrast with being of old revealed in His word. Hence the stress laid, both to the Romans, to the Ephesians, and to the Colossians, that it was Now made manifest to His saints. Indeed Eph. 3 adds that through the church (which was part of it) was now made known to the principalities, &c. in the heavenlies the manifold wisdom of God.

There is therefore an insuperable contradiction in applying “prophetic scriptures” to the O.T. prophets; none at all in understanding it of such scriptures as the apostles and prophets were now to write. For they are the joint foundation; not prophets of the O. T. and apostles of the N. T., but “the apostles and prophets” of the N. T. On these are built those Jewish and Gentile saints who are brought into a union where their differences were abolished, as they were both reconciled to God in one body through the cross. This was a new thing counseled by God before the world's foundation; wrought by Christ, Who died, rose, and ascended; and brought home by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, quite incompatible with all known relations in the O.T. times.

Accordingly there is no article with “prophetic scriptures,” as would be correct if “the prophets” had been meant; whereas the anarthrous form was requisite, if new scriptures were intended, written by those who had prophetic gift, whether by apostles who had that gift also or by such as Mark and Luke, who were prophets inspired to write though not apostles.

Deut. 29:29 is an interesting oracle and may help: “The secret things belong to Jehovah our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” This was a great privilege and duty for the sons of Israel. The downfall of the favored Jews that returned from Babylon when they rejected their own Messiah gave occasion, in the interval before their restoration, for God to exalt the Lord Jesus in glory on high as Head over all things heavenly and earthly to the church, which is His body. It is a “secret” or “mystery,” and a great one, only now possible, and a fact divulged through “prophetic writings” to the divine glory for the edifying of the church as we find elsewhere; only now made known in accord with the eternal God's command for faith-obedience unto all the nations.

What can be more according to Paul's gospel, which treats alike the Jews and the Gentiles in sin and in salvation, than that fullness of grace which now unites the believers from both in the same known nearness to the God and Father of our Lord Who made both one? It is a unity which will not be in the millennial earth, any more than revealed by the O. T. prophets, blessedly associated as the nations will be with the then un-jealous Israel, in marked contrast with the ages and generations which preceded the cross. Hence the apostle speaks of himself emphatically (Col. 1:26), as minister according to the stewardship given to him for such Gentiles, “to fill up the word of God.” This hidden mystery fills the blank left for it in God's wisdom unto the display (not of law but) of sovereign grace on earth, and for heavenly glory forever. A new revelation was hence necessary; yet it only enhances the Christian's value for the Ο.T., whilst itself has its own distinctive character of the profoundest worth and interest. And great is the loss of all who fail to learn of God a truth most sanctifying. The unbelief that refuses the evidence which the word affords tends ever to earthly-mindedness and judaizing, as we see not only in Christendom generally but in many dear Christians, who least suspect it of themselves.

In 2 Peter 1 we read of τὸν προφητικὸν λόγον, the prophetic word, the known body of predictive truth, confirmed by the vision of God's kingdom beheld on the holy mount of transfiguration. And the fact that both προφητεία and γραφῆς are anarthrous is strictly necessary in order to exclude every part of prophecy in God's word from being its own solution. The article with either would have been anomalous. Peter was guided perfectly, even in this, by the Holy Spirit. Every part of that word forms part of the great scheme for revealing Christ's future glory, which the Holy Spirit carries out in men speaking from God as He alone was able to make good.

F.E.R. Heterodox on Life Eternal, other Divine Truths, and above all Christ's Person, paper, lOd., limp cloth, 1/-.

TITUS & PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth,... 2/-

THE REVELATION .. 2/-.

One Body and One Spirit, revised ... 2d.

THE BOOK OF THE PROPHECY OF Isa. 8VO. cloth, 7/6

LECTURES ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, or. 8vo. cloth, 3/6

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

THE PREACHING TO THE SPIRITS IN PRISON... 1/6 and 2/-.

THE DAY OF ATONEMENT, & New Edition in Preparation.

Published

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Jacob: 9. Laban and Jacob in Covenant

JEHOVAH was faithful and gracious, Jacob a fugitive. Laban soon pursued in hot haste with no friendly intent, but was compelled at the last to bow to God's protecting Jacob.

“And it was told Laban the third day that Jacob had fled. And he took his brethren with him and pursued after him a seven days' journey, and overtook him on mount Gilead. And God came to Laban the Syrian in a dream by night, and said to him, Take care that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad. And Laban came up with Jacob; and Jacob had pitched his tent on the mountain; Laban also with his brethren pitched on mount Gilead. And Laban said to Jacob, What hast thou done that thou hast deceived me, and hast carried away my daughters as captives of sword? Why didst thou flee away covertly and steal away from me; and didst not tell me that I might have sent thee away with mirth and with songs, with tambor and with harp, and hast not suffered me to kiss my sons and my daughters? Now thou hast acted foolishly. My hand is as God to do you hurt; but the God of your father last night spake to me, saying, Take care that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad. And now thou must needs be gone, because thou greatly longedst after thy father's house, why hast thou stolen my gods? And Jacob answered and said to Laban, I was afraid for I said, Lest thou shouldest take by force thy daughters from me. With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, let him not live: before our brethren discern what [is] thine with me, and take [it] for thee. For Jacob knew not that Rachel had stolen them. And Laban went into Jacob's tent, and into Leah's tent, and into the two handmaids' tents, and found nothing, and he went out of Leah's tent into Rachel's tent. Now Rachel had taken the teraphim, and put them under the camel's saddle, and she sat upon them. And Laban felt about all the tent and found them not. And she said to her father, Let there be no kindling in my lord's eyes that I cannot rise up before thee; for the manner of women is upon me. And he closely searched, but found not the teraphim. And Jacob was kindled, and chode with Laban: and Jacob answered and said to Laban, What [is] my trespass, what my sin, that thou hast so hotly pursued after me? Whereas thou hast felt all about my stuff, what hast thou found of all thy household stuff? Set [it] here before my brethren and thy brethren, and let them decide between us both. These twenty years I [have been] with thee: thy ewes and thy she-goats have not cast their young, and rams of thy flock I have not eaten. What was torn I have not brought to thee; I bore the loss of it: of my hand didst thou require it, stolen by day or stolen by night. [Thus] I was; in the day drought consumed me, and frost by night; and my sleep fled from mine eyes. These twenty years I [have been] in thy house; I served thee fourteen years for thy two daughters, and six years for thy flock; and thou hast changed my wages ten times. Had not my father's God, the God of Abraham and the fear of Isaac, been with me, surely empty now thou hadst sent me away. God hath seen mine affliction and the labor of my hands, and rebuked [thee] last night. And Laban answered and said to Jacob, The daughters [are] my daughters, and the sons my sons, and the flock my flock, and all that thou seest [is] mine; and what can I do this day to these my daughters or to their sons whom they have borne? And now come, let us make a covenant, I and thou; and let it be for witness between me and thee. And Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar. And Jacob said to his brethren, Gather stones; and they took stones and made a heap and ate there on the heap. And Laban called it Jagar-sahadutha (Heap of Witness), and Jacob called it Galeed. And Laban said, This heap is witness between me and thee this day. Therefore is its name called Galeed and Mizpah (Watchtower); for he said, Watch, Jehovah, between me and thee, when we are hidden one from another. If thou afflict my daughters, and if thou shalt take wives besides my daughters, no man is with us; see, God [is] witness between me and thee. And Laban said to Jacob, Behold this heap, and behold the pillar which I have set up between me and thee. This heap [be] witness and the pillar [be] witness, that I pass not over this heap to thee, and that thou pass not over this heap and this pillar to me for harm. The God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge between us. And Jacob swore by the fear of his father Isaac. And Jacob offered a sacrifice upon the mountain, and invited his brethren to eat bread: and they ate bread and lodged upon the mountain. And Laban rose early in the morning, and kissed his sons and his daughters, and blessed them; and Laban went and returned to his place” (22-55).

The state of both comes out so plainly that no words can give any help when speaking of them. Here all is set in the light; and Laban brings on himself the proofs of his selfishness and dishonesty. Jacob was under no bond to stay. Laban and his sons gave ample signs how distasteful to them were his growth and their decay. He wanted a word from God Who gave it to him. His wives were of one mind with his own. He therefore seized the first opportunity, which Laban's shearing furnished, to be gone. Now that Laban with all the clan overtook Jacob on mount Gilead, what righteous objection could be urged? Undoubtedly the warning God gave Laban alarmed his guilty conscience, though no true fear of God was there, no sense of his injustice, even if Jacob had been no more than a faithful servant. Still on both sides, what a contrast with the day when Rebekah left the same roof-tree, it seems not with mirth and songs, nor with tambor and harp, but with love and honor and the fear of God and the assurance of His blessing, which had much fled from that homestead. If he dreaded spoliation or violence, he complained of his stolen gods. These he prized next to his gains, with no shame for his avowal of heathenism; for where this is, Satan has already brought in darkness and death.

How little Jacob knew that Rachel had really stolen Laban's teraphim, to her own shame! Jacob's house too was not so with God as to make it hateful to her in every way. She had already shown herself the prey of low and vile superstition, which paves the way for idolatry in secret. But Jacob had no suspicion that his beloved was really guilty: else he had not been so quick to propose that such a one should not live. And she that had played false to God little scrupled to deceive her father as well as to rob him. Jacob, ignorant of it, broke into unwonted anger with Laban, whose greed and lack of all justice, to say nothing of affection, he exposes unsparingly, and could well say, that but for God's over-ruling he had now been sent empty away. What could Laban reply but that all were his, wives, children, flock? God was in none of his thoughts, any more than love for his daughters, or their children, or his son-in-law. But he tries to put a good face on the matter, and asks for a covenant between himself and Jacob; who leaves all the terms to Laban, and his wretched thoughts and fears, but solemnly gives execution to it, as well as the name that stood. Not only did he swear by the Fear of Isaac, but he offered peace-offerings; and they ate bread together.

It is a sorry spectacle to the eye of faith; retribution for Laban, rescue for Jacob and his house through God's overruling hand and goodness: but within the chosen family idolatrous images stolen by the wife and unknown to the husband, who, instead of being crushed by Laban, is besought for a covenant with himself. For, as he feared not God, he had no confidence in his own nearest connection. But what had not Jacob to learn, as he weighed his old self-seeking and scheming before Jehovah?

The Day of Atonement: 20. Appendix

(7) Another departure from the faith of God's elect is that of Canon J. P. Norris in his “Rudiments of Theology,” which may be noticed briefly as a warning to souls. It is admitted in the letter that Christ bore our sins; but the spirit is neutralized by the distinct denial that He bore the penalty of our sins. For this is the true force of His having borne them in His own body on the tree, of His having suffered for them once (ἅπαξ). Even the prophet is explicit that “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of (or punishment for) our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” Jehovah “hath made to light on him the iniquity of us all.” “For the transgressions of my people was he stricken.” It is bold to say that this is not a vicarious punishment for sin. No doubt there was also a dying to sin; but this is also a further N. T. privilege beyond the old and new and everlasting truth that He died judicially, or penalty suffered, for our sins, as was expressed even in the types which could give but the surface and semblance, not the very image and fullness, of the truth. Redeeming from all iniquity, saving from our sins, is unquestionably scriptural; but it could not be righteously without Christ's enduring the penalty at God's hand that we might not. In the face of scripture to deny this, as the Canon does (p. 49), is extravagantly false and evil.

Dying unto sin, as any one can see in Rom. 6 &c., is that the believer dead with Christ may live to God; it has really no direct connection with “enabling God to forgive the sinner.” Sin in the flesh as such is “condemned” by God in Christ as sacrifice for sin (Rom. 8:3), not forgiven as sins are. The doctrine is shallow and anti-scriptural. Our death with Christ to sin is entirely distinct from His dying for our sins. The last alone is what scripture treats as propitiation or atonement. “For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.” This is the vital truth of the gospel which the apostle preached and wrote, and by which also believers are saved.

That He died to sin is a blessed and instructive sequel, as taught from Rom. 5:12 to chap 8, no less true, and most necessary for deliverance and practical holiness. But it is ruinous to confound the two truths, as is here done, for it really excludes the basis of all righteous blessing in Christ's propitiatory suffering for sins, and renders powerless our death with Him. It exposes also to perilous heterodoxy. Think of a person teaching that Christ “gathered up into His own person all mankind, laden as they were with sin; and with the consciousness of sin upon His heart consummated that dying unto sin which they were in themselves powerless to effect” (p. 56)! Expiation thus vanishes, and a kind of Irvingite universalism remains in Mr. N.'s crucible.

This fundamental error as to Christ's Person appears with no less certainty in a later page (282), and no doubt is his real, perhaps unwitting, doctrine: “He could not redeem us without taking our nature, and He could not take our nature without drawing upon Himself the curse in which sin has involved it.” This is to destroy His holy Person, and to deny His grace in suffering for sins, Just for unjust. It was by no fatal necessity of our nature but by the grace of God that He tasted death ὑπὲρ παντος. It was in the holy liberty of divine love that He laid down His life for us. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.”

In this only, and for this, lay the inevitable need of His death. It was sacrificial in the strictest sense and the deepest way. To say that it was in itself a Roman military execution, and the bloodshed by a soldier's pilum, is to set external circumstances against the revealed mind and purpose of God in what ought to be beyond all dear to the believer's heart and conscience. God's judgment of sin in the cross, and Christ's infinite suffering for our sins there, are ignored and set aside for another truth, distinct yet inseparable, which has no ground-work or application apart from what is denied. There may have been many an Israelite with no thought beyond “There goes my sin in the victim's death “; but that God meant no penalty by the shadow, or in the substance, is mere infidelity as to propitiation for sins. Undoubtedly God's mercy appeared in permitting, enjoining, and accepting, the sacrifice; but there was penal suffering in that sacrifice, which prefigured grace reigning through righteousness.

This profound error is the parent of others; as for instance (p. 234), that “the blood of Christ is uniformly spoken of as a most living thing, now communicable,” as also in pp. 212, 223, 224. Life eternal in the Son, which we have by faith even now, is thus confounded most grossly with His death and blood as a propitiation for our sins. These truths, every spiritual man ought to see, are wholly distinct, though the Christian knows both: (1) that God has sent His Son that we might live through Him; (2) that He sent Him as propitiation for our sins—in both the manifestation of God's love. Mr. N. utterly confuses the blessed φυχὴ (given up in His death and blood-shedding for our sins) with His ξςὴ αἰώνιος in which we live also, and forever, in infinite grace. The old errors and worse re-appear in p. 309; but enough.

(8) The last aberration, which we may notice here, consists of a slight on Christ's work on the cross in two opposite directions. One writer will have it that Christ only completed His vicarious suffering after death and before resurrection in hades, and even the punishment of damnation; the other insists on propitiation being made by Christ's entering heaven, after death and before resurrection. I understand both of them to hold that the work was not finished in the blood and death of Christ on the cross, but the propitiation effectively depends on a further action of Christ (whether in heaven or in hades) in the disembodied state. Each of these appears to be a fable as to a foundation truth.

III. TEXTS OFTEN MISUNDERSTOOD AND MISAPPLIED IN ISA. 53:4, 11.

It is of moment to disarm the adversary by avoiding a mistaken application or sense of scripture. The truth is enfeebled by anxiety to press texts misunderstood, like John 1:29, and 1 Peter 2:24.

Thus it is notorious how good and learned men have labored in vain over Isa. 53:4, because they have not taken heed to the Holy Spirit's use of it in Matt. 8:17. There it is applied to the grace with which He used His power in the removal of infirmities and sicknesses in His ministry among the Jews. Partly through the idea that the prophecy must be solely about the atonement and its consequences, partly through the language of the LXX, many will have it that the verse includes the lesser troubles of the body in the larger thought of man's deepest need. But God is wiser than men, even the most faithful; and subjection to His word is the best, holiest, and surest corrective. If Isa. 4 were any where applied by an inspired authority to the atonement, this would be decisive. It is only applied to Christ's ministry or at least miracles. When His dying for our sins is meant, the Spirit (in 1 Peter 2:24, Heb. 9:28) refers to Isa. 53:11, 12. The wisdom of inspiration shines conspicuously here; for the Septuagintal Version is avoided when incorrect or equivocal, and employed only when exact; and this by Peter who had no erudition to fall back on. God is the only absolutely wise guide; and here we may see it, if we be not blind.

But again, ver. 11 has two parts, which cannot be confounded without loss. “By His knowledge shall My righteous servant instruct many (rather, the many) in righteousness; and He shall bear their iniquities.” Dan. 12:3 serves to prove the true force of the verb translated “justify.” Translate it as it should be here, and the sense of both clauses is plain and consistent. Take it as it is done ordinarily, and violence ensues at once with error as the result.

(concluded).

Israel Holy to Jehovah: 2. Eating Blood Prohibited

What we have just had before us applies in its fullness only to the wilderness and the tabernacle there, in part even to the strangers that sojourned among them, wholly to the children of Israel as Jehovah's people of possession. The main prohibition of the closing verses (10-16) has a far wider bearing as the N. T. proves.

“10 And every one of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn among them, that eateth any manner of blood—I will set my face against the soul that eateth the blood, and I will cut him off from among his people, 11 for the life (or, soul) of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to atone for your souls, for it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul. 12 Therefore have I said to the children of Israel, No soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall the stranger who sojourneth among you eat blood. 13 And every one of the children of Israel, and of the strangers that sojourn among them, that catcheth in the hunt a beast or fowl which may be eaten, he shall pour out the blood thereof, and cover it with earth; 14 for as to the life of all flesh, its blood is the life in it (or, for its life): and I have said to the children of Israel, Of the blood of no manner of flesh shall ye eat, for the life of all flesh is its blood: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off. 15 And every soul that eateth that which died [of itself] or that which was torn [by beasts, whether he be] home-born or a stranger, shall both wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the even; then he shall be clean. 16 But if he wash them not nor bathe his flesh, he shall also bear his iniquity” (vers. 10-16).

Thus did Jehovah impress on the heedless heart of man, that as human life was forfeited to God through sin, so He forbids the profane levity of turning the blood which is the natural life of earthly creatures into food. So had He enjoined after the deluge when liberty was first given to partake of flesh. The blood was strictly reserved for Himself. Even with natural animals, born to be taken and destroyed, and suitable for food, the claims of God must be maintained. This was long before the law, or even the fathers who had the promises. It was for those rescued from destruction, and standing on what Jehovah saw in the holocaust Noah offered on the altar. But when God thereon blessed Noah and his sons, who began the world that now is, while every moving thing that lived was now given for food as the green herb previously, “flesh with the life, or blood, ye shall not eat.” Man's life has a value attached to it never before declared; and the more because now for the first time it was for government responsible to God to vindicate. “And surely your blood, [the blood] of your lives, will I require.” Even if a mere animal with no reasonable soul slew a human creature, this was no reason to pass it by. “At the hand of every animal will I require it; at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man's brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made He man” (Gen. 9:3-6).

These Noahic precepts were carried out further for the children in the law; but they were divinely made known for the post-diluvian world. And when the judaizing party in the early days of the church strove to bring the Gentiles under the law, God took care to maintain liberty from the law of Moses for such. The effort was made at Antioch, where the very name of Christian was first heard, by certain men who came down from Judea, and taught that none could be saved, unless circumcised. Paul and Barnabas after no small discussion failed to settle the question, which was carried to the source of the dispute; and all came out before the apostles and elders in Jerusalem. There Peter, giving a witness with no uncertain sound, asks why they tempted God by putting a yoke on the disciples “which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear. But we believe that through the grace of the Lord we shall be saved in like manner as they also,” not merely shall they be saved even as we. Then Barnabas and Paul rehearsed what signs and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them; and James summed up that which became the decree of the apostles and the elders with the whole assembly, nay of the Holy Spirit Himself, to lay upon the Gentile confessors no other burden than these necessary things “that ye abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication; from which, if ye keep yourselves, it shall be well with you” (Acts 15:28, 29).

It surprises not a few that non-complicity with idols, and personal purity should be set with abstaining from eating blood and things strangled. The apostles did not reason on the ground of man's conscience; for grave a monitor as it is, it was then and it might be at any time darkened by public opinion and habits, which among Gentiles made as little of idolatry and personal purity as of using blood and strangled things for food. The revealed will of God is absolute for the believer; and as a fact His face was set against all these indulgences, entirely apart from the peculiar institutions of Israel. They have the full weight of apostolic authority as “necessary things “: what can abrogate this expressly for those of the Gentiles that believe? and in pointed distinction from Levitical ordinances? God's honor is inviolate, and His sanction of marriage, not of fornication. God insists on the recognition that life belongs to Himself; so that, as He gives to eat of flesh, He reserves the blood and forbids eating of things strangled similarly; and the Christian is in no way to be indifferent even to these last injunctions, but bound to honor Him in both.

In Israel, as we see in these verses, to eat blood was to provoke Jehovah's jealousy to the cutting off of the offender: Israelites or strangers sojourning among them made no difference. It denied man's obligation to own the forfeit of life to God: for God was to be owned solemnly, if not on the altar, at least by pouring out the blood on the earth as due to Him, instead of appropriating it to one's own gratification. Death was a serious thing; and Jehovah would not have it slighted, even when He allowed His people to partake of flesh that had been killed for their food. But He would have them, on penalty of their own death, honor His claim of the blood as the sign of life given up to God, and in no way for man to make his food.

Yet there is marked distinction as ver. 15 shows between eating that which died of itself, or what was torn by beasts, “Whether he be home-born or a stranger, he shall both wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean till even; then he shall be clean.” Here it was not the defiance of Jehovah's rights, as in deliberately planning to eat the blood which was forbidden; yet was it a want of zeal for God's word, and of adequate sense of relationship to Him, and uncleanness was incurred, with the command to purge oneself and one's surroundings before Him in the manner prescribed. If the defiled soul was indifferent to these mild terms of humiliation in the ease, Jehovah was not mocked, and the soul which so despised Him, “shall bear his iniquity.”

Who that weighs these words can wonder at the shock given to Jewish feeling by our Lord's words in John 6:28? “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in yourselves. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath life eternal; and I will raise him up at the last day; for my flesh is truly food and my blood is truly drink.” Granted, that His words were symbolical, as so often in this Gospel. Yet what symbol could be more startling? His person, His work, is the key to the truth. To eat blood under the law was to rebel against one's forfeited place, and to deal with the life that reverts and only belongs to God. But God now gives eternal life in His Son to every believer, and sent Him to die as propitiation for our sins. Grace changes all; and we despise the truth too, if we do not appropriate His death as the food of faith for our souls. But this in no way abrogates the fact that, in the full blaze of the N. T., the apostles under the Spirit's guidance call us to respect the outward token that life given up belongs to God.

Proverbs 16:17-24

The precepts and warning next impressed are of a wider range and a more general moral character. The upright, the humble, the heedful, the wise, the pleasant of speech are pointed out and encouraged, with grave admonition to those who are otherwise.

“The highway of the upright [is] to depart from evil: he that taketh heed to his way keepeth his soul.

Pride [goeth] before destruction; and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Better [is it to be] a humble spirit with the poor [or, meek], than to divide the spoil with the strong (or, proud).

He that giveth heed to the word shall find good; and whoso confideth in Jehovah, happy [is] he.

The wise in heart is called intelligent (or, prudent), and the sweetness of the lips increaseth learning.

Wisdom [is] a fountain of life for him that hath it; but the instruction of fools [is] folly.

The heart of the wise instructeth his mouth, and addeth learning to his lips.

Pleasant words [are as] a honey-comb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones” (vers. 17-24).

In a world of evil and the multitude following evil, it is no small thing to depart from evil. For the believer was once like the rest; and it is the grace of God which acts on conscience through Christ, in Whom was no sin, and Who died for us and, our sins, that we might be forgiven and delivered. It is indeed the highway of the upright to depart from evil: but there is the positive side too: he that taketh heed to his way (and Christ is the way to the Christian) keepeth his soul.

Pride on the other hand is most offensive to Jehovah and dangerous, yea destruction, to man; and he is apt to be most lifted up when the blow falls; as we may see throughout scripture, a haughty spirit before a fall. So Nebuchadnezzar, where mercy interceded: so Haman, where was only judgment.

Next we have the good portion of the humble spirit with the meek; just as the Lord pronounced such souls blessed whether for the kingdom of the heavens, or inheriting the earth when the Heir of all things takes it, even He then sharing with the great, and dividing spoil with the strong. For it is the inauguration of the King reigning in righteousness, in contrast with this evil age.

Then we have a fine climax. He that gives heed to the word beyond a doubt shall find good; but if he also confide in Jehovah, which is better still, happy is he.

The wise in heart is called intelligent; and so he is, and inspires confidence. It differs much from what men call a long head, feared rather than trusted. And the sweetness of lips which accompanies that wisdom increases learning all round.

Wisdom is truly a fountain of life to him that has it, as he begrudges not its waters for those that have it not. The instruction of fools can be nothing but folly, and is fully exposed, because of the vain assumption to teach.

How different when the heart of the wise instructs his mouth, as it does; and adds learning to his lips! For there is not only profit but growth.

Such are indeed “pleasant words,” and they are as a honey-comb, sweet inwardly, and strengthening outwardly.

Gospel Words: the Kingdom of God

The kingdom of the heavens is an expression derived apparently from Dan. 4:26. Its inauguration also is foreshewn in Dan. 7:13, 14; in 22 not only the Heir of all but the heavenly joint-heirs, and in 27 the “people” under the whole heaven to whom the chief dominion is given. Such will be the manifested kingdom when the Son of man comes with power and glory; and there will be earthly things and heavenly (John 3:12). But He came first as the great moral test in humiliation; and His rejection and cross brought out higher than earth through redemption therein accomplished. This too, refused by the unbelieving people, left the door open for the mystery of that kingdom and its mysteries while the rejected King is on high, and the gospel of indiscriminate grace, till the church is complete. Then all Israel shall be saved on their repentance, and the blessing of all the nations as such shall fully come.

Plainly, “the kingdom of the heavens” is a dispensational phrase peculiar to the first Gospel, as in contrast with the incredulity of the Jews who looked only for an earthly one. Mark and Luke use “the kingdom of God” for it, and in a general sense; John exclusively for what is real. But Matthew, for that very reason, when he does say “the kingdom of God,” does not mean the dispensational view, either in future manifestation or in present mystery, but the power of God ruling in Christ when here, or now in the Spirit's action morally in those that are His. Hence the same term which is so comprehensive elsewhere has here this force all the more marked because of Matthew's general employment of the dispensational phrase.

Here occurs the first instance; the others are 12:28, 19:24, 21:31, 43, of which this is not the place to speak more particularly.

“But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Be not careful (or, anxious) for the morrow for the morrow will be careful about itself: sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.”

Throughout the discourses on the Mount the Lord is not preaching the glad tidings to the lost but instructing His disciples who already believed. Earthly care is a great bane and unworthy of faith. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” Where could they find that kingdom and righteousness most truly, plainly, and fully set out before their souls? Surely nowhere as in Himself. It was even more wondrously by God's Spirit in His moral power than by His casting out demons. “Lo, I am come to do thy will, O God,” was far beyond all the miracles together that ever had been wrought. Who but He was the “man that lived by every word of God” unswervingly?

Nor is it too much to ask of such as were born of God. Indeed the principle was always true. Jehovah's people were to be holy because He is holy. And this applies all the more strongly now that we have the relationship of sons, with redemption through Christ's blood, and the gift of the Spirit. For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking; nor yet abstinence from flesh or wine; but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Making God's kingdom and righteousness our first concern, we are entitled to expect that all the things needful and good will be added to us. For our God and Father never overlooks our wants. If faithful in the greatest and deepest things, He loves that we should confide in Him as to our least things. Do we believe the Lord, that “all these things [about which unbelief worries] shall be added unto us?” Let us not forget the condition: “seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” What can be more due to God, or more comely for us as His sons? The Lord's yoke is easy, and His burden is light.

It is unbelief, accompanied by loving the world or the things in the world, which produces anxiety, darkness, and doubt, as in the Gentiles who knew not God. If we know Him, and the blessedness of His kingdom, and the perfection of His righteousness, why be careful for the morrow? For the morrow, says the Lord, shall be careful for itself. Has He failed us to-day, or in the past? What evil has He ever done us, what good thing withheld from us? Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Even if the hardest trials come, do we not know that all things work together for good to those that love God, to those called according to purpose?

Do you, my reader, say that you love Him not, but dread Him because of your sins? Then why do you not flee for refuge to Him that stretches out to you His strong and gracious arms? Come unto Me, He cries, all ye that labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” He is full of grace and truth. Is not this the only Savior for a sinner? What does “grace” mean but unmerited favor? You are justly condemned if you refuse to come at God's word.

1 Peter 3:8-12

More general exhortation succeeds.

“Finally [be] all likeminded, sympathetic, brother-loving, tender-hearted, humble-minded; not rendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, because hereunto ye were called, that ye should inherit blessing. For he that will love life and see good days, let him stop his tongue from evil and his lips that they speak no guile; and let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it; because [the] Lord's eyes [are] on the righteous and his ears unto their supplication; but [the] Lord's face is against evil-doers” (vers. 8-12).

It is Christ alone who makes these desires possible in those who are His. But less than this could not satisfy the apostle ever in the presence of weakness and contrariety. They were called out of sin and ruin and misery to blessing, and were therefore to be the witnesses and channels of grace in a world and a race which had fallen under curse. They were already begotten again according to the much mercy of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ through His resurrection from the dead unto a living hope, unto an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading, reserved in heaven for them; and they were blessed with other privileges of love, and holiness, and dignity in the highest degree, as we have seen, according to the fullness of Christ. For He that spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?

Thus it is plain that our duties flow from our relationships conferred by sovereign grace in Christ according to the glory of His Person and the efficacy of His redeeming work. They are therefore not only beyond all price but unchanging; and they are the ground of our new responsibilities. Christ by His death met and closed our old responsibilities, in which we were lost; and by His resurrection He has ushered us who believe into an entirely new standing of soul-salvation and blessing, whilst here below, and waiting for the completion of His grace as to our bodies also and in heavenly glory. We can therefore without affectation and in the Spirit bless God, and are a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For He ever liveth to make intercession for His own. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? He that bore our sins in His body on the tree, lost and dead as we were in evil, lives also to make the fruit of our lives, our praises, acceptable to God. What that issues by the Spirit from our hearts and lips can have a place, so high and momentous as our worship of God and the Lamb? No doubt love works here and downwards by the same Spirit; but we, if rightly feeling cannot but own that God has the first and nearest claim.

And if this be so, will not His working be all the mightier and purer when we consider our relations to one another, to say nothing of the claim of compassionate love toward a perishing world? The apostle calls all who believe to be “likeminded.” Rivalry, self-seeking, liking to differ or even thwart, is not Christ, but of the first and fallen Adam. When the eye of faith rests on all, Himself and those He loves, there is no difficulty. Naturally we see others' faults and overlook our own; but this is the old man; it is the reverse of Christ, Who is our new life and Whom we are called to live. Members one of another, members of Christ, how unworthy not to be “like-minded?” If nature is opinionative, what does the one indwelling Spirit aim at and effect? If we live in Spirit, in Spirit also let us walk, not vain-glorious, provocative, or envious.

Being in such a scene of wretchedness as the world and with bodies not yet redeemed in which we groan, we are exhorted to be also “sympathetic.” Surely we may and ought to rejoice with those that rejoice, but far more frequent is the demand on our sharing the grief that abounds, and especially for righteousness or Christ's sake. It is our common portion as Christians to suffer with Him, even if we may not have the experience of suffering for Him. In any case sympathy in these holy sorrows is sweet and strengthening.

“Brother-loving” is a plain call, as belonging to the same family of God. Are we not to love them personally beyond our affection to our natural kin, as the bond is deeper and of divine nature and everlasting? Assuredly the enemy strives continually to bring in contention and misunderstanding, and every other means of hindrance; but the duty is as incontestable as the relation. How it is to be exercised depends on each case, for which we need the word and Spirit of God. For as John clearly shows, it is no mere human impulse and must not clash with the truth of God or with obedience.

“Tender-hearted” suitably follows. There is no worth in God's eyes if we love but in word or tongue, and not in deed and truth. We are to learn of Him who never relieved by power only, but His spirit entered into and bore up before God the infirmities and the diseases which He removed.

Nor is “humble-minded” the least though last in these qualities which the apostle sought to be in exercise. And where can we find its perfection but in the same Lord and Savior? Nor could the days of His flesh be recalled without the vivid and humiliating remembrance of the sad contrast even in the honored Twelve, so often and to the last disputing which of them should be accounted greatest. “I am meek and lowly in heart,” said He, and it was ever true. Man's ambition was wholly alien. “Ye shall not be so; but let the greater among you be as the younger, and the chief as he that serveth.”

Again the apostle charges the saints not to return evil for evil, or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary to bless, “because for this thing were ye called that ye might inherit blessing,” So marked is the contrast of the Christian with Israel when they undertook to earn blessing by keeping the law; as the apostle Paul set before the saints in Galatia, who had made the same sad mistake. “For as many as are of works of law are under curse” (Gal. 3:10): not as many as broke law, but as many as are pledged to that principle.

It is by grace alone, that we, Christians, are saved, or any can be; and it is through faith, not of works. Called also to an inheritance of glary, are we not witnesses of blessing? We know that one of our own poets expresses what nearly all felt as unbelievingly as himself: “Man never is, but always, to be blest.” Christianity is the standing proof that they knew not the truth. It was the less wonderful in A. Pope, as he never rose out of superstition and dead form even to apprehend the gospel of God's grace.

But grace gives the Christian to understand and make good the moral government God carries on with His children. The apostle in vers. 10-12 cites Psa. 34 for this even now; though Israel must await another day when their heart turns to Him whom they rejected in their unbelief. Evil and guile wholly misbecome the life of believers. If they dishonor their Lord like the Corinthians, they fall under His chastening; and this may take the shape of sickness and death. Nor is it only words that are warned against. He urges from that scripture that they should turn away from evil and do good, seek peace in practice, and this earnestly, because Jehovah's eyes are on the righteous, and His ears to their supplication, whereas His face is against evil-doers. Now the mind of the saint is as truly to please God, as the carnal mind is not nor can be. The believer is in living relationship with Christ, the duty follows, and the Holy Spirit works in power.

The Christian's Special Relationship and Privileges

The New Testament clearly shows that since the Lord Jesus came, truths have been made known in distinctive reality as to the heavenly family and the church of God. During the Lord's life He spoke unmistakably of both, outside anything previously revealed, though the fullness of its blessedness was even farther reserved, until He was risen and glorified, and the Holy Spirit given as the power to make it good. The heavenly family we have fully declared, in holy life and relationship, in both the Gospel and the Epistle of John. Indeed its special nature and character awaited its relation in the person of the Lord God, of whom John speaks as the Only-begotten Son that is in the bosom of the Father: “He hath declared Him.” No wonder therefore, that divine life and relationship depended upon Him, as it is written “To as many as received Him to them gave He power (title) to become children of God.”

These realities are further unfolded in John 17 by the Son of God Himself, where love's eternal purpose is touchingly breathed forth in communion with His Father, that may well call forth everlasting praise and worship. Though He came into the world in grace, and presented Himself to be received, neither the world nor His own people recognized Him, but rather rejected and cast Him out. Thus, so to speak, all was lost as to His rights and glories, and He was without a throne and people, having no home in the world He created, to which He came in light and love, as a giver and a Savior. All was of no avail, as far as the heart of man was concerned; yet it was then sovereign grace and purpose shone, with the fullness and blessedness of special relationship and privilege, respecting the heavenly family. On the threshold of the glory from which the Lord Jesus came, He turned upward from this dark world to His Father, expressing precious words as to a new set of people of whom He could say “Not of the world as I am not.” Indeed the many loving utterances of John 17 surpass anything revealed in the past or even coming blessing for Israel, in the day of their Messiah's established kingdom, in power and glory, when the now rejected Lord will have the nations for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession.

The recipients of such grace, and objects of so glorious a purpose of relationship and blessing, have but to accept and adore, not only for the place given, but for the wondrous work, its basis. Therein all the will of God was accomplished, as the Son Himself said, “I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” In the inexhaustible and unfathomable depth of such a fact, it is not to be wondered at, that its outcome should surpass all gone before, and that the Son Who, having nothing in the world but the cross, should have those given to Him by the Father, to Whom He would manifest the Father's name. Yea He declares the reality of eternal life, by the knowledge of God now revealed. “And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.” Thus eternal life and relationship are blended by Him, Who put the Father's name upon those given to Him out of the world, and of whom as the risen one He speaks (after redemption was accomplished), “I ascend unto My Father and your Father,” &c.

Distinctive is the relationship, which is now fully known by the indwelling Spirit, Who bears witness to believers of being children of God, according to the manner of the Father's love, and purpose. Moreover it is formed and established in a world knowing not the Son, nor those belonging to the Father, who are nevertheless destined to shine in the likeness of, and share glory with, the Son, Who declared, “The glory Thou hast given me I have given them.” Precious holy destiny! that justly calls forth the worship of the heavenly family, and keeps them in true separation from a world knowing them not, and hating both the Father and the Son. He prayed for them saying, “All Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine, and I am glorified in them.” Such the marvelous oneness of the heavenly family, as again stated by the Son, “That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us.”

Truly such language exceeds anything past or future of earthly privilege, or as known to the disciples when following their Lord down here; Who begets the testimony to the world, that the Father sent the Son. By-and-by, when all the heavenly ones are in the same glory as the Son, will the world know the Son, as the sent One of the Father; also that saints unknown are equally loved with the Son. Weighty realities, for every member of the heaven-born family to ponder! Whilst admitting so special a relationship with its many privileges, the truth should assuredly have its sanctifying effect; for the Lord has bound up present sanctification, with Himself the standard and object of it. “For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.” Let us be mindful too of this present sanctification, coupled with the Lord's parting promise, “I will come again and receive you unto Myself that, where I am, ye may be also.” Every child of God by the Holy Spirit may well desire to have a deepening sense of these holy privileges and responsibilities, crowned with his experience of what the Son said to the Father, “That the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them and I in them.”

The truth of the church of God is equally, if not more, distinct and special, than of the heavenly family; though the term “church” is to many very vague, particularly in these days of human thought and judgment. But for this there is no ground, when we turn to the unerring scriptures about the church of God founded upon Christ, the Son of the living God. Indeed in such a day as the present, when in the true moral ruin and nearing end of all in the professing church and the world, with judgment at the door, it is most important to learn what God is doing for its abiding blessedness. It is not only in saving precious souls, and by the death of His Son bringing them to Himself, in holiness, righteousness, and peace, but giving such a place in His church.

That the Lord Jesus did indeed come to seek and to save the lost is surely a truth to be sounded forth far and wide. But rarely is the blessed fact rightly declared, that Christ is building His church, against which the gates of Hades can never prevail. This important fact was reserved for the Lord Himself to declare, as He does in Matt. 16, when as the rejected Messiah He speaks of Himself as the Son of Man. Asking men's judgment as to who He was, He finally puts the same question to His disciples; and Peter replies, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Then for the first time the Lord states His intention of building His church on the immoveable rock of His blessed Person; and assuredly the material of the newly declared structure would be in character with it. Whatever aspect the building may assume, all would be worthy of Himself and His death.

We can all see that Peter, being a stone for the building, was the first servant by the power of the Spirit of God to preach Christ risen and glorified; and by the same power were sinners saved, and added to the new assembly. How plain that the building was formed of souls saved by sovereign grace, who became part of God's church, which the apostle in his Epistle designates as a spiritual house in contrast with the Jews' material temple, or Jehovah's house. Moreover those forming it were a holy priesthood; so that, instead of Aaron and his sons, all believers now are priests, belonging to the spiritual house, with holy liberty to offer up spiritual sacrifices by Jesus Christ. This truth was more fully made known, not indeed by the apostle of the circumcision, but by the apostle to the Gentiles, who also unfolded the church as in the mind of God before time began, or world was founded. The same Paul speaks of it in many aspects as the one new man; a holy temple; the habitation of God; and, not least, as the body of Christ.

All this the Epistle of divine purpose (to the Ephesians) clearly sets forth, together with the signal truth of the mystery hid in God but now blessedly revealed, as to its origin, nature, character, and glorious destiny. Alas! how rarely these truths of abiding reality, with the work of the Spirit of God in reference to them, are spoken of and dwelt upon even by true believers. A cry is often seriously raised, Where is the pure gospel of Christ, and the needed atonement preached? To this may be added, where is the further truth of the church inquired after, even in its least form? Who seeks to know, what the new man does mean; or the holy temple growing to completion and heavenly glory? where are those that desire to know and own, with holy consistency, the habitation of God by the Spirit? Conversion we mercifully know and hear of; but it is usually followed by joining one of the varied denominations, each having its own claim to the slighting of the only church of God for all believers. Not this only but the same Spirit who quickens the sinner and seals the believer is He Who forms all believers into the one body; as it is written, “For by one Spirit were we all baptized into one body;” “God set the members every one of them in the body, as it pleased him” (1 Cor. 12:13-18).

Thus Christ's body, with its membership, leaves no place for human thought or will. It is for each believer to receive these God-formed relationships, and act upon the divinely appointed communion proper to it. The truth is clearly laid down in 1 Cor. 10, 11, where the breaking of bread is set forth, the one loaf, the true and only outward expression of the one body of Christ. No less is the remembrance of the Lord in His death enjoined as the saint's holy privilege on the first day of the week, until He come.

Yet, it is largely said in these days of ruin and indifference, that the truth of the fellowship of the one body cannot now be acted upon for reception and discipline. Were it so, the breaking of bread would only be to individually remember the Lord in His death, without any expression of the one loaf or one body according to 1 Cor. 10:16, 17. Thus would privilege of the highest order be sacrificed for practice; and the truth of God's workmanship, forming the church in union with Christ its living Head, be completely lost in its intended responsibility for the choicest collective fellowship of all the members. Nevertheless, if obedience sadly lacks, God's side of the truth cannot fail, whether as to the church as Christ's body, the holy temple growing, or the habitation of God by the Spirit. Indeed that which is the object of the Lord's special affection must and will have its corresponding answer, when “He shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied.” Blessed indeed for faith to look away from failure and ruin (save to judge responsibility as to it) and dwell in holy meditation on the unceasing love of Christ, in its past, present, and future, as declared in Eph. 5:25-27.

Having given Himself for the church, it is not surprising that He should sanctify and cleanse it, which He is now doing, as He will assuredly present the church to Himself glorious, without spot, wrinkle, or blemish. This then is the crowning point of the true church for Christ who, for nearly nineteen centuries, has been waiting on high for the moment to receive her to Himself. Isaac welcomed Rebecca to his tent in Canaan. Christ will call us up on the cloud in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, and receive us to Himself; He will have the church as His bride for the glorious marriage in heaven. Till then, surely, the precious truth of the heavenly family and the church of God is what the abiding Spirit would have all believers know and enjoy. Assuredly the Holy Spirit has not given up His purpose and action, any more than His present testimony and work in the gospel. He is ever true to the Father and Son Who sent Him. However complete be the ruin, His purpose goes on in spite of the many names and parties, humbling and appalling as this may be. The Spirit still gathers to the Name and Person of Christ, the unfailing Head of the church; so that even the twos and threes, obediently responding to His action, may prove the value of His promise in Matt. 18:20: “For where two or three are gathered together to my name, there am I in the midst of them.” How important therefore to keep His word and not deny His name The Lord Himself, Who says He is coming quickly, create, exercise, and establish His own in grace and truth, in obedience responsive to His will and word, for His name' sake. G.G.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: 1 John

Chap. V. Divine Design. 49. the First Epistle of John

The unique character of the Epistle before us cannot but impress every intelligent Christian, one might say any attentive disciple. Like that to the Hebrews, it has no formal address: like that of Jude, it is meant for, as that was addressed to, all saints everywhere, both too in view of the deepest evil among professing Christians; Jude, apostates who had crept in; John, many antichrists who had gone out.

But our Epistle is distinguished by the fullest development of the life eternal in Him who lived among men, in the closest intimacy with His own here below, the same life which was with the Father before He was manifested on earth.

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we gazed on, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life (and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and report to you the life eternal, the which was with the Father, and was manifested to us): that which we have seen and heard we report to you that ye also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship too is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ; and these things we write that your joy may be filled full” (vers. 1-4). This introduction is based on the grand one to the Gospel in John 1:1-18; but with the marked difference that there it was the Word in the beginning, God with God before creature came into being; here it is “that which was from the beginning,” the Word of life become flesh, that tabernacled among us in the most familiar love; that the chosen witnesses, and we who believe their report and like them have life eternal in Him, might have the same blessed fellowship, fellowship with the Father and with His Son in the fullest joy now and evermore. No higher joy than this fellowship will be in heaven; and it is our unbelief if it be not ours now on earth.

Then comes the divine nature, testing our reality in vers. 5-10; it is “the message” that follows the manifestation.

“And this is the message which we have heard from Him, and declare to you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth; but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us; if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we sinned not, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

Thus having had the love of the Father and the Son, we must face God as light, as every converted soul proves. One following Christ walks no more in darkness but has the light of life. The question here is where we walk, not how. We are brought to God Who is light and therein walk henceforth, poorly as we may walk; but if this be so, we have fellowship one with another, all so walking (and no longer in the dark of an unknown God), with the assurance that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from every sin. Its efficiency is as great to purge as God's light to detect all sin, and this we now share with every saint. We confess, and God forgives and purifies. But if we pretend to walk in the light while still in the dark, our life is but a lie; if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves: else the truth would lay it bare. If we say that we did not sin, we go farther still and make God a liar, for His word attests the contrary.

Verses 1,2 of chap. ii supply the resource if one should sin. “My little children, these things I write to you that ye sin not. And if one sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but for the whole world.” His Person and His work abide in unchanging value; but He meets our inconsistencies by His advocacy on our behalf on high. And we have “Father” here as in the introduction, not “God” as in the testing of our nature and ways by His light between the two.

The question is then raised how to know that there is true knowledge of God. The first proof is obedience in 3-6, keeping His commandments, and yet more His word. All profession without obedience is false; while he that speaks of abiding in Him ought himself also so to walk as He walked. The second proof is love in 7-11. It was an old commandment without power when our Lord was here with His disciples; it became a new one when He died and rose. Always true in Him, it was then and thus “true in him and in you, because the darkness is quite passing, and the true light already shineth.” Here too, claim to be in the light, while hating one's brother, proves that one is in nothing but the darkness of fallen nature. Christ must be our life, either to obey or to love.

Next we have the family of God, all having their sins forgiven for Christ's name (ver. 12), distinguished as fathers, young men, and babes (παιδία) in ver. 13, and repeated with enlargement, save for the fathers, in vers. 14-27, closed by ver. 28 which unites them again as “little children” (τεκνία) by the call to abide in Him, that when He shall be manifested, we (John, &c., not “ye") may have boldness, and not be put to shame from before Him at His coming. The great principles and the details of this parenthesis are full of weight, beauty, and interest: the fathers characterized by knowing Christ as here, to which the apostle adds nothing; the young men by vigor in overcoming Satan and loving the Father, not the world; and the babes warned against the many antichrists, but knowing all as having unction from the Holy One, and as it abode in them, so were they to abide in Him.

Practical righteousness is touched in the last ver. of chap. 2 as flowing from being born of God, when the apostle turns to another parenthesis in 3:1-3, where the Father's love, our present relationship as children, and the hope of Christ's manifestation are richly brought out in a few words. For indeed we need all grace to practice righteousness, which depends on the divine nature; but the hope too has purifying power. He then contrasts the sinner with Christ in Whom was no sin and Himself manifested to take away our sins: as every one that practices sin practices also lawlessness; for sin is a deeper and wider thing than transgressing the law. So whoever abides in Him sins not; whoever sins has not seen nor known Him. Thereon the family of God are warned against deceivers; and righteousness is insisted on, and the devil and the Son of God confronted as are the children of God with those of the devil, ver. 10 being the transition to love, and Cain the ensample of hatred and unrighteousness. Thus they were not to wonder if they were hated by the world which remains in unremoved death. We on the contrary know that we have passed out of death because we love the brethren; whereas hatred is in principle murder, and no murderer has life eternal abiding in him. But love must be real, not in the tongue only, from its utmost self-sacrifice down to little deeds of every day. And we must beware of a bad conscience, so as to have boldness toward God, and receive what we ask, in an obedient spirit, believing on the name of His Son and loving one another. “And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him; and hereby we know that he abideth in us by the Spirit which he gave us.”

This leads into the unfolding of the Spirit in chap. 4 as to truth and love. “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits if they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth Jesus Christ come in flesh is of God; an i every spirit that confesseth not Jesus [Christ come in flesh] is not of God; and this is the [spirit] of the antichrist whereof ye have heard that it cometh, and now it is already in the world” (1-4). Ye are of God, says he to the little children, and have overcome them; they are of the world, their all; we (the inspired like himself) are of God, as perfectly giving His word: a momentous thing then and ever since. “Hereby know we the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” When the truth is thus clear and settled, we can freely speak of love.

“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth hath been begotten (or, is born) of God, and knoweth God; he that loveth not knew not God, because God is love.” It is not standing here by faith, as Paul urges and it is also true, but participation in the divine by Christ as our life. “Herein was manifested the love of God in our case, because God hath sent his Only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as propitiation for our sins.” Ought we not then to love one another? No one has ever beheld God; our love should now attest Him, as Christ when here declared Him (compare John 1:18). “Herein we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.” For His Spirit is the power of all communion. Yet is the apostle careful to allege the surest fact, lest we should get lost in feeling. “And we have beheld and do testify that the Father sent the Son as Savior of the world.”

Hence the simplicity and the directness and the breadth of Christian truth. “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in him, and he in God.” How it strengthens the weak, and reproves the careless! Does it allow of doubt? “And we have known and believed the love which God hath in our case, God is love, and he that abideth in love abideth in God and God in him” Nor is this all: “Herein hath love been perfected with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear; because fear hath torment, and he that feareth hath not been made perfect in love. We love, because he first loved us.” Unreality is thus exposed. If one say, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment have we from Him, that he who loves God love also his brother.

With this chap. 5 connects itself. Who is my brother? “Everyone that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born (or, begotten) of God; and every one that loveth him that begot loveth him also that is begotten of him.” But John will not allow love apart from obedience: “Herein we know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments; and his commandments are not grievous.” They unite in a new nature, life eternal, the substratum of the entire Epistle. “For all that is begotten of God overcometh the world; and this is the victory that overcometh the world, our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?”

Then he adds the work, or rather the Person characterized by it. “This is he that came through (διὰ) water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by (έν) the water only, but by the water and the blood. And it is the Spirit that witnesseth because the Spirit is the truth. Because there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and the three are to the one (end).” Life is not in the first man, but in the Second, Who also atones and purifies. So blood and water came out of His pierced heart when dead; and the Spirit bore witness through John who saw and knew its truth, that we might believe: three witnesses, and one testimony. Full salvation is in Christ and in Him alone. On this the apostle reasons and appeals in 10-12. It is God's testimony about His Son; and he that believes on Him has the testimony in himself, if all else failed, for the life is in Him “He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” Very weighty is the sum here: “These things wrote (or, write, ep. aor.) I to you that ye may know (εἰδ) that ye have life eternal, ye that believe on the name of the Son of God.” Then he urges confidence in prayer, and specifies it on behalf of a brother not sinning to death; if so, one should refrain. The threefold “we know” in 18-20 grandly concludes the Epistle. Day of the worst evil as it was, what can match the calm confidence of victory over sin and Satan, of belonging to God and His nature above a lost world, of a spiritual understanding to know Him that is true, and to be in Him that is true, in His Son Jesus Christ! “This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, guard yourselves from idols.”

Daniel 9:27

Q.-Dan. 9:27. Is it true that the translation of the heavenly saints to the mansions on high synchronizes with the arrival of Daniel's last week? or does it suppose a partial restoration of Jews in unbelief, the acceptance of antichrist as king, a rebuilt temple, and re-established sacrifices? How then, since none of these has taken place, or can occur in the next 24 hours, can it be taught that if the rapture were to be to-day, the man of sin would reign to-morrow? And if the Lord may come any hour, and the church be removed at the beginning of the tribulation seven years long, how can this be in view of the four events already mentioned? O.

A.-There have been and are men of marked spiritual intelligence who look for (not the last week but) its latter half. I see no sufficient reason for just seven years, still less the half. The seven Seals of Rev. 6 have no apparent connection with Daniel's last week. Their nature, especially of the first four, seems to imply a considerable time for each to stamp its own space with the predicted character; and all the more because it is a general sort, instead of anything more definite and extraordinary in divine providence. So does the persecution of the fifth Seal; and surely also the immense catastrophe to befall high and low in the sixth. We may see some traces coming into evidence of the West and East for the latter day in the later Trumpets; but we do not hear of the Beast till the parenthesis before the last or Seventh in Rev. 11. Does not all this indicate a longer lapse of time than enquirers generally conceive? Is there not implied a series of judgments before the last week begins? There is no solid ground in scripture for conceiving that, when the rapture to heaven takes place, the Roman prince of the future forthwith confirms a covenant with the unbelieving mass of the Jews as to their reconstituted worship and temple service. The week remains to be fulfilled; yet there is nothing but assumption or theory for closing up all so sharply. Enough has been said to show that scripture involves preparatory circumstances of great moment, which leave ample sphere for a considerable settlement of unbelieving Jews in the land, and for all the other connected events. Indeed there is nothing to hinder much while the Bridegroom tarries. But scripture is clear that His coming to receive His own for heaven is wholly independent of any such changes on earth. Therefore does it remain the same for us now as for the saints in apostolic days: so that the one hope might have its heavenly power, and all have the blessing of waiting for Him in holy separateness and bridal affection, sure that He is coming, with nothing to enfeeble our constant expectancy. Thus it is of all moment to keep the lamp of prophecy as distinct as the written word makes it from the Christian hope, and to know that this is heavenly and rests on Christ's love and truth, and never there mixed up with the earthly things which prophecy unveils. Even now it is our privilege to have day dawning and Christ as daystar arising in our hearts, whilst we look for its actual fruition at His coming. Nor is there a greater hindrance to the power of the truth in our souls, our communion, our walk, and service, and worship, than confounding our proper hope with prophecy, as is done in the query here answered.

The Life Is the Light of Men

It is an essential difference between man's thoughts and God's, that man who makes himself the center would have light, as he says, even divine light, to have life. God's way is all the opposite: “The life was the light of men.” Life, the Person of the Lord Jesus, comes first; and that is right, because it, and it alone, puts God in His place. Nor could the law do this; it was given to man as man.

As man was made in the image of God after His likeness, so Christ was in nature the light of men (not of angels as such): He is the image of the invisible God. But we are born of God, and “he that hath the Son hath life,” God having given to us eternal life—quite a different thing from simply being immortal. It is the possession of that divine life, which in Christ never had a beginning, that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested to us, and of which in its moral qualities it is said, “which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light already shineth.” Hence it is said of us, “Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.” But even this partaking of the divine life or nature is dependent as it is derivative. And though it is a nature which in itself does not sin and delights in God, as the eye in light, yet we have to walk in the light. We have fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ in that life which is from them (and that through the Holy Ghost). But then God is light, and fellowship with Him out of the light is impossible.

It is not, If we walk according to the light. This is the practical consequence in the world, even when we are not directly enjoying communion; but we walk in the light, when we walk with God fully revealed to soul and conscience. It is a real thing in life: we walk, but more than walking according to light. It is a walking in the presence of a fully revealed God, the conscience and spiritual judgment and apprehension being in the light as He is: what God is perfectly seen, and everything by it, and all clear as it is in light and for the soul. If we walk thus with God inwardly, all is judged inwardly; and our life is only the expression of the working of God in power in the life which we have of Him, of Christ in us (wisdom and power). J.N.D.

P.E.R. Heterodox on Life Eternal, other Divine Truths, and above all Christ's Person, paper, 10d., limp cloth, 1/-.

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row,

Publsahed Monthly.

Jacob: 10. Jacob in Distress and Praying

Laban went and returned to his place, as we have seen. Of him we hear no more.

“And Jacob went on his way; and the angels of God met him. And when Jacob saw them, he said, This [is] the camp of God. And he called the name of that place Mahanaim (two camps). And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother into the land of Seir, the field of Edom. And he commanded them, saying, Thus shall ye speak to my lord, to Esau: Thy servant Jacob speaketh thus. With Laban I have sojourned and tarried until now; and I have oxen, and asses, sheep, and bondmen and bondwomen; and I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find grace in thy sight. And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, We came to thy brother, to Esau; and he also cometh to meet thee, and four hundred men with him. Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed; and he divided the people that [was] with him, and the sheep and the herds and the camels, into two companies (camps). And he said, If Esau come to the one company and smite it, then the company which is left shall escape. And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, Jehovah, who saidst to me, Return to thy country and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee; I am less than all the mercies and all the truth that thou hast shown unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two companies. Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from Esau's hand; for I fear him, lest he come and smite me, [and] the mother with the children. And thou saidst, I will certainly deal well with thee, and make thy seed as sand of the sea which cannot be numbered for multitude” (1-12).

When a lonely fugitive from his father's house Jacob beheld in a dream on his way to Haran a ladder from earth to heaven, with angels of God ascending and descending on it, but above it Jehovah promising His presence and eventual blessing. Here again him, a fugitive, angels of God met, so that, when he saw them, he recognized the gracious aim, This is God's host, and named the place accordingly. But neither the dream nor the sight of angels sufficed for Jacob's need. The fear of Laban was soon followed by his sorry terror of Esau. So it must be, just because Jacob was born of God, but with an unpurged conscience and a heart not at rest to enjoy the only object that satisfies. Even visions in this case are of little power and would soon be forgotten.

We see the lesson of faith feebly learned. Again he has recourse to his plans, and sends messengers to his brother in Seir, with words skilfully framed to conciliate “my lord Esau,” and “thy servant Jacob.” Esau was not to fear that Jacob needed to encroach on a brother or a father; he had ample resources of his own, and only sought grace in his sight. But no answer from Esau filled Jacob with alarm and distress; especially as the messengers told him that Esau was coming to meet him with four hundred men. Why, but to overwhelm him? It was unbelief of Him who cannot forget His promise but can control and turn the most alien spirit.

Again, he betakes himself to his devices, dividing the people and the stock into two companies, saying, If Esau come to the one and smite it, then shall the other escape. How short and sad is man's prudence! He that arrested Laban in his hostile intentions and made him depart with a kiss all round, could he not bring Esau to Jacob with an embrace and not without tears? It is his state that the Holy Spirit here recounts for everlasting profit, that we be not anxious for the morrow, but cast all upon the God of all grace, because He cares for us. Jacob had as yet a bad conscience, and never yet faced it all out in God's presence. Yet God was faithful to him, not he to God.

After the trembling man had made his plan, he betakes himself to God, and we may trace the work slowly going on in his soul. He reminds Jehovah the God of his fathers Abraham and Isaac, that it was at His bidding he was returning to his country and kindred. He owns his unworthiness of the least of all His mercies and of all His truth. He compares his destitution when he first crossed the Jordan with his two companies at present. He earnestly entreats his deliverance from the hand of his brother Esau, whom he dreaded both for himself and for the mother with the children. Then finally he reminds Him of His promise of a surety to do him good, and make his posterity as sand of the sea innumerable. We can readily perceive that it was faith, but as yet mingled with human expedients. Hence was he far from peaceful reckoning on God, and even in abject terror of Esau.

The fact is that he was dissatisfied with himself, and feels the need of drawing near to God in a way he had never yet known. The interesting details of this we find in the next page of the divine story, a very important epoch in Jacob's experience. His plans did nothing toward softening Esau, any more than relieving himself from his dread. But he was now to be alone with God who took him up in a way worthy of Himself, and laid the basis for the deepening work in his soul ever after, and a blessing which at length shone in Jacob's declining years beyond his father or even his grandfather. But in his then low estate spiritually grace was about to meet him that very night, little as his troubled soul looked for it, and in a manner foreign to all natural thoughts.

Israel Holy to Jehovah: 3. Israel's Duty in Natural Relations

Here Aaron and his sons appear. Jehovah communicated to Moses what he was to charge on the people in general. They had left the house of bondage behind with its idols and impurities; they were to enter Canaan where and when the cup of the iniquity of the Amorites was full. They were a people redeemed externally at least, sheltered from divine judgment even in Egypt by the blood of the paschal lamb, and delivered by divine power through the Red Sea which swallowed up the world's adverse power. Yet were they meanwhile in the wilderness, but with Jehovah their leader on march, and dwelling in their midst where-ever they sojourned.

His dealings up to Sinai were in pure grace (spite of constant unbelief and complaint). If they murmured at the bitter water, after three days of thirst, Jehovah smote none but showed Moses that which made them sweet. When they murmured for hunger, Jehovah gave them bread from heaven and in double measure on the sixth day to mark the sabbath of rest. When again they murmured for water, Moses at Jehovah's call struck the rock on Horeb, and water flowed abundantly. Then Amalek came and Joshua fought, but Israel, however assured, prevailed only while the hands of Moses were held up. The beautiful pledge of the Kingdom closes in righteous order. All changes in Ex. 19; for Israel, instead of owning their utter weakness and pleading the promises of grace, boldly undertake to stand on their obedience of the law, i.e. on their own righteousness, the sure proof that they knew aright neither God nor themselves, the sad token of ruin ever to grow worse and worse.

Still there they were His people as no other nation was. His choice and their redemption were as plain facts as the judgment He had executed for their deliverance on the greatest of the then kingdoms of the earth. As such Jehovah had brought Israel to Himself; but confiding in themselves; they had accepted the condition of keeping His covenant for their standing and blessing. This became the basis of their obligations. They were in relationship with Him as His people on earth, with His law as the rule which bound them in all respects. Obedience is a duty; but to rest life or blessing on it was fatal. Law thus became for sinful man a ministry of death and condemnation.

“1 And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying, 2 Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, I [am] Jehovah your God. 3 After the doings of the land of Egypt wherein ye dwelt, ye shall not do; and after the doings of the land of Canaan whither I bring you, ye shall not do; neither shall ye walk in their customs. 4 Mine ordinances shall ye do and my statutes shall ye observe to walk therein: I [am] Jehovah your God. 5 And ye shall observe my statutes and my judgments, by which the man that doeth them shall live: I [am] Jehovah” (vers. 1-5).

It is of all moment to apprehend that on this ground no sinner can live: he needs to be justified by faith in Jesus the only Savior. For this reason the apostle in Gal. 3:11, 12 quotes the last of these verses to set the position under law in contrast with faith. “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 he that doeth them shall live by (or, in virtue of) them.” Indeed he had already in ver. 10 laid down the still more sweeping sentence that “as many as are by (or, on the principle of) works of law are under curse,” founding it on Deut. 27:26. Let the reader weigh the striking fact here recorded. Silence is kept as to the blessings declared on mount Gerizim: all these were in vain. But the curses on mount Ebal stand in all their solemnity.

The law was given, not for sinful man to gain life thereby, but to learn that in such a way it was impossible. Law can only curse sinners, and sinners Israel and all men are. By faith the elders, like ourselves, obtained witness of being righteous; for faith ever rests, not on self but Christ, as Abel did and every saint that followed him. Before the law God gave promises of unconditional favor to the fathers; but the children forgot them, and boldly undertook to live by obeying the law, and so, when they transgressed and rebelled as they did, increasingly incurred the curse. Such as looked on to the coming Messiah, renouncing self-confidence, and owning their sins, were justified by God's grace, even as the fathers. For when man fell, God revealed the Seed of woman as Satan's destroyer, the resource and object of faith.

The law was as absolutely right, as man and favored Israel were thoroughly wrong. On the ground of law sinful man could only meet with death and condemnation. But man is blind both as to God and as to himself, and having no confidence in His grace, willingly accepts earning life by his well-doing. As he did not believe, he must learn to his cost that in the things of God he is as weak as he is ungodly (Rom. 5:9). Through law is not acquirement of righteousness but knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20). The law also works out wrath, and thereby the offense abounds. As the sting of death is the law, so is the law the power of sin. But Christ only is the Savior whom God made sin for us in His atoning death; which glorified God even as to sin, and left him free to display His grace to the uttermost for all that believe on His Son.

Hence the Christian rests in a new righteousness, not man's as Israel pretended to and are now suffering the consequence of their failure, and yet more for rejecting their own Messiah. It is now God's righteousness apart from law that is manifested, God's righteousness through faith of Jesus Christ unto all (Gentile no less than Jew), and upon all that believe (whoever they be and whatever they may have been); for there is no difference, let the unbelieving pride of man conceive what it will on its own behalf. For all sinned and do come short of God's glory: being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God set forth a propitiatory through faith in His blood, unto showing forth His righteousness because of the passing over (or, praetermission of) the sins that had been before in His forbearance; for showing His righteousness in the present time that He might be just and justifier of him that is of faith in Jesus (Rom. 3:21-26). Thus was boasting excluded. The Christian confesses his ruin by sin and his own sins, but has faith in Him Who suffered once for sins that He might bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18).

Hence too Christian responsibility is not less real than the Israelite's, but is wholly different. He has life eternal in Christ Who gives it to him; he comes not into judgment which Christ bore for him; and he has passed from death into life. The blood of Christ has cleansed him from every sin, so that he knows himself white as snow in God's sight. He is God's son through faith in Christ Jesus, and sealed with the Holy Spirit given to him, crying, Abba, Father. He is a member of Christ's body in union with the heavenly Head. All this and more create a responsibility not only altogether distinct from that of Israel, but far beyond what the saints had before Christ's redemption and the gift of the indwelling Spirit. For duties, depend on relationship; and as the Christian is by grace brought into an entirely new place in Christ, so are we expressly regarded (Eph. 2:10) as created in Him for good works, prepared before that we should walk in them. The measure and character of Israel's place, excellent as it was, is wholly short of and quite different from ours.

But we may notice in the prefatory words of our chapter how Israel were warned against the doings of both Egypt and Canaan. Jehovah's ordinances and statutes they were to observe and walk in: the man that did these should live. That in fact they turned away in disobedience of those both the evil ways was their utter ruin.

Proverbs 16:25-33

The first of these apothegms we have had before in chap. 14:12. The repetition indicates its importance, and our aptness to forget it. We may therefore consider it again.

“There is a way that seemeth right to a man, but the end thereof [is] the ways of death.

The appetite (or, soul) of the laboring man laboureth for him, for his mouth urgeth him on.

A man of Belial diggeth evil, and on his lips [is] as a scorching fire.

A froward (or, false) man soweth contention: and a talebearer separateth chief friends.

A violent man enticeth his neighbor, and leadeth him a way [that is] not good.

He that shutteth his eyes, [it is] to devise froward things; he that biteth his lips bringeth evil to pass.

The hoary head [is] a crown of glory; it is found in the way of righteousness.

The slow to anger [is] better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.

The lot is cast into the lap, but the decision [is] of Jehovah” (vers. 25-33).

Self-love and self-will lead into self-deception, whatever be the honesty that would oppose a conscious wrong. We need therefore to look to Him who is greater than our heart, that we be guided by a wisdom above ourselves. How terrible to have trusted what one should have judged, lest, to one following a way that seemed right, its end should be only a way of death! He that hears and knows and follows the voice of Jesus finds Him not only the way but the truth and the life. Nor can one be too simple in listening to His words open to all. This is the Christian highway; and therefore is peace and joy, whatever the suffering and danger.

Humanly speaking, as idleness is a peril and misery, labor is good for man as he is. He that is a truly working man has a need that impels him on his course of daily toil. His soul (appetite, or life) has wants that call for supply, or, as it is here put, “his mouth urgeth him on.” Others understand that “the soul of him that is troublesome shall suffer trouble; for his mouth turneth it on him.”

Ver. 27 vividly sketches the ungodly. Not content with what appears on the surface, a man of Belial diggeth up evil, and on his lips is as a scorching fire. As James says of the tongue, it sets on fire all the course of nature, and is itself inflamed by hell. What can one think of the comment by a learned Romanist expositor (Maldonat), which Bishop Patrick cites?— “This is apparent by the example of the Spanish Inquisition, whereby he who speaks anything rashly against the faith is deservedly delivered to the fire, which I wish were done everywhere.” Romanism ignores and reverses Christianity.

The next form of mischief is a perverse or froward man sowing contention; and a tale-bearer separating chief friends. May we have grace not only to refuse such a spirit, but to reprove it, whenever it betrays its injurious and often insinuating way.

The violent man may not be so insidious; but the openness of his course, with apparent honesty, may entice his neighbor, and lead him into a way that is not good, possibly beyond his misleader.

The picture in ver. 30 describes one of those that shut the eyes in their evil work; but it is to devise froward things: and one biting his lips, that he may bring evil to pass.

Nor must one be deceived by age, though it claims reverence. But how deplorable if it help on evil! “The hoary head is a crown of glory; it is (or, if it be) found in the way of righteousness.”

What a testimony to the patient and the self-restrained in ver. 32! If we walk in the light, as every Christian does, even more than this should flow freely. Yet slowness to anger and self-control are admirable in their place.

The Jew resorted to the lot (ver. 33), till the Spirit was given the believer in the gospel. But he was reminded that Jehovah directed. Christianity in this as in all things shows God providing some “better thing,” faithful though God was of old, and is still, now that in Christ He is far more intimately revealed and known.

Gospel Words: Judge Not That Ye Be Not Judged

There ought to be no question of the Lord's meaning here. No fault was more prevalent then or now. Censoriousness is not only the habitual bane of religious professors, but the snare to which true disciples are too prone. Gracious men who set their face in general against detraction are often bitter against what they themselves dislike, and thus slip into judging motives wrongly like others. He who is Judge of quick and dead discerns every heart, and enjoins what is comely and just on His followers. For this sin tends to hypocrisy; and what saint would regard such a thing lightly?

“Judge not that ye be not judged; for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye measure, it shall be measured to you. And why lookest thou on the mote that [is] in the eye of thy brother, but observest not the beam in thine eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote from thine eye; and, behold, the beam [is] in thine eye? Hypocrite, pull out first the beam out of thine eye, and then wilt thou see clearly to pull out the mote out of the eye of thy brother.”

The indulgence in a hasty, severe, and suspicious spirit provokes reprisals, and such as wantonly impute evil to others in ignorance or unkindness do not fail to bring on themselves unsparing imputation. For here the Lord turns from the lack of confiding in our Father's care and love, and warns of our danger from many an unkind impression and expression. To surmise wrong motives is itself a wrong. It is natural for such as live in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another; and such once were we ourselves. But since the kindness and love to man of our Savior God appeared (no premium for our deserts), but according to His own mercy He saved us through washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, which He poured on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, are we not bound by the family character, the new life relationship as children of God, sons of such a Father? Since redemption and the gift of the Spirit, more can be added now to what the Lord uttered then.

But He reminds us of what we easily forget. If others are a trial to us, are not we a trial to them? Are we not, unless walking according to the light, as dull to see our own faults as we are sharp to notice, and even imagine, wrongs in our brethren? How pungently the Lord puts the case that we may loathe ourselves! “And why lookest thou on the mote in the eye of thy brother, but observest not the beam in thine eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote from thine eye, and, behold, the beam is in thine eye?” The Shepherd and Bishop of our souls thus holily strips us of the mask which failure in self-judgment puts on. For if before God we discern not our own grievous shortcomings and sins, we do not know our brethren with anything like the same certainty and clearness. Love therefore and the fear of God call us each to deem others better than ourselves, judging ourselves for what we do know instead of others for what we know not and ought not to think. “Hypocrite,” says the Lord with severe reproof, “pull out first the beam out of thine eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote out of thy brother's eye.”

Yet it is well to beware of the too common misuse of our Lord's warning. How often pious persons thereby deprecate any censure of their own position and any care against false doctrine, or evil associations, or responsibility for such discipline as scripture requires! But this is to fail in godliness; which assuredly covers not only personal conduct, but also public walk as members of Christ. The Corinthians were careless in this way and others, which grace has turned to the profit, not only of them, but of “all that in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours.” The apostle allows no excuse for carelessness congregationally any more than individually. There is no call to exercise discipline on the evildoers of the world; but Christians have the obligation of dealing with offenders in God's assembly. Paul, though absent, could not but judge that the wicked person should be excluded. It was due to Christ and His sacrifice. God must be vindicated Whose is the assembly. The saints were bound to clear themselves in the matter, taking up the offender's sin as their own; yet even here his ultimate good was sought, “that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” “Do not ye judge those that are within? But those without God judgeth. Put away the wicked [man] from among yourselves” (1 Cor. 5:3-13). Here we are commanded to judge.

The selfsame principle expressly applies to sins far less gross. Our thoughts and reasonings are to be discarded on the one hand; and on the other God's authority to be recognized and conclusive. Scripture too is plain, that, important as is right judgment of moral evil, the truth is yet more momentous; and this both because to slight and oppose it offends against the Giver, and it ruins those who thus err, whilst they have a fair appearance, instead of shocking men like immorality or unrighteousness.

Express injunction is also laid down, when the evil is of a more general and public character, as in 2 Tim. 2 “Howbeit the firm foundation of God standeth, having this seal, The Lord knoweth those that are his; and, Let everyone that nameth the Lord's name depart from unrighteousness. Now in a great house are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some for honor and some for dishonor. If one therefore purge himself out from these, he shall be a vessel for honor, sanctified, serviceable to the Master, prepared for every good work.” There is thus no license to join in what God disapproves and demands us to judge. Conscience, a purged conscience, is exercised, and the heart all the more free to love fervently according to God.

But how is it with you, dear reader? If you are of the world and only bear the outward badge of Christianity, take the place of truth for your soul in God's sight. Jesus is the all-sufficient Savior of sinners, and He, the Lord of all, is rich and near to all that call upon Him. For whosoever shall call on the Lord's name shall be saved. Righteousness and salvation are the portion assured by God to each that believes and confesses Him. If you received Christ, say not that you cannot tell who are His. How then can you love God's children, as Christ charged you to do? Even the unconverted know in a general way who are His, and who are not; how much more does every sober believer? He owns that, till born anew and brought to God by Christ's work, he was as evil as anyone; and, without pretending to judge the heart, he accepts those who confess the Lord and follow Him, as he himself does. Such is the judgment of true charity, not the indifference of unbelief which is of Satan.

The verse that follows itself shows whom we ought to judge. For we are to prove all things, holding fast the right. “Dogs” and “Swine” we are bound to discern and disown. “Give not the holy thing to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before the swine lest they trample them with their feet, and turn and rend you.” Nabal's family is not extinct, sons of Belial with whom a disciple cannot speak with impunity. Shamelessness and filth plainly tell what they are, and the folly of treating them as sheep of God's pasture. No doubt the grace of God can save such: but in all this discourse is not a word about redemption or saving sinners. All throughout consists of the characters which suit God, and must really be for His Kingdom. This is its design: and it is worthy of Christ, as the gospel is where this was the question.

Lord's Prophecy on Olivet in Matthew 24-25: 1. The Jewish Disciples

In this discourse the Lord unfolds, first, the future of the Jewish disciples; secondly, that of the Christian profession; and thirdly, that of all the nations tested by the gospel of the Kingdom before the end comes, and He Himself reigns. Such are the simple divisions of the two chapters; and so it was or will be in fact. The discourse grew in His wisdom out of their directing His attention to the splendor of the buildings, from which their hearts were not yet weaned. They believed that Jesus was the Christ; they were born of God; but they had as yet their hearts associated with Israel's hopes, yea, even till the day that He ascended to heaven (Acts 1:6-11), though theirs was no small advance when He rose from the dead.

The Lord therefore begins with His disciples as they then were, who fittingly also represent those who are to succeed in the latter day, when the work of gathering out the Christian company for heavenly glory is complete, and God begins to prepare His people on earth for the reign of the returning Son of man. It is also the order of fact. No other division of the subject matter could be so satisfactory. In this connection were the disciples viewed not only generally throughout the Gospel, but evidently when He sent forth the twelve in chap. 10. “Depart not into a way of Gentiles, and into a city of Samaritans enter ye not; but go rather unto the lost sheep of Israel's house. And as ye go preach, saying, The kingdom of the heavens hath drawn nigh.” That this was superseded by the Christian testimony, as we shall see still more markedly in the discourse on Olivet, is true; but it is plain from ver. 23 that this Jewish mission will go forth again before the end: “for verily I say to you, Ye shall not have finished the cities of Israel until the Son of man be come.” Christianity is a parenthesis.

Again, in the chapter (23) immediately preceding, the Lord says to the crowds and to His disciples, “The scribes and Pharisees sat in Moses' seat: all things therefore whatever they tell you, do and keep; but do not after their works, for they say and do not.” The disciples clearly are here viewed, not as Christians, but as Jews; and this is confirmed by the pointed language of ver. 34 to the end of the chapter. For sad as the retribution must be, a change should come to the people before His return. “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate; for I say unto you, Ye shall in no wise see me henceforth until ye say, Blessed be he that cometh in Jehovah's name.” Thus the repentance of a remnant will pave the way for His return; some suffering to death for His name, others preserved to welcome the Son of Man when He comes. Of both we hear much in the Psalms and the Prophets, as well as in the Revelation.

The first part of the discourse with its various sections suitably follows in chap. 24:1-44.

“And Jesus went out, and was going forth from the temple, and his disciples came to [him] to show him the buildings of the temple. But he answered and said to them, See ye not all these things?

Verily I say to you, Not a stone shall in anywise be left here on a stone, which shall not be thrown down” (1, 2). The rejected Messiah pronounces sentence: most solemn to hear for believing Jews who justly regarded the temple as the great external and public witness of the one true God and His worship on earth. It had been destroyed before, after the reigning son of David apostatized and made it the seat of Gentile idols. But had not there been a gracious return (not of Israel, it is true, but) of a Jewish remnant from Babylon to rebuild city and temple and to await Messiah? Alas! now, He whom they believed to be the anointed Son of David doomed it to another demolition which should not linger, when not the first but the last Gentile world-power should execute it; not because of idols, but because the Jews were first to refuse and then by Gentiles crucify their own Jehovah-Messiah: the two impeachments which Isaiah so long ago had predicted against the chosen people (40-48 and 49-57.).

“And as he was sitting upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, Tell us when shall these things be? and what [is] the sign of thy coming, and of the completion of the age? And Jesus answering said to them, See that no one mislead you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and they shall mislead many. And ye shall be about to hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled; for they must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in places. But all these [are the] beginning of travails. Then shall they give you up to tribulation and shall kill you; and ye shall be hated by all the nations for my name's sake. And then shall many be stumbled, and give up one another, and hate one another: and many false prophets shall arise, and shall mislead many. And because lawlessness shall be multiplied the love of the many shall grow cool. But he that endured to [the] end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole habitable [earth] for a witness to all the nations, and then shall the end come” (vers. 3-14).

From Mark 13:3 we learn that Peter, James, John, and Andrew were those who thus inquired, When shall these things be? i.e. the temple's destruction; and what the sign of His coming and of the consummation of the age? In the Gospel of Luke we find the first of these questions fully answered, and the overthrow of the city involving that of the temple, and Jerusalem trodden down by Gentiles till their times be fulfilled, running on still since the sack of Titus, and very distinctly severed from the Son of Man's coming when the redemption of the godly Jews draws nigh. Here the answer as to the impending ruin, already given in the parable of the marriage feast (Matt. 22:7) is passed by; and the Lord passes on to the second question, which rightly enough brings together the sign of His coming and of the completion of the age.

It is important to note the inexcusable error, in both the A. V. and the Revision, of confounding the end of “the age” with that of “the world.” There is not a shadow of ground for it; for the coming age of a thousand years and more is after the age that still is, and before the eternal scene. Even disciples, as yet preoccupied with Jewish hopes and prejudices, and wholly unintelligent of the new and large and heavenly associations of Christianity, knew better. They did not say rot' KOrrilov (“of the world”) but rov arovos (“of the age”); and the Lord in Matt. 13:38, 40 had amply guarded against such a confusion. The field or sowing place was “the world"; the judgment on the darnel and the display of the wheat should be at the close of “the age.” The new age will be characterized by the King reigning in righteousness, when the Father's kingdom is come on high, and the Son of Man's here below when His will is to be done on earth as in heaven.

The Lord gives first a general sketch of the ruin about to ensue. Moral amelioration, truth prevalent, peace for mankind, as yet were misleading dreams against which they should be on their guard. The rejection of Himself would open the door to many false claimants to lead astray many wars and their rumors should be heard. Only when He takes His great power and reigns could it be otherwise, as Isaiah predicts. His disciples were not to be disturbed any more than deceived. Such evil things must be, as the King was rejected; and the end is not yet. For instead of learning war no more as when He comes in His kingdom, nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; nor this only but providential inflictions such as famines and pestilences and earthquakes in places. Yet all these are a beginning of birth throes. At this time should His disciples be objects of persecution, betrayed, and even killed by all the Gentiles because of His name. Worse still, stumbling should befall many; and mutual treachery and hatred among themselves. Many false prophets should rise and mislead many; and because of the lawlessness that should abound the love of the many would wax cold. But he that endured to the end should be saved.

The Lord in these verses is contemplating souls with Jewish expectations, and tried by Jewish opposition and unbelief with the hatred of all the nations; but the one that endured is specially assured. The Deliverer will come in due time; but not a word about the church, nor yet the gospel in its depth. Yet “this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the habitable earth for a testimony to all the nations, and then shall come the end.” It is a testimony and not without fruit everywhere, without a word of effect farther. The change for dead and for living, for heaven and for earth, is reserved for Him Who is worthy, at His coming—the rejected Christ.

Now the remarkable and evident fact is that the Lord has here before Him Jewish disciples in early days with their counterpart before the end, but without reference to the Christian light and privilege which would come in. And we have plain enough proof in the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle of James, that in Jerusalem there was pertinacity in this respect that has often struck Christian readers as strange, not only after the great Pentecost was fulfilled, but to the eve of the subversion of the city and sanctuary. The Epistle to the Hebrews a little before gave God's final warning and proof, that for the Christian the Jewish system was now null and void. In this way one can apprehend how the Lord provides instruction for Jewish disciples before the end is come. Still thus far all is general; but from ver. 15 we are given much that is precise, He Himself referring to the last chapter of Daniel.

“When therefore ye shall see the abomination of desolation that was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in [the] holy place (let the reader understand), then let those in Judea flee unto the mountains; let not him that is upon the house come down to take the things out of the house; and let not him that is in the field return back to take his cloak. But woe to those with child and to them that suckle in those days! But pray that your flight be not in winter nor sabbath. For then shall be great tribulation, such as hath not been from world's beginning until now, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days had been cut short, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake those days shall be cut short. Then if any one say to you, Behold, here [is] the Christ, or there, believe [him] not; for there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall give great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect. Behold, I have told you before. If therefore they say to you, Behold, [he is] in the desert, go not forth; Behold [he is] in the inner chambers, believe not. For as the lightning cometh forth from the east and appeareth unto the west, so shall be the coming of the Son of man. Wherever the carcass is, there will be gathered the eagles. But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun shall 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 land mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with great sound of trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from [one] end of heavens to the other” (vers. 15-31).

Here we learn the awful mark of Jewish wickedness in guilty and fatal alliance with the Gentiles, as Daniel warned. It needs the more attention; for this too had been done by the order of Antiochus Epiphanes long before Messiah's first advent. An idol was then set up in the holy place which brought desolation on all who acted or submitted, as it also drew out the uncompromising opposition of the Maccabees. This was predicted fully and plainly in Dan. 11:31, as the pious heroism that rejected the abomination follows. For this reason it is the more distinguishable from the future of like and even more portentous apostasy. For all has been accomplished up to ver. 35, where a blank is without doubt implied leading to the “time of the end,” which we have here also in the Gospel. Then “the king” of the last time appears, not “of the north” as Antiochus Epiphanes had been in his day, still less “of the south,” but demonstrably distinct from both. For 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, (Dan. 11:40). He is thus the object of hostility to both, and has for his sphere “the goodly land” between those two powers of the future on either side of him.

But he is also more widely the great religious enemy of Jehovah and His Christ; for reigning over the land of Israel, he will set himself forth as God in the temple of God. For this is the man of sin whom the apostle portrays in 2 Thess. 2., citing or applying Daniel's words. And to this future abomination of desolation the Lord refers in Dan. 12:11, with which is connected a date of 1290 days, and a supplement of 45 more, before the blessed time comes which the then faith of Israel awaits. Then the prophet himself shall rest and stand in his lot; and better still the Son of Man reign over not Israel only but all peoples, nations, and tongues: His dominion an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.

This public act of apostasy the Lord makes the signal for immediate flight. That some ancients and moderns have interpreted it of Cestius Gallus or of Titus is familiarly known; but either is really out of the question. For neither the one nor the other set up an idol in the holy place; and as the one gave ample time to flee without the precipitancy here enjoined, so the other afforded none. For the city was surrounded and sacked; and the victor (far from setting up an idol) sought in vain to spare the temple from the flames of utter ruin. The error arose from not seeing that the divine design was to present us with the Roman capture of Jerusalem and its results in Luke 21:20-24. But here the Lord passes these over in the corresponding place of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, and dwells only on the unequaled wickedness and tribulation of the future days, expressly said to be followed immediately by His own coming in clouds with great power and glory, closing man's evil age and opening the long-desired day of Jehovah. Luke omits that awful crisis.

As the sign for flight is unmistakable, so are those disciples contemplated by the Lord: “then let those in Judea flee to the mountains.” This in our future could not be for Christians, who, as we know from other scriptures, had been ere that translated to heaven. But God, on their disappearance, works in souls by His word and Spirit, to have an earthly people also, but first and especially among the Jews, the mass of whom are then deceived by the Antichrist. The godly Jewish remnant are thus therefore in question; and the Lord here points out that their danger is so immediate that there is no space to come down from the house-top for going into the house and taking their property out: they must flee at once. If one is in the field on the other hand, let him not turn back even to secure his cloak. It touched the Lord to think of women at such a crisis impeded personally or by their babes. And He urges prayer that the flight might not be in the rigor of winter or to the dishonor of sabbath. Can any intelligent Christian fail to see how godly Jews are here in view? From “the holy place” in ver. 15 to “sabbath” in 20, all point to disciples in that form of relationship, at that future epoch, and in that limited area.

So is the tribulation that comes next (21, 22). “In the world ye have tribulation” applies to the Christian in principle: hut no specific one is ever held out for him; he should expect it always. All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. But the tribulation beyond parallel even for Israel is during the last three-and-a-half years from the setting up of the abomination of desolation in the sanctuary.

It is a judicial dealing of God through their enemies because of their audacious apostasy, and has no point of contact with the Christian, save that merely nominal Christians fully share it. The Gentiles as such play their part in it; so we read in Rev. 7 of '' the great tribulation “; out of which come a crowd of faithful ones who washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For the Jews and the Gentiles in the latter day will be thus visited in their respective measures, when the Christians are no longer here but in heaven with Christ. But those days are cut short for the elect's sake: otherwise no flesh should be saved: for here the Lord speaks of Jewish disciples preserved on earth for His kingdom, not of Christians that endure suffering, and reign with Him when changed at His coming, which is not even supposed in this question.

Not less clear are the intimations in 23-26. They suppose Jewish dangers and deceits of the most trying kind, but not at all such as Christians are exposed to. For we know that when the Lord Jesus comes for us, we shall be changed, dead or living, and be caught up to meet Him in the air. This is so definitely revealed in the very first Epistle written to correct the mistake in the assembly of Thessalonians, just gathered unto the Lord's name, that it is hard to conceive a Christian that is not now apprised of it. Hence were any to tell him that the Christ was here or there, in Rome or in London, he would reject it, and treat the alleged as a false Christ, and the herald as a false prophet; nor would great signs and prodigies weigh in support of so glaring a contradiction of the word of the Lord. But Jewish believers who have no such a promise did and will need the Lord's fore-warning to keep them from the snare. Whether therefore they say, He is in the desert or in the inner chambers, they were to believe neither. “For as the lightning cometh out of the east and appeareth unto the west, so shall be the coming of the Son of Man.” Not so does the apostle John put His coming to receive us to Himself, but as the Bridegroom for the bride. But the lightning flash appositely describes His judicial presence for the Jewish disciples beset with Jewish and Gentile enemies animated with Satanic rage and hatred. And this is fully confirmed by the figure attached: “wherever the carcass is, there shall be gathered the eagles,” the swift instruments of divine vengeance on the dead prey which ought to have been a living witness for God. What a contrast with His coming and our gathering together unto Him! the blessed motive to deliver the deceived Thessalonians from being troubled by the false assertion that His day was there (as in 2 Thess. 2:1, 2).

Then the Lord states that “immediately after the tribulation of those days” there should be a total subversion of governmental order above, the sun, the moon, the stars, “and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken,” signs physically of the great change in progress for the earth. “And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in the heavens.” His appearing there on high is the sign of His coming to set up His kingdom and judge the quick. “And then shall all the tribes of the land” (for the context seems to favor this rendering, rather than “of the earth:” the word means either) lament: a result never expressed with His coming to translate us. “For they see Him coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” But He acts on and by more than men. He has His angels; and these “He shall send with a great sound of trumpet; and they shall gather His elect,” meaning here those of Israel as well as of Judah who are written in the book, “from one end of the heavens to the other.” We may compare with the many references in the Psalms and the Prophets, Isaiah especially.

To interpret scripture we need a power and wisdom above our own. We cannot understand by forcing the lock: the key is wanted, and grace gives it in Christ as taught by the word and Spirit of God. If you have Christ by faith, you have already the key. In faith apply Him to the Bible, and the Holy Spirit enables you to understand it. It is not a question of a superior mind or of great learning—for many learned men have been most foolish in their mistakes. The simple saint who knows not beyond the mother-tongue may understand the Bible, if he with true simplicity submits himself to the Lord and has confidence in His love. This is produced by the Spirit of God: this, and only this, makes men humble, giving withal confidence in God and in His word, by taking away objects which darken, misdirect, or overpower his own mind.

Take the advice of a friend; read the scriptures carefully but believingly, and you will understand what is infinitely better than anything found in the various schemes of man. It is just the same as regards the interpretation of prophecy as in doctrine. No man should convince a Christian that one part of the word of God is sealed up and the other open. Once on a time it was so. When Daniel of old received those very communications to which the Lord directs the reader, he was told to seal up the book; when John was called to have the same communications and yet greater ones, he was told not to seal up the book. Perhaps you have seen the difference, and the reason of it. The principle lay here: Jewish saints could not enter into the true and full meaning of the future till Christ came, at least until the end comes. For then indeed, when the last days of this age are come, the godly remnant will understand. The wicked shall not understand. You cannot separate moral condition from real intelligence of God's word. But the Christian already has, not Christ only, but the Spirit in virtue of redemption; and hence he is called and qualified to search all things, yea the deep things of God. They are now revealed fully and finally.

When the grace of God gives faith and the desire to do the will of God, then souls become able to understand both doctrine and prophecy. They learn that all the revealed mind of God centers in Christ, not in the first man. When you are not bent on finding in prophecy, England or America, the cholera, the potato disease, or your own time; when you are delivered by grace from all such prepossession, then with Him as the object of the soul you have a fit moral condition; because such absorbing ideas of men no longer govern and blind you. Hence the only way to understand any part of the Bible is just by grace to give up our own will and desires, for Christ; then we can face anything. We are no longer afraid of what God has to reveal; nor do we try to read anything of our own into the Bible, being then content to gather God's meaning from it. May this be truly the temper and endeavor of our souls now.

Has it not been clearly shown that thus far the Lord Jesus speaks of disciples connected with the temple, and Judea, and Jerusalem, but not of Christians? Take these further proofs of it. He says, “And pray that your flight be not in the winter nor on a sabbath day.” The Lord's day is our day, the first day of the week. The Jew rightly and properly keeps Jehovah's sabbaths. As to this, there are languages in Europe more correct than what we hear more commonly spoken around us. The Pope's tongue, the Italian, keeps up the right distinction; it always speaks of Saturday as the sabbath day, and Sunday as the Lord's day. How curious that it should be so, where such gross darkness reigns on almost everything else!

In our own land and for a long time has been a great deal of confusion as to the sabbath and the Lord's day. Let none be offended at the remark; for its truth is certain and of importance. The Lord's day differs from the sabbath, not by a lower but by a higher degree of sanctity, not by leaving Christians free to do their own will on that day, but by calling them to do the Lord's will always in a complete separation to His glory, the holy services of divine praise in works of faith and in labors of love. In short, the Lord's day differs essentially from the sabbath day in that it is the day of grace, not of law, and the day of new creation, not of the old. The consequence of seeing this will be very important differences indeed in heart and practice.

Suppose a Christian had the strength to walk 20 miles on the Lord's day, and to preach the gospel six or seven times, would he be guilty of transgressing God's will? It is to be hoped that not a single person perhaps in this place would venture to think so; yet if really under the sabbath law, what can absolve from the obligations of that day? All under the law are bound within defined limits. Are Jews free to use the sabbath in indefinite labor even for what you know to be the active purposes of goodness? We must obey in our relationship.

Granted that the Son of man is Lord of the sabbath; but are the Jewish disciples also lords of the sabbath? You cannot do freely what you count ever so good: Jews are under stringent regulations as to that day. If the sabbath were your day, you are required to keep it as such. As you, a Christian, have to do with the Lord's day, seek to understand its meaning, and be true to it. Without question the Lord's day is a day of consecration to the worship and to the work of the Lord. It is not the last day of a laborious week, a day of rest that you share with your ox or your ass. It is a day that is devoted to the Lord Jesus, especially to communion with His own in the world. Nor is there sin in the most strenuous labor for souls then; on the contrary such labor in the Lord is good and blessed wherever it is found, if He guide in it, (and we need this).

But the Jewish disciples contemplated here are told to pray that the time for their precipitate flight should not be in the winter nor on a sabbath-day; for the one would seriously impede from its inclemency, and on the other they could not go farther than a sabbath-day's journey. But how could this affect us as Christians? Even if once Jews, we are no longer under such restrictions. The Lord is speaking not of Christians but of future Jewish disciples, subject to the law and its ritual, and animated by Jewish hopes.

Further, it is said, “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not even from the beginning of the world until now, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days had been shortened, no flesh would be saved.” All this is plain enough. It is not a question of heavenly things but of His Kingdom. They sought to live here and be the subjects of the blessed reign and glory when the Lord comes. It is glory on earth, not in heaven. “But for the elect's sake those days should be shortened.”

“Then, if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is the Christ, or there, believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, so as if possible to mislead even the elect. Behold, I have told you beforehand. Therefore, if they say to you, Behold, [he is] in the desert, go not forth: Behold, [he is] in the inner chambers, believe [it] not.” It is clear and certain that the elect here are Jewish. Improbable for a Christian to be deceived by such rumors for an instant. But it is the fact that the Lord Jesus supposes considerable danger for such disciples as are here. In fact, being Jewish (not Christian), they might be deceived by the cry that He was here or there on earth; whereas no Christian could be in danger, who awaits the Son of God from heaven. Yet the Jewish disciples were exposed to it. For looking as they were for the Lord's coming to the earth, they knew that the Lord's feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives. They might thus be taken in by deceits. Not so the Christian. He knows that he is to be with the Lord in the heavens, being for this taken up out of this world into the air to meet the Lord on high. But the deceits in question are addressed to such only as expect to meet the Lord on the earth. The whole of the scene thus far consists of the Lord's instructions to disciples connected with Jerusalem and Judwa, and has nothing at all to do with the Christians looking to join the Lord above.

Here again is the reason why even Jewish disciples should not listen. “For as the lightning cometh forth from the east and is seen even unto the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.” Commentators have applied all this to the Roman conquest. But the army of Titus did not come out of the east, as the lightning is said to do here, nor did it shine unto the west: the very reverse would be a more apt figure, had the Romans been meant. So distinctly has the Lord Jesus guarded against the misinterpretations of men. The Son of man's coming will be quite different and surprise men like the lightning. It will be no question of going hither and thither to seek Him.

The Lord then has given these firm standing points, these landmarks as it were, in the prophecy, which hinder us from being carried away by every wind of theory. We may see clearly what the Spirit has set before us. Nor has there been knowingly passed over anything material, or any violence done to a word. No wish is there to give aught but a clear, distinct, and positive impression of the mind of the Lord as conveyed in His own words. The disciples furnish occasion for others in the main like themselves in Judea at the close of the age.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: 2 John

Chap. V. Divine Design. 50. the Second and Third Epistles of John

These two lesser Epistles of the beloved disciple could yield no such large or minute testimony to Christ as the first and longer one; but they are no less admirably suited to fulfill the work given him to do on our behalf, who face the dangers and difficulties of the last time. Each has from God its own special object. The Second Epistle is mainly to warn and direct where the doctrine of Christ was not brought; as the Third is to cheer and confirm those who zealously helped the true witnesses of Christ, and none the less but the more if self-seeking men sought to exclude and malign them. As in the First Epistle, the truth, even Christ, is insisted on as of all moment.

But the evident peculiarity of the Second is that the Holy Spirit addresses this inspired letter to “an elect lady and her children.” This is so novel as to indicate an extraordinary crisis which called for it. And the crisis is that “even now are many antichrists.” The lady and her children were exposed to danger in this respect: which is so great in itself, and aggravated by the absence of a Christian head of the family, that it pleased the Lord to send them a solemn caution, and indeed a peremptory command. Nor do we hear of any assembly near at hand. We can easily understand that the antichristian may have been a friend, perhaps in former days used to preach and teach Christ, nay possibly to their conversion. In any case it seemed no small self-denial to close their door. Was she not a woman, and as such forbidden to teach, or to exercise authority over a man? Hers was but a private household. Why should she and her children be required to discharge so stern a duty? The apostle meets such excuses.

“The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth; and not I only, but also all who have known the truth, for the truth's sake which abideth in us and shall be with us forever. Grace shall be with us (or, you), mercy, peace from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love. I rejoiced exceedingly that I have found of thy children walking in truth, according as we received commandment from the Father. And now I beseech thee, lady, not as writing to thee a new commandment but that which we had from the beginning, that we should love one another. And this is love that we should walk according to his commandments. This is the commandment, according as ye heard from the beginning that ye should walk in it. Because many deceivers went out into the world, those that confess not Jesus Christ coming in flesh: this is the deceiver and the antichrist. Look to yourselves, that we lose not what we wrought but receive a full recompence. Whosoever goeth forward and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God: he that abideth in the doctrine, he hath both the Father and the Son. If any one come unto you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not at home, and give him no greeting; for he that biddeth him greeting partaketh in his wicked works. Having many things to write to you, I would not with paper and ink, but hope to come unto you, and to speak mouth to mouth that our joy may be filled full. The children of thine elect sister salute thee” (vers. 1-13).

All heterodoxy is evil; but not to bring the doctrine of the Christ, perfect man and true God in one Person, is fatal and admits of no compromise.

Neither a mother nor her children can plead innocence if they yield. It is high treason to admit friendly terms, if we own Christian ground. The lady might be ever so orthodox: but to welcome to the house one who, claiming to be a Christian teacher, denied Christ's deity or humanity (i.e. their union in one Person), is to give up the foundation implicitly; and he or she who receives out of courtesy, liberal feeling, or any other human motive, becomes partaker of “his wicked works,” even if the evil doctrine be declined. The truth of Christ admits of no neutrality. Truth, love, and obedience must be in those who, believing in Christ, have life eternal and the Holy Spirit. We go right as Christians only as the eye, the heart, is true to Christ. Not “transgressing” but going forward, instead of abiding in the doctrine, loses all. “Transgressing” is spurious: it was development rather, which cannot consist with the truth.

The Third Epistle deals with the good side in the evil day. We are entitled to have and enjoy it in the worst of times. As the lady and her children were appropriately warned not to yield through fear of being counted narrow, bigoted, and uncharitable, with no less fitness the apostle writes to the gracious Gains that he might persevere in his loving care for all faithful servants of Christ, whatever be the party or personal opposition of any. John here too insists that it be love in truth and walking in it. One must have the truth clear before we can speak of love or exercise it: else we may be helping Satan against Christ under the name of charity. Even here truth has the first place; how indeed could it be otherwise?

“The elder to the beloved Gaius whom I love in truth. Beloved, I desire that in all things thou mayest prosper and be in health according as thy soul prospereth. For I rejoiced exceedingly when brethren came and testified to thy truth according as thou walkest in truth. Greater joy I have not than these things, that I hear of my children walking in (or, in the) truth. Beloved, thou doest faithfully whatsoever thou doest toward the brethren, and this strangers, who testified to thy love before the assembly; in sending forward whom worthily of God, thou wilt do well; for they went out for the Name, taking nothing from the Gentiles. We therefore ought to receive such, that we may be fellow-workers with the truth. I wrote to the assembly; but Diotrephes that loveth the first place among them accepteth us not. For this reason when I come, I will bring to remembrance his works which he doeth, prating against us with wicked words; and not content with these, neither himself accepteth the brethren, and those that would he forbiddeth and casteth out of the assembly. Beloved, imitate not what is evil but what is good. He that doeth good is of God: he that doeth evil hath not seen God. Demetrius hath been testified to by all and by the truth itself; and we also testify; and thou knowest that our testimony is true. I had many things to write to thee, but I am unwilling with ink and pen to be writing to thee; but I hope soon to see thee, and we will speak mouth to mouth. Peace to thee: the friends salute thee. Salute the friends by name” (vers. 1-14).

The hearty love of the apostle goes forth to Gains, because his love was governed by truth. The right rendering corrects making his prosperity to be the prime desire, but that about all things it might be, and even his health too, as his soul was prospering. For how often when the soul gets lax, God uses trial and sickness for good. His exceeding joy was brethren's testimony to Gaius' cleaving to the truth and walking in it; as be had no greater joy than to hear of this in his children. Nor does he fail to name Gaius' fidelity toward those laboring in the word, though strangers, not only in hospitality on the spot, but in setting them forward “worthily of God.” And these laborers were worthy, for the Name was their motive; and they declined the world's favors: even the apostle was glad to range himself as a fellow-worker with them and the truth.

But his writing to the assembly provoked the pride of Diotrephes who disliked these earnest witnesses for Christ, so as not to accept his words, and to go the length of babbling wickedly against the apostle. How soon the ruin came, and how audacious! Nor was it in word only, but in hostility to the stranger brethren and to those who honored them for their work's sake. We discern here the spirit of the evil house-servant who beat his fellow-servants, and may be assured that Diotrephes was not (like John, Gaius, and these visitors) longing and looking for Christ; to him it would be an enthusiasm if not a delusion. For the Lord traced such misconduct to this cause, to the heart saying, My Lord delayeth to come. But his evil way should not be forgotten when the apostle came: for the church is holy ground. Gaius was to imitate not the evil but the good; so to do is of God.

Then he speaks of Demetrius as one testified by the truth itself and his own testimony, which he knew would have the greatest weight with Gaius. It was a green spot in the midst of ruin. If we have seen much of Diotrephes that cannot be overlooked to our sorrow and shame, let us make so much the more of a Demetrius and a Gaius. All turns on the truth. Diotrephes no doubt assumed to respect order, but had no heart for the truth: else he had valued the working of the joints and bands in furthering and spreading it. His notion of order proved itself unsound, because of his indifference to the truth; for not content with opposing the visiting brethren, he ventured to despise the apostle's word on their behalf and ill-treated such as walked in truth and love. But be the declension ever so real and painful, the truth abides to walk in, and the love that is of God is its sure accompaniment. Such is the consolation in this the last Epistle of our apostle.

Christ's Witness Not Alone, but if Alone, Divine

The hasty reader might think there was a contradiction between these two statements, and the pious reader might be perplexed; for they seem at the first blush to contradict one another. In John 5 the Lord disclaims bearing witness of Himself; in John 8 He insists on His divine right to do so. Indeed the language, in both passages, is the strongest possible. “If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true,” says our Lord in John 5 “Though I bear witness of myself, yet is my witness true “: thus run the words in chap. viii. “Record” in the A. V. of the latter passage is really the same Greek word in the original, changed from “witness,” possibly to suit the whim of a pedant. For, as is generally known, King James desired the translators to vary their English rendering of Greek words.

Now one can imagine cavilers objecting: at least if the two statements were found in two different Gospels, they might say that such contradiction was natural, and to be expected from conflicting minds. But not so. Both statements are found in the fourth Gospel. Needless to say, they are both profoundly true. Clearly also forgers would not require excessive caution to avoid such an apparent discrepancy; for they naturally fear an exposure of their subterfuge. And the truth!—what has it to fear? Nay, ours should be the care to heed that word which is indeed as much God's as if orally heard from heaven.

Writing on “No one knoweth the Son but the Father,” I was proceeding to say that this statement was made by the Lord concerning Himself, and that His witness was true, though He bore witness of Himself. But, on turning to John 5:31 for verification, my eye met the seeming opposite of what one wanted to enforce. “If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.” Had memory played me false? Was my doctrine unsound? A pause and a re-perusal of John 8 convinced me that it might be profitable to call attention to these two sayings of our Lord. Other pens may unfold at greater length the deep and far-reaching meaning of both the lessons to be learned from these two, not conflicting or antagonistic, but, if I may so call them, complementary truths.

What then is the solution of the seeming discrepancy? It seems this—in John 5 He speaks not only as Son but as become flesh, and doeth nothing of Himself but what He seeth the Father doing. Our Lord's argument is that if He was the only one to bear witness of Himself, His witness would not be true. He thus graciously though searchingly meets the contention of the Jews that if a man bare witness of himself, his witness could not be true. Two witnesses there must be, three were better, more than adequate, according to Jewish law. So Christ says, “If I (alone) bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.” It could not be that His should be the solitary testimony concerning Himself. He had first John the Baptist bearing Him witness; next, the testimony of the works given Him to do; and thirdly that of the Father's voice. It was superabundant. If only on their one technical ground the Jews were bound to heed it.

Nay, there were the scriptures likewise. Such is the force of the passage in John 5 He is the perfect and dependent Man, Who referred His adversaries to the fourfold witness of John His herald, His own works, the Father's witness, and the scriptures. Yet is He “Light of the world,” “the Truth", “the Son,” the “I Am” (John 8). So, far from there being discrepancy in the statements of one and the same Evangelist, there is the most absolute agreement between him who wrote mainly for the Jews (S. Matthew), and the “disciple whom Jesus loved.” He who said “I am the Light of the world” could also say, “No man knoweth the Son but the Father.” Such a One only could be so great a light. A mere man would becomingly shrink from bearing testimony concerning himself. He, Who when Thomas addressed Him as “My Lord and my God,” accepted the homage, might indeed say, “Though I bear record of myself, yet is My record true.” Even here he adds “I am not alone, but I and the Father who sent me. And in your law it is written that the testimony of two men is true. I am one that beareth witness concerning myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness concerning me.” If two men were to be believed, how much more the witness of the Son and of the Father?

So it is with all scripture. What seems at first a difficulty, a discrepancy, to our imperfect vision, is ever found to be fraught with some blessed meaning that had hitherto escaped us. The Holy Spirit alone can illuminate; but He does teach those who are subject to the written word, surely not apart from it.

R. B.

2 Timothy 4:1

Q.-2 Tim. 4:1. What is the true text and the right version of this solemn scripture? The explanation even of the wisest seems unsatisfactory in consequence. ENQUIRER.

A.-Almost all agree that the οὖν ἐγὼ, (“I therefore”) of the Text. Rec. is uncalled for accretion, and “the Lord” too before “Jesus Christ” or rather Christ Jesus. The present κρίνειν expresses the long continuity of the judgment, instead of the brief act on the great white throne to which κρίναι would tend to confine the process. But the great defect is not only the allowance of Kara “at” (E K L P, 37, 47, and the Syrr.), but the failure to take the accusatives with καὶ repeated as the direct and simple object of the verb. The older Latin copies have no “per,” but say loosely “adventum” for ἐπίφάνειαν. “I testify earnestly, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus that is about to judge living and dead, both his appearing and his kingdom.” It is a fresh charge in which the apostle urges this twofold, however closely connected, object as the special ground of responsibility for Christian walk and service. Then will shine forth not only the Lord but those that are His, each in the position awarded by the righteous Judge according to the things done in (or, through) the body (2 Cor. 5:10). It is not simply His coming, His παρουσία, to receive us to Himself for the Father's house, which is sovereign grace, but when He appraises the fruit of each one's reward according to his own labor (1 Cor. 3:8). This the apostle earnestly testified, that Timothy too might believe and act on it in preaching urgently, with every duty of ministry, looking for the glorious result, as one who also loved Christ's appearing when righteousness shall reign and therefore His Kingdom. But the grace which gives us Christ now in all its fullness and will receive us to Himself (not heaven only but the deepest joy and bliss with Him) for the Father's house is far more, and the means too of bracing and strengthening us to fulfill our part in responsibility. Such grace gives us to enter into His will and interests both intelligently and with devoted affection; so that, instead of shirking present duty and suffering for Him and the truth, we love His appearing and His reign when Satan will be powerless, evil put down everywhere both at once and infallibly, and the Lord exalted over all the earth as well as in the heavens. Then indeed will “Thy (the Father's) Kingdom” have come; and His will be done too, not only on high, but on the earth even as in heaven. Everybody is familiar with the words: how few seem to enter into their blessed force Yet men boast of theology, colleges, school-boards, Sunday schools, societies and sermons without end. Is not the reality humbling? The words are plain.

TITUS & PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth, 2/-THE REVELATION

Priesthood its privileges and duties... 1/6

Short Introduction to Paul's Epistles, 1/- & 1/6

F.E.R. Heterodox on Life Eternal, other Divine Truths, and above all Christ's Person, paper, 10d., limp cloth, 1/-. -

One Body and One Spirit, revised ... 2d.

THE LORD'S PRAYER, a New Edition, 3d.

THE FEASTS OF JEHOVAH, a New Edition, 6d.

EZEKIEL'S LAST PARABLE, by Mrs. Bevan, cloth, 2/6.

Published

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Montho.

Jacob: 11. Wrestling With God

The vision of two bands of angels did not deliver Jacob from fear for himself and his two bands. He was not at ease with God, though a believer. All that hindered communion was not yet judged; and hence his abject dread of Esau, of whose change of feeling toward himself he had no idea. Making his own plan of defense, he then prayed for Jehovah's blessing for deliverance from Esau. Further details are given in vers. 13-21; and the rest follows, where God takes in hand Jacob.

“And he lodged there that night; and took of what came to his hands a gift for Esau his brother; two hundred she-goats, and twenty he-goats; two hundred ewes, and twenty rams; thirty milch camels with their colts: forty kine, and ten bulls; twenty she-asses, and ten young asses. And he delivered [them] into the hand of his servants, every drove by itself: and he said to his servants, Go on before me, and put a space between drove and drove. And he commanded the foremost, saying, When Esau my brother meets thee, and asks thee, saying, Whose art thou? and whither goest thou? and whose are these before thee? then shalt thou say, Thy servant Jacob's, it is a gift sent to my lord Esau; and, behold, he also is behind us.

And so commanded he the second, and the third, and all that followed the droves, saying, According to this word shall ye speak to Esau when ye find him. And ye shall say moreover, Behold, thy servant Jacob is behind us. For he said, I will propitiate him with the gift that goeth before me, and afterward I will see his face: perhaps he will accept me. And the gift went over before him; and he himself lodged that night in the camp (or, band).”

Next we come to God's dealing with him that he might be blessed more abundantly.

“And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two maidservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford of Jabbok; and he took them and led them over the stream, and sent over what he had. And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the rising of the dawn. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh: and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was strained as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the dawn ariseth. And he said, I will not let thee go except thou bless me. And he said to him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Not Jacob shall be called henceforth thy name, but Israel; for thou hast wrestled with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked and said, Tell, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore askest thou after my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. And the sun rose upon him as he passed over Penuel, and he halted upon his thigh. Therefore the children of Israel eat not the sinew that shrank, which [is] upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day: because he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh in the sinew of the hip (or, that shrank)” (vers. 22-32).

Jacob must be alone with God. He was not yet at Bethel, but had a needed meeting meanwhile in the dark. Not so much as men say, Jacob wrestling with God, true as this may be in its measure, but yet more God wrestling with Jacob. “There wrestled a man with him until the rise of the dawn.” It was grace that gave him perseverance and to prevail, but in a way contrary to man's thoughts; not in any degree Jacob's goodness, wisdom, and power, but God's faithful mercy. Hence He touched the hollow or socket of Jacob's thigh, so that it became out of joint. This would render powerless the strongest; but it was not so here. His grace enabled Jacob to hold on. He deigns then to say to Jacob, Let me go, for the dawn ariseth: as Jacob answers, I will not let thee go except thou bless me. Thereon Jacob gets his new name, no more the supplanter but a prince of God—Israel, “for thou hast wrestled with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” So wrought divine mercy while withering natural strength; but there is no revelation of His name as to Abraham; and instead of drawing out his intercession for others, God wrestles with himself. Prevail he must in order to be blessed; but there is no communion. The name is undivulged as later to Manoah, before the man of overcoming strength was born, who wrought heroic wonders, yet with surprisingly little moral power. And so it is here with Jacob in his way, who called the name of the place Peniel; “for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” Think of the totally different issue when Jehovah appeared to Abraham both in Gen. 17 and Gen. 18 Then “He went away as soon as He had left communing with Abraham.” The wife of Manoah understood God better than her husband.

Thenceforth Jacob halted upon his thigh. God would have him permanently learn the lesson of His strength displayed in human weakness. So the sun rose on his halting as he passed Penuel; and therefore the children of Israel eat not the sinew that shrank which is upon the hollow of the thigh, to this day. Would to God that they read its meaning in the light, instead of going about to establish their own righteousness and refusing to submit to His righteousness! Nor is it Jews only that need to learn this great truth; for it is ever fading more and more away from Christendom, where flesh is increasingly gloried in, and superstition and rationalism contend for the mastery against God and His Christ.

Israel Holy to Jehovah: 4. Abhorrent Mixtures of Relation

The divine prohibition in this portion of our chapter refers to near relations and rests simply on the divine will and authority: “I am Jehovah.” Marriage was not, save at the beginning, to unite “one's own flesh,” naturally united or near already.

“6 None of you shall approach to all (or, any) flesh of his flesh to uncover nakedness: I [am] Jehovah. 7 The nakedness of thy father, and the nakedness of thy mother, shalt thou not uncover (she [is] thy mother); thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. 8 The nakedness of thy father's wife shalt thou not uncover: it [is] thy father's nakedness. 9 The nakedness of thy sister, daughter of thy father, or daughter of thy mother, born at home or born abroad, their nakedness thou shalt not uncover. 10 The nakedness of thy son's daughter or of thy daughter's daughter, their nakedness thou shalt not uncover; for theirs [is] thy nakedness. 11 The nakedness of thy father's wife's daughter, begotten of thy father (she [is] thy sister), thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. 12 The nakedness of thy father's sister shalt thou not uncover; she [is] thy father's own flesh. 13 The nakedness of thy mother's sister shalt thou not uncover; for she [is] thy mother's own flesh. 14 The nakedness of thy father's brother shalt thou not uncover; thou shalt not approach his wife: she [is] thine aunt. 15 The nakedness of thy daughter-in-law shalt thou not uncover (she [is] thy son's wife); thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. 16 The nakedness of thy brother's wife shalt thou not uncover; it [is] thy brother's nakedness. 17 The nakedness of a woman and her daughter shalt thou not uncover; thou shalt not take her son's daughter, nor her daughter's daughter, to uncover her nakedness (they [are] her own flesh): it [is] wickedness. 18 And thou shalt not take a wife to her sister, to vex [her] (or, be a rival), to uncover her nakedness, beside her during her life” (vers. 6-18).

The opening is singularly emphatic, “Man, man, &c.” This the Septuagint follows closely. Man's attention is called for. Marriage is only honorable where God's will is observed. Heb. 13:4 in no way sanctions or sanctifies a forbidden union. The true rendering is, Let marriage be honorable (not “among all” as the Revisers say, but) “in all things,” and the bed be undefiled. The construction is alike before and after. It is an injunction, not an affirmation as in the A.V. with Wiclif, Cranmer, and the Geneva translators. The Rhemish is an ungrammatical evasion, meant to correspond with the Vulgate, which would seem to take the Greek like the Peschito, Wiclif, &c. Tyndale alone was right. Against unions or licenses, such as are here indicated, Jehovah sets His face. His name from beginning to end of the chapter is the solemn warrant against them all. If an Israelite allowed passion to carry him away, it was rebellion against Jehovah and at his own peril.

But in these near relationships marriage was unnatural and dishonorable in the measure of the nearness. And that intercourse which was proper to the married tie, forbidden in every case outside it, was here sinful and shameful in the highest degree, whether in the superior place of father or mother, and the nearest on either side, or in the equal one of sister howsoever born, or in the inferior one of daughter-in-law. And who would be bold enough to deny that the corresponding ones, not here specified, are not really implied? It is the man who is here prohibited: surely the woman is so no less. Further, the prohibition goes beyond blood-relations and extends in like degree to those by marriage connection. Of great moment it was to cultivate the warmest affection between all that stood together in near kin or connection. But still more was it essential that their mutual love should be ordered in all purity.

There was a marked exception requisite to keep up tribal inheritance in Israel, which though existing elsewhere applied to no other people as to them, still less to a Christian; a Levirate or brother-in-law marriage. It was when a man died childless, and his brother or next of kin was called to raise up seed to the deceased, the aim being to bind up the family line and the inheritance; so much this, that if the nearer kinsman refused, the widow was entitled publicly to loose his shoe and spit in his face.

Verse 17 shows that the prohibition goes beyond this to the incongruous and unnatural intercourse with a woman and her daughter, or her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter, though all strangers to him. And verse 18 forbids an Israelite to have two sisters together, for the reason assigned. Christianity goes to the root of the matter by recalling, as our Lord did, to what was at the beginning when God made one man and one woman.

Proverbs 17:1-7

The blessing of quietness at home, the value of wisdom there and elsewhere, the hearts tried by Jehovah, the evil-doer's heeding wicked lips, and falsehood listening to mischief, the reproach done to the Maker by mocking the poor, the mutual honor of parents and children in their due place, and the congruity of speech with those who speak, are here severally dealt with.

“Better [is] a piece of dry bread and quietness therewith than a house full of the sacrifices of strife.

A servant that dealeth wisely shall have rule over a son that causeth shame, and shall have part in the inheritance among the brethren.

The crucible [is] for silver and the furnace for gold; but Jehovah trieth the hearts.

An evil-doer heedeth iniquitous lips; falsehood listeneth to a mischievous tongue.

Whoso mocketh a poor [man] reproacheth his Maker; he that is glad at calamity shall not be held innocent.

Children's children [are] the crown of old men; and the glory of children [are] their fathers.

Excellent speech becometh not a fool: much less do lying lips a prince!” (vers. 1-7).

The opening word contrasts the immense superiority of a peaceful household with hard fare, over one where plenty is found, embittered by contention, or, as is here energetically said, “full of the sacrifices of strife.” Love and peace may abound through Christ where is little else; only unhappiness abides where He is unknown, were all there that wealth can supply.

Then again, who has not known one from the lowliest place promoted for his wisdom over a son that bringeth shame, and even to share the inheritance of the family? A son crushes the family with his disgrace; a wise servant, especially in such circumstances, acquires love, respect, and honor with his full share.

But there is a moral government ever carried on by Him who is alone capable of trying the hearts, with a goodness and wisdom and patience, not wanted for refining silver and gold, which man can do. For the Christian it is as Father; for the Jew it was and will be Jehovah, the one true God.

There is also no small trial from those who wish and do evil; and we are here shown how close is the connection between malice and falsehood. If an evil-doer heeds false and unjust lips, falsehood listens to a mischievous tongue. Such is mankind without God, each in his own way, but all astray and malicious.

Nor is Jehovah indifferent to the pride that mocks the poor out of an overweening value for the passing advantages of this life. It is to reproach, if not blaspheme, his Maker. There is another ill-feeling hateful to God, gladness at calamities not our own. He that indulges in such heartlessness shall not remain unpunished.

Quite different from these is what follows: where family relations are maintained as Jehovah intended. “Childrens's children are the crown of old men, and the glory of children are their fathers.” How blessed when the aged feel their descendants an honor, and they no less delight in their parents!

The last of these verses glances at a twofold moral incongruity: when a fool (in the serious light of that word according to scripture) utters “excellent speech” out of all harmony with his character and life; and when a prince or noble, instead of being a pattern of probity in his exalted position, gives himself up to shameless deception. Yet such stumbling-blocks occur in this evil day. What a contrast with Christ who is the truth, and came to do the will of God!

Gospel Words: Confidence in Our Father's Giving

Our Lord here encourages His disciples to count on the goodness of their Father for every want consistent with His will.

“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. For every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, who, if his son shall ask of him for a loaf, will give him a stone; and if he ask for a fish, will give him a serpent? If therefore ye, being wicked, know to give good gifts to your children, how much rather shall your Father that is in the heavens give good things to those that ask him? Therefore all things whatsoever ye desire that men should do to you, thus do ye also to them; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matt. 7:7-12).

It is not a shiner needing life and forgiveness of his sins, but saints directed to appeal to God and assured of their Father's answer of love, whatever their wants be. The Lord had already taught them to pray in chap. 6 as with alms and fasting, parts of saintly righteousness and due to His name and glory. Here He enforces it as the way in which all they need from above is to be given them. Hence perseverance and earnestness are incumbent. Asking will ensure receiving, yea to every one that asks; seeking will not be fruitless but shall find; and to the still more importunate the door will be opened, which is but shut to exercise faith. For there may be a matter of importance for the applicant to learn before the request can be granted, as with the Syrophenician woman, so earnest in supplicating the Lord to have pity on her, whose daughter was grievously possessed by a demon. Yet at first the Lord answered her not a word. She pleaded like a lost sheep of Israel's house; whereas she was a Greek, and had no right of promise with the Messiah; indeed she was a Canaanite, and thus under the curse. But when she drops His title as Son of David, and gathered from His answer to the disciples wherein her mistake lay, she did Him homage, saying, Lord, help me. On this He speaks out, It is not good to take the bread of the children, and cast it to the whelps. This did help her soul, for it led her to the secret of sovereign grace on which she at once threw herself, saying, Yea, Lord; for even the whelps eat of the crumbs which fall from the table of their masters. Then Jesus answering said to her, O woman, great is thy faith; be it done to thee as thou wilt. The door opened to her knock. She was deepened and cleared in her faith, as her daughter was healed from that hour.

The Lord also encourages His disciples through the affection which is implanted in a parent's heart. If their Father makes His sun rise on evil and good, and sends rain on just and unjust, how does He feel toward His sons? His love surely goes out to them in every request that is for their good, and withholds only what their foolishness asked that must do them harm. Hence He says, Or what man of you, whom his son shall ask for a loaf, will he give him a stone? and if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? Who would not repudiate such mockery of a son's hunger? Thence He draws the conclusive words for their hearts, If ye then, being wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father that is in the heavens give good things to those that ask Him?

The last verse goes into that which becomes the disciple with men, and lays down the simple but evidently sound principle, to do to others as we would have others do to us; and this too on no ground of human rights or natural benevolence, but of consistency with God's revealed will. “All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, thus also do ye to them; for this is the law and the prophets.”

Now let me ask you, dear reader, if you have not by faith the Son of God as your Savior, are you not conscious that these words are altogether beyond you? What is your state then now, and what must the end be? I call on you in the Lord's name that you perish not in your sins. The same Lord, who thus cheers His disciples and bids them ask freely, warns you that he who disbelieves (who is unsubject to) the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides upon him. Go to God as you are, a poor sinner, in the Savior's name, and own your ruin and His grace, that you may be saved, and know it to your exceeding and everlasting joy; and then serve Him as your Lord, awaiting Him from heaven, for He is coming.

The Lord's Prophecy on Olivet in Matthew 24-25: 2. The Jewish Disciples

THEN it is said, “Wheresoever the carcass is, there will be gathered together the eagles” (ver. 28).

Apply this to the church or to the Christian, and what can you make of it? Is the church “the carcass”? We have heard something still more dreadful. Men have not been wanting who say that the Lord is! Such are the results of attempting to interpret the prophecy on false ground. From early days Greek and Latin Fathers taught these strange and even profane ideas; and many down to modern time have followed in their wake. These crudities ought surely to be judged irreverent as well as grossly mistaken. Can any intelligent Christian deny it to be a rash and unworthy interpretation, no matter how (according to this scheme) they take “the carcass,” whether applying it to the church or to the Lord? The church united to Christ by the Holy Spirit is His body (σῶμα): it is a wondrous privilege and a blessed truth; but is the church a carcass (πτῶμα)? Surely not; it is His living body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all. Nor is the Lord regarded as a body dead or merely alive, but as the risen and glorified Head. The Lord a carcass! What were, or are, they dreaming about?

The whole effort is on false ground. There is no getting a consistent meaning out of the passage when interpreted of the church. The moment you refer it to the Jewish people, it becomes strikingly true. For the mass of the Jews will then be apostate; and the eagles or vultures who come together are figures of the divine judgments executed on the guilty people by the hostile nations of the earth. Whatever may be the instruments, they are judgments of God executed at this time. If the Christians were the carcass, they must be the object of the judgment, for there the eagles, figures of those that execute judgment, are gathered together. But this is not at all the relation of the Lord's coming to the Christian. Nor can any Christians be the eagles or instruments of divine vengeance, any more than the carcass, without abandoning all the truth and character of their calling. The changed saints undoubtedly will go up to meet the Lord; but is He then to be the carcass, and are the church the eagles? In such a scheme, there is only the choice of one evil less or greater than another; and it is generally so with an erroneous interpretation. Apply it to the object the Lord had in view, and harshness disappears. This is the test of scriptural truth: whenever men press a false interpretation, the general testimony of scripture is confused and dislocated or contradicted thereby.

Then the Lord adds, “But immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give its light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken” (ver. 29).

Here it is that the popular view advocated by Dean Alford and others places the Lord's beginning to speak of His return personally. This however is not only to destroy the force of “Immediately after the tribulation of those days” with which the verse opens, but it breaks the connection with the true transition to the last days in ver. 15, which introduces precise details of that epoch in their order; and it would seem, synchronizing with the preaching of the gospel of the Kingdom in all the habitable earth as a witness to all the nations in the general history, “and then shall the end come.” Thence forward it is, what happens in the temple, Judaea, and strictly Jewish concerns at the end of the age. This is shown clearly by the reference to Dan. 12:11. For the prophet there tells us that “from the time that the continual [holocaust] shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolation set up, [there shall be] a thousand, two hundred, and ninety days,” with a supplement in ver. 12 of “forty-five days” more to complete the incoming of the blessed time. Now count as men like from the siege of Titus, 1335 years for days bring in nothing of the sort.

The starting-point is wrong, and all modes of rectification are vain. It is really the last future crisis in and round Jerusalem, though it seems the gospel of the Kingdom goes on by godly Jews outside over the earth about the same time, the days in the prophet being literal days as here in ver. 22. What has misled most is confounding the very different language and truth in Matt. 24:15 etc. and Mark 13:14 etc. (who both give us what is entirely future) with that of Luke 21:20-24, which is entirely past, save the treading down of Jerusalem by Gentiles while Gentile times last, &c. Here it is unequivocally and exclusively the Roman sack and its consequences to this day; while Luke's future reference commences with ver. 25 and onward. It is an error to Mix up this Roman episode in the third Gospel with the pointedly different description in the first and second Gospels which omit this, and then converge on the future only. They speak of the abomination of desolation, and of the unequaled tribulation, on which Luke is silent. But Luke tells of the Romans investing Jerusalem, and their desolation, of which Matthew and Mark say not a word; as he does not about the tribulation without parallel, but only of days of vengeance, and great distress upon the land and wrath to this people. The other Evangelists are wholly silent on the extreme slaughter by the Roman arms, and their captivity into all the nations; with the notable prolonged fact that Jerusalem should be trodden down by Gentiles till their times are over, as they are not yet. All this is as carefully presented by Luke in exact consistency with the Spirit's design in his Gospel, as the other two omit it, and are devoted to the unprecedented horrors of the future which Luke omits.

But all three take up the closing scene, Luke not saying “Immediately after the tribulation etc.,” as in fact he had not alluded to it in the least, but joining the other two about signs in sun, moon, and stars though as usual noticing moral state beyond the others. Next all speak of the Son of man coming, as he puts it in a cloud with power and great glory; and he alone adds, “But when these things begin to come to pass, look up and lift up your heads; because your redemption draweth nigh.” Can any Christian be so prejudiced as not to see that not the heavenly saints are here in view? For we already have in Him redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our offenses; whereas those here represented have yet to enjoy it in His Kingdom.

Luke's presentation is of the more value as settling the true force of “this generation shall in no wise pass till all things have taken place” among them, the end of Gentile supremacy over Israel and Jerusalem. The desire to limit “this generation,” as here employed, to the destruction of their city by the Romans is thus certainly precluded. Further, at the consummation of the age the revived Roman Empire will not be against the apostate Jews, but rather on the side of the Antichrist or willful king of Palestine, when the King of the North at the time of the end shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots and with horsemen and with many ships. But each shall perish successively and horribly under the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. The future (and these verses beyond just question strikingly speak of the future,) still more conclusively proves, for any acquainted with the prophets, the impossibility of interpreting the eagles of the Roman armies in the past, or any still more childish fancy of their symbolizing the church or Christians in the future, or the result (yet more offensive involved) of the carcass as figuring the Lord of glory.

“And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall the tribes of the earth mourn (ver. 30).” The Son of Man appearing in heaven is, I presume, the sign of His coming to enforce His claim on earth. It is not here the believers with joy going up to meet the Lord, but the tribes of the earth or at least of the land mourning when the sign appears. “And they shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send forth his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other (ver. 31).” Here too light is given of all moment to decide that the coming of the Son of man is in view of the land, the Jews (or mankind in general), and not at all to receive the heavenly ones for association with Himself in the Father's house.

For beyond controversy He is seen coming on the clouds of heaven before He sends forth His angels to gather together His elect, here in question, from the four winds. Now it is a matter of positive revelation by the apostle Paul (Col. 3:4) that “When Christ, our (or your) life shall be manifested then (τὀτε, not εἶτα) shall ye also be manifested with Him in glory.” It is not the moment when we are changed and caught up to meet Him in the air, but are with Him manifested in glory. The heavenly saints are already with Him when He comes judicially as Son of man; for this is His given office as such (John 5:27), to execute judgment. They are with Him already, not then translated, called and chosen and faithful, and therefore not angels (who are not “called” or said to be “faithful”) but saints (Rev. 17:14).

Indeed we learn from Rev. 19:14 that the armies that are in the heaven followed Him upon white horses clothed in white pure byss, the righteousnesses of saints as interpreted just before; whereas angelic clothing had been said to be pure bright linen (Rev. 15:6). The elders, who represent the saints as chiefs of the royal priesthood, are seen on high from Rev. 4 to 19. Here they first appear in the quality of bride for the marriage of the Lamb above, and next, accompany Him as armies when He issues from heaven to judge and war in righteousness. Hence it is in the teeth of scripture that we can be on the earth and see Him appear as the glorious Son of Man in heaven coming to judge the quick. On the contrary we shall be then manifested together with Him when He is manifested in glory.

The Lord had already intimated it before Paul wrote 1 and 2 Thessalonians Cor. 15 and Col. 3. Only, though spoken, it was long after Paul had departed to be with Christ that John 14 was written and still longer than Rev. 4-19 These scriptures reveal that Christ will surely come to change and translate above the heavenly saints; as Enoch (Jude 14) and Zechariah (14:5) say they come with Him a truth repeated by the apostle in 1 Thess. 3:13; 4:14. Then in vers. 15-17 he proceeds in a new revelation to explain that this will be by His coming for them by His descent from heaven with a shout of command which gathers them in a moment to Himself. Clearly then “the elect,” subsequently gathered after the Lord appears, are not heavenly, but rather His restored people, the nucleus of godly Israel, in harmony with the context. Too many lay great stress upon gathering “His elect.” Be not too quick, my friends. The “elect” may not necessarily mean Christians. If one speak of elect now, it is so; but had God no heavenly “elect” before there were Christians? And after these are taken to heaven, will there be no elect on earth? Was the Lord to make a solitude and call it peace? Was God precluded from mercy on earth, because His sovereign grace had given us and the O. T. saints our respective places in heaven? There were elect Gentiles in patriarchal days and later too. Take Job for one, and his friends no doubt also the same; were they not elect men? Melchisedec, Jethro, and others; were not they elect? Need one enumerate the elect of Israel in the past? We find clearly elect Gentiles as well as Jews and Christians. When we read of Christianity, then the elect must be so explained; if we read about a Jewish state, then the phrase applies to a Jewish election; and so with the nations too. We must be governed by the context. As the Lord here is simply speaking about Israel, the sense should not be ambiguous. When we have “his elect” named, He means the elect of those described, that is, of Israel. This is not at all to bring in arbitrary rules. Is it not in fact a very plain and necessary principle of exposition?

The Lord in all the context is speaking about Israel and their hopes. Consequently “his elect” must be interpreted according to the object in view. These elect ones are to be gathered “from one end of heaven to the other,” yet not for heaven but on earth. (Compare Isa. 27, 65, Rom. 11:5, 7, 28.)

Then “learn the parable from the fig tree.” The fig tree is a well known symbol of Israel as a nation. This confirms what has been already said. In the Gospel of Luke, where the Lord takes a view of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews, He employs this very symbol, but enlarged remarkably. He says “the fig tree, and all the trees.” The latter are not spoken of in Matthew, because this part only looks at the Jew; but in Luke He refers to the Gentile as well as the Jew: hence He adds, “and all the trees.” (Compare Luke 21:20.)

“Now learn the parable from the fig tree. When its branch is now become tender, and putteth forth its leaves, ye know that the summer is nigh; even so ye also, when ye see all these things, know that it (or, he) is near, at the doors. Verily I say to you, this generation shall not pass away till all these things have come to pass” (vers. 32-34). Mark the phrase “all these things,” —from the first troubles down to the last, and the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. Clearly here “this generation” cannot mean, what some impute to it, a mere period of thirty years, or a man's life. The phrase means, what it frequently does in scripture, a line characterized by certain moral tokens entirely independent of length of time. Hence we find in the Psalms very particularly this use of “generation.” One text is enough to prove it in the most convincing manner. In Psa. 12:7 we read “Thou shalt keep them, O Jehovah, thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever.” “This generation” is supposed to go on, and it is an evil generation, a generation which has no faith, a stubborn and Christ-rejecting generation. “This generation,” or the non-believing race of the Jews, is not to pass away till all these things have taken place. Thus the same generation which crucified the Lord of glory is going on still, and will, till He comes again in the clouds of heaven.

Some of you, probably have read in a respectable Review, an article of no small notoriety which boasts that the Jews of the present day are really what they were in the days of our Savior—a noble-hearted generous race (though they made that mistake!) as compared with their rude forefathers in the days of Moses, &c. Alas for the judgment of man! What a confession that “this generation” has not passed away! They are still the same proud, self-righteous, Christ-rejecting race as they were then.

But the grace of God will make them anew, “a generation to come.” The Lord will judge the unbelievers at last, dealing with them righteously after His immense long-suffering, but delivering a godly remnant in His grace. The Messiah has great things in store for Israel. There will be this double action indeed, that the mass of them will fill up the cup of iniquity which their fathers began; and the remnant will become the holy seed, the Israel of the millennial day. Of the former He speaks when He says that “this generation shall not pass away till all these things have come to pass.” “The heaven and the earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. Of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of the heavens, but the Father only” (vers. 35, 36).

The next comparison (vers. 37-41) is not to the fig-tree or anything else taken from the physical world. A figure is taken from the dealings of God in the Old Testament. “But as the days of Noah, so shall be the coming of the Son of Man; for as in those days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and they knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so shall the coming of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field; one is taken and one is left. Two women [shall be] grinding at the mill, one is taken and one is left.” Had heavenly saints been in question, Enoch would be the appropriate type; but as the Lord meant saints, not caught up, but carried through the waters of judgment for the earth, He justly chose Noah as the pattern.

Again, instead of being an indiscriminate slaughter or captivity such as the Jews had executed upon them by the Romans, there is a direct contrast to this. Here is unfailing discrimination: one man taken and one left; one woman taken and another left. The Lord will deal with perfect discernment in each case: not so did the Romans, nor any army that ever took a city. Notoriously if not necessarily at such a time, there is scarce thought of, or leisure for, discrimination. The rule is wholesale bloodshed. and often slavery. It was especially so when Titus sacked the city. So alas! it may be to this day. But when the Lord Jesus comes in judgment of the quick, it will be quite otherwise. One, whether of men or of women, is taken for judgment, one left for blessing in the land.

The Lord winds up this part of His prophecy by saying, “Watch therefore, for ye know not on what day your Lord doth come. But know this, that if the house-master had known in what watch the thief was coming, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be digged through. Therefore, be ye also ready, for in an hour that ye think not the Son of man cometh” (vers. 42-44). There closes the portion of the prophecy which refers to the Jews. It began by referring to the Jewish remnant, because such the disciples as yet were really, though believers. Christ took them up just as they were; though we know they subsequently became Christians. They then passed into a new relationship. Faith in Him they had already; but instead of His reigning and blessing them on the earth another order of things was founded in connection with His ascension to heaven. Hence the same disciples merged into a new form of relationship with God, of which the Holy Spirit sent forth was the power. They were taught no longer to expect the Lord's restoration of the kingdom as their proper hope, but, contrariwise, that the Lord would come to receive them to Himself, and take them to the Father's home in heaven. This is the Christian's hope; this is what they await. The Lord calls them out from everything on earth to Himself. They had been expecting the Lord to establish them on the earth up to the day when the Lord Jesus went up to send down the Holy Ghost.

Christianity thus comes in, as if a drawbridge had been opened and let them into an entirely new thing. The disciples at the beginning were on one side of the bridge, the disciples at the end would be on the other side. The drawbridge opens, and the new thing, the church, passes through. It is the calling of Christians out of the world, of those called in one body, waiting till Christ comes to receive them to Himself and take them where He is. The Lord Jesus, having accomplished redemption, has Himself first taken His seat in heaven. Thus the disciples become heavenly (1 Cor. 15:48) and are being transformed spiritually (2 Cor. 3:18). Finally, at His coming, the Lord Jesus will take them completely out of their natural environment, conformed in body to His own glorious body. The state of things on earth since redemption, till He come to take us to be with Him on high, is truly well enough called Christianity.

It is not denied that the saints of old, before Christianity came in, will share in the resurrection, when they too will shine in the likeness of Christ. Only there is an enormous difference meanwhile. We are brought, since His cross, into salvation with new relationships in union with Himself; and the Holy Spirit gives a fresh and incomparably greater power to those who are now gathered to His name. It is possible that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were more faithful than many, perhaps than most of us. For ourselves we cannot take high ground; but we boast in God and of what Christ has given us. This really brings in grace and truth which makes our unfaithfulness more manifest; for the greater the Christian privileges, the more strictly is our unfaithfulness measured. But the hope does not make us ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.

Very striking is the fact that “the Son of man” is here dropt, only to be resumed in the third section where all the nations come into review. For it will be shown that the clause containing that title in the Christian portion (25:13) is spurious. So in Dan. 7 we see this title used when He comes to deal with the Gentile powers, the last in particular, to the deliverance of the Jewish people.

(Continued)

Giving Thanks to the Father

It is impossible to make too much of the Lord Jesus. He, Who as a babe received the homage of the wise men from the East (men, who, it has been finely said, though accustomed to instruct youthful princes, could only worship that little Prince), He, equally with the Father, is worthy of the fullest and most exalted honor. When Thomas addressed Him as “My Lord and my God,” our Savior accepted the homage. In the Epistles the Father and the Son are habitually coupled in a way that would be inconceivable if Jesus were not God. All this is beyond dispute. But because through grace we are free from the ruinous error of Arianism, Unitarianism, etc., we must not slip into another error, less common no doubt (for it is not a question of denying the Deity of a Person in the Godhead), but still very grievous; we must not practically exclude the Father from our adoration.

We “give thanks unto the Father.” Does this mean at the prayer or the open meeting only? Nay, it is a grave and deplorable omission when the Lord Jesus only is addressed at the breaking of the bread. It all springs of course from the one-sidedness that is inseparable from trusting the human mind; and believers are by no means exempt from this snare. Perhaps such are more liable to this infirmity for the simple reason that the truth, even partial truth, when received from God, claims and produces the devoted allegiance of the soul. And there is the deepest claim on our affections in the humiliation and sufferings of the Lord Jesus. He, and He only, suffered for our sins; He loved and gave Himself for me. What believer's heart could be dead or dull to such an appeal as this? But in fact both the Father and the Son are to be worshipped now; as in the Revelation we see them both the joint object of heaven's adoration; and the Holy Spirit using the word as the standard is the only safe guide as to where and when. Undoubtedly when we worship God as God, we include Father and Son—and Holy Spirit. There is room and place for all.

The writer is aware that some think that the worship of the Father is on a higher plane than thanksgiving to the Son in the breaking of bread. And beyond doubt it calls for more maturity in the truth, and more spiritual power in the worshipper. But in reality can anything be higher than the adoration of the blessed Lord, once the holy sufferer, now the risen Head and exalted Savior? Everything should lead up to that supreme act of thanksgiving at the holy Supper. Yet even there the Spirit of God might guide, not to separate the Persons of the Godhead, but to join them in praise, and so to direct address of the Father, though there is doubtless a peculiar fitness in addressing the Lord Jesus at His table. But who is entitled to dictate or exclude, since scripture shows us the contrary? Let us abide simple and subject to God's word.

There is indeed to be no bondage to human thought or will or fancy, but contrariwise holy liberty. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Only let us remember that it was the Father that sent the Son to be the Savior of the world, the Father that spared not His Son, but delivered Him up freely for us all, that the Father of lights begets believers by the word of truth and of His own will, and, last but not least, that He seeks worshippers and that the true worshippers worship the Father in Spirit and truth. This is the testimony of our Lord Himself.

It is the Father Who made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: who delivered us from the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. None more jealous than He for His Father's glory, unless it be the Father for the Son's. As scripture abundantly proves we should thus exalt both in our praises. Let us beware of any unauthorized regulations, and of setting one against the other in any way.

Enough has been said to enforce a most important truth that seems in danger of being disregarded. Let us heed it and worship both the Father and the Son; and let us recollect too the claims of God as God. “For God is a Spirit; and they that worship Him must worship in Spirit and truth.” Indeed all the names and titles of the Godhead have an inexhaustible fullness, not least surely the name of Father. “I have declared unto them thy Name” said our Lord—the name of Father. What infinite love is wrapped up in it Elevate the human conception of fatherhood to the highest degree, and we fail to touch the fringe of that divine relationship. “I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father.” It is παιδια too, not τεκνια, which latter term embraces all. And to know Him leads to the worship of Him, to giving Him thanks now and forever.

R. B.

The Cross of Christ

The more we study the cross, the more we shall see that every question of good and evil was brought to an issue, and the immutable basis laid for perfect blessing according to what God is in righteousness and grace and majesty too, yea for the new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness: we come by the blessed testimony that it meets all our wants; but in contemplating it at peace, we see man in absolute sin, hating and rejecting God in grace and goodness; we see Satan's full power, and all the world else in his power against Christ; we see Man in absolute goodness, loving the Father and obedient, glorifying God in the very place of sin, where it was needed, and at all cost; we see God as now here in perfect love to the sinner. Innocence was conditional blessing. This is completed in perfectness, and its value can never change. It is everlasting righteousness. Hence the blessing of the new heavens and new earth is immutable. There has been an innocent Eden. There is a sinful world. There shall be, besides the reign of righteousness, new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. J.N.D.

1 Peter 3:13-16

ZEAL for what is good is apt to disarm the honestly hostile; but in case it should not be so, how blessed to suffer for righteousness! Christ was perfect thus; in what was He not?

“And who shall injure you if ye become zealous of the good? But if even ye should suffer for righteousness, blessed [are ye]; and be not afraid of their fear, nor be troubled, but sanctify the Christ as Lord in your hearts, ready always for answer (or, defense) to every one that asketh you a reason for the hope that is in you, but with meekness and fear, having a good conscience, that in what they speak against you as evil-doers, they may be ashamed that revile your good behavior in Christ” (vers. 13-16).

Man that is born of woman is of few days, as Job says, and full of trouble; he is fallen and sinful with death before him soon, and, after this, judgment forever. Impossible to face his real state conscientiously without continual unhappiness and awful forebodings for all eternity. Nothing within or around one can afford him solid satisfaction, still less be acceptable to God who is good and does good. His goodness therefore leads to repentance, and effectually in Christ only; for herein was the love of God manifested in our case, that God hath sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. It is clear that, if we are spiritually dead as being all of us lost sinners, this is our first great want, to receive a new life that we might live to God; and this life, as it is seen in its perfection and fullness in Christ, so it is given by Him to every one that hears His word and believes Him that sent Him. The Son quickeneth whom He will; and thus the believer has life eternal, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life.

But God's love as known in the gospel goes very much farther even now; for the believer might have life, life eternal, and be burdened by the sense of his past sins and of his present weakness and unworthiness. In the gospel God removes this distress by purging his conscience, and fills with peace through faith in Christ's sacrifice. Therefore is it added in 1 John 4:10, Herein is love, not that we loved God (which we surely do as now living in Christ), but that He loved us, and sent His Son as propitiation for our sins. This alone is perfectly efficacious, and the Spirit seals us in virtue of it, so that we are brought into liberty and spiritual power by grace.

Henceforward, therefore, delivered from evil we become zealous of the good; and who shall injure us if it be so? The worst of mankind are struck when they see the proud rendered lowly, the violent meek, the quarrelsome peacemakers, the frivolous and pleasure-hunting grave, the corrupt pure, the covetous liberal, the careless or even blasphemous godly. But no doubt an evil eye under Satan's power may refuse all moral evidence and impute every such change for good to hypocrisy, and only hate the more those who leave their own wretched and wicked ranks to follow Christ. They do therefore seek to draw His confessors into evil ways old or new; and if they fail in ensnaring, they will not fail to detract and persecute; for all that desire to live piously in Christ Jesus are surely persecuted, or (as our text says) “suffer for righteousness' sake.” But “blessed are ye” says the word. It is God's mercy and their honor, as delivered by Christ out of the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father.

Accordingly the saints are exhorted not to” fear their fear, nor to be troubled.” Why should they, who now are redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, and called out of darkness into God's wonderful light? Calling Him Father (for such He truly is) Who without respect of persons judges according to each one's work, they would pass the time of their sojourning here in fear, because they are so favored and blessed, yet in a wilderness of trial and pitfalls and dangers. From “their fear” who hate and malign, once their own fear, they are set free by the Savior; and they owe it to His honor not to be troubled, seeing that at His cost they are blessed supremely by His God and Father who is ours also. Instead of such unbelieving fear and trouble naturally they can and do exult though now for a little while, if needed, put to grief by various trials, all of which His grace turns to account (Rom. 8:28) to those that love Him, to those that are called according to purpose.

What then is the resource and remedy? “But sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord.” Sanctimoniousness in manner or outward acts, far from availing, is a snare and a shame unworthy of a Christian, as far as possible from pleasing God, though it may deceive himself if unwary and others too. But to give Christ the holy place due to Him, and supremely as Lord, in our hearts, truly pleases Him Who would have us honor the Son even as we honor the Father. Without Him thus constantly set up and apart in our hearts, we are exposed to any and every idol whereby the enemy deceives the world; but with Christ thus the object of our inmost affections, how kept and blessed! So we see the fruit and accompaniment in the words that follow, “ready always for an answer to every one that asketh you a reason (or, account) for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” What account can creature give so satisfying, even to God, as the Lord Jesus and His redemption? In Him we have the righteousness found nowhere else, yea, we are become God's righteousness in Him; so that, as the same apostle says (Gal. 5:5), “we through the Spirit by faith await,” not righteousness as if we were not justified, but “the hope of righteousness,” that is, heavenly glory with Christ. But this very blessedness, so undeserved by any, calls us to meekness and fear in confessing it, lest a rough or presumptuous spirit might dishonor the God of all grace or ourselves the recipients of His rich mercy.

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Jude

Chap. V. Divine Design. 51. the Epistle of Jude

The characteristic form and aim of this Epistle will become clear to every attentive believer. No other resembles it so closely as the Second of Peter; so much so, that many learned men have contended that the one must be copied from the other, and that the copy at any rate must be spurious. But this reasoning only betrays their spiritual ignorance and presumption. Both Epistles are not only of profound interest but evidently inspired of God; and each with its own specific object in the mind of the inspiring Spirit. Hence the distinctions graven by divine wisdom cannot fail to be seen to the great profit of him who reads in the dependence of faith which gives intelligence.

In the Second Epistle of Peter we have seen that the dominant truth is God's righteous government, not as in the First Epistle dealing with the saints in their daily path and with the house of God too, but with the unjust and the guilty world even to the day of the Lord in which the now heavens and the earth, kept for fire unto a day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men, shall be burnt up. Jude was given to portray the same evil in the yet deeper and more solemn aspect of departure or apostasy from God, and so from the faith and holy will of God, rather than from righteousness. This gives occasion to the nicest points of difference which have escaped these carping critics, who instead of admiring the perfect word in its astonishing consistency with the requisite variety, blindly turn it against the Holy Spirit to their own sin and shame and folly.

“Jude, bondman of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to the called, beloved in God, [the] Father, and kept by (or, for) Jesus Christ: mercy to you and peace and love be multiplied” (1, 2). There can be little doubt that “beloved” represents the true and certainly more ancient text. It is also singularly in keeping with the tried and perilous circumstances of His called ones exposed to evil within which they are summoned to resist at all cost, and therefore need the comforting assurance of His love (compare 21), and of their preservation for Christ as an abiding state. There is also the remarkable “mercy” in the address to all, as to Timothy in his delicate and difficult path: all the true-hearted have it here in the most emphatic way looked for as a fact.,

“Beloved, while giving all diligence to be writing to you of our common salvation, I was constrained to write to you, exhorting [you] to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. For certain men got in privily that were of old prescribed unto this sentence (or, judgment), ungodly, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ” (3, 4).

It was the writer's joy to be writing of our common salvation, the blessed alphabet of the gospel; but the danger of the saints laid on him the necessary duty of exhorting them to contend earnestly for the faith. In days of apostasy the urgent call was to the converted, where shallower faith would be absorbed in the unconverted: the saints themselves were exposed to deadly peril. The faith itself once delivered to them, once for all, was not menaced only, but undermined within. For there had got in unnoticed certain men that of old were beforehand written of; and their ungodliness had the special trait of turning the grace of our God into licentiousness, and of denying the right of Jesus Christ as sovereign Master that bought all, and as our Lord that redeemed us that believe. Compare 2 Peter 2:1, who only speaks of the former; but Jude adds and specifies “our Lord” as well as their changing the grace of our God into dissoluteness:

“But I would remind you, though once for all knowing all things, that [the] Lord, having saved a people out of Egypt's land, in the second place destroyed those that believed not” (5). This is quite peculiar to the epistle before us, because it marks the doom of apostates. Peter does not allude to it, but speaks of “an old world” not spared, and Noah, preacher of righteousness, preserved with seven others, whilst a flood overwhelmed a world of ungodly ones. Can we conceive of more exact thought and language in the two letters? Both draw warning from angels, but we readily see that even here each writes with exquisite propriety which unbelief overlooks. “And angels that kept not their own beginning (or, original state), but abandoned their proper dwelling he hath kept in everlasting bonds under gloom unto [the] great day's judgment; as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, having in the like manner with them greedily committed fornication and gone after strange flesh, lie there an example, undergoing judgment of eternal fire” (6, 7). Jude points out departure from original position, whether of angels or of the cities in question. They went away from nature; and they suffered accordingly in a manner wholly uncommon. Peter, true to God's purpose there, writes of “angels having sinned,” and of cities made an example to those that should live an ungodly life, and of “righteous Lot” saved (the righteous man tormented his righteous soul from day to day), while the Lord knows how to deliver godly men out of trial and to keep unrighteous ones unto judgment day to be punished.

“Yet likewise these dreamers also defile [the] flesh and set at naught lordship, and rail at dignities. But Michael the archangel when disputing with the devil he discussed about Moses' body, did not dare to bring against [him] a railing judgment, but said, [The] Lord rebuke thee. But these rail at whatever things they know not; but whatever they understand naturally, as the irrational animals, in these things they corrupt themselves (or, perish)” (8-10). Here Jude depicts the apostate spirits of Christendom in their giving up all respect for authority, and railing against it, and cites Michael in particular, as Peter does angels generally, with those that sinned, for marked contrast; and speaks of those like irrational animals, receiving unrighteousness' reward, and dilates on their grievous immoralities.

Then we have the awfully concise judgment which Judo pronounces on that which outwardly bears the Lord's name. “Woe to them! because they went in the way of Cain, and rushed greedily in the error of Balaam's hire, and perished in the gainsaying of Korah. These are spots (or, hidden rocks) in your love-feasts, feasting together, fearlessly pasturing themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumnal trees without fruit, twice dead, rooted up; raging sea-waves, foaming out their own shames; wandering stars for whom hath been reserved the gloom of darkness forever” (11-13). Peter too alleged the way of Balaam who loved the hire of unrighteousness; but Jude prefaces that prolific error with Cain's apostasy from God, and finishes all with the rebellion of Korah against Moses and Aaron, the known types of Christ the Apostle and High Priest of the Christian confession. This is and will be perdition: ministry or service arrogating to itself what pertains to the Lord Jesus only, the closing apostasy, but carrying throughout the sad marks which show that the corruption of the best thing is the worst corruption.

Very striking too is Enoch's earliest warning against these who perish at the end of the age. “And Enoch, seventh from Adam, prophesied also as to these, saying, Behold, [the] Lord came amid his holy myriads, to execute judgment against all, and to convict all the ungodly [of them] of all their works of ungodliness which they ungodlily wrought, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners spoke against him. These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their lusts, and their mouth speaketh swelling things, admiring persons for the sake of profit” (14-16).

Pretentious and ill-willed adversaries of scripture have availed themselves of the Book of Enoch in the Aethiopic which was brought into Great Britain by Bruce and translated by Abp. Laurence as if the supposed original of that work could be the source of the quotation. They failed to observe that it yields conclusive proof that it is no prophecy but an imposture; for the concocter, trying to incorporate this very passage from the Epistle, could not even do his evil work correctly. He makes the Lord come in judgment of His saints: a false doctrine in direct antagonism to all scripture, which Jude of course in no way says or implies. It speaks only of condign judgment executed on the ungodly in works and words.

“But ye, beloved, remember ye the words that were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they said to you, In [the] end of the time shall be mockers walking after their own lusts of ungodlinesses. These are they that make separations, natural (or, soulish), not having [the] Spirit. But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in [the] Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in [the] love of God, awaiting the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto life eternal. And some convict, when contending, but others save, snatching out of [the] fire, and others pity with fear, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh"(17-23).

The gracious encouragement in the darkest day is manifest and rich. Mockers, who set themselves apart like the Pharisees, are branded as natural men: the Spirit leads to, and in, fellowship as well as to faith and love. Therefore are saints to build themselves up on their most holy faith. Only here is it so designated. What a rebuke to such as would lower the standard and accept laxity to please a party, avoid decision, and shirk reproach! A loose time calls on us more strenuously to build ourselves up on our most holy faith, and for prayer in power of the Holy Spirit, that we may keep ourselves in the love of God, awaiting the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto life eternal; for indeed we need both every step of the way through. This will the better enable us to help souls in slippery places such as are described in vers. 22, 23, though the text is as tangled here in the copies as those whose well-being we should seek, imperiled as they are more and more.

The conclusion is in beautiful harmony with the Epistle. “But to him that is able to keep you without stumbling, and to set you with exultation blameless before his glory; to [the] only God our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord, [be] glory, majesty, might, and authority, before all time, and now, and unto all the ages. Amen” (vers. 24, 25). It is not, as in 2 Peter, looking for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness, but that sovereign grace which will translate us into His presence like Christ Himself, associated with Him actually, yea bodily then and forever, as now in Spirit.

Gathered Unto His Name

My Dear Brother,

I am but one of many who are praying the Lord to make Him your first object in your service of His name. There are far more who, if they knew the circumstances, would join in this, and not least some who are very devoted in the gospel work.

But they justly feel that it is Christ who gives everything and everyone due measure of importance in God's sight, and therefore in His children's, as in itself too.

Now He loves the church supremely and gave Himself up for it, that He might sanctify it, having purified it by the washing of water by the word, that He might present to Himself the church glorious, having no spot or wrinkle or any of such things, but that it might be holy and blameless. That He came to seek and save the lost is most true and blessed; but nothing is nearer to His heart, next to His Father and ours, to His God and ours, than His body the church, now exposed to every snare and danger in the present evil age. For that precious object is a spectacle to the world, both to angels and men, in order that now to the principalities and authorities in the heavenly places might be made known through it the manifold wisdom of God.

If you weigh this and far more which may occur to you throughout the New Testament, you will allow that the duty to the Lord in caring for poor sinners ought not to swamp the yet higher one of loving His own that are in the world, as He did to the end. And how can we do it better than keeping His word and not denying His name, urging others in faith and love to do the same?

Take the quite simple yet most affecting and very important duty of remembering Him on the first day of the week in the breaking of the bread, His supper. No doubt you are well aware how greatly this institution differs from what all Romanists and Protestants have perverted it to, as a sacrament with its priest or the minister set officially apart to administer it. You have learned too that there is now also the added truth, in the standing and precious privileges of the church, that the Holy Spirit, Who baptized into one body, abides forever in and with those that are Christ's, to work in them of His own will, one or another in all liberty, to glorify the Lord Jesus.

It was because Christendom had fallen away from those essential truths, here merely and briefly sketched, that a few (separating themselves from all denominational membership as being but sects and denounced in God's word) met with little but growing light to begin, as the early disciples began, gathered to His name, to show His death till He come, and to recognize the abiding presence of the Spirit in the assembly, even if but two or three were thus faithful. They were not nor could be satisfied with an approach or a partial resemblance. They rightly felt that they must be obedient and do the will of the Lord. To this the Christian is sanctified by the Spirit.

When I was in C— through serious ill heath, it was a great joy that we could meet, if ever so few, as gathered to the Lord's name. The dear few met there, Mrs.—giving the use of a fitting room in her house; and if visiting brothers and sisters came to the town, they gladly enjoyed the privilege in a foreign land. And I remember a sister who was Mrs.—'s guest (a Lutheran if I mistake not, and certainly not in our communion) who was not refused but welcomed in the Lord's name. She had not learned that Lutheranism is but a sect; yet she loved the Lord's name and word as far as she knew; and we could and did therefore heartily give her the right hand of fellowship.

I left when most leave, the heat becoming an injury to invalids at any rate; and the meeting fell through, because there was none but one brother (his wife being sometimes unable to come). And I understand that, knowing you were in communion, Mrs.—appealed to you in this strait. For it was a very sad thing that there was indeed no place in the town where they could break bread with a good conscience. It seems that you pleaded not being at home in French, so as to express yourself in prayer or worship fittingly. But when you acquired familiarity enough to preach the gospel to the world, you did not remove the difficulty by remembering the Lord with them according to His word. Apparently you had got interested in evangelizing work, so as to overlook the infinite claim of Christ on you as a member of His body, and all the more because they were so few and so circumstanced, that your holding aloof precluded their thus honoring Him scripturally.

If this state of things be substantially true, I earnestly appeal to you in the Lord's name. Help with all your heart that which is manifestly due to Him and His alone. Ought not you and they to keep His word at all cost? Mr. — I know; for he often came to readings at Mrs.—'s on the First Epistle of John; and I doubt not that he has otherwise received light beyond most in his society, preaching the gospel too as not a few do indefatigably and earnestly. Still he is the minister' of the Free Church (as I understood): which in no way, more than other denominations, owns God's assembly, or the Holy Spirit for action in it, as God's mind for His saints, as long as Christians, however scattered, are here below. To recognize the Free Church, or the Evangelic Church, which are what scripture calls “sects,” each with its peculiar polity, ministry, doctrine, and discipline according to man's wisdom, is to compromise God's word, and to dishonor the Lord Jesus as well as the Spirit's presence and action as in 1 Cor. 12; 14 They don't pretend to carry this out, as far as is now possible, but argue against it. “All things” are not “done decently and in order,” as the apostle prescribed, but as men devise for our day.

Now you, I presume, have learned from scripture, that we are the Lord's now and forever more. Let us help each other to be obedient. No one wishes to slight the vast moment of preaching the gospel: but honoring the Lord by doing His will helps us to preach all the better. It also makes the Spirit's presence and action a living reality; whereas dropping this for the gospel makes it all a dead letter. Further, one grieves Him by lack of faith about God's plain will, so as to risk the loss of all conscience about it, and to slip by degrees into any sect and all sects, if we begin to own one that looks fairer than others, instead of adhering to the Lord's word and way exclusively.

Bear with me, beloved brother, if I urge the truth, and your debt to sovereign grace. How I should rejoice, if you prayed over this matter before God; so that when our sister returns, you might all be together gathered to the only true center, and not in word only but in deed and truth. Thus might you prove His blessed and blessing presence in the midst of the few, be a comfort and help in the highest degree to any converted by your means and turn a real grief we feel when we think of it into a true thanksgiving.

Ever affectionately yours in our Lord.

W. K.

R S. A few words as to the position you are tempted to take. First, it is a new one, breaking off, not only from all dearest to you in the flesh and in the Lord, but from what you have hitherto professed to be of God. The only thing which could justify it is the imperative duty of following scripture. But we, your family included, left all to follow scripture; we abandoned our denominations or sects, forbidden by God's word. The Eglise Liber began by adopting a new code of polity which is but of yesterday, with the ordinary false position of the minister, and no assembly open to the presence and free action of the Holy Spirit, as God's word requires. Weigh this before God; for departure into what is clearly unscriptural is most serious.

Secondly, you know that brethren as such went back to the primitive standing of God's church, gathered only unto the name of the Lord Jesus. To this we have adhered at cost of suffering in 1880-1 and since, as your father well knew and refused with us to endorse the new departure of the Park St. party, which afterward divided into Ravenites and Anti-Ravenites, to say nothing of the Loose or Open Brethren who long before went off from us. I mention this to satisfy you that the resumption of meeting at P— is not adding a third or second meeting, but simply enabling those, now debarred by circumstances, to remember the Lord in true scriptural simplicity. They, and they alone, would meet as all did, not only from the beginning of Brethren but from the day of Pentecost, however feeble a representative as the Lord provided for in Matt. 18:20; and, till they meet on this divine principle, there is no true, representative in C—. Think of the solemnity of this, and of your being faithful or not, my dear young friend, I beseech you.

Be sure that I will pray earnestly for you.

Yours in Him

W. K.

TITUS & PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth,... 2/- TH E REVELATION ...

Priesthood its privileges and duties ... 1/6

Short Introduction to Paul's Epistles, 1/- & 1/6
F.E.R. Heterodox on Life Eternal, other Divine
Truths, and above all Christ's Person,
paper, 10d., limp cloth, 1/-.

One Body and One Spirit, revised ... 2d.

Published

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row,

Published Monthly.

Jacob: 12. Meeting of Jacob and Esau

The bringing of Jacob into communion with God was not yet complete; and as God's dealing with him in the last chapter indicates it, so does this chapter confirm it. He lifted up his eyes and looked; but God was greater than his fears, though he still devised the best he could whether Esau came as a friend or as a foe. Jacob can hardly be said here to walk by faith, not by sight; but God was faithful in His providence.

“And Jacob lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, Esau came, and with him four hundred men. And he divided the children to Leah and to Rachel and to the two maid-servants; and he put the maid-servants and their children foremost, and Leah and her children after, and Rachel and Joseph hindmost. And he passed over before them and bowed to the earth seven times, until he came near to his brother. And Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him; and they wept. And he lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children, and said, Who [are] these with thee? And he said, The children whom God hath graciously given thy servant. And the maid-servants drew near, they and their children, and they bowed. And Leah also drew near and her children, and they bowed. And after drew near Joseph and Rachel, and they bowed. And he said, What [meanest] thou [by] all this band (or, camp) which I met? And he said, To find favor in the eyes of my lord. And Esau said, I have much, my brother; let that which [is] thine be to thee. And Jacob said, No, I pray thee: if now I have found favor in thine eyes, then receive my present at my hand; for therefore I have seen thy face, as though I had seen God's face, and thou wast pleased with me. Take, I pray thee, nay blessing that is brought thee, because graciously hath God dealt with me, and because I have all. And he urged him, and he took [it]. And he said, Let us take our journey, and let us go; and I will go before thee. And he said to him, My lord knoweth the children [are] tender, and the flocks and the herds with young [are] with me; and overdrive them one day, then all the flock will die. Let my lord, I pray thee, pass over before his servant, and I will lead on softly according to the pace of the cattle that are before me, and according to the pace of the children, until I come to my lord unto Seir. And Esau said, Let me leave, I pray thee, of the people that [are] with me. And he said, Why this? Let me find favor in my lord's eyes” (vers. 1-15).

None of the patriarchs passed through such inquietude as Jacob. So it must be if one is out of communion with God; who avails Himself of anxiety and change and danger to do us good and restore the soul at length. Even after God wrestled with him and enabled him to wrestle with God for His blessing, it was as yet far short of God's mind. For how poor that he could say no more than “I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved!” God “talked with” His friend Abraham, revealing His Name as the Almighty, covenanted to make him father of many nations with things to come of Him, and revealed what He was going to do to the guilty cities of the plain, so as to draw out his intercession for righteous Lot.

But here Jacob was still far from peace as he considered Esau. He never thought of God's power over the hearts of all, and His intention of over-ruling Esau's resentment, to fill his heart with warm natural affection. As Jacob passed before the carefully arranged company of women and children, and bowed to the ground abjectly till he came near his brother, Esau ran to meet him, embraced him, fell on his neck, and kissed him. In his dread Jacob had prepared Esau for his abundant substance, but was silent about his family. Hence the inquiry, “Who are these with you?” to which Jacob, now getting more at ease, answers as became a believer, “The children whom God hath graciously given thy servant.” But when Esau asks the meaning of all the band, or drove, he had met, he says, “To find favor in the eyes of my lord.” To this Esau rejoins, “I have” (not only enough but) “much, my brother; let what is thine be to thee,” and Jacob goes yet further in pressing its acceptance, “for I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God, and thou wast pleased with me. Take, pray, my blessing that is brought thee, because God hath graciously dealt with me, and because I have all.” In fact it was a gift meant to avert the anger and strong wrath he apprehended; but the manner and the terms in which it was couched hardly deserve the appreciation commonly expressed thereon. God had wrought pitifully: to Him indeed he owed thanksgiving; while he might well be touched by brotherly affection instead of all that he feared.

It may be painful to notice, but it is well to heed, what follows as showing Jacob's state even then. When Esau proposes that they should proceed, and himself lead the way, Jacob pleads the tenderness of the children and such of the flocks and herds as would all die, if overdriven one day, and begs his lord to pass over, whilst he should lead on softly, till he came unto his “lord” in Seir. Then on Esau's offer of some of his trained convoy he replies, “Why this? Let me find favor in my lord's eyes.” The truth is, that he was most anxious to get rid of his brother, and that he had not the smallest intention of going to Seir. He was going to Succoth. Viewed in the light of God, Jacob was not truthful in what he said to his brother. There was evil still unjudged in those around, and he spoke with little scruple but with characteristic fertility of excuse.

Israel Holy to Jehovah: 5. Other Abominations Forbidden

But there is uncleanness through other causes, and viler abominations contrary to nature, against which Jehovah warns. It may be painful to read; but it is wholesome to learn of what human nature fell into among heathen races so civilized as in Egypt and Canaan; and God knew that His people, when slighting His word, might follow them both.

“19 And thou shalt not approach a woman, in the separation of her uncleanness to uncover her nakedness. 20 And thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbor's wife to become unclean with her. 21 And thou shalt not give of thy seed to let them pass through [the fire] to Molech, nor shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I [am] Jehovah. 22 And thou shalt not lie with mankind as one lieth with womankind: it [is] abomination. 23 And thou shalt not lie with any beast to become unclean therewith; and a woman shall not stand before a beast to lie down therewith: it [is] con fusion. 24 Make not yourselves unclean in any of these things; for in all these have made themselves unclean the nations which I cast out from before you. 25 And the land hath become unclean: and I visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land vomiteth out its inhabitants. 26 But ye shall observe my statutes and my judgments, and shall not do any of all these abominations, —the homeborn and the stranger that sojourneth among you 27 (for all these abominations have the men of the land done, who [were] before you, and the land hath been made unclean); 28 that the land vomit not you out also, when ye make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you. 29 For whosoever shall do any of these abominations, the souls that do [them] shall be cut off from among their people. 30 Therefore shall ye observe my charge, that ye do not [any] of these abominable customs which were done before you; and ye shall not make yourselves unclean therein: I [am] Jehovah your God” (19-30).

Here is a somewhat different character of defilement, but leading on to still viler abominations, on none of which need one dwell, though assured God is wise and holy in every word He lays down. Indeed the Epistle to the Hebrews (13:4) calls the Christian Jews, and in principle all concerned, to take heed, in terms which take in verses 19, 20 of our chapter. Marriage is to be honorable in all respects, as well as among all of course. Christian light and love is meant to pervade even the most intimate of relationships, and cleanse from every defilement of flesh and spirit; of Jews and of Gentiles we need to be reminded that the Lord is the avenger of all such wrongs.

Then we have a transition from wives to children, and that most inhuman rite in which parents were so blinded of Satan as to devote their offspring sacrificially to Molech or Moloch, and probably Malcham and Milcom. It was the tutelary God of the Ammonites; and Chemosh, the deity of the Moabites, differed little from it, Furst making the name signify “fire,” as Molech, etc., mean “King.” From Jer. 19:5 it appears that Baal was worshipped thus. It was widespread under various idols over the earth; and how awful the fact that Solomon yielded to his heathen wives, and went after Ashtoreth, the licentious goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom or Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, and built a high place for Chemosh, that of Moab! The greatest science and learning, the highest civilization and luxury, in no way hindered this, if they did not help it on; and the day hastens, when the Jews, now so staunch apparently against every idol, will fall under strange gods, and set up a man as God in His temple, drawing apostate Christendom into this fatal revolt, all the more guilty on the part of those called to worship the Father and the Son in Spirit.

This verse 21 is but one of many solemn prohibitions of a horror, which prevailed down to Josiah's days, as Ahaz was a notable patron of it long before. Some have reasoned on “passing through the fire,” as here and elsewhere, to deny the burning of their seed: but this seems a kindly effort to soften the reality of the wickedness. It was the fullest, though not the only, profanation of the name of Israel's God. Jehovah accepted a sheep or an ox, or even a much smaller sacrifice; Satan under these names demanded their sons.

The unnatural brutalities of verses 22, 23, are plain enough; but it may not be known how unblushingly they were perpetrated among the heathen, even the Greeks and the Romans. What abomination! It is confusion, says Jehovah. Israel were not to render themselves unclean in any of these things, as in all these did the nations of Canaan which He cast out before them. How much guiltier, if so, would Israel be I The very land was made unclean. Therefore had He visited the iniquity on it. Earth vomited out its inhabitants; so that Israel must beware, not only for themselves, but for any stranger sojourning among them, lest the land should vomit them out, as it had the nations that dwelt there before Israel. For such evil was intolerable in His eyes, and yet more offensive in His own people than in any other a truth forgotten soon among the Jews, as later in Christendom. “Therefore shall ye observe my charge that ye do not [any] of the abominable customs which were done before you, and that ye make not yourselves unclean therein: I [am] Jehovah your God.” It is by receiving the good that is from God, His word and above all His Christ, that souls are kept from evil.

Proverbs 17:8-14

But it is not a question of speech only, excellent or deceptive. Acts are still more serious and influential; and to this we are now led on.

“A gift [is] a precious stone in the eyes of the possessor; whithersoever it turneth, it prospereth.

He that covereth a transgression seeketh love; but he that bringeth a matter up again separateth chief friends.

A reproof entereth more deeply into him that hath understanding than a hundred stripes into a fool.

The evil seeketh only rebellion; but a cruel messenger shall be sent against him.

Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man rather than a fool in his folly.

Whoso rewardeth evil for good, evil shall not depart from his house.

The beginning of contention is [as] when one letteth out water; therefore leave off strife before it become vehement” (vers. 8-14).

The Law and the later O.T. writings, the Gospels and the Epistles, bear ample witness to God's love of liberal and cheerful giving. But there may be a gift when it becomes a bribe, and even the law loudly warns in this case. Accordingly here its influence is asserted to be as a precious stone in the eyes of him that obtains it, as the giver too knows its power, where Jehovah was not before the soul.

But in a world of contrariety and evil, there is a mightier power and of a higher source. “He that covereth transgression seeketh” not a bribe, but “love “; as on the other hand “He that bringeth up a matter again,” without any motive higher than idle talk, with no positive aim of edification, “separateth chief friends.” Love is not at work.

There might be error or evil, and this continued. In such a case to be indifferent for peace' sake is a sin; and reproof is called for, especially where a man of sense was concerned. For a reproof penetrates such a one more than a hundred stripes would a fool. How timid even Christians are in this office of love, even when a worldly mind does not make them unfeeling!

It is an evil man that indulges a spirit of revolt: for rebellion is hateful to God, and His word gives it no quarter. Circumstances on earth yield constant opportunity; and hence such a one “seeketh only rebellion.” It gives an unhappy self-importance, which to vanity is irresistible. But God is not mocked, though it be the acceptable year, and not yet the day of His vengeance; and a “cruel messenger” will not fail to be “sent against him.” Even now is there moral government.

But a fool in his folly goes a great deal farther and bursts through all bounds. To be met by a she-bear robbed of her cubs is a dangerous thing for any man; but a fool in his folly is worse still, as not the wise alone know to their cost. It is difficult also for the considerate to conceive what a fool may dare in his folly.

Ingratitude too is an evil of no small magnitude, and the face of God is set against such sheer baseness as rewarding evil for good. If one be thus guilty, evil shall not depart from his house. Even if it were but the snare of Satan for the highest in the land, himself most generous habitually, Jehovah did and could not overlook it: the sword departed not from his house, who gratified his passion at the cost too of a faithful servant's blood to bide his own sin. How Solomon must have felt as he remembered this!

And who has not seen to what a blaze a little spark may come, if godliness and grace do not rule? It is as the letting out of water when one begins contention; mere drops trickling at first, till the opening enlarges for a flow that sweeps all before it. “Therefore leave off strife before it become vehement.”

Gospel Words: the Narrow Gate

The Lord here gives a warning of great practical value. Public opinion weighs much with the natural mind. It may be and often is right in material things: there men judge fairly well, and are awake to their interests. For the spirit of man that is in him knows the things of man. But it is not so in the things of God, where the carnal mind does not fail to display its inveterate enmity against Him to man's certain ruin if it sway. Therefore is it elsewhere written, There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none that understandeth, none that seeketh after God. All turned aside, together they become unprofitable, there is none doing good, no, not one (Rom. 3:10-12).

Hence the Lord says here, “Enter ye through the narrow gate; because wide [is] the gate, and broad the way that leadeth off unto destruction, and many are they that enter through it. Because narrow [is] the gate, and straitened the way that leadeth off unto life, and few are they that find it” (Matt. 7:13, 14).

Reader, how is it with you? Have you entered through the narrow gate of conversion to God? Have you repented toward God and believed on our Lord Jesus Christ? Baptism is the divine and admirable sign of salvation; yet it never gave life, but rather represented remission of sins and death to sin for such as had life: if they had not life in Christ, its true meaning, as far as they were concerned, was their guilty and wretched inconsistency, to their utter condemnation far worse than if they had not been baptized to that excellent Name. Deceive not your own soul; be not deceived by others. The great apostle warned that in the last days grievous times should come, and evil men and impostors wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But this trust in an ordinance is one of the oldest of errors, and revived of late with fresh audacity and large success, though the same apostle expressly denounced its vanity and danger in early days (1 Corinthians 10:1-11). For “our fathers,” said he, “were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and did all eat the same spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink... Howbeit with most of them God was not well pleased; for they were overthrown in the wilderness.... Now all these things happened to them as types, and were written for our admonition on whom the ends of the ages are come.”

O unbeliever, will it assuage the horrors of everlasting fire that you followed the multitude in despising the word of the Lord and neglecting His great salvation? You cannot deny that what He says here is very plain; your conscience must own that it is true. It is of no avail to talk about the fate of Thibet sealed up against the light of the gospel, or to inquire what is to become of the heathen millions in darkest Africa, or in haughtier India and China, or anywhere else. You at any rate have the Bible, and may outwardly profess the Lord's name. You have often heard and perhaps read these words of Him who will surely judge living and dead; and the time hastens for it. When you stand and are manifested before Him, will you not be speechless, like him who might be christened but had no wedding garment? The numberless crowds of the lost will verify His words, but yield not a drop of water to cool your tongue in the torments of that day without an end, or even when you die impenitent now before it come. Masses and classes alike perish in their unbelief of Him and His word.

In fact it will only add unspeakably to your bitter self-reproach that the Lord gave you so distinct a signal of danger for time and eternity. You refused the narrow gate, because it admitted neither self-will, nor fleshly lust. You loved the wide gate and the broad way, because you set your heart on what you called liberty, seeking and doing what you liked in defiance of God's will. You stifled the conviction of your moral folly and incredulous madness by the abundance of your company high and low. The narrow gate was repulsive to you, because it compelled you to stoop to God, which your pride and your passions alike resented. You had in entering through it to meet God singly, and to face Him alone about your sins. Had you been in earnest, you would have seen that He is our Savior God, who desires that all men should be saved and come to acknowledgment of truth. And this is solely in Christ Who is the one Mediator of God and men, and gave Himself a ransom for all.

Therefore are you without excuse. And you are lost and must be condemned forever, above all your sins for this crowning sin that you reject Christ Who died for you, losing the ransom so precious to God and efficacious for man. O bethink yourself: believe the words of Him Who cannot lie, and in love uttered this warning that you might hear and live. For both gates are clearly set before you, and both ways, one unto life and the other unto perdition. Many are they that enter through the wide gate and tread the broad way. O beware; for I too was once your fellow-sinner, as infatuated as any other. But the Shepherd's voice reached my ear, my soul. May it pierce yours, that you may turn off from the broad way, as from a serpent, yea the old Serpent the Devil, and enter the narrow gate of Christ, the straitened way that leads off unto life. Few are they that find it. May you know this happiness now and evermore in the Savior.

The Lord's Prophecy on Olivet in Matthew 24-25: 3. The Christian Profession

From this point the Lord begins to open out a new thing, namely, what the disciples were going to enter. Evidently this was the proper order. The Lord had begun with them as they were, and then He leads on to what they were soon to become, with the new relationships to Christ dead and risen, when fresh power would be given by the Holy Spirit. As a mark of this, you will see that the Lord drops all allusion to Judaea, and any reference to the temple, the prophets, and the sabbath. The Lord widens out now into parables of a general and comprehensive nature, which would be equally as true at Timbuctoo as at Jerusalem—it does not matter where. They belong to Christianity. What Christ died and rose to establish by the mission of the Spirit is not one of the narrow systems of men, nor of their broad worldly associations. Christianity is exclusive of nothing but sin; it is the practical expression of Christ, not only in grace and truth but in resulting practice. The Lord definitely marks this opening out into wider principles of a moral nature, which embrace all Christian disciples, wherever they might be in this world, and at any time till He comes. Hence we find three parables which apply thereto.

The first parable is the prudent servant contrasted with the evil one. It is a question of faithful service in the house, the duty of the highest and the duty of the lowest, not of intelligent activity with variety of spiritual endowment in each for trading with his lord's goods as given in the parable of the Talents (chap. 25). The form is very striking. We have, seen as one, a profession carried out and ending very differently; and this in relation with the Lord, not with Israel as before. “Who then is the faithful and prudent bondman whom his lord set over his household, to give them their food in due season? Blessed [is] that bondman whom his lord on coming shall find so doing. Verily I say to you, that he will set him over all that he hath. But if that evil bondman shall say in his heart, My lord tarrieth; and shall begin to beat his fellow-bondmen, and shall eat. and drink with the drunken, the lord of that bondman shall come in a day when he expecteth not, and in an hour that he knoweth not, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth” (vers. 45-51).

It was another case with the nation. In Judaism there was an enormous unbelieving mass in former times falling into idolatry and all kinds of wickedness, and hence persecuting the faithful brethren. But one of the characteristic marks of Christendom is that all are professors of Christ, whether truly or falsely; and it is therefore presented here as one whole strikingly. The Lord in the parable says the faithful and prudent servant shall be made ruler over all His goods. Blessed is that servant whom his Lord when he comes shall find so doing. It is the responsibility of all in the house. Hence He goes on to say, “But if that evil servant” etc. They are surprisingly joined thus. On what does his ruin turn? The evil servant says in his heart, “My lord delayeth.” His coming is not a mere idea: man likes to have his notions; and nobody is the better for them. But He refers to what is deep and real, the heart's indifference to the coming of the Master. The evil servant says in his heart, “My lord delayeth.” He believes what he likes; and what he likes is that the Lord should delay His coming.

Most affecting it is to see that the Lord treats the heart's putting off His return as leading to assumption within and laxity without. That evil servant when he says in his heart (for so it is), My lord delayeth, shall begin also to heat his fellow-servants, and shall eat and drink with the drunken. What a contrast with Christ, and practical denial of Him! It led back the professor to the world in self-exalting oppression, and in allowed intimacy with the ungodly and immoral. He is therefore appointed, when the Lord is come, to have his part with the hypocrites. The Lord does not treat him as a Jew or Greek, but according to his responsibility.

How different is it with the faithful and wise servant! He waits and longs for the Lord because he loves Him who first loved us. Hence the hope of Christ is quite distinct from prophecy. One might be greatly versed in the prophetic word, and wholly lack that hope; one might have the heart filled with the hope, and be altogether unacquainted with prophecy. No one could rightly deprecate those solemn warnings of what will burst unexpectedly on the world. But, next to believing in Christ for life and redemption, with worship and service and walk following, the Christian needs and is called to wait for the Son of God from heaven. Now if you love anyone, you delight to see him. The absence of the person beloved is trying to you. There may be the wisest reasons for delay, but the delay taxes your patience; and the hope of the speedy return of the one you love is the greatest joy to the heart.

The Lord gives this feeling, and strengthens it, toward Himself. It is the proper hope of the Christian, not the Kingdom but Christ. Grant that it may be hindered by the influence of prophetic notions; yet there is in the heart of all true Christians a genuine desire for the coming of Christ. But when the soul is not in peace through a full gospel, one is afraid. Those who give them an uncertain gospel are responsible for it; as they thus keep souls in dread, they do the greatest injury to the grace of God. One does not speak of such as quite falsify Christ or His work, but of those who do preach it partially, who fear to set forth the full value of the sacrifice of Christ, in the perfect deliverance which His death and resurrection have wrought for the believer.

The result of this defect in teaching is that Christians are apt to be alarmed instead of rejoicing at the immediate coming of Christ.

They do not own that the acceptance of Christ is the acceptance of a Christian; they have not learned the truth that the Lord by His death has not only effaced their sins but had their sinful nature condemned completely; and this in order to their walking now in the Spirit, to be followed by a perfect conformity to Christ's image in resurrection at His coming (Rom. 8:11, 29, 1-4).

Who can exaggerate what Christ has wrought for the believer? If you rest on His redemption, all difficulties Godward are taken away. Then there is nothing left but the need of daily self-judgment for every inconsistency, the duty of serving Him now, and the delight of being with Him and seeing Him then, as also of worshipping both now and forever by grace. He has done all for each to bring us to God, taking us out of every evil. How can the believer not rejoice in this and in Him? Therefore all Christians, wherever or whoever they may be, are entitled to have joy and delight, though for many dimmed unhappily, in the prospect of His coming.

Notwithstanding all their imperfect notions, it is certain that all Christians love Christ here, and in principle await Him too. To say this may not please some zealous pre-millennialist friends; but surely this hope belongs to every Christian heart. Would you doubt it of S. Rutherford? or of the late S. Waldegrave? Yet the system of the latter in his Modern Millennarianism was wildly unscriptural. For he believed the First Resurrection reign over, and that we are now in the little space, before Christ sits on the great white throne; and this he made His, coming, when heaven and earth had fled!

There are false prophetic views which hinder; but as the new nature goes out toward Christ, so it longs for the day when we shah be forever with the Lord. Waiting for Christ supposes waiting for His coming; but if put into precise forms and logical propositions, damage may easily ensue. If the object be to prove that many Christians do not look for Christ's coming, abundant grounds appear for working on. But if, on the other hand, you are child-like, God gives sufficient evidence that those who are Christ's, notwithstanding obstacles, do look and at bottom long for His coming.

Only let the children of God get clear of those clouds of noxious and unwholesome vapors that constantly rise up between the Lord and them. Let them cherish in their souls the hope He gave them. If you bring in a millennium first, it is hard to see Christ's coming clearly; it must act as a veil, which dulls the hope of that day. It may not destroy the hope, yet one cannot but look for His coming in an imperfect manner. If you bring in a great tribulation first, this 'also lowers the outlook and enfeebles the hope greatly; it occupies one with evils as they rise, produces a depressing effect, and fills the heart with that judicial trouble and the shade of desolation. They are the mistakes of theorists. The one puts a mistaken hope between you and the coming of the Lord, kindling meanwhile a dreamy excitement in waiting for that day. The other case produces a sort of spiritual nightmare, an oppressive feeling in the thought that you must go through so dreadful a crisis.

Be assured, my brethren, that the scriptures deliver us from both the dream and the nightmare. They entitle the believer to wait for Christ as simply as a child, being perfectly certain that God's word is as true as our hope is blessed. There is to be God's glorious kingdom; but the Lord Jesus will bring it in at His coming. Without doubt the great tribulation is to come, but not for the Christian. When it is a question about the Jew, you can understand it well: for why does the greatest tribulation come upon him? Because of idolatry; yea, of the Beast and the Antichrist worshipped. It is for him a moral retribution, with which the Christian has nothing direct to do. The predicted judgment falls on the apostate nations and the Jews. Those called to be witnesses of Jehovah and His Christ will at last fall into the dreadful snare of allowing the abomination to be put into the sanctuary of God.

What connection is there between this and the Christian looking for Christ? Here the prophecy of the blessed Lord drops all allusion to anything peculiar to Israel. His coming will surely be for the solemn judgment of all who pervert grace and indulge in unrighteousness, receiving a sentence so much the more stern, because the gospel reveals God perfectly in light and love, which they abused to fleshly license. As to this the Fathers taught falsehood and unholiness.

Then comes the parable of the ten Virgins. It is essential to disengage the Christian from the thought that the early part of this prophecy is about him such an idea completely perverts his judgment. For it presents, as we have seen, the Jewish people distinctively. Here we have a future comparison of the kingdom of the heavens.

But we have also in our day to do with another and opposite error, an error that takes away the parable of the Virgins from properly applying to the Christian. We may affirm, on the contrary, that it has nothing to do with the Jewish remnant directly; who, as they are not called to go out to meet the Bridegroom, could not have oil in their vessels, and lastly will not be exposed to the temptation of going to sleep. The Jews ought to abide where they are, or only flee to escape death in their refusal of idolatry. And those who survive, for the Lord's appearing and their own deliverance, only receive the Holy Spirit after He appears. All is in contrast with the Christian position. But many a one who had been a Jewish disciple became a Christian, in the true sense of the term, as Peter uses the word in his First Epistle, and Luke in the Acts. In this parable, then, the Lord shows the kingdom of heaven will be likened to ten virgins. They all went forth to bear their testimony to Christ as the torch was to give light. They were to shine as lights in the world. Each virgin taking her lamp, they went forth to meet the Bridegroom.

(Continued).

1 Peter 3:17-18

In a fallen world and a sinful nature, with God on one side and Satan on the other, there must needs be suffering, and especially for the saint till Christ take His great power and reign. Satan is still the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience. So far is the enemy from having lost his bad eminence, though defeated by our Lord perfectly dependent and obedient, it was by the world's rejection of Him that he became the ruler of the world, yea, the god of this age, as we read in 2 Cor. 4:4. No doubt exceeding his commission by inciting the world to crucify the Lord of glory, he has, as it were, sealed his own everlasting ruin in that precious blood. For to this end, as to others of greater moment still, Christ died, that through death He might annul him that has the might of death. But the full execution of the sentence awaits (not the coming age merely when the Lord will reign and he is shut up in the abyss, but) the end, when he is cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the Beast and the False Prophet had been consigned a thousand years before; and they shall be tormented day and night for the ages of the ages.

Here in the present evil age (Gal. 1:4) the Christian pre-eminently is called to suffer, not merely under divine discipline when he fails, but because he has a new nature as possessing life in Christ, and is faithful to God. Why should the fact seem hard? This the apostle here meets and explains.

“For [it is] better, if the will of God should will [it], to suffer [for] well-doing than [for] evil-doing. Because even Christ once suffered for sins, just for unjust that He might bring us to God, put to death indeed in flesh, but made alive in [the] Spirit” (vers. 17, 18).

How simple yet weighty and conclusive is scripture! Who that considers it, when declared, can doubt that it is better to suffer when we are doing well than when we deserve chastening for ill-doing? Yet it is not at first obvious to him who, feeling the iniquity done him, is apt to complain of the hardship. Christ suffered throughout for righteousness, for truth, for love; and we have it as our privilege to share these sufferings of His, as the apostle Paul pressed on his beloved Philippians: “To you was granted in behalf of Christ not only the believing on him but the suffering for him also, having the same conflict as ye saw in me and now hear of in me” (1:29, 30). Peter too had already in chap. 2:21 presented Christ as a model in this, but there as here, distinguished from that following in His steps, the foundation of all which He only could lay, in that He bore our sins in His body on the tree, that dead to sins, we might live to righteousness (ver. 24). So here the apostle turns to what is and must be solely His: “because even (or, also) Christ once suffered for sins, Just for unjust.”

For sins it was His alone to suffer. He suffered but once in this atoning way where none could follow; for it was not from man because He was faithful to God, but from God because of His grace to man, whatever it might cost in bearing God's righteous judgment of man's sins. For on His holy head Jehovah made to light, as Isaiah says, the iniquity of us all. “It pleased Jehovah to bruise him,” not only to put Him to grief, but “to make his soul an offering for sin.” Thus only could we be pardoned righteously and saved. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes are we healed. What pathos as well as force in the apostle's cheer for suffering as doers of good and not evil, that He suffered for our sins once and once only. Let this suffice: so perfectly was it done, as He alone could bear that burden, intolerable to Him above all, yet borne by Him that they might be, as they are, borne away for all that are His. Let us therefore now suffer only for what is good on our part.

But there is more. Christ also suffered once for sins, Just for unjust. He was alone in that one act of suffering supremely at God's hand. It was for unjust or unrighteous men; Alas! here all were unrighteous, all sinned; and those who by grace benefited through faith would be the first to own it of themselves. Henceforward they are righteous, and so live by faith, as through it they became so; nor do they forget that they believed on Him that justifies the ungodly, and thus their faith is reckoned for righteousness. Such was His grace.

Think too of the efficacy of His suffering thus, “that he might bring us to God,” not yet actually to heaven but meet for it, and therefore “to God” Who is far more than heaven. Christ on the cross cleared us from both our evil works and the evil root and sap, sin in the flesh that produces them. We are therefore no longer far from God but brought nigh, as he had said in chap. ii., a holy and a royal priesthood with a better reality of nearness to God by the blood of Christ than the Aaronic priest had typically. To assert a sacerdotal class on earth now between the Christian and Christ is to deny the gospel. None can wonder who believe in the glory of His person who was put to death in flesh, and made alive, or quickened, in the Spirit. His death rolled away the evil before God, and His resurrection proclaimed the victory to faith.

If any one desire a fuller discussion of these remarkable expressions and of what follows, he may find help in a small treatise entitled, “The Preaching to, the Spirits in Prison” (Weston, 53, Paternoster Row).

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Revelation

Chap. V. Divine Design. 52. the Revelation

It needs little discernment to see that the characteristic design of this book is judicial beyond every other in the N. T. Some may wonder that he who was inspired to present “the grace and truth which came through Jesus Christ” should also by the Spirit write the great book of divine judgments. But even the Gospel (ch. 5) prepares the way for it; for it reveals the Lord Jesus as the Son of God, the giver of life eternal to him who believes, but the same who as Son of man is the executor of judgment on all who disbelieve and dishonor Him. Hence He is seen as Son of man in the opening vision of chap. 1. There are exceptional words of grace, as we may observe where the saints at His name break forth into a song of praise parenthetically in the preface of the book (1 latter part of 5, and all 6); and so again in the conclusion (22:17), where the Spirit leads the bride in welcoming Him, when He proclaims Himself the bright, the morning Star.

Yet government is the predominant truth, as even in the commencing address “to the seven churches that are in Asia,” Grace to you and peace from Him that is, and that was, and that is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before His throne; and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the first-born of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. How different from the revelation we have in the Epistles! Christ's coming too, described in ver. 7, is in view of judgment on the earth, without an allusion to the Christian hope as in John 14:1, 1-3, 1 Thess. 4:16, 17, 2 Thess. 2:1, etc.

After the divine seal in ver. 8, John carefully (as the prophets were wont) gives his name, but describes himself in strict keeping with the book, not as the disciple whom Jesus loved, but as their brother and fellow-partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and patience in Christ (or, Jesus), being in Patmos for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. It was on the Lord's day, the first of the week or resurrection day, that he became in the Spirit; and he who knew so intimately the gracious tones of the Good Shepherd heard behind him a voice as of a trumpet, saying, What thou seest, write in a book and send to the seven churches, whose localities follow. A glorious vision truly, but judicial; for He walked Son-of-man-like in the midst of the golden lamps that represented the churches: the description of His clothing and person confirm it. It is not intercession nor supply from His fullness, still less cleansing their feet, but majestic scrutiny according to their standing in divine righteousness. He who erst lay on His bosom fell as dead at His feet; but the Lord laid His right hand on him, saying, Fear not: I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I became dead, and, behold, I am alive unto the ages of the ages, and have the keys of death and of hades. Write therefore the things which thou sawest, and the things which are, and what is about to take place after these things. The mystery of the stars and lamps is explained; the seven stars as angels of the seven churches, and the seven lamps as seven churches.

Chaps. 2, 3 give “the things which are,” as chap. 1 the things John saw. Briefly then, Ephesus is the church, though opposed to evil and zealous, yet declining from first love, and threatened, if not restored by repentance, with the Lord's removing the lamp out of its place (2:1-7). Smyrna suffers not from pretended apostles, but from the blasphemy or reviling of Judaizers, Satan's synagogue, and tribulation even unto death (8-11). Pergamos dwells where Satan's throne is, and holds Christ's name and faith, yet has such as hold the doctrine of Balaam and that of Nicolaitans likewise. Hence if not repentant, the Lord comes quickly to fight with them (12-17). With Thyatira is the change with the call to hear, which thenceforward follows the promise suited to the overcomers in each. And the personal coming of Christ is also presented appropriately, now that the state was characterized by the horrible yet pretentious Jezebel, though a remnant had not this doctrine (18-29). Sardis has a name of life but dead and its works not complete, and threatened, as the world is, with Christ's coming for unwelcome surprise like a thief (iii. 1-6). Philadelphia has in their weakness Christ before them in spiritual power and liberty: they kept His word and denied not His name; and in particular kept the word of His patience, that is, as He patiently waited to come, so did they for Him (7-13). Laodicea is the saddest contrast of self-complacency, indifference, and lack of self-judgment; so that they lacked all that should distinguish the Christian; and therefore the Lord was about to spue them out of His mouth (14-22).

“'The things that are” is a striking expression of these churches, and of itself suggests a protracted state. But see the wisdom of God, who would not allow any revelation inconsistent with constantly waiting for Christ as the hope. Hence their existence was a fact: but God took care to give light through their varying phases, and the Lord's estimate of all, when one looked back, and nothing was said of the future to put off the heavenly hope. For the elements were there from John's day, and any delay in fact only gave occasion to see more and more of developed display. They were seven, the known figure of spiritual completeness in good or evil. The first three do not express the future coming of the Lord as a terminus, like Thyatira and those that follow, save Laodicea which was the last; and these, though beginning successively on the protracted view, go on severally but together from the rise of each to His coming. “The things that are” last as long as there is any church-condition recognized by the Lord on earth. First, declension and threatened displacing; second, era of persecution and martyrdom by the heathen; third, worldly power, but false teaching; fourth, mediaeval popery with faithful protests; fifth, formal Protestantism; sixth, return to Christ and the heavenly hope; seventh, fatal lukewarmness rejected with disgust.

What stronger confirmation could be than that “after these things” the apostle in chap. iv. is called up by a door set open in the heaven to be shown “the things which must take place after these things,” i.e. subsequent to “the things that are” or the church-state up to its end? “And straightway I became in the Spirit” for heavenly things, as in chap. 1:10 for the Lord seen judicially dealing with the churches, the sole corporate witness for God on earth. Here again the throne, and the displayed glory of the Eternal Who sat on it he saw with a rainbow of emerald hue round about it, the emphatic pledge of covenanted mercy while He governed in providence.

But a wholly new sight is there given to meet his eyes: round about that throne twenty four thrones filled by twenty four elders, mature in the mind of Christ. These symbolize the chiefs of the royal priesthood, not the courses but their heads, clothed with Christ as their meet robes, and on their heads crowns of divine righteousness. There they sit in peace, though out of the throne proceed lightnings and voices and thunders. It was no longer the throne of grace, to which Christians on earth approach boldly to obtain mercy and find grace for seasonable help. Nor was it the millennial throne of God and of the Lamb, with river of water of life clear as crystal proceeding out of it. It was unlike either, and, between both, manifestations of God's displeasure. But the enthroned elders, who had ever seen them before? Not even Stephen, nor Paul. John, as the Christian prophet who saw in the Spirit the church-state closed on earth, saw also the overcomers in heaven thus symbolized as the chiefs of the royal priesthood, and thoroughly at home in God's presence as if they had been there always. Their translation to heaven is thus implied by those seated on the thrones associated with the central throne of God. It is not described, because it was of sovereign grace, and so not falling under the judicial ways of this book. Already had it been announced by the Lord in John 14:1-3, and details given to correct the mistakes of the Thessalonian saints in 1 Thess. 4:16, 17, and 2 Thess. 2:1-8. Cp. also 1 Cor. 15:51-53. This vision anticipatively sets before us what will be verified above when the heavenly saints are no more on earth but on high, and the earth becomes the object of God's providential judgments. Hence seven torches of fire burning before His throne, which are the seven Spirits of God: the Spirit not in His personal unity baptizing the saints into one body, but in His varied powers governmentally and in consuming power to deal with what opposed God's glory. Another remarkable proof of the great change at this time is that before the throne was a sea of glass like crystal. While here below, these elders were cleansed by the washing of water by the word. A sea “of glass” attested that there was no need of purifying more: theirs was now fixed purity. And the cherubim or living creatures are prominent in the midst of the throne or around it, the emblematic agencies (whoever may be the agents) of God's government in power, firmness, intelligence, and rapidity, endowed with swift movement, and large and inward discernment, as suited to that critical time, and seraph-like in constant celebration of the thrice holy Eternal God Almighty. But the elders worship intelligently as knowing Him, prostrate themselves and cast their crowns before His throne, owning His creative power and providence.

In chap. 5 it is plain that the sealed book is the question: who can open it? None but the Lamb so overcame to unroll its judicial announcements, in order to the reception and rule of His inheritance, now utterly alienated. Hence, when He takes it from the Sitter on the throne, from elders and living creatures now united, is “a new song” to Him who bought out the heirs with His blood from every nation and tongue. Others too are joined, made to our God a kingdom and priests to reign over the earth. This key-note struck calls forth the anticipated deliverance of all creation, “all things” following the joint-heirs. See Col. 1:20-23.

On the Seals and Trumpets one may here be brief. They each reveal a complete course of judgments on the guilty world while Christ is still on high: the first comparatively ordinary and secret, but in the order prescribed; the second loudly sounding and severe up to the moment when Christ takes His great power and reigns. Each too has a striking parenthesis between the sixth and the seventh in its respective series, wherein we are given to see that God is active in goodness, not to gather into one body Jews and Gentiles, but to prepare out of Israel and out of Gentiles distinct peoples for blessing, when the Heir of all things enters triumphantly on His inheritance. Under the later series we hear the proclamation of the coming kingdom in its wide extent in chap. 10, and in 11 the connection with Jerusalem and its temple, inner worship, but as yet a sackcloth prophetic testimony, and the public enemy beginning to be descried.

This ends in a general way what we may call the first volume of the Revelation.

The last verse of chap. 11 belongs as a sort of preface to chap. 12, the ark of God's covenant being first seen in His temple above, not yet found on earth, with even increased signs of His displeasure. But the sources of earthly change appear in heaven also, the sun-clad woman in travail, and the great red dragon in the forms of Roman power. The Son is born, but, instead of reigning now, caught up unto God and unto His throne, while she flees into the wilderness for 1260 days. But the great dragon with his angels is cast out of heaven, to the joy of the heavens and of those that dwell in them. But woe to the earth and the sea during the little while of his great wrath! Still the woman-mother, symbolizing Israel (not the bride), is preserved.

But two great vessels of his hostile energy appear on the scene to do his worst (chap. 13): the Roman Beast or empire revived, for its deadly wound was healed to the wonder and worship of all the apostate earth; and the second Beast in the land imitating Christ's power as King and Prophet, the sign-making false prophet, each greatest in the sphere of the dragon's power. For the restrainer of 2 Thess. 2:7 no longer acts: Satan is allowed his way for a short space, before judgment falls more openly.

Then in chap. 14 seven dealings of God come out in their order: 1, a special and large remnant of Jews, who follow the Lamb, seen with Him on mount Zion; 2, the everlasting gospel to every nation and tongue in view of His judgment; 3, the fall of Babylon declared; 4, as also the cup of God's wrath for any who worship the Beast; 5, the blessedness from henceforth of the dead that die in the Lord, for the tables are now turned; 6, the harvest, or discriminating judgment; and 7, the vintage of unsparing vengeance on the vine of the earth, its religious falseness and evil.

Then in chaps. 15, 16 the supplementary Bowls of God's wrath, the seven plagues the last. These are highly figurative like the Trumpets, but intense; and a parenthesis appears between the sixth and the seventh as before. Only here it consists of Satan's last efforts, with his two vassals also, to gather the kings of the whole habitable earth for the war of the great day of God the Almighty. Even here we may see an inner parenthesis of the Lord coming as thief: not as Bridegroom, for this had been after Rev. 3 and before chap. 4 for the heavenly saints, as that will be for those converted afterward, as well as for His other purposes.

Chaps. 17, 18 are devoted to the fuller description of Babylon, the great whore and the city that had kingship over the kings of the earth, the fall of which had been already announced in chaps. 14 and 16. First, we have her relations with the Beast, ruling, or hated and destroyed; then, is her fall when the Lord God judged her; and all classes on earth were her mourners, but heaven called to rejoice, as we hear the loud Hallelujah on high in the beginning of chap. 19, the last notice of the elders and the living creatures. For now the Bride prepared herself for the marriage of the Lamb; and we hear also of those that are called to the marriage-supper, the O. T. saints presumably, who with the Bride constituted the elders. Next, the heaven is seen set open; and the Faithful and True on the white horse comes to judge and war in righteousness, clothed now with a garment dipped in blood. His unmistakable name is the Word of God. And the armies in heaven followed Him on white horses clad in pure white byss, the righteousnesses of saints (not of angels). But it was not theirs to wield the sharp sword against the nations; His it is to tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty, though He with them will shepherd men with iron rod. But He alone has on His garment and on His thigh a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. And the carnage that ensues, what a supper for all the birds in mid-heaven! For if the Beast and the False Prophet were consigned alive to the lake of fire, the kings of the earth and their armies fall victims under the sharp sword. The symbols are obvious.

So it is in chap. 20 clearly: plain narrative prevails therein. The restraint of Satan is one of the marked traits of the age to come. Nothing like it has been since man was created; nor will it be again when he deceives and destroys for a little while after the thousand years' reign is over. He too will then be cast into the lake of fire. But the grand fact is that Christ reigns over the earth; He is the exalted and displayed Head over all creation, heavenly and earthly. It is the administration of the fullness of the times, He shining where all else had failed (Eph. 1:10). Prominence is given to those who had suffered unto death, not only in the first half-week, but still more in the last when the Beast rose into supremacy during Satan's great rage. Only it is an oversight to leave out that John saw thrones with sitters on them, and judgment theirs, before he saw the souls of those who were martyred raised up to join them. The sitters were changed when Christ met them in the air and took them into the Father's house, as seen from Rev. 4 and on, till they follow the Lord out of heaven as His armies for His appearing and day. Two classes of martyrs follow their translation, who now rise as we see here. They all comprise the First Resurrection, and reign with Christ a thousand years.

Some wonder at the loosing of Satan after that; but why? The coming age, though immensely different from this evil age, is a dispensation; and men would not be tried adequately without the old tempter being allowed to assail them. But though the unconverted may long yield a feigned obedience, ever so long a reign of righteousness and power, peace and blessing, will not turn them to the living and true God; but they too, as all before, listen to the Serpent for their destruction, and muster from the distant quarters of the earth against the beloved city, and the camp of the saints, who separate from the mass and congregate there, in marked contrast with the tares and the wheat in this age.

Nor is it the wicked of that age only that are consumed, but the earth and the heaven fled from His face Who next is seen, seated on a great white throne to judge the dead, the wicked now raised who had no part in the first resurrection. Having rejected Christ, they were judged each according to their works in the other books; and each was cast into the lake of fire, the second death. This was no coming of Christ, for there was no earth then to return to. It was the standing before the throne of those to be judged who had not eternal life, but earth and heaven had fled. Christ had come long before: these went before Him for their doom.

Then comes in its due order the end of all, a new heaven and a new earth, not in the inchoate sense of Isa. 65, 66 where it is applied to the renovation of Jerusalem, created a rejoicing and her people a joy, with the earth and even the animals and vegetable creation delivered. But 2 Peter 3 even and Rev. 21:1-8 go much farther, and show us the everlasting state, which is stamped by the sea existing no more, a condition incompatible with natural life on the globe. All its former inhabitants who were saved, including the righteous during the millennial reign, were now in unchangeable blessedness for the ages unto the ages. The holy city, new Jerusalem, for so the Bride is designated, retains her pristine place and beauty. The mediatorial kingdom is closed, and God is all in all. Righteousness dwells now, above and below, in perfect peace; it is no longer righteousness ruling as in the kingdom till the last enemy be destroyed. Hence, apart from the church, God's tabernacle, we have simply men and God, they His people, and Himself (like His tabernacle) with them, their God, every tear wiped away, death no more, nor grief, but all things made new absolutely. What a bright testimony to the water of life He freely gave! What an awful proof that He is not mocked in all the wicked cast into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, the solemn back-ground of the state without end!

It is plain that nothing can historically follow the vision of eternity in those eight verses. But just as there was a supplement to the series of judgments of earthly character about the corrupt city Babylon, so there is one now about the holy city, the Bride of the Lamb, during the millennium. As the city of confusion, full of idolatry, and murder of the saints, was shown in her illicit connection with the kings and the Beast, so we have now the pure and blessed place she, the heavenly bride of the Lamb, is to fill during the millennium, with the homage paid her by the kings and the nations walking by her light; for the glory of God enlightened her, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof. Those who take these verses (Rev. 21:9-27; 22:1-5) in continuity with the eight before are involved among other errors in the folly of conceiving kings and nations throughout eternity. They fail to profit by the break with which ver. 9 opens, and the plain analogy afforded with Rev. 17:1, etc. From xxi. 9 to xxii. 5 is a retrogressive vision, letting us see the relation of the heavenly to the earth, its nations, and its rulers, during the thousand years.

The rest of the last chapter (6-21) consists of both grave warning and divine cheer. Christ's coming, notwithstanding the predicted events, is declared to be soon, and the time near. Blessed those that wash their robes that they may have title to the tree of life, and through the gates enter the city: without are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the murderers, and the idolaters, and every one that loves and makes a lie. But how precious when the Lord Jesus provides for testifying these things in the churches (alas, how far from done!). Jesus presents Himself, not only as the Root and the Offspring of David, but as the bright, the morning Star. An outburst of faith is heard at the end, as we heard another suited to the beginning of the book. “And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come; and let him that heareth say Come.” It is the Spirit animating the church to welcome Christ's coming; nor only her that knows her bridal relation, but the simplest Christian: “and let him that beareth say, Come.” The rest of the verse calls on him that is athirst to come (not to say, Come); yea, he that will, to take life's water freely. This is the call to the unconverted, the gospel call. Again, after the gravest menace against adding to or taking from the words of this prophecy, He that testifies responds, Yea, I come quickly. May we by grace join the apostle John in saying, Amen: come, Lord Jesus.

All the Truth Requisite

We cannot have too clear a view of Paul's teaching union with an ascended Christ, putting us in a wholly new position. The more I go on, the more I see that the loss of this by Christendom is the secret of its state; and it is mainly that which God has recovered in a measure in these last days. But this it is makes it so important that the truth should not be discredited, by denying or in any way slighting any other part of scripture. It is curious that this was just the ruin of the Paulicians. They had nothing else but Paul's Epistles, and the Gospels; and their adversary took up this very point against them, a certain Peter Siculus.

But it is a mistake to think only Paul speaks of the new place; John does too. Nor is this all. The other parts of scripture are the word of God; and if any have not attained to Paul's doctrine, we are to walk by the same rule. Besides, the other aspects of the truth are as important in their place as that. Where that truth is held alone, there is a hardness, a want of daily dependence, which leaves the best Christian affections dormant. Further, the whole system is false. Those other parts of the New Testament were certainly available for Christians then, and, if so, for Christians now. “Holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling,” is clearly Christian ground; and wilderness life is a part of Christian life, as Canaan and conflict are.

Further, the person who makes light of John's writings makes light of the manifestation of God and of the Father, and makes his own acceptance before God the only thing of importance now. This is a very very bad state of soul, and such are clearly on low ground. We have to., maintain redemption against the Puseyite heterodoxy of making incarnation the saving work. But if we hold redemption tenaciously fast, the Bread come down from heaven must not be lost. And as to Peter, if I lose his writings, I lose the government of God and the connection of this in Christian times with O.T. times. Now the glory of God is concerned in these things; and it is a poor boast of knowledge to leave that aside, and think only of what exalts. So of Jude where it directly concerns the professing church. In no place is the Lord's personal glory as Christ brought out more fully than in Hebrews. Is that nothing for the Christian, because the unity of the body is not there too?

Even Paul's Epistles give different aspects of truth. The Epistle to the Romans does not hint at our resurrection with Christ, nor allude to Christ's ascension (save once in chap: viii. to lay the ground for intercession, which is really dropped out of their scheme). Ephesians never goes on Romans ground at all; Colossians takes up in substance both. The vaunted clearness is not sound knowledge, but rejection of many important parts of truth; and it uniformly produces self-sufficiency and hardness, not personal dependence on grace and on Christ. J.N.D.

Scripture Queries and Answers: King of Israel

Q.-2 Chron. 21:2. In this verse Jehoshaphat is called King of Israel, not King of Judah as in 2 Chron. 18:3. Why is this? Is it in praise or blame he is thus called Sing of Israel? W.R.K.

A.-It is clear that historically Jehoshaphat was King of Judah; and this was necessarily stated in the second passage and throughout the chapter where he is shown in guilty alliance with the then King of Israel. But he was a man of faith and ought to have kept clear of so compromising an association. Even after Jehovah's great intervention against the vast gathering of Moab and Ammon, Jehoshaphat joined with the wicked King of Israel, Ahaziah, and had his fleet broken, and so the joint design came to naught. Was not the name “King of Israel,” attached to Jehoshaphat to mark that he ought to have stood as de jure sovereign, while owning de facto the chastening which broke up their unity? We see how Hezekiah and Josiah (2 Chron. 30:1; 34:33; 35:3) went out in heart to fraternize with the godly in Israel. How much more had Jehoshaphat wrought for Jehovah's glory, if he had in his life kept aloof as “King of Israel,” the title given to him after death? How sad his son Jehoram's course in every point of view! The remarkable scripture in Isa. 48:1 may be compared in some respects: “Hear ye this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah,” etc.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Words Translated Altar

Q.-Ezek. 43:15. According to the margin two very different and highly significant words are translated “altar “: Harel, mount of God, and Ariel, lion of God. Is the A. V. correct? And if so, what spiritual meaning underlies those singular words? W. R. K.

A.-It may be well to notice first that the regular word for altar is neither of these terms, but Mizbeach, derived from the verb zebach, to slay, especially as a sacrifice. Hence this is the word in verses 13, 18, 22, 27. The words questioned are figurative. The former, Harel, designates the upper altar, naturally flowing from its etymology; the latter, though capable of meaning “lion of God,” rather signifies “hearth of God,” in this scripture, the whole upper surface of the altar. But “Ariel” in Isa. 29:1, as applied to Jerusalem, makes good sense as “lion of God,” though some prefer there as here “hearth of God,”

Scripture Queries and Answers: Matthew 12:31-32

Q.-Matt. 12:31, 32. Is there any difference between blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and speaking against Him? ONE.

A.-The same thing in substance is meant, the first stating its evil character with energy, the second widening its extent. It signifies imputing to Satan that power of God which the Holy Ghost exercised then and afterward; and it bespeaks deep and settled hatred of God. Souls that give themselves up to such malice against the worker of all good are beyond pardon. Forgiveness is for those who repent and believe the gospel.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Covering the Head

Q.-Is preaching the gospel of the grace of God with the head covered (1 Cor. 11:4) scriptural?

YOUNG DISCIPLE.

A.-The question of covering the head is raised in the early verses of 1 Cor. 11, because certain sisters at Corinth had forgotten or never known the due place of men and women in divine things. It is a reproof of the Christian females who were disorderly. For if in salvation and relationship to God by grace there can be no difference, there is in His service. Woman's head was to be covered, man's not. Every man praying or prophesying with aught on his head (i.e. covered) dishonors his head; as did every woman uncovered in such exercises. It is the order of power; and God will have this divinely constituted propriety in such as fear Him and know His grace. If she will not be covered, let her also be shorn, is the apostle's taunt. But this says nothing about preaching the gospel, though it is well that man should ever speak reverently and act after a comely sort even in evangelizing, instead of yielding to nature, or cultivating popularity in a worldly way. In the assembly, where God's presence is manifested and enjoyed specially, still more should flesh be disallowed. Woman were there to be silent (1 Cor. 14). For, says the apostle, it is not permitted to speak, even could they prophesy like Philip's daughters, but in their father's house it seems, and with due subjection.

Scripture Queries and Answers: 1 Corinthians 15:3-4

Q.-1 Cor. 15:3, 4. Did the apostle preach to the Corinthians, while unsaved, that Christ died for their sins? How are we to use these words? R. M.

A.-On the contrary it is evident that the apostle thus writes to the Corinthians, after they believed the gospel and were baptized. Never is language so precise applied to unbelievers. Those who so preach assume what is false: namely, that all are saved, but that it after all avails only for such as believe. But this is to trifle with both God and man. For it is absolutely true that, till they believe, all are alike sons of disobedience, and children of wrath. So the apostle classes himself with the most privileged of mankind, yet declares that “we also all once had our conversation in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and the thoughts, and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest.” All were alike dead in their offenses and their sins. But God being rich in mercy, because of His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in our offenses, quickened us together with the Christ. It is contradictory, unsound, and evil to claim for the elect that they were not dead but alive as compared with the rest of men, and that faith only manifested their previous life. The idea is only another form of the error as to life. “For by grace are ye saved—have been and are—through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is God's gift and not of works, lest any man should boast.” Grace did not need to be said “not of ourselves,” for grace means God's unmerited favor to us. But faith might be, as it has often been, argued to be of ourselves, because it is a subjective work of the Spirit in the heart. Therefore the apostle carefully declares that this thing faith, is not of us, but God's gift, that he might counteract and preclude that proneness which is in man to boast of something in himself.

We are therefore to use the words of the apostle to the Corinthians, as he wrote them, when they bore the name of the Lord. Nothing more simple or natural than that he should say that he delivered to them first, what he also had received, that Christ died for them according to the scriptures; and that He was buried; that He was raised the third day according to the scriptures; and that He appeared variously after that. But he had already stated what was meant to warn their light minds, that the gospel which he announced, which they too received and in which also they were standing, by which also they were being saved, involved their also holding fast the word he preached to them. Caution in other forms and to a similar effect he repeatedly gave them in this Epistle. It was necessary for those who were tampering with evil and danger. It is wholesome for every soul who confesses Christ, and not least for those who are impatient with such grave admonition, as if it weakened sovereign grace; whereas all flows from it and is leveled at the presumption and self-confident laxity of professing Christians.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Colossians 1:23

Q.-Col. 1:23: “the gospel, which was preached to every creature which is under heaven.” What is the meaning? Does “every creature” include North American Indians and South Sea Islanders?

P. H. D.

A.-The universality of its witness is meant in the then known world, “in all creation that is under heaven.” Compare ver. 6 for its fruit-bearing and growth, as also Mark 16:15 for the Lord's commission. The word “creation” is not that used for each individual creature, but for creation in an abstract way; and this is confirmed in Col. 1:23 by the absence of the article, so that there is no assertion of the Red Indian or of the South Sea Islander. Yet had it been proclaimed as a fact then, as Christ's bondmen had gone forth and preached everywhere in all the world as then known. So Mark 16:20 testifies.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Hebrews 9:12

Q.-Heb. 9:12. Can it be that this warrants, as I have heard it said, that Christ's blood is literally presented in heaven, and would be seen by us when with Him in glory? F.C.G.

A.-The notion, utterly baseless and revolting, shows the danger of speculation by going beyond the N.T. and literalizing the O.T. shadow. It should be met with, not discussion but rebuke.

Short Introduction to Paul's Epistles, 1/- & 1/6
TITUS & PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth,... 2/-
THE REVELATION 2/-.

PRIESTHOOD, ITS PRIVILEGES AND DUTIES, cloth... 1/6

THE DAY OF ATONEMENT, a New Edition 2/-.

P.E.R. Heterodox on Life Eternal, other Divine Truths, and above all Christ's Person,paper, 10d., limp cloth, 1/-.
F.E.R. Heterodox on Christ's Person...

LIFE ETERNAL, 2d.

One Body and One Spirit, revised

THE LORD'S PRAYER, a New Edition, 3d.
THE FEASTS OF JEHOVAH, a New Edition, 6d.
THE BOOK OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH, Svo. cloth, 7/6
AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, Svo. cloth, 7/6
THE PREACHING TO THE SPIRITS IN PRISON... 1/6 and 2/-.
EzEiciEL's LAST PARABLE, by Mrs. Bevan, cloth, 2/6.

Lectures on Matthew, lately reproduced, were consumed by a fire at the printer's; and no new edition is just now contemplated.

Published

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

... 2d.

Jacob: 13. Succoth and Shechem

GOD was faithful to Jacob, but not yet Jacob to God, Who still kept up reserve, and could not yet reveal His name as He did to Abraham and Isaac, and would in due time to Jacob (35:11). There was not the self-judgment that made the way for it. Hence with all his obsequiousness to his brother there was not even candor, and still less faith in activity.

“And Esau returned that day on his way to Seir. And Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and built him a house, and for his cattle he made booths. Therefore the name of the place was called Succoth (Booths). And Jacob came [in] peace [to the] city Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Padan-Aram, and encamped before the city. And he bought an allotment of the field where he had spread his tent, at the hands of Hamor's sons, father of Shechem, for a hundred kesitahs (lambs). And he set up there an altar, and called it El-Elohe-Israel” (vers. 16-20).

Esau returned the same day to his own place, the scene hostile to Israel, and hateful to God, all the more because of the near relationship which drew down His deepening abhorrence. For vengeance belongs to Jehovah who will not permit unauthorized and guilty man to take it in hand. Jacob evasively journeys to Succoth, which should be marked east of the Jordan, though there was a place so named west of that river, as elsewhere too (Ex. 12:37, Num. 33:5, 6). But the Succoth of Jacob's dwelling was the place given to the Gadites (Josh. 13:27) and made memorable by the princes who refused bread to Gideon and his three hundred, and were threshed for their baseness with the thorns of the wilderness and briers.

There Jacob built him a house, as he made booths for his cattle which gave occasion to the name of the spot. But the serious indication of the patriarch's state was the building of a house for himself in manifest departure from the pilgrim practice of his fathers, and indeed his own, as is described in Heb. 11:9, “By faith he (Abraham) became a sojourner in the land of promise [which gave it special emphasis] not as his own, having dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the joint-heirs of the same promise.” It is incorrect to say with Matthew Henry that Jacob “was glad of booths,” as contrasted with his descendants in houses of stone. The very point of God's word here is that he “built him a house,” whereas his fathers dwelt in tents even in the land of promise. It was marked indifference and declension in this respect; and the more because Jacob was only on his way to the land. It was yielding like other men to the desire for the ease and convenience of a more settled and convenient abode.

At length however a movement was made. “And Jacob came in peace to the city Shechem which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Padan-Aram, and encamped before the city. And he bought an allotment of the field, where he had spread his tent, at the hand of Hamor's sons, father of Shechem, for a hundred kesitahs (lambs)."

It is hardly needful to justify “in peace” from “to Shalem” as in the A. V. following the Sept., Syr., Pesch. and Vulgate, nor from the “safe and sound” of the Targum of Onkelos and the Rabbis, with most Germans, in the desire to exalt Jacob, and pretend that his halting passed quite away contrary to any simple impression conveyed by the end of Gen. 32. There is indeed a seeming confirmation of the first sense in the fact of a place still called Salim between Shechem and the Jordan. But this is a mere coincidence, though it weighed with Jerome and Epiphanius. For “in peace” is in contrast with his perturbation of mind through dread of Esau between Peniel and Succoth, which is surely pertinent to the purpose. Yet as he failed in Succoth, so did he yet more in Shechem, which had a pointed claim on him beyond Shalem; for there it was that the father of the faithful had his first manifestation of Jehovah in Canaan, and the promise to give that land to his seed; and there he built an altar to Jehovah that appeared to him. “And he bought an allotment of the field where he had spread his tent, at the hand of Hamor's sons, father of Shechem, for a hundred kesitahs.” How different from him who had none inheritance given him in the land, no, not to set his foot on, save what he bought to lay his dead in at a later day! Jacob thus departed more and more from the position of a sojourner.

But did not Jacob redeem his character as saint by his subsequent act? Not quite as yet. “And he set up an altar there and called it El-Elohe-Israel.” In setting up an altar, where he first spread his tent in the promised land, he was undoubtedly right. He had not raised, nor could he properly raise one, outside the land of God's gift. But he also made evident his falling short of God's mind by the name he gave it. “God, the God of Israel” (ver. 20) did not rise up to the due patriarchal title of relationship; it was not promise, but his own measure of experience. It was short of Bethel; and Jacob must go through more and more humbling experience, and God must dislodge him from settling on the field he had purchased from the Hivite, to bring him to the place of his vow, where he would make an altar to God that appeared to him when he fled from the face of his brother. Not even yet were the strange gods that defiled his household put away. How could there be true communion till then? Yet there was unfailing, patient, and tender mercy. But only there and thus could he enjoy the portion of God as He then revealed Himself. How blessed and holy are His ways!

Israel Holy to Jehovah: 6. Israel's Practical Righteousness

Our chapter begins a varied application of the law to Israel, both Godward and manward. This was divine wisdom. It was excellent to have His will as to the earthly people as a whole summary; not less valuable was it for them to have its several parts in suitable connection. There is no vain repetition anywhere, though those who count themselves able to sit in judgment of His word are necessarily incapable of entering into the truth. For man only learns it through his need and in a spirit of faith, dependence, and obedience. Indeed it would deny God and His majesty if it could be in any other way.

“1 And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying, 2 Speak to all the assembly of the children of Israel, and say to them, Ye shall be holy, for I Jehovah your God [am] holy. 3 Ye shall reverence every man his mother, and his father, and ye shall keep my sabbaths: I [am] Jehovah your God. 4 Ye shall not turn to idols, and ye shall not make to yourselves molten gods: I [am] Jehovah your God. 5 And if ye offer a sacrifice of peace-offerings to Jehovah, ye shall offer it for your acceptance. 6 It shall be eaten on the day when ye sacrifice it, and on the morrow; and that which remaineth to the third day shall be burned with fire. 7 And if it be eaten at all on the third day, it is an unclean thing, (an abomination,) it shall not be accepted. 8 And he that eateth it shall bear his iniquity, for he hath profaned the holy thing of Jehovah; and that soul shall be cut off from among his peoples. 9 And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field; and the gleaning of thy harvest thou shalt not gather. 10 And thy vineyard shalt thou not glean, neither shalt thou gather the scattered grapes of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and the stranger: I [am] Jehovah your God. 11 Υe shall not steal, and ye shall not deal falsely, and ye shall not lie one to another. 12 And ye shall not swear by my name falsely and profane the name of thy God; I [am] Jehovah. 13 Thou shalt not oppress thy neighbor, nor rob him. The wages of the hired servant shall not abide with thee all night until the morning” (vers. 1-13).

It is not the abominable and evil against which they were warned, but the good inculcated because of their relation to Jehovah: what they should do, rather than what they should not, though this continues here and there to have its place still. So the chapter begins with a word and principle applied by the apostle Peter to the Christian Jews he addressed, as it is far more deeply true in Christianity; “be ye holy, for I am holy.” As woman so largely figured through the corrupt lusts of fallen nature in the chapter before, and even to unnatural vileness, it is striking that here we begin with, “Ye shall reverence every man his mother, and his father, and my sabbaths ye shall keep: I am Jehovah your God.” The mother has the first place in singular contrast with the slight of woman and the pride of man characteristic of the Talmud and modern Judaism. Of course the father is in no way forgotten, and if remembered would have his place of just authority. It is worthy of note that Jehovah adds here, “and my sabbaths shall ye keep.” The sabbath was not a moral duty, but of divine authority; and hence of all moment as a question of relationship with Jehovah and therefore the sign of His people Israel. If we as Christians own the Lord's day, Israel will truly honor the sabbath in the age to come when Jehovah reigns. How pithily contempt is poured on “molten gods” in ver. 4.

Peace-offerings are next guarded; for man there had a large place, and danger was nigh. It is well when holiness guards our joy; but it is evanescent. Hence it could not be eaten on the third day without iniquity, and profanation (5-8). Man's eating must be kept near the offering to God.

Jehovah would also train His people in gracious feeling. If He would bless their harvest and their vintage, He inculcates kindness to the needy, and instructs them to leave a margin of their good crop, and the scattered or fallen grapes, for the poor and the stranger. Such had once been their own lot in the land of Egypt; but the ground. is Himself, Jehovah their God (9, 10).

Dishonesty and untruthfulness He prohibits, especially with the profanation of His name; and He denounces oppression of one's neighbor, were it but in delaying for a single night to pay what was due to a poor laborer. Wealthy Jews were guilty in this way: is it confined to men of Israel? Vers. 11-13 are of great weight.

Proverbs 17:15-21

There is an evil still worse than the selfish love of contradiction or contest, bad as this is in itself and its consequences. Unrighteousness is ungodly.

“He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the righteous, even they both are abomination to Jehovah,

Wherefore [is there] a price in the hand of a fool to get wisdom, seeing [he is] void of sense (or, hath no heart)?

The friend loveth at all times and is a brother born for adversity.

A man void of sense striketh hands, becoming surety for his friend.

He loveth transgression that loveth a quarrel: he that raiseth high his gate seeketh destruction.

He that hath a perverse heart findeth no good; and he that shifteth about with his tongue falleth into evil.

He that begetteth a fool [doeth it] to his sorrow; and the father of a vile [man] hath no joy” (vers. 15-21).

On either side the guilt described in ver. 15 is grievous in Jehovah's eyes. Not only is it sympathy with evil men and heartlessness as to the righteous, but direct antagonism to every principle of divine government. For men are put to the test in this life by the concrete facts of the wicked man here and the righteous there. To judge only in the abstract is to deceive oneself, injure others, and be an abomination to Jehovah on both sides.

Jehovah is a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy, even when man is under law. Thus He does not fail to put purchase-money in a fool's hand. How kind to the unthankful and the indifferent, the infatuated and evil! To what purpose is it but that such may acquire wisdom? Seeing he is devoid of sense draws out his pity. What folly to frustrate all goodness by slighting Him who alone is good, and trusting the old serpent, the evil one!

Fine is the description of the friend and precious just as far as it is realized. He loves at all times: sad the blank of not having one uncapricious and constant, whatever the changes of this passing scene, nearer still of a brother born for adversity, where the strain is greatest! None fills up the sketch to perfection but our Lord Jesus, Who indeed in His infiniteness went beyond what lips can utter or heart conceive.

Man's capacity and resources are so limited, and the changes of human life so frequent and fast, that it would be hard to name a more dangerous error than a rash pledge or suretyship. Grace no doubt is free to lose indefinitely for another, but not thereby to dishonor the Lord by one's own debt, or to injure others whether one's family or strangers. This were indeed to play the part of a senseless man, not of a brother born for adversity.

How blind men are to their own spirit that love a quarrel under the plea of faithfulness to truth, right, or custom! He loves transgression that loves a quarrel, says the word. It betrays itself in little and outward things, and stops not of ending in the ditch. Near akin to it is the aspiring spirit which seeks self-exaltation, or, as is here the figure, raiseth high his gate. In God's sight it is to seek destruction. So was the angel that, inflated with pride, fell, and became the Devil.

Again, it is the just lot of him who has a perverse heart, so that, as he looks for evil, he finds no good; and he whose tongue shifts about in like perversity is doomed to fall into real evil. God is not mocked by bad thoughts or words; and he that indulges in either will surely have to eat the bitter fruit of his own ways.

Solomon had not to look beyond his father's house or his own in order to prove the truth of ver. 21. Jehovah took pleasure in the families of His people. So we read in a well-known Song of degrees, “Lo, children are an inheritance from Jehovah, the fruit of the womb a reward. As arrows in a mighty man's hand, so are the children of youth. Happy the man that hath his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed, when they speak with their enemies in the gate.” Yet did David taste of bitter sorrow when he set his heart overmuch on them. What irony in the issue of him whom he called “Father of peace,” who rose up as a vain and unscrupulous pretender against himself and to his own destruction? Nor was he by any means the only one that yielded a crop of sin and shame and blood. Yes, “he that begetteth a fool doeth it to his sorrow: and the father of a vile man hath no joy.” Whether the father of such a one be prince or pauper makes little difference, save that the eminence of degree makes the grief more conspicuous and perhaps more poignant. Only he who is begotten of God has life everlasting.

Gospel Words: Fruits

The disciple is here cautioned. It is not only against trusting himself, that he may be dependent on his Father, and earnest in prayer that looks for an answer of grace. He has to pass through a scene haunted by the subtle emissaries of the unseen enemy; and the greater their pretension, the more are they to be shunned. The Lord would not have His own deceived and led astray.

“But beware of false prophets, which come unto you in sheep's clothing but within are ravening wolves. By their fruits ye shall them recognize. Do they gather from thorns a grape bunch or from thistles figs? So every good tree produceth good fruits, but the worthless tree produceth bad fruits. A good tree cannot produce bad fruits, nor a worthless tree produce good fruits. Every tree that produceth not good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire. Therefore at least by their fruits ye shall recognize them well”

Every reader of the O. T. may learn the destructive part by the false prophets who followed like a dark shadow the holy men whom the Holy Spirit inspired, and took up popular cries to oppose the warnings of God as evil became more rampant. There is no less danger now, as Peter particularly insists under the gospel; not to say that there is so much the more when good men pretend not to inspiration and are no longer invested with miraculous vouchers, but press only the word. in the Spirit. And so it will be again for the godly remnant in the last days when, the heavenly ones being caught up, it becomes a question of that land and people.

But the Lord's warning is of living value now also, as we hear in the worst and deceptive form (1 John 2:18-23; 4:1-6 John 7-11). What believer does not know of the boldest antagonism to the truth? What Christian has not tasted bitter grief in seeing saints of God deluded by the sheerest clap-trap? Yea, even conniving, for alleged peace, unity, or testimony, at the denial of Christ's Person?

They who love Christ do well to beware of false prophets, who are such as come unto them in the garb of sheep, but within are ravening wolves. They may cultivate sanctimoniousness and pretend to devotion, but are under the dominion of a mightier foe than themselves, and filled with the keenest zeal to deprive the Christian of a true Christ, of life eternal possessed, of present standing as God's righteousness in Christ, of association with Him in and for heavenly glory. Are not such truly ravening wolves? What remains, if the disciple lose all the treasure distinctive of Christianity?

“By their fruits ye shall recognize them.” Do they exalt Him who humbled Himself? Do they confess His incomprehensible being, God and man in one Person? Do they proclaim His grace and truth? Do they follow Christ in absolute subjection to scripture? Do they own it, as the invaluable standard, and the sure communication, of God's mind by His Spirit? Is the believer established? Is the sinner won and delivered? Or are minds filled with ideas which but inflate the spirit, inspire self-complacency, and end in death? For these are practical effects which test what men teach, and which are legible enough to simple souls little versed in scriptural truth, and still less in human subtleties. And thus the Lord safeguards the sheep in various ways.

There is another class of false prophets who more openly contradict the Lord, count scripture obsolete, or deny that it was ever more than Hebrew sages moralizing or romancing according to their genius. Hence they dare to say that the wide gate is all right, and the broad way safe; that the few are only sour, proud, and narrow, and that the many cannot but be welcome to the universal Father, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord, too good to be severe to His erring children. Here again for all who receive scripture as the expression of divine revelation and authority there is no lack of evidence for any one to recognize these false prophets from their fruits. For their love of the world, or indulgence of the flesh, is as plain as their apology for sin, slight of the Savior, and ignorance of the true God.

Good fruits are produced by neither the religious misbeliever or the profane unbeliever. How could it be? Do people gather a bunch of grapes from thorns or figs from thistles? Those who utter false oracles are trees which the Father never planted. It is the worthless tree producing bad fruits: whereas every good tree produces good fruits. Christ is the true vine; and they only who abide in Him are branches that bear good fruit.

O then, sinner, renounce yourself, and heed none who point to another than Christ. Were He not set forth openly, and did He not welcome you in perfect grace, your lot would be dismal indeed. But He Himself declares, “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all unto myself” (John 12:32). On earth He, the Messiah, was not sent save to the lost sheep of Israel, though he and she who by grace discerned a higher glory were blessed according to their faith. But lifted up on the cross He is seen as the Son of man come to seek and save the lost, whoever and whatever they might be. He is the attractive center to draw all, however dark or distant, who own Him as Savior and themselves as guilty and ruined sinners. For on the cross He through death annulled him that has the might of death; on the cross He bore the judgment of sin and effected propitiation; on the cross His blood was shed that brings the defiled one perfectly cleansed nigh to God. O sinner, no longer hold out against a work thus provided and commended to you just as you are. Christ is the true God, and eternal life; and it is written, that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life in His name.

Made a true and living branch of the Vine, you will bear the good fruits of that only good tree. Be humbled, but not in despair, if through allowance of flesh you bear unworthily. For you have still the flesh in you, but no excuse to let it out. For if you are Christ's, you died to sin, not to sins merely, but to that source of lust and will, the flesh; and such is the virtue of His death to law too, that even if a Jew you were made dead to that old husband and free to belong to Another, Who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit to God. The Holy Spirit directs your eye and heart to Christ; and He, as He produces nothing but good fruit, never fails him that looks to Himself. He is the way, the only way of life and holiness; and if you live by faith, it is now yours to say, “not I, but Christ that liveth in me.” Then and then only, can you produce good fruits; as surely as “every tree that produceth not good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire.”

Be not deceived then. Look to Christ believingly; and all will be well with your soul now, and evermore. Therefore at least by their fruits ye shall know those that uphold the ways of the Lord, and those that pervert.

Lord's Prophecy on Olivet in Matthew 24-25: 4. The Christian Profession

Now this is characteristic of the Christian: The Israelite did not separate from the world of which he was head. The Christian goes forth to meet Christ, who is gone to heaven. If he had been a Jew, he leaves his ancient association and hopes behind. Again, if the greatest grandee in the Gentile World, or if of the poorest condition, he alike abandons his old obscurity or his old grandeur. He willingly forgets all that is of the world. He is called out of every snare which can arrest or fascinate the heart of man. He has got a new and all-absorbing object in Christ; and Christ in heavenly joy and blessedness. It is not the Judge coming to deal with the wicked. If the Christian goes forth to meet the Bridegroom, does such a parable fitly bring an image of terror? Well he knows that the same Jesus who is the Bridegroom will be the Judge; he knows well that Jesus will put down all those who oppose Him; but He is not the Judge and the Bridegroom to the same persons, any more than both will be at the same precise time. Where would be the sense of such confusion? The Lord purposely brings in the bright figure of the Bridegroom to Christians who are waiting for Him.

But there are other elements of moment. Here are persons true or false. They are not presented as one object: consequently the idea of the bride is not the expressed aim. When we talk about Christians, real or professing, we do not fix our mind on unity; we think of individuals who go forth. He was about to show profession, and so introduces foolish as well as wise virgins. It is Christ looking at Christians professing the Lord truly or falsely, not as the bride of Christ. The Christians are here characterized by quitting every object on earth to meet the Bridegroom. Even the Jew, attached as he was to the old religion (and they had a religion which could boast an antiquity before which all others grow pale), when become a Christian, leaves all to go forth unto Him with joy, as we read in Heb. 13:13, “bearing His reproach.”

Here you have the same great principle. As the Christian, even though once a Jew, was called to leave all the old things behind, so the Virgins went forth to meet the Bridegroom. Five of them were wise, and five foolish. Those who were foolish took their lamps but no oil with them; but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.

Is it true that the Jewish remnant at the end of the age could have oil in their vessels? They will never have such an unction till the Lord Jesus comes and sheds the Spirit on them. For it is well known that oil symbolically means the power of the Holy Ghost. It is not merely the washing by the Spirit, however vital; for beyond doubt the Jewish remnant will have this. They will be really cleansed by the word in the heart. The Jewish disciples found at the end of the age do not receive the outpouring of the Spirit till the Lord appears; they wait for that day. It is only when the kingdom comes that the power of the Holy Spirit will be for them. They will when converted welcome Him in their heart, saying, Blessed be He that cometh in Jehovah's name. They will go through a serious inward process next; as we are told, when they see the Lord Jesus, they mourn as for an only child. They have a fountain opened in Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness; but the power of the Holy Ghost will be given only after they have seen the Lord. There is this difference with the Christian, who receives the oil or unction from the Holy One while the Lord is unseen and on high. The Jewish remnant will only receive it when the Lord comes back.

Again, there is at no time in their case, what we see in these Virgins, a class that went forth to meet the Bridegroom. The Jewish disciples will not disappear from Jerusalem until the idol is set up and the tribulation is at hand. Then they flee from the enemy's power and its consequences from God. It is a flight from the sore scourge in retribution and judgment for the people's iniquity. It is no going forth to meet the Bridegroom in joyful hope.

The Christian has another course and hope altogether. Whether it be light or dark, the Christian goes forth to meet the Bridegroom. What is the original hope of the Christian? It is our object and calling revealed in and from heaven. That object is Christ, the blessed One whose grace has been proved, and whose coming one awaits: hence one goes forth to meet the Bridegroom. Not so the Jewish remnant; they expect to see the Lord coming to deliver them by the putting down of their enemies. As Christ ascended, so the Christian waits to be caught up out of the world; the Jewish saint waits for the Lord to come judicially into the world. It is a totally different kind of expectation. The parable speaks solely of the Christian, and in no way refers to the Jewish remnant.

We shall see other proofs of this. It is said that the wise took oil in their vessels: the foolish took no oil. This meets another error. It has been supposed that the foolish virgins mean Christians who are not pre-millenarians. This gives a very undue value to correct notions of prophecy. Granted entirely that those who look for the Lord to come before that reign are right in their judgment. Those who put the millennium before the Lord's coming are mistaken. But how can one sympathize with those who put a slight upon such Christians as have not been taught as you and I? These are self-flattering delusions, and are empty manifestations that bear the brand of sect or school written on them. The best blessings we have are those which God confers on His children, on the body of Christ, in other words on all those in whom the Holy Ghost dwells, who rest on Christ and redemption. These are the persons spoken of here. The Holy Ghost is a divine spring for sustaining testimony, as well as a divine power of understanding the word of God, and for communion with the Father and the Son.

The foolish virgins never had oil in their vessels. Some ask how they can have had their torches burning. The answer is easy. They could light the torch: there is no mystery about that. The foolish virgins were not real Christians. The weakest Christian as well as the strongest has the oil. The, apostle John so tells not the fathers, nor the young men, but the babes, the little children. He tells the feeblest they have an unction from the Holy One. For those who had no oil could not be Christians, in any real, full, or divine sense of the name. Hence a deeper evil is in question than denying the millennium to be after Christ's second coming or before it. The heart was a stranger to the Lord's grace: a thing more momentous than right notions about the word of prophecy.

If you have Christ, if you know the blood of sprinkling, if you rest on a crucified and risen Savior, you surely have the oil in your vessels. You are not one of the foolish virgins. Their folly consisted in a want very much deeper than in a right or wrong prophetic scheme. The foolish lived a life of religious levity, not of necessity hypocrisy but of self-deception, ignoring God and His grace; and, consequently, not having the Spirit of Christ, they were none of His. The foolish virgins have not the Holy Spirit dwelling in them; so the Lord means and deals with them.

We often think of the early Christians with their great advantages; we see that, many of the scriptures applying to them fully, we can only get the principle of them. But your attention is called here to the fact that there are other scriptures which apply more emphatically to us now. There is thus what one may call a divine compensation. We can only take the general spirit of what was said to the Corinthians. For instance, they had tongues and other miraculous powers among them. It is plain that we have not; and only a few enthusiasts pretend to have them. Alas! wherever there are pretensions to such gifts, their falsity is soon found out.

The fact is that God, for the wisest reasons, has not been pleased to continue these miraculous powers. The present condition of the church would make it to be a moral impossibility that God should at present bestow these miraculous virtues. For if the Lord were to restore them now, one might ask, Where? Most people would begin with themselves. Were the Lord to confer these powers upon the various sects of Christendom, it would be putting His seal upon what His word says is wrong as if all were right. How could He thus contradict Himself? How could He thus sanction the broken fragments of His house or put honor upon its fallen condition?.Without this we are ready to be self-satisfied; we are too prone to think more highly of ourselves than we ought: and the Lord will not help us to be more so.

But He has left what is infinitely better; He continues everything due to Christ and good for the soul in every true want. He has taken away nothing needful for edification. He still gives peace and joy in believing. Now as of old He put this inward power in the church; but He marked it of old with a brilliant signature before the world. Those who look for the restoration of these powers are not alive to what befits our fallen condition. It is morally most important for the Christian to know what the church was at first and what it is now, grieving before God at the difference. What sympathy ought there to be with the Christian who is not a mourner because of the state of the church? It is well to have joy in the Lord; but we should be humbled about ourselves and the church. Ought we not for the Lord's sake to feel deeply this condition of ruin?

In the parable, you will observe, the Lord marks the failure from the original calling. “While the bridegroom tarried, they all nodded and went asleep.” What a state of departure, from forgetfulness of the Lord's return! It was a general and total insensibility to the hope. When sleepy, they haply turned in here or there to take repose. It was no longer true that they went forth to meet the Bridegroom. The wise who had the oil slept like the foolish who had none.

But now mark another thing. It is midnight, and there was a cry made, “Behold the bridegroom; go forth to meet him.” Has this been fulfilled? In measure this, or rather it is being fulfilled now. It is a cry made by divine grace. No sign appeared, no outward warning, no seeing of a prophecy accomplished, as for the Jewish remnant in chap 24. In us God works invisibly by His word and Spirit. The Lord is interposing to break the long slumbering condition of Christendom, and this not only for the wise, but for the foolish.

Have there not been times when men were impressed with the fear that judgment-day was coming, when they yielded to sore panic at the cry that “the end of the world” was at hand? In the year 600 they were sure it would be then. But time passed on, and the end of the world did not come. They slumbered again. Then, in the year 1000 (surely 1000 was the fatal number!), there was yet greater alarm all over western Christendom; and the clergy took advantage of this, and got the barons and people to give their gold and their silver, lands and possessions, to build grand cathedrals and religious houses some of which, as is well-known, exist to the present day. This fear passed away, and the end of the world did not come. Then followed a long slumber indeed.

Further there have been partial awakenings at various times since, but they were of the same character. At the period of the great rebellion, when the Puritans got into power in England, there was a momentary shaking in this country; and bold men rose up, who tried to establish the Fifth Monarchy, or present power in the world in the name of the Lord Jesus. Movements such as this took place at various epochs; but where was the going forth to meet the Bridegroom? There was not even a resemblance to it.

In past ages then there was alarm, sometimes to the utmost degree; and this state is represented in the well known medieval hymn or dirge, “Dies Irae,” the extreme expression of Catholic terror. Such was the feeling of the middle ages. Since then in later times, Protestant fanatics tried to get power into their hands. But this means seizing the earth at the present, not quitting all to meet Christ.

The momentous fact is that two spiritual characteristics, very distinct from ancient or medieval or modern views, mark off truth from error as to this. Are we not to be humbled because of the evil that has been done in Christendom? And are we not practically to take our stand on what was the Lord's will from the first? If the Lord at the outset called all Christians to go out to meet Him, they should ever cherish this as their calling and joy of heart. The consequence of a revival of the Christian hope of meeting the Lord is resumption of the original position, that of going forth to meet the Bridegroom. How could believers honestly continue in what they mow to be false and unscriptural if they look for the Lord to come back any day? Thus the practical effect is immediate and immense where heart and conscience are true to Him.

Awe-stricken come the foolish virgins to the wise, saying, “Give us of your oil;” but this is beyond the Christian, and the wise bid them “Go, buy oil for yourselves.” There is One who sells, but freely, without money and without price: to buy even from an apostle is fatal. The cry was given to revive the hope, as it had the effect also of recalling to the original and only right attitude of the saints toward Christ. It was enough to sever the wise as alone ready to act accordingly. It was too late for the foolish: who could give what they wanted?

What is the meaning of all the recent agitation? People zealous for religious forms, who know not really of Christianity. It is the foolish virgins in quest of the oil, leaving no stone unturned to get what they have not, the one thing needful—taking every way except the right way. There is only one means of procuring the oil: solely can it be through Christ Himself, without money and without price. I remember the time when men bearing the name of the Lord's ministers spent their time in fishing, hunting, shooting, and dancing. Clergymen joined in worldly pleasures without shame. You rarely hear of such things now: the Oxford delusion has altered the form. The same sort of men now-a-days look very demure: they are in general busy everywhere about religion. Do you believe they are any better than the men who used to hunt and dance? They have a zeal; but is it according to knowledge? Is it Christ, or is it not what they call the church without Him? Form deceives most.

All the fashionable ecclesiastical millinery or machinery, does it change people's state or suppose real renewal? The decking of ecclesiastical buildings, the fantastical costumes of clergymen, the modern taste for church music, processions, and stations, simply show that the foolish virgins are at work. They are not in a fit state to meet the Lord, and fear it themselves. They are troubled with the rumor of they know not what. The consequence, then, of this midnight cry is that a double activity is going on. For the Lord is awakening those who know Himself, and are wise by His grace, to go forth to meet the Bridegroom. The others, if indirectly, are none the less powerfully but in their own way affected by the cry and its effects, which rise not above nature and the earth.

Utterly ignorant of the grace of God, they are trying to make up by what is called “earnestness.” They know not that they are far from God, yea, dead in trespasses and sins: their superstitious trust in baptismal regeneration blinds them. So they think, or hope, that being “earnest” they may somehow or other get right at last. What delusion can be more hopeless? If you ask them whether their sins are blotted out, and they are saved by grace, they count it presumption. They are as ignorant of the true power and privilege of redemption as the heathen or the Jew. They have no Spirit-taught certainty that the Son of man came down to save the lost. If there be such a thing as a present salvation, their occupation is evidently gone. Neither grace nor truth admits of all this religious self-importance, bustle, and vain show. As sinners, we need a Savior, and a divine salvation; as saints, let us seek a calm but complete devotedness to the name, word, and work of the Lord Jesus. But man prefers his own works; and to win the world he finds that scenic representations of Christian facts or forms act most on the masses, and attract the light, sentimental, despairing, and even profane. Individuals in the midst of such histrionic religion may seek with a certain measure of the gospel to win souls; yet they subject Christ Himself to the church. But the movement as a whole is just the activity of the foolish virgins, who have not the oil and in vain try to get it as best they can.

At length the Bridegroom comes, and “they that were ready went in to the marriage; and the door was shut.”

Afterward come the foolish virgins. Now they cry, but it is with horror and despair. Their religious energy is at length seen to be of the old man. In an agony they cry, “Lord, Lord, open to us.” But the Lord of peace, the Giver of life and glory, has only to tell them, “I know you not.” Do not fancy that this is said to faulty believers. It is said of the foolish virgins who had no oil; of those who bore the name of the Lord, but had not the Spirit of Christ. Of and to them it was declared that the Lord knew them not. “Watch, therefore,” says He, “for ye know neither the day nor the hour.”

There is no authority for what follows (“wherein the Son of man cometh”). You have heard the names of Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann,. and Tischendorf; of Dean Alford, Dr. Scrivener, Drs. Tregelles, Westcott and Hort in this country. It is no peculiar thought in the least; for all biblical critics worthy of the name agree in this omission as required by the best authorities. Copyists added the clause from chap. 24:42 and bring in the sense of the coming Judge. But this is quite incongruous with what He here urges, which is the delight of meeting, yea, the going forth to meet Him, the Bridegroom. Man as such, must be judged; all the guilty tribes mourn before the Son of man. But the calling and hope of the Christian is fraught with other and joyous expectations: and this, spite of their unfaithfulness during the night whilst He tarried, for all slumbered and slept.

The middle parable is a similitude of the kingdom of the heavens. There only is found an historic or dispensational view of the state of things among those professedly Christ's on earth while He is on high. There accordingly the constant expectation of those who took the place of entering into the interests of His love is treated, with the issue at the end for such as were “foolish” and had no share in the unction of the Spirit; for this alone could enable any to be “ready” for going in with Christ to the marriage. The “then” of the comparison (Matt. 25:1), when judgment is executed on the evil servant of chap. 24, carries us up to the foolish virgins shut out and disowned by Him as known to Him a complete disproof of the strange notion that they could be saints. Indeed the theory, if it deserves such a name, that any member of Christ's body will be left behind when He comes to receive His own to Himself and translate them to the Father's house, is not only baseless as opposed to the clearest testimony of scripture, but quite unworthy of a spiritual mind. Think of Christ's body without an ear or an eye, a finger or a toe! The bride of the Lamb mutilated and deformed in glory!

But even worse is that extreme form of the speculation, which supposes persons possessed of eternal life, the knowledge of and communion with the Father and the Son, yet condemned to be tormented in the flame of Hades during the thousand years' reign of Christ and the glorified saints. And why? Because they were not immersed as professing believers in the water of baptism, and were not intelligent enough to accept premillennialism! For who does not know that there are thousands of saints, neither premillennials nor immersed, yet far more intelligent, devoted, and spiritual than multitudes of such Anabaptists even if they fully accept premillennialism? No, “they that are Christ's at His coming,” not some who plume themselves on this or that external mark or of truth quite subordinate to what they have or love, will be raised to share the kingdom when He reigns and be with Him before the kingdom and during it and after it, having His presence and love in a glory deeper and higher. The scheme that denies this revealed certainty as in John 17:24, Rom. 5:17, 1 Thess. 4:17 (last clause), and Rev. 22:5, is not only anti-scriptural but repulsive, yea destructive of all sound judgment and of the best affections.

In the third parable (of the Talents) it is not the collective responsibility so strikingly depicted in the first, nor the heavenly hope separating from other objects and attaching to the Bridegroom's coming, but a kind of pendant on it. “For [it is] as [if] a man going abroad called his own bondmen and delivered to them his goods. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his several ability, and went his way. Straightway he that received the five talents proceeded, and traded with them, and made other five talents. Likewise also he [that received] the two, and he gained other two. But he that received the one went off and dug in the earth and hid the money of his lord. After a long time the lord of those bondmen cometh and settleth account with them. And he that received the five talents came forward and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst to me five talents: behold, I gained five other talents [besides them]. His lord said to him, Well, good and faithful bondman, thou wast faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many: enter into the joy of thy lord. And he also that [received] the two talents said, Lord, two talents thou deliveredst to me: behold, I gained other two talents. His lord said to him, Well, good and faithful bondman, thou wast faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many: enter into the joy of thy lord. And he also that had received the one talent came forward and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou didst not sow, and gathering whence thou didst not scatter; and being afraid I went off and hid thy talent in the earth; behold, thou hast that which is thine. But his lord answering said to him, Wicked and slothful bondman, thou knowest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather whence I scattered not. Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the bankers, and at my coming I should have got mine own with interest. Take away therefore the talent from him, and give [it] to him that hath the ten talents. For to every one that hath shall be given and he shall be in abundance, but from him that hath not, even what he hath shall be taken away [from him]. And cast out the useless bondman into the outer darkness: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth” (vers. 14-30).

Here it is the Lord working by diversity of gifts; and as He is sovereign, so confidence in Him is what severs the “good and faithful” bondmen from the wicked and slothful one, as it was in Matt. 24 a question of prudent or wise fidelity. Zeal according to that confidence was followed by blessing and fruit. Here we have marked variety, and individual responsibility in faith, in contrast with unbelief and blindness to grace. When we know Christ, and the unprofitable one professed this, it is profound wickedness, and none in general worse than such a professing Christian. When confidence in Him is wanting, all is wrong, though this may be shown in fear to use what He has given for profit. Had he truly known the Lord, he would have served Him gladly, especially as he had a gift of power; but he knew Him not from God, and was judged according to his distrust and the falsehood which unbelief readily yields to. Unbelief receives what itself says, according to what the evil heart suggests when it listens to Satan's lie. And the Lord deals with the wicked as his slander deserved. While those who work on in confidence of His grace enter into the joy of their Lord, those who would not, distrusting Him shall be consigned to the outer darkness with all its horrors and misery. Bliss with Christ is beyond rewards, though this too has its place of moment.

Here the Parable of the Ten Pounds (or, Minas) in Luke 19:12-27 is most instructive. It is peculiar to his Gospel and given before the last visit to Jerusalem; whereas that of the Talents was when the visit was drawing to a close. In Luke there is the same gift entrusted to each of the servants, and their responsibility and right use as yet was strongly in evidence, and to have authority over so many cities is the reward in the Kingdom, not entrance into their Lord's joy. But how profound the mistake to set a place of outward honor above sharing the Lord's joy with Himself! The good and faithful will receive that also, both being in the Kingdom.

If the faithful and wise servant, contrasted with “that evil servant,” set forth the general place in the house, faithful or the contrary, the parable of the Talents shows us those who trade with the goods of Christ, and that blessing in this work turns on confidence in Him and His grace.

(Continued).

1 Peter 3:19-20

HERE we have need of vigilance that we yield not to fancy, but be subject to the words of the Holy Spirit in their exact bearing and in accordance with the context. For they are often taken up loosely and with bias in favor of a preconceived idea or with a view to a desired end. To ensure light we need the single eye; and this can only be where Christ is the governing object. The relative refers to the Spirit in virtue of “which” Christ was made alive after His death. Now of course a very different fact is added, but equally dependent on the Spirit.

“In [virtue of] which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison, disobedient afore-time when the long-suffering of God was waiting in Noah's days, while an ark was being prepared, in which few, that is eight souls, were brought safe through water” (vers. 19, 20).

We are here given to understand that Christ in the Spirit preached to those whose spirits are imprisoned because when they heard His warning they were disobedient; which time is fixed as before the flood which punished them here, as they are now kept like others for judgment hereafter.

The Greek preposition ἐν is here required in order to accurately express in or by what power Christ went and preached to the spirits in prison. It was not in person but by virtue of the Spirit. This is remarkably confirmed by the language of Gen. 6:3: “And Jehovah said, My Spirit shall not always strive (or, plead) with man, for he indeed is flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.” Here we learn to what the apostle alluded, not only Christ in Spirit (and we know He was Jehovah beyond doubt), but the term of the long-suffering of God in Noah's days. For to this the divine statement refers, not to man's life, which even after the deluge was far longer as yet, but to His patient pleading while the ark was in preparation. 2 Peter 2:5, with 1 Peter 1:11, lends much help to the clearness of the sense intended; for as Noah is beyond any man of old designated “preacher of righteousness,” so we might expect for the power at work in him the same Spirit of Christ which in the prophets testified beforehand the sufferings Christward and the glories after these.

The truth meant in the passage is thus made quite plain and consistent, not only with the exact demands of the context but with the rest of scripture. There is if possible less difficulty here than with Eph. 2:17, where it is said of Christ, that “He came and preached peace to you that were far off, and peace to those that were nigh.” No sensible person sees more in this than Christ, not personally but in Spirit, preaching to Gentiles as well as Jews, after His ascension. This was plain enough; but in our text, lest it might be understood by the imaginative or the superstitious, grace furnished the qualification “in which” [Spirit] He proceeded, not into the prison, as some have conceived, but preached to the spirits that are in prison. They were living men on earth when the Spirit pleaded with them in Noah's days while preparing the ark.

With this precisely agrees “disobedient as they once, or aforetime, were,” during that long space of forbearing, compassion, and testimony. Again the structure of the phrase is the one proper to express the moral cause or reason why they are now in prison. Instead of penitence and faith, when Jehovah's Spirit strove, they were disobedient: a fact which our Lord (Matt. 24:38, 39) turned to a warning like His servant here. A similar fate will befall the heedless at the coming of the Son of man in the consummation of the age. There is no room in doctrine any more than in fact or in the phraseology of Peter, for the strange notion of ancients or moderns that Christ in person went to Hades after His death for the purpose of preaching to the spirits there. The strangeness is heightened by the fact that the only ones said to be the objects of His preaching were that generation of mankind which had been favored with the pleading of His Spirit in Noah. Such a favor when they were alive would much more naturally have weighed against the alleged visitation after death, even if other scriptures did not prove its needlessness for saints and its unavailingness for sinners.

The truth is that the fabulous notion of such a preaching by Christ after death in Hades contravenes all scriptural truth elsewhere, and is only extracted from the passage before us by violence done to its separate clauses and its scope as a whole, in no way carrying on the divine argument but interpolating a wholly incongruous interruption. For the only character given to those who heard the preaching is that they were then disobedient, as the ground of their imprisonment: a strange reason for singling these out for the favor of the Lord's going to the prison on their account.

If it be an outrage on orthodox doctrine to suppose such a preaching to such an audience in in such a place, condition and time, it is even more plainly opposed to the terms of the apostle, if one foist in the idea that the Lord preached to the O.T. departed saints. Not a word implies a believer among the spirits in prison. All attempts in this direction from Augustine down to Calvin, and near our day to Horsley, as to others since, are utterly vain. The clear bearing of the teaching is to contrast the disobedient mass of spirits (in the prison of the separate state for such) with the few who in the ark were brought safe through water.

The unbelieving Jews who objected to the fewness of the Christians were thus powerfully met, as well as their contempt for preaching as having no serious effect, whether believed or rejected. Was Christ acting now by the Spirit, instead of that manifestation of power and glory which they longed for in unbelief of what God is doing by the gospel? Let them remember how He wrought before the deluge, and how it fared with those who disobeyed His warning. There is thus no real difficulty in the passage when the general analogy of Noah's days is apprehended; any more than in the details of the most correct text, with the strictest attention both to grammatical rendering and sound doctrine. No event in the O.T. could be found more apposite to warn scoffing Jews in the apostle's day than that which befell the disobedient in Noah's time of preparing the ark. How different the effect of Jonah's preaching to the men of Nineveh! Yet their repentance was but transient, and the end of the great city followed. But the deluge was not all for those who rejected the Spirit of Jehovah that warned by Noah. Their spirits are in prison waiting for the judgment, wherein no one is just before God. They are lost forever. It is only by faith that a sinner is justified. The disobedience of unbelief is final; it braves God's mercy as well His wrath, and most in such as have the scriptures.

It is the hasty assumption of Christ's preaching to the departed in Hades, which clashes not only with the truth in general but with this context in particular, rendering it in all the minute points of the words both halting and irreconcilable, when adequately looked into. The result too is an allegation extraordinary, suggesting a doctrinal inference at issue with God's word everywhere else. For it attributes a work to Christ which is superfluous for saints no less than sinners; and for these last is apt to become the basis of a spurious hope, as inconsistent with all that our Lord when here declared for those that die in unbelief, as with that which the Holy Spirit has taught since redemption. Another evil effect of this misinterpretation is, that it sets ingenious minds to essay a shadowy confirmation from such texts as Psalm lxviii. 18, Isaiah xlv. 2, xlix. 9, in the O.T., and to deny that Paradise is heavenly in the N.T. One error leads to another and perhaps many. It is well to maintain the hope of the blessed and holy “first resurrection” at Christ's coming, but there is very great harm in denying the intermediate bliss of the saints departed to be with Christ. Scripture is perfectly plain and sure as to both.

Inspiration of Scripture: Conclusion

Chap. Vi. Conclusion

Having now brought to a close the test of divine design in the several books of the New Testament as well as of the Old, I commend the work to the blessing of God on the reader.

It is usual in such treatises to notice objections laid by unbelief against the scriptures. If this were added in any adequate degree to the present volume, it would increase its' bulk very considerably. As it already exceeds 550 pages, I think it better to let the positive truth produce its own impression, which difficulties of the kind have no real title to destroy; seeing that the most certain truth, save in matter or in its abstract forms, is necessarily open to such questions. It ought not to be so where God has spoken or caused His word to be communicated in writing. But this is what skepticism disputes or refuses. Legitimate criticism may seek to gather the true text from reliable documents, in time differing more or less through human infirmity or fault. But it rightly supposes an original divine deposit.

No intelligent person would mix this question with God's inspiration: various readings belong to the distinct region of man's responsibility, as scripture does to divine grace. The problem of the true critic is to use all means, external and internal, to recover what was originally written. What is called “higher criticism” is essentially spurious, either denying God as the author or impudently pretending to speak for Him, if they go not so far. Even Christians are in danger of heeding what these enemies of the written word assume, when it is said that it nowhere claims divine authority. Nor is it only inferential evidence that is given throughout the Bible in general, as well as the conclusive proof of the reverence to all then written shown by our Lord, the Lord of all. It is dogmatic truth, that God's inspiration is claimed for every scripture, not merely for all given before the apostle Paul wrote his last epistle, but for that part which remained to be written. For nothing less is the force of 2 Tim. 3:16: “Every scripture [is] inspired of God and profitable” etc. Had the existing body been meant, the article would have been requisite, as in verse 14 which speaks only of the O. T. Its absence was no less correct for accrediting with the same source and character all that God might be pleased to vouchsafe till the canon was complete.

Indeed the apostle had at an earlier date made in substance the same claim in 1 Cor. 2. Where the Hebrew oracles stopped, the N.T. revealed all that is for God's glory and goodness to communicate (vers. 9-12): “Which things also we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those Spirit-taught, communicating spirituals by spirituals,” or, if we supply the gap, “spiritual [things] by spiritual [words].” The words were as positively of the Holy Spirit as the thoughts. Such is the essential property of scripture. Thus all was of the Spirit of God, the revelation, the communication, and also the reception. Rationalism denies God in them all, attributing them to man's spirit, which he may elevate in effect to that of God, being in darkness and walking in darkness, and knowing not whither he goes, because darkness blinded his eyes.

Translation again, like interpretation, as well as editing the text from the varying witnesses, belongs to the responsible use of scripture, and is quite distinct from the fact of its divine inspiration. No doubt the conviction that God inspired every scripture would act powerfully on the spirit of every believer who undertook works so serious, and is intended to make him feel his dependence on God in the use of all diligence and every means duly to attain the end in view. But inspiration means, as one of those employed in it says, that men spoke from God, moved (or, borne along) by the Holy Spirit. Hence scripture is not of man's wit or will, but of God, as no one more clearly than our Lord ever shows, and so of final and divine authority. Hence too the danger and evil for any one to give, whatever the cause of failure, his own mind and not God's in editing, translating, or interpreting. What God communicated is able to make one wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus. “Is it not written?” if truly applied is absolutely conclusive in His judgment Who will judge living and dead. “And the scripture cannot be broken.”

How immense too is the privilege! In its later portion it is the revelation of God, not merely from God, but of Himself, and of God speaking to us in a Son, not the First-born merely but the Only-begotten, the revelation of the Father and the Son by the Holy Spirit. O the grace too of His Son deigning to become man, that we might have what is absolute made relative to us in the tender affections of very man, yet of One who was and is God as His Father. Hence the total change for us in looking at things, seen or unseen, according to God, where the greatest are brought down to our hearts, and the least we learn to be near to God's love: nothing too great for us, nothing too little for God, as said another departed from his labors to be with Christ. Christ alone, Christ fully, accounts for both; and scripture is the true treasure-house as well as standard of it all, as the Spirit was sent forth from heaven to make it good in us in every way.

No tradition could avail for such a stupendous task. “But the Comforter (or rather, Advocate), the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things which I said to you” (John 14:26). Nor is this all. The Spirit would reveal also Christ's glory on high. “But when the Advocate is come, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, he shall bear witness concerning me: and ye too bear witness, because ye are with me from the beginning” (John 15:26, 27). More still of the deepest interest appears in John 16:12-15: “I have yet many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now. But when he is come, the Spirit of truth, he shall guide you into all the truth; for he shall not speak from himself, but whatsoever he shall hear he shall speak; and he will announce to you things to come. He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine and shall announce it to you. All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine: on this account I said that he receiveth of mine and shall announce it to you.”

The permanent result of His presence and inspiration is, one may say, the New Testament, that inestimable and final gift of God in its kind. But the character of the inspiration in the N. T. becomes the higher and the more intimate in consequence. Every spiritual man must have felt this, in comparing the Psalms, which express the heart of the O. T. saints, with the N. T. Epistles, which breathe of the indwelling Spirit animating the Christian and the church. But they are alike God's word: there is no difference as to divine authority.

The Future Tribulation: Part 1

It is as clear to the Christian that he is to expect suffering, scorn, injury, persecution, and in short tribulation of every sort in and from the world, as that grace has given him the richest privileges in Christ. “These things I have spoken to you,” says our Lord, “that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye have (not merely “ye shall have,” as in inferior witnesses) tribulation; but be of good courage: I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Also in Acts 14:22 in establishing the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to abide in the faith, the word is that “through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God.” So the great apostle could say on the one hand, “I ask that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory” (Eph. 3:13), and, on the other, “to you it was granted in behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him but also to suffer for his sake, having the same conflict which ye saw in me and now hear of in me” (Phil. 1:29, 30). “Faithful the word [is]; for if we died with [him], we shall also live together; if we endure, we shall also reign together” (2 Tim. 2:11, 12). We may not all he called to suffer for Him, but if we suffer not with Him, can we look to be glorified together? Rom. 8:17. It is here that we differ essentially from the saints born in the millennial age, who therefore are reigned over, instead of reigning with Christ.

But it is quite another question, Who are the saints that pass through and come out of the great tribulation? The answer cannot be given by human feeling, nor by good men undertaking to prophesy, but by the light God has given us in the prophetic word. Vehement accusation of wresting the scriptures, of claims to infallibility, of a self-elected minority who are too privileged to be subjects of persecution, of the madness of exaggerated self-conceit, nay even of “seducing spirits,” only betrays extreme party spirit, and ignorance of the true inquiry, “What saith the scripture?”

The answer is plain not only on the positive side, but even on the negative.

First, and chiefly, the O.T. is explicit that “at the time of the end,” when “Michael shall stand up, the great prince who standeth for the children of thy people,” “there shall be a time of trouble (or, tribulation) such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time.” It will far exceed even what accompanied the idolatrous effort of Antiochus Epiphanes, of which Dan. 11:31, 32 speaks. We do hear of an “abomination that maketh desolate” then set up, but not of the tribulation without parallel which Dan. 12 predicts for the end, when the abomination that maketh desolate will be set up again and for the last time. Here it is incontestable that we hear only of Daniel's people, the Jews, who “at that time shall be delivered, everyone that shall be found written in the book,” that is, the future elect and godly remnant.

It is no less indisputable that our Lord refers to this very abomination standing in a holy place for those in Judea to flee to the mountains, and to the great trouble that is to follow in even stronger terms than Daniel was given to employ. The context is just as plain and certain as that of the prophet of the captivity, that He too contemplates Jewish disciples, at that time, whom He will deliver by appearing in glory as the Son of man to the discomfiture of their enemies, but also to the discriminating judgment of Israel. For the elect, not merely of the Jews (22) but of the entire people Israel (31) shall be gathered together from the four winds (where these are still scattered of the ten tribes undiscerned), from one end of the heavens to the other. The Lord addresses His disciples here in a personal way, which does not apply to the intermediate part, still less to what He tells us of “all the nations.”

The same fact is no less observable in Mark 13 which gives in substance the first section of our Lord's prophecy as in Matthew's Gospel, but with those characteristic additions of his on the service of His name. See vers. 9-12, and 34. But there is no difference in the relevant intimation that in the future crisis only “those in Judea” are concerned, and that it is a question here of “flesh being saved,” and of “this generation,” etc., not of resurrection and rapture on high. Jewish disciples only are in question, and deliverance coming down to the earth in displayed power and glory, instead of saints caught up by and to be with the Lord as in 1 Thess. 4.

But in Luke 21:20-24 there is, what we have in neither Matthew nor Mark (tradition notwithstanding), an explicit prediction of the approaching destruction of Jerusalem, and great distress upon the land and upon this people. Their being led captive into all the nations only he mentions, as also the remarkable and still continued sentence of Jerusalem to be trodden down by Gentiles until their proper times be fulfilled He speaks of “days of vengeance,” as indeed such they were then; and he leaves room for more at the close where in fact he speaks of distress of nations, and men fainting for fear. This is quite in character with the design of the third Gospel, which entirely omits the abomination of desolation and the unequaled tribulation, so prominent in the two preceding Gospels. Those who have (and they are legion from ancients to moderns) attempted to identify his special part with theirs, destroy their true bearing. It is from ver. 25 that Luke coalesces with his predecessors in what evidently belongs to the time of the end.

Secondly, Rev. 7:9-17 presents the vision of a great crowd which none could number (distinguished from the 144,000 sealed out of the twelve tribes of Israel), as that was out of every nation, and of tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They have a wholly different position from the crowned and enthroned elders and the four living creatures; so much so that one of the elders explains to the prophet who they are, and whence they came. “And he said to me, These are they that come out of the great tribulation, and they washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Here then we have clear evidence that grace will deliver a vast crowd of believing Gentiles out of “the great tribulation” at the time of the end. The traditional notion that it figures the church is refuted by the very phrase which limits them to Gentiles saved out of that great tribulation which is to come. They are therefore, as a special gathering out at the close, quite distinct from those heavenly saints of all times symbolized in the same scene. It would seem that the extreme severity of the future tribulation will fall in and round Jerusalem, for the Lord declares it unparalleled; but there is no reason to doubt that it then awaits all nations, if in lesser measure. It is “the great tribulation,” perhaps implied in Luke's description of “distress of nations” at that very time. There are Gentile saints, as well as Jews, to emerge from it in that day, not forming one body as now in the church, but expressly distinct from it and from one another, as Rev. 7 also plainly attests.

Thirdly, there is the promise, most appropriate to the overcomers of the church in Philadelphia (Rev. 3:10), though surely not for them exclusively, “Because thou didst keep the word of my patience, I also will keep thee (not during, but) out of the hour of trial that is about to come upon the whole habitable earth, to try those that dwell upon the earth.” That hour may include more than “the great tribulation “; but one knows no intelligent Christian who thinks it covers less. The faithful, the Christian saints, are here then promised to be kept out of that hour. Any geographical refuge, as was taught by B. W. N. and others, is vain; for it will befall the whole habitable world. The heavenly saints (1 Cor. 15:43) will be caught up before that crisis comes, which is retributive for the lawlessness of the Jews and the Gentiles—a wholly different kind of trouble from what is our portion as Christians.

Jehovah Jealous and an Avenger

This is ever true, and of immense importance. God never holds the guilty for innocent. It is contrary to His nature, and would not be the truth. He may put away the sin, and receive the sinner cleansed; but He cannot act as if it did not exist when it does, nor be indifferent to it while He remains Himself He may chastise for good, and show government (that is, deal with sin in this respect); or He may have it entirely put away and blotted out, according to the exigencies of His own nature and glory, which is salvation for us. And both are true. But He cannot leave sin anywhere as not existing or indifferent. His coming vengeance will be the world's deliverance from the oppressive misery of the enemy's yoke and of human lusts; that it may flourish under the peaceful eye of its Deliverer. J.N.D.

Short Introduction to Paul's Epistles, 1/.. & 1/6
TITUS 8c PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth,... 2/-
THE REVELATION ... 2/,

PRIESTHOOD, ITS PRIVILEGES AND DUTIES, cloth... 2/-.

THE DAY OF ATONEMENT, a New Edition... 2/-.

F.E.R. Heterodox on Life Eternal, other Divine Truths, and above all Christ's Person, paper, 10(1., limp cloth, 1/-.

F.E.R. Heterodox on Christ's Person... id.

LIFE ETERNAL, 2d.

Published

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Pubashed Montish

Jacob: 14. Dinah and Her Brothers

One wrong step in departure from our true position before the Lord leads to many a sin, scandal, and sorrow. So we find here as the consequence of Jacob's buying the land of the Hivite, and building himself a house. His stay at Succoth and Shechem covers some ten years. He must be unsettled to get him back to his pilgrim place; but the way was painful for all, and a deep shame and humiliation and fear for the patriarch.

“And Dinah, daughter of Leah whom she bore to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. And Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the land, saw her, and he took her, and lay with her, and humbled her. And his soul clave unto Dinah daughter of Jacob, and he loved the damsel, and spoke to the heart of the damsel. And Shechem spoke unto Hamor his father, saying, Take me this girl to wife. And Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his daughter; and his sons were with his cattle in the field; and Jacob held his peace until they came. And Hamor father of Shechem went out unto Jacob to talk to him. And Jacob's sons came from the field when they heard [it], and the men were grieved, and they were greatly inflamed, because he had wrought folly in Israel in lying with Jacob's daughter; for so it ought not to be done.

“And Hamor spoke to them, saying, My son Shechem's soul longeth for your daughter: I pray you, give her him to wife. And make marriages with us, [and] give your daughters to us, and take our daughters unto you. And ye shall dwell with us; and the land shall be before you: dwell and trade in it, and get you possessions therein. And Shechem said unto her father and unto her brethren, Let me find grace in your eyes, and what ye shall say unto me I will give. Ask of me very much dowry and gift, and I will give according as ye shall say to me; but give me the damsel to wife. And Jacob's sons answered Shechem and Hamor his father with deceit, and spoke, because he had defiled Dinah their sister, and said unto them, We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to a man that is uncircumcised; for that [were] a reproach unto us. But only in this will we consent unto you: if ye will be as we, that every male of you be circumcised; then will we give our daughters unto you, and take your daughters unto us; and we will dwell with you, and be one people. But if ye hearken not unto us, to be circumcised, then we will take our daughter and go away.

“And their words were good in the eyes of Hamor and in the eyes of Shechem Hamor's son. And the youth deferred not to do the thing, because he had delight in Jacob's daughter; and he [was] honorable above all his father's house. And Hamor and Shechem his son came unto their city's gate, and spoke unto the men of their city, saying, These men are peaceable with us; therefore let them dwell in the land, and trade therein. And the land, behold, [it is] wide on both sides before them. Let us take to us their daughters for wives, and our daughters let us give to them. Only in this will the men consent unto us, to dwell with us, to be one people, in circumcising among us every male as they [are] circumcised. Their cattle, and their substance, and every beast of theirs, [shall] they not [be] ours? only let us consent to them, and they will dwell with us. And unto Hamor and unto Shechem his son hearkened all that went out of the gate of his city, and every male was circumcised, all that went out at the gate of the city” (vers. 1-24).

The only daughter of Jacob had no doubt a difficult part to play in the midst of so many brothers, to say nothing of other characteristics of the household. As the destroying incident of the chapter was soon followed by all quitting the scene, she may have been about fourteen or fifteen years old. With or without the sanction of her parents Dinah went out to see the daughters of the land. Josephus alleges a festive gathering. What had she to do with them in any way? All but the profane knew that the time would come for their judgment, that the seed of Abraham should possess the land; and their iniquity was great though not yet full. Apart from that, how giddy she and dangerous! She seems to have been as independent of her mother, as the young men certainly were beyond taking counsel of their father. Her gadding curiosity exposed her to the young prince of the land, who, smitten with her and carried away by his passion, seduced if he did not by force outrage her. Her poor father was silent till the sons returned from work. Meanwhile Shechem earnestly sought marriage at any price, and his father repaired to Jacob, pleading hard for his son's set desire to have her as wife, and offering the readiest terms of peace between the peoples, as Shechem urged for himself.

Thereon Jacob's sons interposed with guile the condition of circumcision for every male. Not the smallest thought or wish had they for inviting the Shechemites into the covenant. It was the basest treachery in order to ensnare and massacre them. Jacob had nothing to do with the cruel secret. Their pride and revenge ignored God as it did their father. Shechem was guilty of a great wrong; but Dinah too was in fault. Neither their mothers nor their grandmother came of circumcised fathers; nor did any pious or delicate reluctance appear in their own marriages. The condition was a lying and cowardly pretext to carry out their resentment to the uttermost. Hamor and Shechem fell into the trap, and had influence enough to persuade all their townsmen with themselves to submit to the painful rite, and its unexpected peril.

Then, when the inflammation was at its height for the beguiled Hivites, the bloody crisis came, executed by the two of the least scruple.

“And it came to pass on the third day, when they were sore, that two of Jacob's sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took each his sword, and came upon the city boldly, and slew all the males. And Hamor and Shechem his son they slew with the edge of the sword; and they took Dinah out of Shechem's house, and went out. Jacob's sons came upon the slain, and spoiled the city, because they had defiled their sister. Their flocks and their herds and their asses, and that which [was] in the city, and that which [was] in the field they took; and all their wealth, and all their little ones, and their wives, they took captive and spoiled, even all that [was] in the house” (vers. 25-29).

How solemn is the calm with which scripture recounts this whole affair of corruption and violence, covered and effected by odious hypocrisy, in which the chosen race were the perpetrators and Canaanites were the victims! Still it is going too far to say that Jacob felt only the consequence, not the appalling iniquity. It is related here, “And Jacob said to Simeon and to Levi, Ye have troubled me to make me stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites; and I [am] few in number, and they will gather themselves together against me, and smite me, and I shall be destroyed, I and my house. And they said, As with a harlot should he deal with our sister (vers. 30, 31)?” Jacob was no doubt filled with alarm, so as to forget God's promise; but who can forget the sense of this dark and hateful day he expressed on his dying bed in words of prophetic power? “Simeon and Levi [are] brethren; Instruments of violence their swords. Come not thou into their council, my soul; With their assembly be not thou united, mine honor; For in their anger they slew men, And in their wantonness they houghed oxen. Cursed their anger, for [it was] fierce, And their wrath, for it was cruel. I will divide them in Jacob, And scatter them in Israel” (Gen. xlix. 5-7).

Israel Holy to Jehovah: 7. Israel's Practical Holiness

Another duty is here urged, considerateness for such as through natural infirmity are liable not only to err but to have advantage taken of them by the light-minded or the malicious. Other warnings are given that an Israelite might behave to his brother as became the people of Jehovah. His fear was to govern all the life, individually or together. Righteousness in judgment is insisted on, irrespective of low or high. Tale-bearing is frowned on: who could tell the mischief that might result? Hatred in the heart is the deep wrong against a brother; but it is immediately urged earnestly to rebuke one's neighbor that one bear not sin on his account (or, bring not sin on them).. In short, no allowance of grudge, or self-vengeance, but to love one's neighbor as oneself.

“14 Thou shalt not curse (or, revile) a deaf [person] nor put a stumbling-block before a blind one, but thou shalt fear thy God: I [am] Jehovah. 15 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shall not respect the person of the lowly, nor honor the person of the mighty; in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor. 16 Thou shalt not go about a tale-bearer among thy people; nor shalt thou stand against the blood (or life) of thy neighbor: I [am] Jehovah. 17 Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart; thou shalt earnestly rebuke thy neighbor, lest thou bear sin on account of him. 18 Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I [am] Jehovah” (vers 14-18).

We may view these injunctions as a class, and even from ver. 11. But it is well to observe that moral and ceremonial are expressly flowing together side by side, both founded on the revealed name of Jehovah, whose honor is at the head of all, and whose dishonor was more deadly and detestable than any other sin. It must and ought to be so, if He, the living God chose Israel to be His people, and Israel gladly owned Jehovah as their God, the one true God. And beautiful it is to note how He deigns to guide them in all the details of life, civil as well as religious, as their moral Governor: for so it really was.

Israel was in obvious contrast with the long abnormal time which stretched from man driven out of paradise till the deluge was sent on the race left to its self, and his so-called free-will ended in corruption and violence, greatly aggravated by the fallen angels, as Gen. 6 tells us, interpreted if we needed it by 2 Peter and Jude. It was now in Israel, apart from all nations, brought out of Egypt led through the wilderness, and established in Canaan under a divine government which comprehended all the people in their relation with Jehovah and with one another, and strangers too, with the utmost minuteness. Love would delight in it as showing His deep interest in them; self-knowledge would gratefully own His wisdom and their need. Insubjection to Him could only if distinct and unjudged bring death, as obedience was met by His manifested blessings.

Yet we must never forget that it necessarily and wholly differs from Christianity, which sprung from the sovereign grace of God in honor of His Son, after the Jew scornfully and with hatred refused Him, the end of their wicked history as a responsible people. So Isaiah had prophesied, disclosing first their captivity in Babylon for their idolatry (chaps. 40-48); next, the irretrievable ruin as far as they were concerned by the rejection of their Messiah (chaps. 49-57). But his last chaps. (58-66.) prove no less certainly, that divine mercy will restore them to better unfailing blessing for the elect remnant, who will become His strong and honored and holy people, when the Lord appears in power and glory for His world-kingdom (Rev. 11:15).

Christianity, and the church of which Christ is the glorified head, come in after His cross and ascension and before He comes to receive the saints destined for the heavenly places. Christ as revealed in the written word is their rule of life, and the Holy Spirit sent forth is their power, in faith working by love, on the ground of Christ's redemption and their deliverance by His death and resurrection. Hence, while taught to appreciate the faith and walk, the service and the worship of saints from Abel all through the O.T., there is in Christ a quite new standard of walk and worship. Also we are called to suffer for righteousness and Christ's name, to love our enemies, and to lay down our lives for the brethren, as no Jew was. Hence the N.T., which not only confirms the Old but reveals God's secrets, that were not then revealed to the fathers or their children, as they are now by the Spirit to the glory of the Father and the Son.

It could not but be that these wondrous counsels of God, when the cross of Christ and His exaltation furnished the fit moment for making them known to His children, introduced wholly new ways both in the individual Christian and in the church as a whole. Alas as they were the last to be revealed, they were the first to evaporate when the apostles departed to be with Christ. The Fathers so styled, the sub-apostolic Fathers, as far as we have their remains, are the clearest proof of their fall from the grace and truth which came through our Lord Jesus. The heavenly things are thereby eclipsed. The very righteousness of God as revealed in the gospel is ignored, clouded, or debased. What could be expected of their knowledge in the mystery of Christ and of the church? of its standing, or of its hope?

It thus appears that time is a vast parenthesis between eternity before it and eternity to follow, in which the earth and Israel with the other nations fill the scene as in the O. T. Within that parenthesis comes another, turning on Christ's rejection and exaltation on high, and the revelation of the great mystery concerning Christ, and concerning the church united to Him by the Spirit already, but awaiting His coming for heavenly glory and their reign with Him over the earth. Restored Israel will be blessed, at the head of all the nations here below, under the new covenant and the Messiah till eternity begins.

Proverbs 17:21-28

FOLLY, wisdom, and righteousness, are here compared in their effects on the heart and life of man.

“He that begetteth a fool [doeth it] to his sorrow; and the father of a fool hath no joy.

A joyful heart causeth good healing; but a broken spirit drieth up the bones.

A wicked [person] taketh a gift out of the bosom to pervert the ways of judgment.

Wisdom [is] before the face of him that hath understanding; but the eyes of a fool [are] in the ends of the earth.

A foolish son [is] a grief to his father, and bitterness to her that bore him.

Also to punish the righteous [is] not good; [nor] to strike nobles for uprightness.

He that hath knowledge spareth his words; a man of understanding [is] of a cool spirit.

Even a fool when he holdeth his peace is reckoned wise, he that shutteth his lips is prudent” (vers. 21-28).

The inspired writer had seen, without looking far afield or minutely, the humbling truth of which ver. 21 reminds us. It received a manifest verification among his own brethren, especially those two who wrought sin and folly in Israel and came to an end no less violent than disgraceful to themselves and full of anguish to his father and theirs. He was spared the witness of its repetition in his own son and successor, whose folly rent the kingdom, never to be re-united till He comes to reign, who is the repairer of breaches, the bearer of sins upon the tree, whose name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Father of eternity, Prince of peace. For increase of the government and peace shall be no end, upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish and uphold it with judgment and with righteousness henceforth and forever. The zeal of Jehovah will perform this.

It is His purpose to glorify the Christ who at all cost glorified Him to His own shame and suffering but moral glory; and this on earth and especially the land where He was put to the death of the cross. It was God's wisdom in Christ, the blessed contrast of sin-stricken man, even in the highest place, who has so often to endure the pain of a fool begotten to his sorrow. But if here the responsibility is traced, and the father knew the reverse of the joy that a man was born into the world, because of his foolish son, the rejected Christ to his faith turns the temporary sorrow into a joy that never ends, though this was not the place or season to speak of it.

On the other hand a joyful (not a vain or thoughtless) heart is an excellent medicine in this world of aches and bruises; as surely as a spirit shattered by affliction and charged with grief and fear dries up the bones, making one a skeleton rather than a human being (22). Man lives not by bread alone, still less bitter herbs, but by God's word that reveals His grace in Christ.

A gift to pervert the ways of judgment blinds the eyes, and betrays as a wicked man him who takes it, no less than him that gives it (23) To take it “out of the bosom” ought to be a signal of danger. No other eye of man sees; but God who abhors the wrong is not mocked.

The wisdom here spoken of is (24) that of a single eye, and is before the face of him that has understanding; for he has God in his thoughts, not persons or things to govern him, but all subjected to divine light. On the contrary, the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth and liable to fluctuation under every breeze of influence. How blessed those to whom Christ is made to us wisdom from God, not the least of Christian privileges for present need, saving, and joy.

Again in ver. 25 is “a foolish son” brought before us; but here it is not only a grief to the father, but a bitterness to her who bore him; the father's authority thwarted and despised, the mother's affection tried and abused. How little such a son feels their anguish!

The next maxim bears on more public matters, and supposes a totally different fault, to which “also” appears to be the link of transition. Those who bear the character of just men must incur obloquy, and should be esteemed. To punish such in any respect is not good, to smite the noble for uprightness exhibits an unworthy spirit; it is a man forsaking his own mercy, and base enough to lower what is above himself. Men, not some only but as a class, are senseless, as we read in 1 Peter 2:15. Sin breeds independence, which chafes and blames, rails and rebels, against excellence, and authority, formal or moral.

The chapter closes with two verses which show the value of that silence which is said to be golden, and even of that which is but leaden, not positive but merely negative or seeming. He that has knowledge spares his words, aware of what is far better; the man of understanding is of a cool spirit, knowing the mischief of inconsiderateness and impetuosity. And this is so true, that even a fool, when by his experience of many a buffet he profits to hold his tongue, gains credit for wisdom he does not deserve; as he that shuts his lips habitually is counted prudent. The day is not yet come for the earth when a king, the King, shall reign in righteousness, and princes rule in judgment. Then a man, for indeed there is but One on whose shoulder the weight of such government rests, shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. Then the fool shall no more be called noble, nor the crafty said to be bountiful. But the day is at hand, dark as its dawn must be and terrible for the ungodly, Jews, Gentiles, and above all those that now name the Lord's name in vain.

Gospel Words: Bare Profession Worthless

The Lord here delivers a most salutary warning, to which the new things of the kingdom gave occasion. For while the truth which came through Him is as precious as it is characteristic, it of necessity left the door open for mental activity and spurious profession in ways which could not under the law be addressed to Israel. “Now we know that, whatsoever things the law saith, it speaketh to those in (or, under) the law.” The truth, Christ, on His coming into the world which knew Him not, casts His light upon every man, and places all that have it under deep and direct responsibility. But it is also capable of being abused widely and variously by a false pretension more or less willing, yet ever inexcusable.

This the Lord meets in these verses with emphatic clearness and solemnity.

“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 the heavens. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out demons, and by thy name do many works of power? And then will I avow to them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work lawlessness” (Matt. 7:21-23).

The sense of entering into the kingdom of the heavens here is fixed to its glorious estate, not only by “in that day” in the following verse, but by the Lord's application of it in chap. viii. 11, where its citizens sit in it with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. It is the more important to note; because His rejection (which soon began to appear) brought in its “mysteries” as in Matt. 13, during which He sits on high upon the Father's throne, and the kingdom applies to the anomalous state, as in the field or world wherein He sowed wheat and the devil darnel to ruin as a whole. This is the present mixture of Christendom while the Lord is absent above, during which any one can say “Lord” in vain, and wheat and darnel grow together till the harvest time, and the glory come by judgment.

The essential thing is doing the will of His Father which Christ was revealing. As He said in John 5:24, where life eternal was in question, “Verily, verily, I say to you, He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath life eternal.” These are the persons who, having done the good things as possessed of life now, rise for the resurrection of life (ver. 28). Equally peremptory is the Lord's word here. No profession without corresponding course of life can avail; nothing less or other than doing His heavenly Father's will. And who so competent to reveal as the Son, who left (as He tells us in John 16:12, 13) many things, beyond hearing then, for the Holy Spirit to announce when He came?

It is clear that, as in the entire discourse, not a word is said about the new birth, still less redemption. The Lord is not here preaching to sinners how they were to be saved; He is teaching His disciples how to walk before the Father that is in the heavens. How does He view that vague and multitudinous profession, which is a burlesque of Christianity, though now so popular, on the one hand through histrionic ceremonies and gaudy shows and religious fables, and on the other through appeals to the intellect and to the imagination by oratory or reasoning. There may be seeming devoutness and profuse earnestness; but without living faith in Christ, neither is God known nor is self judged. The Lord insists on true obedience.

O my fellow-sinner, how can you obey a far fuller standard than the law, as long as you are dead in your offenses and sins? Are you not by nature children of wrath (Eph. 2)? For we are saved (nobody else), as the apostle adds, by grace through faith. A rite is wholly unavailing. And faith is God's gift; it is not of works, as rash men pretend: else man could and would boast. Faithful is the word, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). O then repent and believe the gospel.

How overwhelming is the Lord's warning! “Many shall say to Me in that day (and it is at hand), Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by Thy name, and by Thy name cast out demons, and by Thy name do many works of power? And I will say (not even you once knew Me, but) “I never knew you.” Compare Heb. 6:4-8. No gift of power is a sign of life eternal, not even the edifying gift of prophesying. A man might be an apostle of Christ, but not a child of God. “Ye must be born anew,” begotten by the word of truth; which Judas never was. Outwardly near, he was really far off, not only a stranger in heart but an enemy. And so we read here of crowds not like Judas, deceived as well as deceivers, “Then will I avow to them, I never knew you.”

So indeed it is and must he, where men enjoy the greatest outward privileges, and remain without faith working through love. But it is faith, not founded on evidence, nor on tradition, nor dependent on a dying priest or a dead ordinance or a self-asserting church, but given of God's grace that you may become God's son and Christ's bondman, though just as surely a member of His body. Thus only can you walk in obedience of the Father's word and will, till Christ comes or you depart to be with Him, waiting with Him as well as for Him till then.

And those who do not so believe, whatever their claims now, whatever their pretension to order, office, Tower or authority, must assuredly hear in that day the just and irrevocable sentence, “Depart from Me, ye that work lawlessness.” May grace work and win now, giving an ear to hear the voice of Jesus to the saving of the soul, and delivering from the delusion that christening quickens souls, or exempts them from the condition of being lost and the need of being born anew.

Lord's Prophecy on Olivet in Matthew 24-25: 5. The Gentile Portion

This is the third and concluding section of the Lord's prophetic word. No part of it has been less understood; yet it is clearly defined as distinct from the other two by internal marks which ought to have carried conviction to every believer. But such has been the fate of scripture; not that God's word fails in plainness of speech and certainty of meaning, but because it crosses man's will, who therefore seeks to interpret it according to his own thoughts. Every scripture is for us, and, being of God, is also profitable for man; but is not all about us, and we can only learn surely from itself concerning whom it speaks.

1. We have had a Jewish remnant believing, but without the full privileges of Christians, as the Lord addressed those who then represented it down to the end of the age. Then He appears as the Son of man, and in that day delivers not only such, but the elect of the nation, the “all Israel that shall be saved,” immediately after unparalleled tribulation.

2. Then (without a vestige of allusion to Judaea, the city, the temple, or any association local or temporal) the discourse takes up what applies directly and exclusively to the Christian profession, sound and unsound, in the three intermediate parables which were therefore couched in terms of altogether general import. Here “the Son of man” disappears according to the overwhelming testimony of the best MSS, Vv., and early citations for 15:13.

There remained accordingly only to tell and hear of the Gentiles. For every reader or enquirer is aware that the mass of mankind, devoted to idols and impostures, has to this day resisted the Christian testimony. But the Lord had given in the first part (24:14) the remarkable intimation that “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the habitable world for a witness to all the nations, and then shall the end come.” Here He lets us know the fruit of this preaching, of course (if we are caught up) by the believing Jews of that day, as its place intimates, just before the end comes.

Hence the last section has its suited peculiarity which differentiates it from both the preceding ones, that pertaining to it alone and characteristically. For the specific ground for the King's decision turns on a preaching of the glad news of the kingdom which only came through His brethren (evidently converted Jews) before “the end,” and is here shown to result among all the nations in some heeding the message and in others despising it. It is therefore unique in its circumstances as a whole; though no principle is involved which cannot be justified from other scriptures.

“But when the Son of man shall have come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit down upon his throne of glory, and all the nations shall be gathered before him; and he shall separate them from one another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats (or, kids); and he will set the sheep on his right but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say to those on his right, Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the world's foundation. For I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungering, and fed thee; or thirsty, and gave thee drink? and when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in; or naked, and clothed thee? and when saw we thee sick or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King answering shall say to them, Verily I say to you, Inasmuch as ye did [it] to one of the least of these my brethren, ye did [it] to me. Then shall he say also to those on the left, Go from me, accursed, into the everlasting fire that is prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and ye gave me not to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me not to drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and ministered not to thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say to you, Inasmuch as ye did [it] not to one of these least, ye did [it] not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life everlasting” (25:31-46).

The Son of man will have already come. His war-judgments are over, as it seems, not only what He executed by the appearing of His presence (2 Thess. 1:8), but when He put Himself at the head of His people, as in Isa. 63, Ezek. 38; 39, Mic. 6 and Zech. 14. Now the “King” (found here only) enters on the sessional judgment of His throne, before which all the nations must appear; for then all the peoples, nations, and languages must serve Him. It is part of that judgment of the quick and the habitable earth by the risen Man whom God appointed, as the apostle proclaimed to the Athenians. The judgment of living man on the earth, in the midst of his busy and selfish (not to say, sordid and sinful) life was much pressed by the Lord and the apostles, as it is largely in O. and N. T. prophecy; but it has been lost to the living faith even of saints in Christendom, alike nationalists and nonconformists. Yet even the, creeds confess it, however little it was realized when they were written, and even increasingly less since. As the Jews let slip the judgment of the dead, save to hurl it at the head of the Gentiles; so Christendom practically forgets the judgment of the quick. Here we have it applied by the Son of man judicially when He enters on the exercise of His world-kingdom. Hence it is a question of men at large, not Jews, and of course not Christians (both whom we have already had), but of “all the nations,” when the Lord is come and sits down on the throne of His glory, as here.

It is the fullest and plainest contrast with “the judgment before the great white throne “; for then the earth and the heaven fled from His gaze, and no place was found for them. And “the dead,” the great and the small, stand before the throne. There “the dead” (none else are spoken of) are judged according to their works out of the record of all done in the body, the book of life sealing it by its silence. This is not the coming of the Son of man to reign over the earth (as in our scene); for the nations are destroyed, and the earth fled, and even the heavens. Our scene on the contrary shows the Son of man come to the earth, and all the nations gathered before Him. Here they are all living, to whom alone “nations” could apply; there not dead only, but the wicked dead alone, for the righteous dead had been raised long before for the first resurrection.

With all the nations then alive agrees the character of the test applied, There is no such scrutiny as Rom. 2 speaks of for the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by our Lord Jesus, as before the great white throne. Then it will be that as many as sinned without law shall also perish without law; and as many as sinned under law shall be judged by law; and still more terrible will be the doom of those that rejected the gospel or even neglected so great salvation, as other scriptures declare. But here it is a simple and sole issue, which applies only to that living generation of all the nations: how did you treat the King's messengers when they preached this gospel of the kingdom before the end came? The end was now evidently come. The test was an open undeniable fact; but it proved whether they had, or had not, faith in the coming King. Those who honored the heralds of the kingdom showed their faith by their works, and so did those who despised them manifest their unbelief. The test was not only just but gracious. And “the King” pronounced accordingly. The form was new, as the circumstances were, but the foundation is the same for all the objects of God's mercy on the one hand, and for the objects of wrath on the other. So it was before the deluge, so it will be when the Son of man on His throne of glory on earth shall deal with all the nations. Apart from faith it is impossible to be acceptable; for he that approaches God must believe that He is, and becomes a rewarder of those that seek Him out.

So it will be with the blessed of these nations. Their conduct to those who preached the coming kingdom evinced their faith, and the King's grace accepted to their astonishment what they did to His brethren, even the least, as done to Himself. The trials and sufferings of these “brethren” gave the Gentiles occasion to faith working by love, or to the total absence of it. It was so that Rahab the harlot was justified by works when she received the messengers; but her faith is as carefully stated by the apostle Paul: without faith indeed her works would have been evil. But she rightly judged that Jehovah and His people were above king and country; and this was a turning point for her not then only but to eternity. So it was with the sheep; and the sad reverse was no less true for the goats.

There is another element overlooked by those who confound Matt. 13:31-46 with Rev. 20:11-15. In the judgment of the dead but one class is stated, the dead who were not in the resurrection of the just. So only the unjust appear; and they are judged according to their works in all their life. Here appear not only the sheep and the goats, but the King's brethren, a third and highly honored class; none of them dead or risen, but all alive. Can there be conceived a more striking contrast? The traditional view is nothing but ignorant though unwitting contempt of this scripture, which many Christians do not really believe in simplicity, and therefore cannot understand. The resurrection state must exclude what we find herein. With the judgment of the quick, and in particular of “all the nations,” all here is harmonious. At the end “of the age” He comes; at the end “of the world” He does not. There is then no world to come to. It is all gone, to appear afterward quite new for eternity.

The decision is final, which led many to gloss over the marked distinctions, and mix it up with the close of Rev. 20 which is final too. But the one was at the beginning of the thousand years' reign, and the other at its end, when there could be no coming of the Lord to surprise the careless world, as He Himself teaches, but earth and heaven had fled away. To interpret the two (yea, and the three!) as the same is in effect to lose each, if not all, of these grand and solemn revelations.

Let it be observed that the righteous, though they had faith in the kingdom and therefore treated its preachers as became the truth, were evidently little instructed. For we see how little their intelligence rose above that of their unbelieving countrymen. But their heart was right by grace, as the King knew perfectly, who from the first separated these to the right and the others to the left. He allowed this ignorance to come out that He might give to all a profound lesson never to be forgotten. This is quite compatible with the righteous as they were alive in their natural bodies. But is such lack of intelligence consistent with the risen condition? When that which is perfect is come (and it surely comes at the resurrection of the just), that which is in part shall be done away. This was not at all the state as yet of these sheep, the righteous Gentiles; and the King only communicates to them before His throne what every Christian may be assumed now to know, with a vast deal more quite beyond them. Yet was the kingdom prepared for these, as for the righteous generally, from the world's foundation.

Notice also that the everlasting fire to which the unbelieving Gentiles of that epoch are consigned is said to have been “prepared for the devil and His angels,” not for the goats, save that they fitted themselves for it by their evil ways. Compare also Rom. 9:22. The devil and his angels were not yet cast into the lake of fire. This will only be after. Satan's last effort at the end of the millennium, as Rev. 20:10 tells us. But here the goats have now their portion, as the Beast and the False Prophet had a little before them, as we read in Rev. 19:20, and that while alive too, Premillennialists like Alford, Birks, and almost all, are nearly as confused as the postmillennialists.

The cause is evident: the ancient and general error which connects the scrutiny of “all the nations” in our chapter with the judgment of “the dead” in Rev. 20:11, &c. Resurrection is not nor could be predicated of “the nations” in the one; whereas it is the positive and essential statement in the other. When they are jumbled, dimness reigns, and alas! irreparably for distinctness of truth.

It must be borne in mind that stupendous facts had just taken place before all the nations are gathered here, facts ignored by most, yet all-important for understanding the position. The vast hosts of the west will have been destroyed from above at a stroke when the Beast and the False Prophet meet their doom. Soon after the eastern hordes led by the Assyrian of the prophets (Daniel's king of the north) will have been dissipated like the chaff. Edom will have met its final judgment (Isa. 63); and so will Gog with his numerous allies (Ezek. 38,39.). The Jews, and Christendom, will have been already judged, as we see in this discourse. Hence “all the nations” here summoned are composed of what remains after these executions of judgment; and, from the nature of the case, they must needs be exclusively living men who were quite lately placed under the responsibility of having heard “this gospel of the kingdom” preached by God-fearing Jews, whom the Lord will have sent for the express purpose before the end come.

This alone explains the peculiar criterion by which “the righteous” were marked off from their unbelieving fellows. It was His grace that blessed those who received these glad tidings; and now they hear of their blessed portion from the lips of the King They were as amazed to learn His estimate of their faith working by love, as the hardened in their incredulity were to meet their awful end. We have no ground to believe that either the sheep or the goats ever heard the full gospel of God such as was preached by the Christian witnesses, any more than that the converted Jews themselves knew it as we do. We must leave room for the sovereign ways of God, dealing variously in His wisdom with the future quite as much as with the past. But for every sinful soul there must be faith for life eternal; and faith is from a report, and the report through God's word. Thus only can any fallen man be brought into living relation with Him. The measure has differed greatly at different times, as it will; but the principle is the same. This of course applies only to those who hear.

We may further and particularly note that there is not the least allusion to the resurrection here for either “the righteous” or “the accursed.” On both sides they were Gentiles living in their natural bodies; for they are expressly said to be “all the nations” when they were gathered before the glorious throne of the Son of man. It is not, as in Rev. 20:11-15, impenitent sinners of every age and nation, and of mankind before there was a nation as in the antediluvian world. These had all died, and were now raised at the resurrection of the unjust, to be judged each according to his works. In Matt. 15:31, &c., all the Gentiles there find their doom decided by the way they treated the King's brethren, the messengers of “this gospel of the kingdom.”

He had said that it should go forth “in all the habitable world for a witness to all the nations.” And now comes out the solemn issue. Some had shown, not merely benevolence, or self-denial, or moral excellence in any formal degree, but love in varied ways to the servants who preached in the King's name the same truth which He had preached at the beginning of His public ministry. But it was faith which wrought in their love. If the King and His coming kingdom had been but a myth in their eyes, they would have at least ignored His messengers as impostors. They believed the message, contrary to all appearances, to be of God, and therefore treated its preachers with kindness; and are to enjoy the gracious result. Ancients and moderns lower, deprave, and destroy the true force of Christ's words by taking it as kindness to “the poor.” Thus Chrysostom, for instance, one of the best of the Fathers, makes this lack of giving to the poor to be the fatal evil, even in the parables which set forth Christendom, of course with more appearance there, but everywhere wrong. It was not good done even to the sheep, but specifically to “My brethren,” even the least of them.

So the King puts the difference of the two classes on the only right ground that could apply to “all the nations” then before His throne, after such a preaching as had by grace reached them before the end. Now it had come: the new age was begun. The King had done what none else could; for He separated them all, and, as it is evident, individually with unfailing discernment.

Instead of their giving account to Him, He recounts to them why He set some on His right and some on the left. The ground for it He lays down with a majesty and a touching yet righteous character, appropriate and peculiar to Himself, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Yet it turned on faith that it might be according to grace, or alas I on unbelief where no grace was, but only self. Hence He said to the wondering righteous, “Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these my brethren [whatever the living work to His despised and suffering messengers], ye did it to me.” How awful on the other hand for the unjust to hear, in answer to their more hurried summary, “Inasmuch as ye did [it] not to one of these least, neither did ye [it] to me.” Yet was it altogether righteous.

Thus all at bottom rests on Christ, though His grace makes the most of what to others might seem little. But the point is lost when the special circumstances of these Gentiles is ignored, and men generalize, oblivious of the principle. Take Alford's note on “my brethren” as a sample (and he is far from the least intelligent): “Not necessarily the saints with Him in glory—though primarily those—but also any of the great family of man (!). Many of them here judged may never have had the opportunity of doing these things to the saints of Christ properly so called (!!).” But here God took care that the preaching did reach them; and that the circumstances of its messengers should give opportunity to all the Gentiles here gathered for this manifestation of faith and love, but also of total indifference, to say the least. The faith working by love in the one class, and the utter unconcern of the other, laid bare respectively their fitness or unfitness for inheriting the kingdom. In all cases of saints, works are the evidence, faith of the word the instrument, Christ s work the ground, and God's grace the source.

It is well also to observe that the King does not call them adopted sons, as is the portion of Christians (Gal. 3:26), nor do they exhibit the indwelling of the Holy Spirit which is characteristic of such, any more than either can be predicated of the O. T. saints. He calls them “blessed” of His Father, but does not add of “yours “; for this was not their privilege to know as it is ours. Nor does He speak of the blessings according to God's counsels for us in the heavenlies, to which He chose us in Christ before the, world's foundation. Even Bengel like others before and since made this strange confusion. The King bade them inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the world's foundation. They are elect and born of God, as all saints must be; but they do not reign with Christ in that day, any more than even “His brethren” among the Jews who survived this last crisis before the kingdom; whereas such as had been at that “time of the end” slain for His name will be raised to reign with Him as shown in Rev. 20:4. But those saved of Gentiles like the saved of Israel will have a distinctive place of honor over those born during the millennial reign, as we may gather from Rev. 7 and 14. As elect Jews will have known “flesh saved” from the tribulation which is to befall the rebellious people, so elect Gentiles emerge out of “the great tribulation” in their own quarters: contra-distinguished from the church, whom the Lord declares He will keep out of the hour of trial that is about to come on the whole habitable world to try those that dwell on the earth.

If there were the slightest value in “universal consent,” it would be hard to find a clearer sample than in the traditional interpretation of the sheep and the goats gathered before the King. Is there a single commentator of note who does not educe from it what they call “the greatest judgment of all mankind” at the end of the world? The postmillennialists are at least more consistent than most premillenialists; because the former are entirely in error, whereas the latter know enough truth to make their system incoherent and themselves without excuse. Let us seek to realize what the hypothesis means. If the terms admitted of all the dead being then raised from the grave, how do the criteria apply to the ante-diluvians? Had they the opportunity of receiving the King's brethren in their varied trials, or of neglecting them to His dishonor?

No such mission of old can be sustained for a moment. Noah alone preached to warn in his day of coming ruin through the deluge; but it was only to that generation, and not at all “this gospel of the Kingdom.” Again, how or where were His brethren? And how can it be shown in “the world that now is” since the deluge? In due time Jehovah gave Israel His law; but this was as far as possible from “the gospel of the kingdom.” Where comes in at that time the preaching of “this gospel?” Now the law and the prophets were till John, who first preached that the kingdom had drawn nigh, because Messiah the King was there. And so the Lord preached, and the Twelve. But His rejection interrupted this, and the cross postponed it, giving meanwhile a new and mysterious form to it during His absence on high (Matt. 13) till Israel's heart turn to the Lord, saying, Blessed be He that cometh in Jehovah's name. A righteous remnant takes up the word before the end comes, whom the Lord will convert and send forth, and preaches it as a testimony to all the nations, before the Son of man appears to establish it in power.

During the many years that precede this extraordinary mission to all the habitable world, the ground of statement as stated in Rom. 2:12 is for mankind generally wholly different. For there is no respect of persons with God, who will then judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, which can scarce apply to this scene. Hence, while there is a resurrection of life for such as (hearing the word of Jesus and believing God that sent him) have life, eternal life, there will be at length also a resurrection of judgment for those who, believing not, produced only evil works. This is the judgment in Rev. 20:11., &c., where all had been dead but raised and judged according to their works, and are therefore lost. But it is an evident and total contrast with the King's decision about the living Gentiles, to whom His brethren, the converted of the Jews, are to preach before the end, and proved righteous or reprobate as they behaved to the bearers of “this gospel of the kingdom.” Clearly the test here employed by the King suits only the living Gentiles who had treated well or ill His brethren with whom they are confronted, because of their faith or unbelief in the King who pronounces on both. The character is peculiar and necessarily determined by the brief mission of “this gospel of the kingdom” before the end. It was in no sense the end of the world (κόσμου), but of the age (αἰῶνος), when the King had not yet come to reign over the earth. This appraisal of all the Gentiles is when He shall have come in His glory, and Shall sit on His throne. It will thus be plain that Rev. 20 in the two resurrections exactly agrees with the Lord's discourse in John 5:21-29; whilst Matt. 25:31-46, though equally true, wholly differs from both.

We may see an interesting link between Matt. 24:14 and Matt. 25:40, 45. “His brethren” were those who at the time of the end carried “this gospel of the kingdom” to all the nations, which are blessed or cursed by the King's decree according to their behavior toward those who thus and then brought the word of God. It was not brethren of the intervening Christian character, but of the converted Jews to the Gentiles. And as these brethren are thus honored by the King, so are the Gentiles blessed who received and entreated them well, the Son of man being come and reigning over both. It is the age to come, not the judgment of the dead; and the ground on which the solemn decision depended fits into no time or circumstances of the Gentiles, save the eventful mission by a future remnant of godly Jews who preach the gospel of the kingdom just before the Son of man comes to enforce it.

(Concluded.)

1 Peter 3:21-22

The water of the deluge leads to the spiritual meaning of baptism in ver. 21: the figure of death judicially; whether for the world that perished thus, or for the believer salvation by grace through Him Who went down for our sins and rose that He might be the true ark for us. The water was the instrument of God's judgment in destruction. Those in the ark were saved through it, but this only because they submitted to God's word and were secured by the ark. But the ark prefigured Christ, not the church as some vainly imagine; for no such thing existed then, nor, if it had, could it have saved, but rather consists of those that needed the salvation which is in virtue of Christ's death and resurrection.

“Which figure (or, antitype) also now saveth you, baptism, not a putting away of filth of flesh, but a request of a good conscience toward God through Jesus Christ's resurrection; who is at God's righthand, having proceeded into heaven, angels, and authorities, and powers being subjected to him” (vers. 21, 22).

It is of all moment to understand the mind of the Spirit; for superstition has caught at words here also to support its delusion. But we must read scripture in the light of other scriptures, as well as of the context, if we are to walk in the truth. All scripture, we may say, points to the Savior and faith in Him for salvation of the soul. Nor is any part of it plainer as to this than the foregoing doctrine of the Epistle before us. Christ is pointed to as the quickener of men dead in trespasses and sins, Christ the Son in communion with the Father, made known in the Holy Spirit's power through the word (John 3:5; 5:21-25). So in the first chapter of our Epistle the apostle says, “Having purified your souls in obedience to the truth unto unfeigned brotherly affection, love one another out of a pure heart fervently.” How could this be, considering what man is naturally? “Having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through God's living and abiding word. Because all flesh [is] as grass, and all its glory as flower of grass; the grass withered, and its flower quite fell; but the Lord's word remaineth forever. And this is the word preached unto you.” Hence in James 1:12 it is written, “Of His own will He (the Father) begot us by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.”

These are but a few of many scriptures which one might cite from the Gospels and the Epistles; but they amply show that, as life is in the Son, so He is the giver of life to the believer, and this now not only for fellowship with the Father and with the Son, but for walking in the light, cleansed by the blood of Jesus. Baptism has its place of deep interest and importance; but scripture never attributes quickening to it. This is a very old and inveterate error of Christendom. All the so-called Fathers who speak of life-giving assign it to baptism. It was the error of darkened times long before the Popish day; and its necessity was founded on the wholly misunderstood words of our Lord in John 3:3, 5. This was so universal after the apostles that Hooker lays down, in opposition to Cartwright (Eccles. Pol. v. § 59), “that of all the Ancient, there is not one to be named that ever did otherwise either expound or allege the place than as implying external Baptism.”

Now it is a striking fact that, beyond the allusion to the disciples baptizing as John did long before our Lord's death and resurrection, and His subsequent commission to baptize all the nations, the Gospel of John avoids even the mention of Christian baptism and the Lord's supper. Its design was to bring out, not the blessed institutions of Christianity, but the life eternal and the gift of the Holy Spirit with their precious issues. No institution is ever said to give life, nor can any restore the communion which indulgence in sin may have interrupted. In John 3 the Lord urges the absolute necessity of being born anew, that is of water and spirit, in order to see or enter the kingdom of God. Being by nature a child of wrath, a new nature is requisite. Water, as in John 15:3, Eph. 5:26, refers to the word of God brought home by the Spirit in faith and repentance. This Nicodemus as a Jewish teacher should have known, especially from Ezek. 36:25, &c.; whereas neither he nor anyone else could have known of Christian baptism, instituted years after.

It is similar with John 6:53, &c., which means communion by faith with Christ dead for redemption, as verses 32, &c., speak of Him incarnate. The language in chap. 3 goes far beyond baptism, as that of chap. vi. far exceeds the Lord's supper. This last ought to be evident to anyone who bows to scripture. He who so applies this passage ought to affirm, that none can have life eternal without the Supper, and that none who partakes of it can fail to have life eternal: both statements as dangerous as they are false.

Still baptism, is the expression and confession of part in Christ's death; or as the apostle Paul puts it, “Know ye not that we as many as were baptized unto Christ Jesus were baptized unto His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism unto death.” This is its meaning: Christ's death, not life, which hangs on faith in Him. So too in the Lord's Supper we announce His death till He come; for this is as it ought to be a constantly recurring feast, as Christian baptism is expressly once only. Christ must come, not by birth alone, but by water and blood with the Spirit given as witness. Till then Christianity could not be, because God had not been glorified nor sin judged in His death. He was straitened, however great His grace, glory, and moral perfections, till that baptism was accomplished. The Christian institution followed.

Baptism was as Peter taught “for remission of sins,” as we read in Act 2:38. Hence Ananias was sent to “brother Saul,” already having life in Christ risen, and bade him arise and get baptized, and have his sins washed away, calling on the Lord's name. So here “Which figure,” for this it is, “also now saveth you, baptism.” But the apostle carefully adds, “not a putting away of flesh's filth, but a request (or, demand) of a good conscience.” For the life of Christ given to the soul seeks and can be satisfied with nothing less. And as He Who is and gives us life eternal suffered for sins, we also receive the rich blessing of His death in all its value. It figures therefore not life, as says tradition ever dark and misleading, but salvation, the present salvation of our souls, and pledge of the glorious change for our bodies at Christ's coming. Baptism sets forth our passing out of the fallen estate into the new standing of salvation “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” All was holy and acceptable in Him incarnate; but such was our guilt, such our ruin, that nothing short of His resurrection could bring us into salvation. “Verily, verily, I say to you, Except the grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.” Remission of sins and salvation are thus part of our blessing. Baptism as the initiatory institution proclaims it; and so does the Lord's Supper throughout, as we wait for Christ; but it all depends on the efficacy of His death and resurrection to our faith.

We can thus see the consistency of the truth in Christ. For in Him God came down to poor lost sinners, that believing in Him they might live who were dead. But in Him dead and risen we come to God, cleared by His atoning blood and in the power and acceptance of His resurrection. And here it is that Christianity finds its basis and character. We are thus not merely safe, as all were who had life; but now we “are saved,” and become God's righteousness in Him, Hence Christian baptism follows Christ's death and resurrection. A good conscience toward God is the thing demanded, when we are alive in Him to God: our clearance by His work of redemption. “Request” or “demand” (not “answer”) is the true force of ἐπερώτημα. And what a grand demonstration of it is in Christ on God's right hand, the same Christ Who suffered once (it was enough) for our sins and bore them away, and proceeded in due time into heaven and its highest seat of honor, angels and authorities and powers subjected to Him, instead of disputing His righteous title. There they indeed pay Him divine homage, as Heb. 1 declares according to O.T. prophecy, and the Revelation discloses in its visions of heavenly glory, seen by John and made known to us, to act now on our souls. For all things are ours, things present and things to come. May we profit by a privilege so wondrous!

We may remark too, that (though God was pleased to give an advance of privilege and truth by Paul in Rom. 6 and Col. 2, as compared with Peter's testimony in this text), the words in Heb. 11:7 coincide with “now saveth you.” “By faith Noah, warned oracularly concerning things to come, prepared an ark for the saving of his house.” This was the figure. But the true salvation to which baptism points figuratively is of a divine and everlasting character on the foundation of Christ's death and resurrection. Whatever be the place and value of baptism, the same Paul thanks God in 1 Cor. 1 that he baptized only a few at Corinth, lest any should say that they were baptized to his own name. How could he possibly say this, if thereby any get life eternal? And further, that Christ sent him not to baptize but to preach the gospel, by which, in chap. iv. 16, he says that in Christ Jesus he begot them. Whereas in chap. x. 1-12 he warns them by the examples of Israel's history that neither baptism nor the Lord's Supper avails to hinder falling in the wilderness through unbelief and the sins to which it exposes. See also Heb. 3, 4. The astonishing thing is, how any saint can have become so bewitched by human pretensions, and so dull to the infinite work of grace (engaging as it does all the Trinity to save a guilty sinful man), as to receive an evident delusion of the enemy. As God in Christ alone could save, so nothing short of His power can keep souls through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

The Future Tribulation: Part 2

Thus it is plain and sure that, if we are subject to scripture, no evidence appears that the church, the Christian body, passes through the great coming tribulation before this age ends. The proof-texts apply expressly and exclusively to Jews and Gentiles, with the striking exemption from that hour of those who keep the patience of Christ. This, though pledged to the Philadelphian overcomers, no saint of sound judgment would limit to such, any more than other words of comfort similarly vouchsafed to the various seven churches.

But this is not all. With that lack of spiritual discernment, which is now and has been for ages characteristic of Christendom, the absurd error prevails, even among many earnest students of prophecy, that because all scripture is for us, our edification and use, it is therefore about us. Any serious consideration must assuredly shatter such an assumption. Is it then left to uncertainty or guesswork? In no way. Nor is time the great interpreter, or history, as sages have said. Not so, but as for all scripture, so for its prophetic part, it is the Holy Spirit. Inasmuch as He inspired to write it, so does He give understanding of God's mind in it to those who wait in dependence on the Lord for it, and thus weigh well not only the text but the context, and other scriptures converging on the same point.

Those, however, who hastily take for granted that the future tribulation must be shared by the members of Christ, have gone farther astray in their zeal, and yield to random invective and rash abuse. This we may leave, and seek to help them in and by the truth, as we give heed to all they argue.

Is it said “that it is from a blend of impatience and cowardice” people look for saints to be caught up before the last tribulation? Also, “that it is by this very persecution that ALL saints in all places shall be brought to be made simultaneously ready for the Lord at His appearing?” Such thoughts, if we prefer silence on their spirit, betray a total want of divinely given intelligence. Suffering for righteousness' sake, and yet more for Christ's name, is a high privilege; and God has given it in the fullest measure to the members of Christ, though really to all saints from the beginning. Our Lord was here as in all else supreme; and as He said, The disciple is not above his Master, but everyone perfected shall be as his Master. Yea rejoins the great apostle, and all that will live piously in Christ Jesus shall be persecuted. Hence the faithful, not of the world as Christ is not, should be prepared for it beyond all throughout their pilgrimage.

But the future tribulation has a quite different source and character. In its most terrible form it will be a penal infliction of God on the consummation of Jewish apostasy, when the abomination of desolation is set up in the holy place. Those who rejected and by hand of lawless men crucified their own Messiah, the Son of God, will worship the Antichrist in the temple of God, showing that he himself is God. If without parallel for severity of judicial woe, it is because of the unparalleled audacity of lawlessness, and Satan's power in the Beast of the west joining the False Prophet of the east in contempt of Jehovah and His Christ. What has this specific crisis to do with our being granted to suffer for Christ's sake? Indeed the Lord (instead of calling on the godly Jews to stay and suffer when God is thus visiting His guilty people, not only for their final apostasy but for their bowing down to the man of sin as the true God in His house) bids the godly remnant flee forthwith, regardless even of clothes or anything else save their lives. So in. the minor case of the days of vengeance that befell Jerusalem, when the murderers were destroyed and their city burnt, it was no question of suffering as a privilege, but of a retributive dealing of God; and the Lord therefore directed those that heeded His words to escape when they saw Jerusalem compassed with armies. Was this “a blend of impatience and cowardice”? Shame on the false system, which thus misleads saints to slight Christ and ignore God's word.

Undoubtedly it will be a short time of unexampled trial. And we know too that there will be martyrdom once more, and a later group answering to a former one, as Rev. 20:4 concisely assures us (cf. Rev. 6:9-11). Those who died for rejecting the Beast, like the earlier faithful, shall rise in the blessed resurrection and reign with Christ; as those whose life was spared shall enjoy the kingdom under Christ. They are both parts of the godly Jews, with converted Gentiles also, at the time of the end; but there is no union in one body like the church, which at this time is only seen symbolically, and on high, as the book of Revelation teaches.

(Concluded.)

The Gospel of God

When our first parents transgressed and fell, God appeared in the paradise of Eden, and after hearing and convicting each, traced the evil to its source and pronounced judgment on the great enemy. For that sentence, wondrous to say, He proclaimed the coming Deliverer, who should suffer for sins but crush the power of Satan. And what grace, that He who should accomplish this divine work was to be the woman's seed, Emmanuel, the virgin's Son, as the prophet then filled in the sketch, long after Moses, and long before the Incarnation and Redemption! Scripture speaks of glad tidings in Abraham's case (Gen. 12, 22, Gal. 3:8) and in that of Israel (Heb. 4:2); yet these and all else were but typical and preparatory. “Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” Christ is all; and the efficacy of all He won comes to the sinner by faith. “And therefore is it of faith, that it might be according to grace.” So still more plainly is it written, when the glad tidings came fully out, “by grace ye have been saved through faith, and that, not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”

This is what God proclaims. Man thinks otherwise, and prefers his “view” to God's word. The Romanist nullifies the truth by his supplement of works and rites and ceremonies, by priests and prayers and masses, by penance and purgatory, by spurious mediators angelic and human. It is dishonor to God and His Son, to the atoning work on the cross, to the Holy Spirit and to the written word. But the grace and truth of God in Christ remains intact for faith.

Calvinism clogs and obscures the gospel by teaching that Christ suffered to reconcile His Father to us, and by its decree of reprobation. For God so loved the world that He gave His own Son, not only that the believer might have eternal life, but that his sins should be effaced by His sacrifice. And Rom. 9:22, 23 is conclusive, that while He before prepared vessels of mercy for glory, He endured with much long suffering vessels of wrath fitted for destruction. They were fitted by their own sins and unbelief, not by God, who is not the author of evil and is righteous in judgment.

The Arminian scheme necessarily fails by making man guilty and sinful, to go as partner with God in his own salvation. But if it be true, as scripture plainly declares, that man is dead in trespasses and sins, not the Gentile only but the favored Jew too, that question is decided. Arminianism is farther from the truth than Calvinism.

What does “Zion's Watchtower” consider to be “the true gospel”? Blind to God and the Savior, to sin and its judgment, to the infinite work on the cross, and the wickedness of neglecting, despising, and rejecting “so great salvation,” it looks only at the awful issue of the great majority of men perishing and punished forever. Scripture, which proclaims the gospel, in no way hides but warns of the tremendous doom that awaits those who refuse it. No fanciful, specious reasoning, no profane denunciation, can alter what God says. And it is Christ, and the N. T., that are so clear and solemn in letting men know that God's judgment is eternal. Nor is any blasphemer worse than such as gives them the lie. It is Jesus, not Moses, who speaks of “the unquenchable fire,” of the future Gehenna, where (unlike the earlier and temporal one) “their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48).

How then runs their new gospel? It is that in the millennial age all come forth from the grave to be tested by the gospel, and to be either accepted to eternal life, or destroyed i.e., extinguished, as unworthy of life, in the Second Death!!

Now our Lord has pronounced already as to this in John 5:21-29, as well as in Rev. 20 “Verily, verily, I say to you, The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that heard shall live.” This hour is still going on, and life for the spiritually dead depends on hearing Christ's voice in the gospel. “For as the Father hath life in himself, even so he gave to the Son also to have life in himself.” Christ is the life-giver for those that believe, the one Mediator between God and man. This however is not all, if we believe our Lord: “And he gave him authority to execute judgment also, because he is Son of man. Marvel not at this; for an hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs (the literally dead) shall hear his voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good, unto a resurrection of life; and they that have done ill, unto a resurrection of judgment.” In this future hour (the millennial age, as it is loosely called) shall be those two resurrections of wholly different character; even before the millennium begins, “of life,” for the “just,” who believed and bore good fruit, to reign with Christ; the other for the “unjust,” who did not believe and are raised for judgment. This judgment is the second death, the lake of fire, where the Beast and the False Prophet were long before Satan, and shall be tormented day and night for the ages. The after extinction is a fraud. The word says tormented forever, and in the most explicit terms.

Such then is this fabulous hope, one of Satan's many false gospels. There is no more ground for this millennial resurrection of mankind than for a preaching in Hades, to give a fresh test and a further opportunity, to those who had died in their sins. Not a word of scripture, O. or N. T., gives the least color to it. Men audaciously dictate it to God, as what He ought to do. But, as we have just read, the Lord, the judge of quick and dead, has authoritatively precluded it. The Revelation is in entire accord with the Gospel, that before the thousand years begin, the blessed and holy dead are raised up to reign with Christ. When this is over and the little space that follows, another resurrection follows of the dead, who are judged and cast into the lake of fire. Not a hint appears there any more than in the gospel for the dream of raising the masses of unbelieving mankind for that probation, which belongs to this life. Raising them again for it contradicts all scripture and can emanate only from the father of lies. It would be more upright for these dreamers on behalf of the unbelieving and wicked to write a Bible out of their own reveries, instead of wresting the scriptures to the destruction both of their own souls and of such as heed them. Alas! this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil.

Short Introduction to Paul's Epistles, 1/- & 1/6
F.E.R. Heterodox on Life Eternal, other Divine Truths, and above all Christ's Person, paper, 10d., limp cloth, 1/-.

Published

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published monthly.

Jacob: 15. Go Up to Bethel

The humbling experiences of Jacob had not come to their close; but the way was being prepared for better blessing than he had yet known, and a nearer, truer, approach to what had been the cherished portion of Abraham and Isaac. Had he forgotten his vow at Bethel? Why so slow after so many mercies? Why the delay at Succoth, and yet more disastrously at Shechem? where only God's overruling hand sheltered them from vengeance after the cruel plot of Simeon and Levi. No doubt Shechem had behaved unrighteously, but Jacob's sons hypocritically and without mercy. God in grace interfered, and this leads to a decisive change.

“And God said to Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there; and make there an altar to God that appeared to thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother. And Jacob said to his household, and to all that [were] with him, Put away the strange gods that [are] among you, and cleanse yourselves, and change your garments; and we will arise and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar to God that answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way that I went. And they gave to Jacob all the strange gods that [were] in their hand, and the rings that [were] in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the terebinth that [was] by Shechem. And they journeyed; and the terror of God was upon the cities that [were] round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob. And Jacob came to Luz which [is] in the land of Canaan, that [is], Bethel, he and all the people that [were] with him. And he built there an altar, and called the place El-bethel; because there God had appeared to him when he fled from the face of his brother. And Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died: and she was buried beneath Bethel, under the oak; and the name of it was called Allon-bachuth” (35:1-8).

Jacob was now to meet God, as he had never hitherto done. This he realized from the words spoken to him. And the effect was immediate and great on his conscience. Put away, said he to all that were with him, the strange gods that are among you. We may be assured that he was as much deceived by Rachel's trick as her father, and that his indignant denial of false gods, stolen and secreted, was simple and genuine. “With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, let him not live.” Never would he have spoken thus if the least suspicion of his beloved Rachel's dishonesty and dishonor of God had crossed his mind. But he had learned it since, and had taken it quietly. But to meet God thus woke him up from his indifference. Even the lawless vengeance at Shechem weighed not so heavily. “Put away the strange gods that are among you” took the first place in his charge. This did not trouble him at Succoth, or at Shechem; but God's call to Bethel at once cast light on his carelessness, and produced self-judgment.

Far was Jehovah from saying of him, “I know that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of Jehovah, to do righteousness and justice, in order that Jehovah may bring upon Abraham what he hath spoken of him” It was the reason of their being to the fathers chosen, called, and faithful. Even Terah was an idolater; and Abraham was separated to the one true God by the promises of which sovereign grace made him and his seed in the line of Isaac the depositary. Yet now his son was forced to feel and confess the sinful presence of strange gods in the midst of his household. No wonder that his was a checkered lot; but how great the goodness that had watched over his trials and intermingled mercy at every time of need, and at length summoned him to Bethel, that he might clear himself and his house from their veiled ungodliness, and return to consistency with his calling! “Put away the strange gods that are among you, and cleanse yourselves, and change your garments; and we will arise and go up to Bethel, and I will make there an altar to God that answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way that I went.” Who of us has followed the Lord without the proofs of the same fidelity on His part? chastising our waywardness too that we might be partakers of His holiness?

“And they gave to Jacob all the strange gods that were in their hand, and the rings that were in their ears; and Jacob buried them under the terebinth that was by Shechem.” Idolatry pervaded even their little ornaments, all of which had therefore to disappear. “And they journeyed; and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them; and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob.” The living God knows how to control and dispose the heart, not only of enemies, but of those naturally resenting injury. Let His children fear and withal trust Him.

“And Jacob came to Luz which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Bethel, he and all the people that were with him. And he built there an altar and called the name El-bethel; because God there had appeared to him when he fled from the face of his brother.” It is not now an altar called by a name that limits God to himself like El-Elohe-Israel. His faith is now cleared, and fuller. He is the God of God's house, which is richer, better, and higher up the source of blessing.

“And Deborah Rebekah's nurse died; and she was buried beneath Bethel under the oak; and the name of it was called Allon-bachuth,” the oak of weeping. It is remarkable that she should have joined Jacob s household, no doubt after Rebekah's death. There her heart turned, her mistress gone, to Rebekah's beloved son. That they requited her love is plain from the record of their tears.

Israel Holy to Jehovah: 8. Israel's Holiness

It is remarkable that here they are called to observe Jehovah's statutes, when three prohibitions are laid on Israel of a seemingly minor importance, not moral like that which follows.

19 “Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind; thou shalt not sow thy field with two kinds of seed; nor shall there come upon thee a garment of two kinds of stuff mingled together. 20 And whosoever lieth carnally with a woman that is a bondmaid bethrothed to a husband, and not at all redeemed, nor freedom given her: there shall be punishment; they shall not be put to death, because she was not free. 21 And he shall bring his guilt-offering unto Jehovah to the door of the tent of meeting, a ram for a guilt-offering. 22 And the priest shall make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt-offering before Jehovah for his sin which he hath sinned, and he shall be forgiven for his sin which he hath sinned. “And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as their uncircumcision: three years shall they be as uncircumcised to you; it shall not be eaten. 24 But in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be holy for giving praise unto Jehovah. 25 And in the fifth year shall ye eat of the fruit thereof, that it may yield to you the increase thereof: I [am] Jehovah your God. 26 Ye shall not eat [anything] with the blood: neither shall ye use enchantments, nor practice augury. 27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, nor shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. 28 Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you: I [am] Jehovah. 29 Profane not thy daughter to make her a harlot; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of enormity. 30 Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I [am] Jehovah. 31 Turn ye not to those that have familiar spirits, nor to the wizards; seek them not to be defiled by them: I [am] Jehovah, your God. 32 Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honor the face of the old man, and thou shalt fear thy God: I [am] Jehovah. 33 And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not do him wrong. 34 The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be to you as the homeborn among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I [am] Jehovah your God. “Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in mete-yard, in weight, or in measure. “Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I [am] Jehovah your God that brought you out of the land of Egypt. 37 And ye shall observe all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: I [am] Jehovah” (vers. 19-37).

Peremptorily, but in wisdom, was divine order impressed, and mixture of different kinds forbidden. He is a faithful Creator, and gave to each creature its species. Hence as it was sin to separate what He joined, it was not less to join what He separated. Their cattle must gender according to the respective kind; their field must not be sown with different kinds of seed; nor was a garment woven of two materials to come on the Israelite. To the Christian the words are full of importance. It was Satan that sowed darnel with the wheat; and the Spirit warns against every incongruous communion (2 Cor. 6). There must be no diverse yoking with unbelievers, no touching what is unclean, no compromise of truth by mixed principles. In matters of this life compromise is amiable and right; but where God's will is in question, it is a ruse of the devil.

The case that is next provided for (vers. 20-22) supposes the imperfect state which the law contemplates; for if she had been free, death was the penalty. But being a bondwoman and espoused, she was scourged, and he brought a guilt or trespass-offering; by which ram the priest made atonement, and the sin was forgiven. Jew or Greek, bond or free, is all gone now: Christ abides for faith.

Again, it was the day of earthly things; but Jehovah would have His people bear in mind the ruin of the earth through man's sin. A full time must pass during which the fruit of their planted trees lay “as uncircumcised unto them “; the fourth year “all the fruit thereof shall be holy to praise Jehovah “; after which they are free to eat, “that it may increase to you its produce.” It is the right principle of the first-fruits for Jehovah (vers. 23-25). God's rights have the first place.

Then not only is the eating of anything with the blood forbidden, but enchantments and auguries, and heathenish ways in trimming of heads and beards, cutting of the flesh and tattooing, as opposed to Jehovah. So too the devoting of a daughter to whoredom, as not immoral only but “profane.” So as His sabbaths were to be kept, and His sanctuary reverenced, they were to shun necromancers and soothsayers as polluting (vers. 26-31). The same authority of Jehovah, which proscribed those heathen enormities, calls for honor to the hoary head and the face of the old man, coupling them with the fear of “thy God” (32). And what strikingly cuts off by anticipation the narrow and base pride of the Talmud, “a stranger” that might sojourn in their land was, not only to be allowed there unmolested, but to be loved as one born among them. “Thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I [am] Jehovah your God” (33, 34). How touching to remember their oppression in Egypt, not for resentment but for compassion!

Lastly, strict equity is enjoined in all dealings of trade and commerce. “Ye shall do no un-righteousness in judgment, in measure of length, in weight, and in measure of capacity: just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin shall ye have: I [am] Jehovah your God, that brought you out of the land of Egypt” (36). It is a great aggravation, because it is not transient but deliberate wrong, when the scales and weights are unfair, when solids and liquids have a falsified criterion. “Therefore shall ye observe all my statutes and all my judgments, and do them: I [am] Jehovah” (37). The least things of daily life fall under His eye.

Proverbs 18:1-12

The first verse seems difficult, and certainly has been rendered differently. The sense in the A. V. does not resemble that given by the Revisers any more than the Ancients. The Sept. and the Vulgate construct alike, but Leeser has another view.

“He that separateth himself seeketh pleasure, he rageth against all wisdom.

A fool hath no delight in understanding, but only that his heart may reveal itself.

When the wicked cometh, there cometh also contempt, and with ignominy reproach.

The words of a man's mouth [are] deep waters, the fountain of wisdom [is] a gushing brook.

To accept the person of the wicked is not good, —to wrong the righteous in judgment.

A fool's lips enter into contention, and his mouth calleth for blows.

A fool's mouth [is] his destruction, and his lips [are] a snare to his soul.

The words of a tale-bearer [are] as dainty morsels, and they go down to the chambers of the belly.

He also that is slack in his work is brother to him that is a destroyer.

The name of Jehovah [is] a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is set in a high retreat.

The rich man's wealth [is] his strong city, and as a high wall in his own imagination.

Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, and before honor [is] humility” (vers. 1-12).

The separation with which the chapter opens is in no way from evil, but rather from others to indulge his own desire and pleasure. Such selfishness enrages him against all wisdom.

This is confirmed by the verse that follows. For such a one is pronounced to be a fool, and to have no delight in understanding, but only that his heart may reveal itself. How far he is from knowing himself! His heart is the chief seat of his folly.

But there is worse among men than vanity; for it is truly said “when the wicked cometh, there cometh also contempt, and with ignominy reproach.” God despiseth not any; but what care they for God? They have only contempt for their betters, and ensure it for themselves, or, as it is here said, “with ignominy reproach.”

The contrast appears next. “The words of a man's mouth are deep waters, the fountain of wisdom a gushing brook.” Here it is a man who has looked up and learned wisdom, instead of trusting himself. His words are therefore deep waters, and they are fresh as well as deep, even as a gushing brook. For Jehovah is the living God, and man under the power of death.

But there are dangers too even for the wise. It is not good to favor the person of the wicked, and just as bad to subvert the righteous in judgment. Strict integrity is a jewel. Prejudice must not be allowed, any more than partiality. Our sufficiency is of God.

There is another way in which folly displays itself. “A fool's lips enter into (or, with) contention, and his mouth calleth for blows.” The way of peace is unknown. His words are for war, and his mouth therefore calleth for blows; even if he escape sometimes. But it is all the worse for him in the long run; for “a fool's mouth is his destruction, and his lips the snare of his soul.” Had he profited by rebuke and other humiliations, it might have been otherwise (vers. 6, 7).

Quite as evil as the foolish talker is the talebearer, of whom we next hear. “The words of a tale-bearer [are] as wounds, and they go down to the chambers of the belly.” Even if they were strictly true, which is rarely the case, they are in every respect injurious, and fall under the censure of evil-speaking. They wholly lack a moral object or a loving way. It is at best gossip, and for the most part the mere indulgence of talking of things which right feeling would rather conceal. The issue is to inflict wounds which pierce very deep, and where they are least curable.

Then we have a maxim of great force in ver. 9. The slothful also, or slack in his work, is near akin to the destroyer, or great waster. Both arrive at the same end of misery, one by idling, the other by careless prodigality. See the blessed contrast of Christ as Mark traces His service; “and straightway,” “and immediately,” “and forthwith.”

What a resource in such dangers, and in all others, is the name of Jehovah! A strong tower truly, whither the righteous betakes himself and is secure (10). For the enemy is still in power; and those who return to God need protection.

How poor in comparison is the rich man's wealth (11)! He thinks it a strong city, and a high wall in his own conceit. But it will fail him utterly when his need is extreme.

So when the heart of man is haughty, destruction is nigh; whereas humility is the pathway to honor that lasts (12). Here Christ is the blessed Exemplar. For He, as high as the Highest, took the lowly place of bondman to obey, and having gone down so low that none could follow to the utmost, is now indeed exalted. The Christian is called to follow; and on none did the Lord lay it more than on the apostles who by grace were faithful.

Gospel Words: Christ and the Law

We have already seen how certainly and clearly laid down is Christ's position in ver. 17. He maintained the authority of the Old Testament. “Think ye not that I came to destroy the law and the prophets; I came not to destroy but to fulfill.” He came to make good God's mind therein. This He confirms in ver. 18. “For verily I say to you, Till the heaven and the earth pass, one iota or one point shall in no wise pass from the law till all things come to pass. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of the heavens; but whosoever shall do and teach [them], he shall be called great in the kingdom of the heavens. For I say to you that, except your righteousness surpass [that] of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of the heavens” (18-20).

That the Lord obeyed the law is beyond doubt. This is not the meaning of fulfilling. He gave the full scope of the law and the prophets; and He did yet more, for He revealed God in Himself both by words and ways, and disclosed those secrets of the kingdom which were absolutely hidden of old. For His rejection and departure to heaven would and did give it a quite new form; and beyond this the great mystery as to Christ and as to the church had to be made known, involving things still higher and deeper. But nothing in the new could weaken the authority of God in the old. “Till the heaven and the earth pass, one iota or one point shall in no wise pass from the law till all things come to pass.”

Christ should be glorified in heaven, and the Holy Spirit sent down to baptize the believing Jews and Greeks into one body, the body of Christ, the temple destroyed, the city trodden down by Gentiles, and the Jews scattered over the earth for their sin against Messiah. But even these woes on the chosen race fulfilled the law and the prophets, and in a special way Christ's word; yet more remains, and darkness still, before the law and the prophets are fulfilled in the salvation of Israel coming to and out of Zion. Then shall the earth yield her increase, and God shall bless to the full His long unblest people, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him. O haste the day! Assuredly Christ came not to make void but to fulfill.

But the Lord is here addressing His disciples who were still under the law. He is not yet even predicting His death on the cross and the redemption through His blood to which grace turned it in the justifying righteousness of God by faith to be revealed in the gospel. Indeed, as we have often noticed and might through the entire Sermon on the Mount, not one word says He here of this work of sovereign love. He first sets out the characteristics that are proper to the kingdom in verses 3-12; then position in 13,14; and now the relation, like His own in their measure, to the revelation God had given to His ancient people, however unbelieving and unworthy as a whole. He does not foretell what their rejection of Himself must entail on the Jewish nation, or what God would then do for them or others who believe.

Hence in ver. 19 He still speaks to them as the godly remnant that heard His voice and clung to Him, born of God, but under law, and on this side of the cross and its blessed results to faith. Obedience first and last is insisted on. Here He begins with the law; but even in this chapter He goes on to what He is saying to them, which the ancients never heard. He brings in rich additions in chap. 6 as declaring the Father's name from the close of chap. 5, guards them from inward and outward snares in chap.7, and ends the discourse there with hearing and doing His words as the rock of wisdom and safety.

As undoing the word justly sunk one to be “least” in the kingdom, faithfulness to it raised to a great place therein. Evidently therefore the righteousness of such as entered must exceed and excel that of the Pharisee (ver. 20) who honored tradition, the word of man, to the necessary disparagement of God's word.

It was the perfection of giving His disciples their food in due season. Many prophets and kings, some even inspired, desired to see the things which the disciples saw, and saw them not; and to hear the things which they were hearing, and heard them not. And greater things were at hand, even that most wondrous of all wonders, God's work in the cross and the resurrection and the heavenly glory of His Son. But if heaven and earth shall pass, as they are, and not the least tittle of the law and the prophets, how far above these to God's glory and man's blessing rise the words of the Lord Jesus

And these are words of His which deeply concern my reader, who is not a disciple of His, but a slave of sin and Satan. If you are indeed His disciple, let me rejoice with you in the grace God has shown you. If you are not, but only a guilty and wretched sinner, I beseech you to hear His words meant for you to heed before God that you may live forever. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Doubt Him not: He is able, He is willing. “I came to call, not righteous men, but sinners:” why despair, or turn away? Even His enemies cried, “This man receiveth sinners.” What does He Himself say, even when His hearers sought to kill Him, and when He sought those who had not a pulse of life toward God? “Verily, verily I say to you, He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath life eternal, and cometh not into judgment [out of which no unbeliever can emerge, nor yet believer if he entered], but passed out of death into life.”

For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him may not perish, but have life eternal. What love in God Who hates the sins and pities the sinner! What infinite love, when you think, first of His Son, then of yourself! But O my fellow-sinner, what a doom must be yours according to His word if you disbelieve the Son, are un-subject to Him, and neglect so great salvation

The Coming and the Day of the Lord: Part 1

The Jewish, Christian, and Gentile portions have already been shown in the Lord's prophecy on Olivet. Let us now see what the word of God reveals as to those, of course not born of God, who may bear the Christian name for the present, but will abandon it, as we learn from the scripture before us. No doubt the world comprehends more than those who outwardly profess the Lord's name. Besides Christendom, it embraces the Gentiles or all the nations that are heathen, besides Israel.

Scripture is silent about none of these; and the light of God is as bright and sure on the future as on the past.

This is an immense principle to hold fast in reading the written word. Men are apt to judge of God by themselves. To speak with certainty of the future being to us impossible, man forthwith imagines that, although God speak about it, even then it must be somewhat uncertain. If we only consider a moment, we cannot but learn that this is the, principle of infidelity. What difference does it make to God whether He is speaking about the past, the present, or the future? He assuredly does not “think” in the sense of having to reflect, nor does He merely give an opinion. On the contrary, He knows all things. The only real question can be (as to some a question it is), whether God communicates what He knows, or how far He has been pleased to do so. Does not the prophetic word profess this? Is it well founded? If God has communicated His mind about the future, as evidently the scriptures not only assume but openly assert, it is simply faith to accept all. The moment our faith rests upon His word, the light shines What seemed confusion, when we did not believe, turns to order before our minds when we do. The light was really there in Christ. It was our unbelief that made the darkness and confusion.

The word of God is the perfect revelation of His mind, no matter of what He spoke, or when; and God has been pleased to speak about the future. It is the special mark of His confidence. He told Abraham what He was going to do, what concerned not merely himself but others, even the cities of the plain. With them Abraham had nothing directly to do, though Lot had; yet not Lot but Abraham was told of the imminent destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot only learned it just in time to be saved, as he was, as by fire. But Abraham, though not in the scene, knew it in peace beforehand, and interceded with God for righteous Lot before his heart. Our portion ought to be that of Abraham rather than of Lot. So there are those of the future who will be saved just in time to escape destruction. They will be in the sphere of judgment, and will pass through it in a measure, but will nevertheless be preserved. The mass will be destroyed for their lawless evil; others too who are unbelieving: “remember Lot's wife.” But a remnant will be delivered, as the angels rescued Lot and his daughters. Theirs, however, will not be the happier portion, but for those on high.

God in fact will have provided some better thing for us in every respect. He has given us the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Accordingly says Paul writing (not to the Ephesians or Philippians, but even) to the Corinthians, “We have the mind of Christ,” the intelligence of Christ, the capacity of spiritual understanding. Not, of course, that even the apostles had the same measure as the Lord, who had and was Himself the wisdom of God, and this absolutely. We have nothing save in and by Him, and hence only in dependence on Him. However, we have not the mere mind of man only but of Christ, as Christians having the Holy Ghost.

The intelligence of Christ is given; and this shows why what was true in principle of Abraham is distinctly and characteristically true of the Christian; for it could not be said, in the full force of the terms, that Abraham or any O.T. saint had the mind of Christ. The Holy Ghost was not yet come, for Jesus was not yet glorified. Now that the Lord Jesus has accomplished redemption, and gene up on high, He has sent down the Holy Spirit to dwell in His saints, to make them the temple of God. Even the body of each believer is the temple of the Holy Ghost, just as His own body was: He on earth having His body perfectly holy, and ever fit for the Spirit without redemption; we only in virtue of His blood. Hence never till the blood of Christ was shed could any saint here below become the temple of the Holy Ghost. Jesus was the living temple of God; we, let us repeat, are only so because our sin is judged in His cross, our guilt blotted out by His blood. Therefore the Spirit of God comes down to dwell in us, putting honor on Christ Jesus for the redemption that is in Him; but because of this we, Christians, receive a divine power, by the Spirit opening in our measure into all that God communicates.

This, though a digression, is of immense importance on the subject which we are examining; for few things more evince divine intelligence than profiting by the communication of the future. The, Old Testament makes, in the main, this challenge to the false gods: a challenge which could only strike them dumb, even if they had pretended ever so loudly before to give out oracles. As long as it was merely a question of baffling inquirers, they might deceive by equivocal answers; but Isaiah, in the most trenchant and severe style, shows their utter impotence to disclose the future. Now a very large part of the Old Testament consists of revelations of the future, not only of what was future then, but of what is future still. And the historical part from the first book is cast into typical forms of prophetic character, exhibiting throughout one and the same mind of God. So does the intermediate poetical portion in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

The prophets inspired by Jehovah expand largely, and in the most blessed terms, on the bright future that yet awaits this world. Isaiah depicts the day of Jehovah, when all that now obstructs the light of glory shall be removed; when all that thwarts the honor of the only true God shall fall; when Satan must lose his delusive power; when the nations of the earth, long groaning under oppression, shall be set free; and when the Jews themselves (who ought to have been the leaders of all that is good and true, but alas! abound with teachers of the infidelity that now poisons the world) shall be delivered from unbelief's most withering thralldom, and rise forever to the place that God's promise assigns them as the head of the nations then blessed, the priests of the world. They, converted and restored to Canaan, are destined to fill the foremost place when the earth itself is raised out of its actual and long degradation. Jehovah has spoken it, and His hand will accomplish all in due time. It is these prospects of the world on which the Old Testament prophets descant at great length, and with graphic minuteness.

When the Lord Jesus came, on whom the accomplishment of prophecy depends for the realization of the kingdom of God—for in truth He was the King who brought in the kingdom in His person, and presented it with final responsibility to Israel—He was rejected. Then came a mighty change of all consequence to the world, when every bright hope seemed blasted, when all expectation of glory for Israel set in clouds and a deeper darkness than before. God made use of that moment of fallen hopes for the earth and the earthly people, and the nations of the world, for “some better thing” He used the cross of Christ to bring in a wholly new state, when Israel vanished for a season—a state distinct from that which prophets prepared the minds of men of old to expect. For their great testimony is to Israel restored and repentant under the Messiah reigning over the earth, blessed itself beyond example and all creatures, and the nations in happy subjection. The reason for a change so unexpected is simple, and the ground when once taken was plain. The rejected Christ is raised from the dead, and, having ascended to heaven, took His seat there to bring in another and heavenly order of blessing. He is seated there until a moment unknown and undisclosed, before which God brings in altogether new things. This is Christianity, which is therefore essentially of heaven. The prophets did not speak of heaven, save incidentally. Prophecy refers to the earth. No doubt there are here and there allusions to heaven; but by no prophet and in no prophecy is there any real, still less detailed, opening out of what the Lord Jesus is doing now as Head of the church at the right hand of God.

It was not the object of prophecy to do so. Prophecy, the prophetic word, is a lamp, and very useful, to which those who love the Lord do well to pay attention, for that lamp shines in a dark or squalid place; and the earth for the present is so. Such is the revealed use of prophecy; and Christianity recognizes it fully. But there is a brighter light, not the day but day-light, as the apostle says, “Till day dawn and a day-star arise in your hearts:"

What does he mean by this? The accomplishment of prophecy? Not so, but more and better. Till the day of Jehovah comes for the world? In no wise. He speaks of day dawning and a day-star arising in the heart, not of the day arising upon Zion and the world. This would be the accomplishment of prophecy; but he is intimating what the Spirit of God delights to bring into the heart of the Christian now. The Jewish believer was encouraged still to use and value the prophetic lamp. Yea, more: the word of prophecy derived confirmation from what was seen on the holy mountain. Yet there ought to be through the gospel a far clearer light—the light of day, the brightness of heaven, not of the lamp. They as Christians were already to enjoy its effect. But it might now be so with those slow to learn more. Not only were Christians born of God, as all saints are; they were all sons of light and sons of day (1 Thess. 5:5), and are exhorted not to sleep but to watch and be sober, and here to have their heavenly portion made good in their souls. For the person of our Lord Jesus is our hope, the day-star, not merely the general light of heavenly dawn, but the day-star arising in the heart. This is, as I understand it, the arising of the proper Christian hope in the heart. Many then, as now, were lukewarm and came short.

The actual arrival of the day of the Lord is another matter, and this will be in its own time. It was, however, a good thing to hold fast the prophetic lamp, until one gets a better light. There are far brighter associations into which the Christian is introduced now through Christ Jesus; but of these prophecy does not treat. The prophetic word does not contemplate the arising of the day-star in the heart. There it is the very reverse of Christ. The day-star of prophecy is rather the title of the Lord's enemy, as you may see in Isa. 14. The day-star that the Christian ought to have arising within is Christ, while He is outside the world in heaven, before He shines as Sun of Righteousness upon the earth. Day by the gospel dawns, and the day-star or heavenly hope of Christ arises in the heart while he is here, as he enters into Christian privilege by the truth.

In consequence of this present privilege we stand in a wondrous position. Believing in the Lord Jesus, we have a Savior who is already come, and has accomplished the redemption of our souls, and given us remission of sins. We have life eternal, and the knowledge of our absolute cleansing by the blood of Jesus in the sight of God through the Holy Ghost that is given to us. Yet the condition of the world is no better, but far worse in some respects of the greatest moment. The world has been led on by its prince to reject its only true King, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, the Son of God. We are in the secret of it; we know that the Anointed King has been refused; and our hearts enlightened from above are with Him. We can afford to wait for the great day; but meanwhile we have day-light in the gospel before the day comes. The light cannot yet shine on the world, but in our hearts; so that it is evident we have more than the lamp of prophecy, even the day-light and a heavenly hope in Christ. And who can wonder if indeed we are children of the light and of the day ourselves?

Hence therefore it is the part of the Christian to judge what is passing around, through communications God-inspired. According to the word it belongs to our proper heritage. The Lord reproached the Jewish chiefs because they were unable to discern the signs of the times. We ought to be able not only to read what is before us according to God, but also to speak of the future with calm confidence, because we believe the word of God. With all that God has communicated we may humbly concern ourselves, as having at heart the family interests; for, if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ. It would be unbecoming that the heirs should not make themselves acquainted with the inheritance; and how strange, if Christians indwelt by the Spirit of God could not understand For this reason then, if we only knew our own privileges and depended on the Lord for it in living faith, we should be led into an immense field of blessedness entirely outside the natural ken of man. This is what one may endeavor a little to expound and apply, in looking also at a few of the principal passages that bear upon the prospects of the world according to the scriptures.

Now the Lord, when He was here below, showed clearly what was to befall the earth. He says, “The field is the world;” and He has told us what will become of the world, where men would be Christianized. From the first, He has shown us clearly what would be the result and why so. Good seed was sown; but there was an enemy who sowed bad seed. He does not give us the smallest idea that the bad seed would be ameliorated. He intimates that the servants were zealous enough to remove the bad effects, but He reproves them. He warns that their effort to correct the evils brought into the field, the attempt to use the name of the Lord, for reforming the Christianized or at most christened world, only issues in rooting up the good as well as the bad, if not more so.

This has been seen habitually in Popery. It is the principle of the reproved servants; but, instead of making the world better, in effect it ends on the contrary in destroying the wheat, rather than the darnel. Babylon, above all evil-doers that ever were, has killed the saints, and made herself drunk with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. This is a matter of divine revelation to every one; and history verifies it as a fact of Rome, not pagan only but papal far more. Scripture had said so long ago; he would be a bold man who would dare to deny it. Yet as of old so now, there are men who live to deny the Bible, and talk of making the world better! This goes along with another fundamental error found in Popery (and far beyond it too), the notion of men getting better themselves. The two delusions go together. The fact is, that Christianity denies both; one's very baptism indeed, rightly understood, denies it, particularly as to man. To be saved one must take the ground of death with Christ to the first man, not of improving him; and he who sees and knows what man is ought never to be drawn into the delusion of the world's improvement. Further, the Lord Jesus implicitly sets aside the latter error when He tells us the nature of the harvest that is at hand. Remember too that the harvest is the end of the “age,” this present evil age, not of the “world.”

When that end or rather consummation comes, there will be a process of discrimination in judgment. The wheat will be removed on high, the darnel consumed below. Consequently then will be the harvest; but this implies evil abounding up to the end of the age. Never will there be a time in this age, when the preaching of the gospel, or discipline however used or abused, can root out the evil sown by Satan from the beginning under the Christian name. It will close by divine judgment on the lawless and all the stumbling-blocks. The new age will be characterized by the Son of man's righteous rule over the earth in power and peace.

In short therefore those who expect the gradual extirpation of evil in this age are in antagonism with the distinct teaching of the Lord Jesus. Far as possible is one from saying this to repress efforts towards winning and edifying souls. It is to be feared that those who yield to such thoughts of their brethren, or at least to such words, are guilty of slander. It is one thing to work in faith, and another to expect the general and true blessing of the world as the result. Granted that this will surely come; but it is reserved for the Son of man. Should the bride of the Lamb be jealous? Such a result is not for the church, which has been verily guilty from early days, dragged down into the snares of the world, into its human activity, its politics, its ease, its honors, its gold and silver, and what not. If Christendom is now suffering the buffets of the world, the world (once eagerly sought by Christians for its own things) is now turning against those who gave anything but true testimony to Christ, and to what a Christian should be. But it will be worse and worse with the world. Ungrateful for whatever of God has been shed around by Christianity, it will turn again and rend her who abuses the name of the Lord for her own selfish and earthly interests. Evil was planted under the pretext of Christ's name, and this evil can never be rooted out until the judgment to be executed at the end of the age. It is presumptuous unbelief to expect or attempt it. The angels dealing judicially are quite distinct from and contrasted with the servants who sow and watch (alas! how poorly) the good seed. It is astonishing how saints continue to confound the two.

We repeat also that the end of the age is not the end of the world. The phrase “end of the world” in Matt. 13:39, 40, is an unequivocal error. There is no scholar who ought not to be ashamed of such a blunder. Far from being the end of the world, the very next verse proves the contrary. The Lord sends His angels and purges from the field or world what is offensive to Him.

The lawless are judged, the scandals removed, the bad crop and the bad fish destroyed. In short the living wicked are punished, and the righteous shine in the kingdom of their Father. The kingdom of the Son of man is the earthly part of the kingdom of God; the kingdom of the Father is its heavenly part, as the Lord explains to any attentive reader. The heavenly things and the earthly things of the kingdom of God (compare John 3:12) will be found then in unsullied brightness and harmony. In the Father's kingdom, according to His own counsels, the glorified saints shine to His own praise. The field or world which had been spoiled by Satan's wiles will be cleared of all its corruptions and their lawless agents. Thus, far from being the end of the world, the harvest which closes this age will be the beginning of the world's going onward in blessedness under the displayed kingdom of the Son of Man and Son of God, the Head of the church which will then be exalted and reigning with Him.

It is the end of the age, the present age while Christ is on high, and does not appear in glory and reign over the earth. There will follow another age, when Christ, instead of being hidden, will be manifested to expel Satan, and remove all that contaminates men and dishonors God. This connects itself with the Old Testament prophets. They all refer to the times of restitution of all things, the kingdom of Messiah over the earth, as the apostle preached to the men of Israel in Solomon's porch (Acts 3:19). The mistake is in applying them to the church now. The principle often does apply in the New Testament, as we all see: no one means to contest this; but there are limits. The fulfillment is another thing.

In the future kingdom there will be not only Jews blessed but Gentiles too as such. Of this truth the apostle avails himself, pointing to the fact of both enjoying the blessings of grace; and this amply suffices to stop the mouth of the Jew. Thus we find the Old Testament applied in Rom. 15:10, “Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people." How then could the Jew consistently object? Was it just to fly in the face of their own prophets? Did the Jew not affirm God's blessing on both to be contrary to the Bible? For the Gentiles are certainly blessed no less than the Jew by the gospel; and this the narrow and proud Jew could not endure. Yet the apostle never says that the prophecy is now therefore accomplished to the full or the letter. The principle is true under the gospel; the fulfillment of the prophecy awaits another age, and a different state of things, when Christ appears and reigns in visible power and glory.

In the prophecies we find intimations, not merely of the coming blessedness for all the earth, but of the Jews treated as a rebellious, gainsaying people, while God is calling in those who were not a people. Take the beginning of Isa. 65. The Gentiles are there designated as those who had not known Jehovah, while His people Israel are judged as disobedient. Compare again Hos. 1 with Rom. 9. Thus the Spirit of God gives here and there hints, dim enough once but now clearly interpreted by Him, which should have a partial bearing on the present time. But none of these Old Testament scriptures discloses to us the heavenly glory of Christ at the right hand of God as the center of union to saints on earth, He the Head of one body to the Christians (Jew and Gentile alike). These things compose “the mystery “; none of them is ever developed by the prophets. It was then a secret hid in God.

We have the fact of the Lord sitting at the right hand of God in Psa. 110; but the great use the psalm makes of it is to show that He sits there till His enemies are made His footstool. There is not a word about what meanwhile is being done with His friends. The revelation of the counsels and ways of God with the latter now is Christianity. The psalm speaks of His sitting there till judgment is executed on His enemies. It tells us also that Messiah is Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek; but it is silent about His present intercession there for the Christian, dwelling plainly on the future execution of judgment when Jehovah sends the rod of Messiah's strength out of Zion.

What the apostle calls the revelation of the mystery is now verified. It is a secret which the Old Testament never brought out, though giving certain intimations that are accomplished, as for instance in calling the Gentiles. For as Moses told Israel, “The secret things belong unto Jehovah our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the works of this law.” But the great central truth of Paul is, that the mystery or secret that was of old hid in God concerning Christ and concerning the church is now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets through the Spirit; as in fact it was made known to us by Paul himself.

It would be easy to furnish proofs, were this the fitting time. The character of the church supposes that God abolishes at present the difference between the Jew and the Gentile, which the promises and the prophecies kept up. The grand fact of the future is that the Jew is exalted to the first place, and the Gentile blessed but subordinately; so that the old superiority of Israel will be maintained then, however blessed the Gentile may and will be. To deny this is to ostracize the truth, though not quite like the wicked Jehoiakim. In the kingdom they will each be recognized and blessed, but in a different position, not as now when both are made one. It is quite evident that the future millennial kingdom supposes the reinstatement of Israel in more than former favor, and the nations will rejoice, but in a place secondary to that of Israel.

In the church of God (whereof the Fathers were as ignorant as the moderns) all this disappears, the church being heavenly, as Christ is, and according to the nature of things in heaven. People are not known by their nationality on high: on earth they are, and they will be in God's kingdom here. But the Christian being essentially called on high or upward, all these earthly distinctions for him disappear. Hence there came a quite new state of things, and a fresh testimony; for God has now revealed in the New Testament that which comes in between the first and second advent of Christ, as different from the future on the earth as from the past before redemption.

When the Lord comes again, the Old Testament prophecies resume their course, with the additional confirmation of a small portion of the New Testament which refers to that time, in order to give so far a combined testimony, and all the more because so great a change had come to pass.

One may now see clearly, what has been pointed out already, that the Lord Jesus prepared His disciples from the very first not to expect that the economy would, as far as the world was concerned, progress or end in joy and light and blessing. On the contrary, old evils were to go on, and new evils begin and take root from early days by the crafty power of Satan, never to be extirpated till the end of the age. This then is a great lesson taught in the Gospel of Matthew.

Again, in Luke 21, is a statement to which we may refer as giving according to scripture a further view of the world's course. It is said, “When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. This distinctly points to the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, when it was invested with armies perhaps more completely than at any point of its most eventful history. But not a word is here about “the abomination of desolation.” Nor does this chapter say “then shall be great tribulation” such as never had been, nor shall be; “these,” it only tells us, “be the days of vengeance” two very different things. Here again we read, “But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days, for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people.” This was fulfilled to the veriest tittle in what befell the Jews when Titus took the city, and the Jews passed into captivity for the second time. “And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations, and Jerusalem shall be trodden down by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” So it came to pass. Jerusalem has been for many centuries trodden down by Gentiles. One national power after another was to have possession of the holy city. And so it is still; that treading down still goes on, for seasons allotted to Gentiles are not yet fulfilled

But much more follows: “There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity, sea roaring and rolling waves, men ready to expire through fear and expectation of the things coming on the habitable earth; for the powers of the heavens shall be shaken,” &c. Some have made the mistake that these scenes also took place when Titus took Jerusalem, but there is no authority for such a supposition. We have had the capture of Jerusalem in verse 20, &c.; after which Jerusalem is trodden down since the siege; and must be till seasons of Gentile come to an end. Here in these and the following verses we are transported into the final scenes. “And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud, with power and great glory. But when these things begin to come to pass, look up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.” It is clear that the earth's destruction is not intended, but the blessedness that comes in at the end of the age, when God terminates the time of man's misery, and wickedness, and trouble, and suffering. The coming of the Son of man is never coupled with the dissolution of the world, or its end in any such sense, but with the close of Satan's misrule, and the shining forth of the kingdom of God. For the world there can be no real permanent general blessing till the Son of man comes in displayed power and glory to reign over it to God's glory.

Now we turn to the scripture immediately before us. The statement of the Spirit of God is most explicit. He beseeches the saints by the hope of Christ's presence, who will gather them together unto Himself, against the unfounded rumor that the day of the Lord, the day of judgment for the living, had actually arrived. There is in the A. V. an error of reading, “Christ” instead of “Lord,” and an error of rendering, “is at hand” instead of “is present.” The day of Christ, as in the Epistle to the Philippians 1:10, 16, has different associations from the judgment of the quick. But the mistranslation of the verb is far more important, because it falsifies the bearing of the passage, from which even those who correct it find it difficult to recover. The word ἐνέστηκεν means “is present” and nothing else. The true sense seemed so unintelligible, if not incredible, to translators and commentators, that they gave the quite different meaning of “is at hand,” or “imminent.” Many of these could not be ignorant that the same tense in the N. T. imports definitely and invariably elsewhere “present “: see Rom. 8:38; 1 Cor. 3:22; 7:26; Gal. 1:4; and Heb. 9:9. In all these it unequivocally expresses the then present, and repeatedly in distinct contrast with “at hand” as future, no matter how near. Yet I am not aware of any one before Grotius who pointed out the mistranslation. But that learned and able man was too worldly-minded, too disposed to human ideas, in short too unspiritual, to make any effective use of that observation for intelligence of the passage by clearing away the obstruction to the truth created by an error which perverts the true sense.

1 Peter 4:1-6

Here, as in chap. 2:24, our apostle urges death to sins in its practical reality. It is not (as the apostle Paul, in Rom. 6 and elsewhere, teaches) the Christian privilege of having died with Christ to sin, but the duty which flows from His death as a fact in the spiritual realm; that we should no longer serve sin but walk as righteous men after Christ's example. Both speak to the same end.

“Since Christ then suffered [for us] in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind; because he that suffered in flesh hath ceased from sin, no longer to live the rest of time in flesh to men's lusts but to God's will. For the past time [is] sufficient to have wrought out [or, purposed] the will of the Gentiles, walking as ye had done in lasciviousness, lusts, wine-bibbings, revels, carousings, and unhallowed idolatries; wherein they think it strange that ye run not with [them] into the same excess of profligacy, speaking injuriously, who shall render account to him that is ready to judge living and dead. For to this end was the gospel preached to dead men also, that they might be judged according to men in flesh, and live according to God in spirit” (iv. 1-6).

To Messiah, the greatest of all sufferers, the apostle turns the hearts of his brethren. It was all the more impressive that of Him it had been verified to perfection, and in the cross above all. For till the veil was taken from the heart of the righteous remnant, the Jew saw nothing but triumph and glory for Him, as well as for His people. And what a large part of Holy Writ bore witness to it! Yet His death was the simplest, plainest, and the most irrefragable proof, that unbelief had hidden from their eyes the divine testimony to His suffering throughout the Ο.T., Law, Psalms, and Prophets. Risen from the dead He opened the understanding of His disciples to understand the scriptures and thus to judge their own dark one sidedness. As He said to two of them on the resurrection day, “O senseless and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets spoke! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory? “Long before His crucifixion He had told His disciples of the Son of man being in His day as the lightning shines from under heaven to under heaven to the surprise of a guilty world; “but first he must suffer many things and be rejected of this generation” (Luke 17:24, 25).

There was revealed an unequaled Sufferer, not Job, not Joseph, not Moses, nor David, nor Jeremiah, nor any other of the prophets; but all these perhaps in some stage foreshadowing the suffering One to come. But all this is infinitely short of the wondrous truth of the cross. For He, the Holy One of God who knew no sin, was made sin for us, and suffered, not for righteousness as saints might and did, but from God for our sins, as He alone could. And hence, when rejected of the people, betrayed by one apostle, denied by another, forsaken by all we may say, God forsook Him, as His own lips declared. So it must be if sin was to be adequately judged, and a perfect ground laid in His death to reconcile the foulest sinner to God, cleansing him from every sin by His blood. As the apostle testified to His blood in 1:18-21, so does he now to the practical power of His suffering to give power against sin: “Arm yourselves with the same mind.” Never had He pleased Himself, though in Him was no sin. Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God. Such was His life in every detail; it was a pure meal-offering, a holy oblation, to God His Father, whose glory He sought in the least thing as in the greatest, and in the humblest, truest, and deepest of all ways—in obedience. And so it was in that with which nothing can compare, in His atoning death, where God had all His nature glorified even as to sin, and made Him sin for us that we might become His righteousness in Christ.

Great, and varied, and infinite are the results of His suffering; yet here the apostle speaks, not of its being the efficacious means of bringing us to God as blameless and spotless as Himself, but of its practical power against sin day by day. “Since Christ then suffered in flesh, arm yourselves with the same mind.” Christ never yielded, but suffered being tempted; holy Himself, He kept sin outside. He had no sin in the human nature which He took. But how were we to be met who had it within and were guilty without? He died for us, yea for our sins; He was forsaken of God that this judgment might be complete; and in this judgment the apostle Paul adds that God condemned the root of all, sin in the flesh, in Him a sacrifice for sin, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to flesh but according to Spirit.

Peter here draws from Christ for the Christian the great abstract principle, “because he that suffered in flesh hath ceased from sin, no longer to live the rest of time in flesh to men's lusts but to God's will.” Allowing all the difference between the Savior and the saved, this truly applies to His followers. When we sin, it is our own will that is active to His dishonor. One suffers in refusing to sin; one judges and hates and thwarts the will of flesh, and suffers, but does not sin. If by grace our mind is set on God's will at all cost, sin does not enter. It is suffering in flesh, and therein is separation from sin. And this is the simple normal state of the Christian with the heart resting on Him that went down below all depths for him. When the heart loses sight of Him, one shirks suffering, and the will asserts fleshly activity, and actual sin follows. But we are sanctified by the Spirit to the obedience of Jesus, no less than to the sprinkling of His blood. We are left here to do the will of God, now that we are Christ's.

There is another consideration the apostle sets before us, and truly humbling it is. “For the past time is sufficient to have wrought out the purpose [or, will] of the Gentiles, walking as ye have done in lasciviousness, lusts, wine-bibbings, revels, carousings, and unhallowed idolatries; wherein they think it strange that ye run not together into the same excess of profligacy, speaking injuriously; who shall render account to him that is ready to judge living and dead” (3-5).

There is no doubt that these wicked ways were characteristic of the Gentiles, not of the Jews; but those of the dispersion, living among the heathen, were apt to be corrupted by their environment. Like their fathers of old, the descendants, especially outside the sharp supervision of Palestinian eyes, were too easily drawn into gross lusts and passions, and thence, with a bad conscience shutting out God and His judgment, adopted unhallowed idolatries, such as amulets, charms, and the like. This is what the apostle charges as a fact in former days, on those who now bore the Lord's name. It was natural for the heathen so to live; it was shocking that such of them as owned Jehovah had so walked: they now knew that they were no better than others. The apostle, while exhorting to consistency with that holy name, reminds the saints that their Gentile neighbors counted it strange that they did not run the same common race of impure and selfish indulgence, so generally linked with idolatrous customs. Instead of approving the change, they indulged injurious imputations, as the world still does in its form of Christendom. In this they but follow the prince of the world, who is a liar and murderer, the marked contrast of Him who is the Truth and the Life-giver, to whom they “shall render account.” But he puts it with all impressive force, when He is described here as “having it in readiness to judge quick and dead.” Can any believer name a single visible event that hinders His coming?

It is indeed a certain, solemn, yet simple truth, that the Lord Jesus Christ is ordained, or determinately appointed, to this office by God. As Peter preached at Caesarea, Paul at Athens declared that God now enjoins men that they shall all everywhere repent, because He has set a day in which He will judge the inhabited earth by the appointed Man, having as pledge to all afforded His raising Him from the dead. To the believer Peter taught in chapter 1: 21 that His resurrection is to give him faith and hope toward God, delivered from all fear of judgment. To unbelievers, Paul at the Areopagus preached it to be God's assurance that the day hastens when Christ will judge living men as well as dead: the first when He comes in His kingdom, the second just before He gives it up for the eternal state (Rev. 20). For it is the same Who bore our sins in His body on the tree that is now raised from the dead; because God was glorified in that sacrifice of Himself for the putting away of sin, Who is the fore-runner for us entered into that within the veil; as He will come to receive us to Himself, that where He is, there we may be also.

But He is ready to judge, not those even now associated with Him, but “living and dead” who disbelieved and despised Him. He brings salvation to those, judgment to these. How the word of God sweeps away, not doubt only, but delay “My lord delayeth” is the heart's language of mere professors. How sad that believers should plead excuses for the unbelief which our Lord stigmatizes! True hearts love His appearing and would rather hasten the day, solemn as it is.

It is His judging that is linked with verse 6, and helps to rid it of the difficulties with which superstition loads and darkens it. “For to this end the glad tidings went to dead persons also, that they might be judged according to men in flesh, and live according to God in spirit.” From the hour that man fell by sin under death and judgment, God had in His grace a gospel to shelter and give life according to God; which is therefore in the last book of scripture called “an everlasting gospel.” To this clung faith from the first; and it was added to and cleared gradually throughout the O.T. till the death, resurrection, and glory of Christ gave it fullness. And those who now dead heard it in the course of ages had their responsibility so much the more increased. If they abode in their sins through unbelief, they will be judged by the coming Lord according to men in flesh. Grace exempts from that sorrowful condition by the faith of the glad tidings, and life is in Christ for all who believe, who therefore live to God in spirit. For Christ gives life no less than pardon. Those who feel their need of God's grace do also submit to the humbling sense that they deserve judgment. Thus it is that repentance and faith ever go together.

We may add that the passage similarly mistaken in chap. 3:19, 20 does not speak of “glad tidings” like this, and has thus another bearing. It was simply Noah's proclaiming the coming deluge as “a preacher of righteousness” and affected those who perished for their disobedience and are kept for judgment. But we hear of “glad tidings” here; and therefore as the context proves, it applies to all in the past who have heard the gospel. This if refused left them in their natural state as men in flesh, fallen men, to be judged; while those who by grace heard the good news that was sent live according to God in spirit by virtue of that word which quickens by the faith of Christ, and produces the good fruit proper to that life practically. Any one acquainted with the language must own the strict accuracy with which the apostle Peter, certainly not a man of letters or learning, was led to the precisely accurate κηρύσσω and κήρωξ on the one hand, and to the appropriate εὐαγγεμίξω on the other.

Christ and God in 1 John

The way in which God and man in one Person are united and presented in the blessed Lord in this Epistle strikes me more and more, so that it is impossible to separate and apply them distinctively (chap. v. 20 giving the clue to it). Thus already in chap 2:5 in Whom do we know we are? All previously is Christ as such, and His word is spoken of. But “in Him” is always “in God” here, nor do I believe that it occurs to the apostle to distinguish them here. In ver. 6 it is clearly Jesus Christ, for we are to walk as He walked; and it may be taken to be Christ in ver. 5. But being “in Christ” is not the subject or tone of the Epistle as distinguishing Him. Vers. 24, 27 make “Him” in the last impossible to distinguish. Of what follows I have spoken elsewhere. In ver. 28 it is Christ, in ver. 29 it is God. In chap. iii. 1 it is God, “children of God,” but in the end of the verse Christ on earth is the same Being; in ver. 2, it is God again, but “like Him” is Christ, and we see “Him as He is.”

So chap. 3:3, 33 is clearly God—Jesus Christ is His Son; but “He” gave us commandment is Jesus Christ Himself. In ver. 24 “His” commandments are God's, and he who keeps them dwells in Him, and He in him; and He has given us His Spirit.

In chap. 4:2 it is the Spirit of God. In ver. 12 it is clearly so: God dwells in us, and this is connected with His nature. Still it is God Himself, and we dwell in Him; and it is by the Spirit we know first we dwell in Him and then He in us. But the source of it is that God dwells in us. God and Christ, verses 12 and 15, are positive revelations of the word; ver. 13 our experimental realization of it. In ver. 16 also, God being love, he that dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him. Chap. iii. 24 is the outward fact, so that the Spirit could be distinguished from evil spirits (compare 1 Cor. 12:1-3; 14:24, 25). But in 1 John 3 the unity of God and Jesus as one Object before the mind is clear. There dwelling in God Comes first, and then He in us. But the testimony of the Spirit is only to Him in us to guard against false spirits which were at work. In chap. 4:17 it is clearly Christ; but it is God and His love which had been spoken of before.

As regards God's dwelling in us and we in Him, besides' chap. ii. 5 which stands by itself, we have chap. iii. 23, 24: obedience, love to one another, and faith in His Son Jesus Christ. But this brings out the practical fact that we dwell in Him and God in us, the dwelling in Him being the state of our souls, when this life is so in existence. Here, His dwelling in us is the strength of His power and presence which so belongs to us—this known to us by His Spirit given to us; and for the moment the Spirit confines Himself to this, guarding us against evil spirits.—J.N.D.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Absence of Father's Name in Revelation; Gospel of the Kingdom; Mission of the Seventy Omitted

Q.-1. Matt. 10:23, &c. The mission of the Twelve to Israel in Matt. 10 is generally inferred, from verse 23, to be now in suspense, and resumed (of course per alios) before the Lord's appearing. How is this reconcileable with the total absence of the Father's name in the Revelation? We see the name of the Father plainly revealed in the Lord's ministry to Israel, and conspicuous in the commission of the Twelve in this chapter. See verses 20, 29.

2. Does the gospel of the Kingdom (“this gospel”), to be preached to all the nations under Matt. 24:14, coalesce with the mission to all nations under Matt. 28:19 (the latter carrying the full revelation of the Trinity)?

3. Why is the mission of the Seventy (Luke x.) omitted from Matthew? What is its special significance as distinct from that of the Twelve?

E.J.T.

A.-1. It may be observed that from ver. 16 our Lord goes forward from this primary Jewish mission while He was there to the time when the Spirit should be given and their Father consequently known. Then again ver. 23 passes over to the still future days when there will be the resumption of the mission in the land. Hence it seems that there is no sufficient ground to infer that “your Father” as in ver. 29 applies to the future messengers. Nor on the other hand can we speak of His Father's name being absolutely absent, when we had such words as meet our eyes in Rev. 14:1. But it is nowhere implied that the Apocalyptic saints know the Father for themselves, as even the babes of the family do now.

2. I do not think that the future mission of converted' Jews to preach the gospel of the Kingdom for a witness to all the nations can be said to coalesce with Matt. 28:19, because there is baptism to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit enjoined on those who bowed in the latter case. This is the special revelation of God proper to Christianity, and goes far beyond the preaching just before the end.

3. The mission of the Twelve was before the Transfiguration which brought out His rejection, death, and heavenly glory as risen. That of the Seventy followed as an extraordinary call of grace, and therefore in full keeping with the design and character of Luke's Gospel as compared with Matthew and Mark. But we need not suppose that these things and others were yet understood. In the latter case, so urgent was it, they were to salute no one on the way; and the rejection of them was to reject both Himself and Him who sent Jesus.

INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES, cloth (shortly) 5/-

TITUS & PHILEMON expounded by W.K. Cloth,... 2/-

THE REVELATION ...

PRIESTHOOD, ITS'PRIVILEGES AND DUTIES, cloth 2/-.

THE DAY OF ATONEMENT, a New Edition ... 2/-.

One Body and One Spirit, revised ... 2d.

THE LORD'S PRAYER, a New Edition, 3d.
THE FEASTS OF JEHOVAH, a New Edition, 6d.
THE BOOK OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH, 8vo. cloth, 7/6
AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, 8vo. cloth, 7/6
THE PREACHING TO THE SPIRITS IN PRISON... 1/6 and 2/-.
LIFE ETERNAL, 2d.

Short Introduction to Paul's Epistles, 1/- & 1/6
F.E.R. Heterodox on Life Eternal, other Divine
Truths, and above all Christ's Person,

paper, 10d., limp cloth, 1/-.

F.E.R. Heterodox on Christ's Person... id.

THE LORD'S PROPHECY ON OLIVET (shortly).
GATHERED TO HIS NAME ld.

THE APOSTLE PETER ON BAPTISM ...

EZEKIEL'S LAST PARABLE, by Mrs. Bevan, cloth, 2/6.

LONDON:
T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.
Published Monihb•

Published

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row,

Published Monthly.

THE BIBLE TREASURY

EDITED BY WILLIAM KELLY.

No. 89, New Series. MAY,

CONTENTS, PAGE

Rachel's Death (Gen. 35:16-20) ... 257

Sanctity in the Priests (Lev. 21:1-9)... 258

The Proverbs (chap. xix. 1-7) 260

Brotherly Reconciliation (Matt. 5:23-26) ... 261

The Coming, and the Day, of the Lord (2 Thess. 2)... 263

The First Epistle of Peter (chap. iv. 12-14) ... 270

Scripture Queries and Answers... 271

Jacob: 16. The Patriarchal Name of God Revealed to Jacob

Slow indeed had been Jacob's steps to Bethel. Long his stay in Padan-aram; and afterward delay followed in Succoth and in Shechem, till he was dislodged at last by sin and sorrow, shame and fear, yet with God ever faithful and true.

“And God appeared to Jacob again, after he came out of Padan-aram, and blessed him. And God said to him, Thy name [is] Jacob; thy name shall not henceforth be called Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name. And he called his name Israel. And God said to him, I [am] God Almighty [El-Shaddai ]; be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings out of thy loins shall come; and the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee will I give it; and to thy seed after thee will I give the land. And God went up from him in the place where he talked with him. And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him, a pillar of stone; and he poured on it a drink-offering, and he poured on it oil. And Jacob called the name of the place, where God spoke with him, Bethel” (vers. 9-15).

It was no mysterious conflict in the dark as at Peniel with sentence of death put on the flesh. Nor was it a vision of the night as at this same Bethel long before, when Jacob dreamed, and Jehovah stood above the ladder reaching to heaven, with angels of God ascending and descending on it. Still it is not here Jehovah as such, but “God” that now appeared to Jacob in grace, when come after so many vicissitudes to the scene of his vow, and blessed. O what a God is the only true God!

God to him as to his fathers reveals Himself as God Almighty. There is not a word about the faults which rendered chastisement necessary, but simply God blessing him. But no such rich and enlarged scope appears as we have in Gen. 12, no such oath as Jehovah swore on the virtual sacrifice of Abraham's only-begotten, raised from the dead in a parable, with its wonderful distinction between the numerous seed and power over their enemies, and the seed to which no number is attached, the one seed with blessing for the Gentiles, as the apostle draws it out in Gal. 3. Nor are there such terms as when Jehovah appeared to Isaac when He bade him not go down into Egypt, but sojourn in Canaan, spite of famine there, where He would be with him and bless him as He did.

Yet it was no longer Jacob entreating God for His blessing: God of His own accord appeared and blessed him, returned as he was out of the land of the stranger, and taught many a lesson about himself “in the way” as well as out of it. But the blessing however gracious is in a lower key and of a more general character as befitted the name Elohim rather than Jehovah. Still Jacob has Him, truly and unasked, revealed to him, as to Abraham and Isaac, by the proper patriarchal title of El-Shaddai, God Almighty. Nor did any one of the fathers need that assurance of protective might so much as that “worm” Jacob.

His name too is not to be henceforth called Jacob, the supplanter, but Israel, the wrestler or prince of God. The manner is striking. For God speaks of it as if it had been then given, and not merely confirmed, as suited to one who was come back to the land, and not a fugitive from his father's house (though greatly by his own sins, whatever the wickedness of Esau might have been and was). He has like Abraham in Gen. 17 the promise of nations and kings of his line; but nothing here goes beyond the bounds and glory of Israel and the land.

“And God went up from him in the place where he talked with him.” We may compare this favor to Jacob with the similar terms as to Abraham in Gen. 17:22. What grace to both! and what an unspeakable difference from the mythological dreams of the intercourse of the gods with Gentile mankind, even if these had been true! But as lies go with moral corruption, and spurious religion degrades man below natural conscience, what a joy to know that the bright side is yet to come for both Israel and the Gentiles, when the promises are bound up with a rejected Messiah and an everlasting redemption and the new covenant in its literal and direct force! Meanwhile between His two comings the heavenly counsels of God are revealed in Christ dead, risen, and glorified in heaven, and now made known to the church His body, truly the great mystery.

But great too will be the day of Jezreel in the land, and great the blessing of the nations, under Him who will be the head and center of all glory heavenly and earthly (Eph. 1:10).

Can one wonder that Jacob set up a pillar of stone to mark that spot of divine grace, and poured a drink-offering and oil upon it, and called its name Bethel with a fullness of honor unknown before?

Israel Holy to Jehovah: 9. Israel's Practical Sanctification

As the preceding chapter insisted on what was good and comely as became the people of Jehovah and in His name, the solemn and sufficient authority for every requirement, so in our chapter it is chiefly a guard against the evils, often enormous and unnatural, to which Israel was exposed through contact with their idolatrous neighbors. The cruel rites of infanticide is the first to be, denounced; it was practiced by the Ammonites on this side and by the Phoenicians on that, and so by the Carthaginians and others too, who boasted loudly of their civilization.

“'And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying, 2 Thou shalt say also to the children of Israel, Every one of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth of his seed to Molech shall certainly be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones. 3 And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed to Molech, so as to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. 4 And if the people of the land in any way hide their eyes from that man, when he giveth of his seed to Molech, that they kill him not, 5 Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people. 6 And the soul that turneth to necromancers and to soothsayers, to go a whoring after them, I will set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people. 7 Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I [am] Jehovah, your God. 8 And ye shall observe my statutes and do them: I [am] Jehovah who sanctify you” (vers. 1-8).

Nothing more profoundly marks the difference between God's word and men's thoughts in all ages than their levity as to idols and strange gods, and His abhorrence of it, especially in His own people. It may not be any deliberate intention to abandon His worship; it may only be, what they count a venial thing, occasional conformity to idolatry while still professing His name. But God rejects absolutely any such unhallowed compromise, quite apart from the danger, for those who allow it, of utter revolt from Him. It strikes at His majesty, at holiness and truth, and is intolerable in His eyes.

The Israelite ought to have known that it was from out of this abomination that Abraham. was chosen and called as a separate witness, he and his seed, to the one true and living God (Josh. 24:3). Every child of his was bound at all cost to be faithful on pain of forfeiting, not only all his privileges, but his life. Not Israel only was bound: the strangers that sojourned in their midst were under the same obligation. Whoever devoted his offspring to Molech must die by the ignominious death of stoning; and this to make the people of the land take their active part in personally executing the sentence. In this and no other way was the idolater to be put to death, that all around might share His horror and clear themselves of the evil.

Still more impressive is the repeated intimation in vers. 3 and 5 that Jehovah sets His face against that man and will cut him off, because such wickedness defiles His sanctuary and profanes His holy Name. It is not the cruel barbarity toward their own children, or the children of others, into which Satan loved to draw those who worshipped false gods that were no God. But God must abdicate His own glory and being if such a sin could be passed over without His avenging the insult by the hands of Israel. Even such as shut their eyes to spare the guilty exposed themselves to the like doom (4, 5).

No doubt the Christian is entirely apart from the legal system and is called to the relationship of a son with the Father in entire separation from the world. He belongs to the Lord Jesus who laid the foundation of Christianity in the cross whereon He bore our sins and suffered, Just for unjust. He is united to Him, rejected by Jew and Gentile, and glorified above on the Father's throne, and has thus the characteristic stamp of heavenly grace, as he waits for His coming to take him there. But when the Lord returns (and all His saints with Him in power and glory) to be King over all the earth, He will execute judgment on. every evil, and destroy the wicked from before Him; while man universally consigns every idol to the moles and to the bats. They shall be utterly abolished, and false gods (real demons) lead astray no more forever, even though Satan may still remain (restrained for a thousand years from mischief) to be finally punished at the end. But Jesus shall reign in righteousness and peace; and we shall reign with Him over the earth where we suffered with Him.

Nor is it only such an enormity as that of Molech. Turning after necromancers or such as had familiar spirits, and soothsayers or wizards, came under the same unsparing judgment of Jehovah (ver. 6): “I will set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from his people.” How awful for professing Christians to tamper with such profanity! If Israel as an earthly people had thus to sanctify themselves and be holy, as under law, how much more have Christians under grace, who have Christ and all the written word their standard, with the Holy Spirit dwelling in them, to obey and please their God and Father!

Proverbs 18:13-24

The weakness and need, the dangers and difficulties, as well as the helps, of man are here remarkably set out.

“He that giveth answer before he heareth, it [is] folly and shame to him.

The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear (or, raise up)?

The heart of the intelligent getteth knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeketh knowledge.

A man's gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men.

He that pleadeth first in his own cause [seemeth] just; but his neighbor cometh and searcheth him.

The lot causeth contentions to cease, and parteth between the mighty.

A brother offended (or, injured) is [harder to be won] than a strong city; and contentions [are] as the bars of a castle.

A man's belly is satisfied with the fruit of his mouth; with the increase of his lips is he satisfied.

Death and life [are] in the power of the tongue; and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

[Whoso] findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favor from Jehovah.

The poor speaketh supplications, but the rich answereth roughly.

A man of friends cometh to ruin; but there is a lover sticking closer than a brother” (vers. 13-24).

Haste or vanity leads men to confide in themselves and to slight what others have to say. Thus it is that they get the discredit of folly and shame to their surprise and pain.

When one is enabled to bear up courageously in conscious integrity, it is all well; but when the spirit is broken, despair is apt to ensue, and all is over, while that lasts.

Everyone can see that those who lack intelligence ought to get knowledge, and that the unwise should seek it. But in truth the reverse is the fact as here. The intelligent have it at heart to get knowledge, as the wise do seek it. So the Lord assured when here: Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. Who seeks of God in vain for our real good?

But now we hear of the way of a man with men, and without God, as we heard in the chapter before. Gifts go far with most, and make way for the least honorable before great men, who are often, like those who court them, neither good nor wise. There are marked exceptions.

The next apothegm is a sort of converse to ver. 13. It is a man first in his own cause: what can be plainer than its justification? But his neighbor comes and searches him; and how does the matter look then?

There are cases however where both sides have so much to plead, that a fair decision is beyond men, who if stiff give themselves over to contention, as there are those outside the dispute whose sad interest it is to keep it up. The Israelite had the resource of the lot, no matter how mighty the contenders might be; for Jehovah did not fail to decide thereby. But the Christian is entitled to look to his Father in Christ's name, and never without an answer of grace if he wait on Him. How great the value of the written word and of free intercourse (ἔντευξις) with Him who is higher than the highest!

But there is as there ever was a great difficulty here; and it might seem strange, if we were not too familiar with the fact, that it is with a brother offended. How unapproachable and unreasonable! Yes, he is harder to win than a strong city; and such contentions are as the bars of a castle. What strength is needed to break through?

“The belly” has a bad name in both Old Testament and New; but not always, as John 7:38 conclusively proves. And so it may be here, where it seems employed in its twofold application for the innermost affections good or evil. The mouth indicates the heart, as the Lord tells us both of the goad man and of the wicked. Out of its abundance the mouth speaks. Here it is the other side: a man's inwards satisfied with the fruit of his mouth, with the increase of his lips. How weighty then our every word if we bring in God! But if this satisfies man, the child of God can be satisfied with nothing less than God's word and grace. Hence too are death and life said to be in the power of the tongue, and so the issues in both good and evil. All scripture declares it; all experience confirms and illustrates it.

Does the finding of good in a wife, in one worthy of that name, join on to this? Certainly no one has such opportunity of intimate knowledge and of giving help. She can avail as none else; and if for God, what a treasure to her husband, who might resent fidelity in another! What a favor from Jehovah!

The poor naturally resort to supplication, the rich as naturally answer roughly. Grace exalts the one, and abases the other, to the happiness of faith, and to the Lord's pleasure Who sees and weighs all.

A man who depends on many friends pays for it to his own ruin; but One is become more than a friend, a lover beyond all others, that sticketh closer than a brother. Well we know Him; yet how little alas!

Gospel Words: Anger

The Scribes and Pharisees were especially ritualist and external. This was letter, not spirit. Our Lord not only condemns a righteousness of mere outward acts, but insists on inward reality as indispensable for the kingdom of the heavens. He does not explain at this time how the requisite practical righteousness is possible and actually made good in sinful men. He had already let Nicodemus know of the necessity for a Jew no less than a Greek to be born anew, as well as to have redemption by His cross. Here to His disciples He expounds the absolute need of realizing the varied spiritual qualities brought before them in order to enter the kingdom. As the Pharisees fatally narrowed the scope of scripture, the Lord gave its fullness as none but He could. The first of these references is to the law of murder. But the Lord goes immeasurably farther for the kingdom.

“Ye have heard that it was said to those of old, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be subject to the judgment. But I say to you, that everyone that is [lightly] angry with his brother shall be subject to the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be subject to the council; and whosoever shall say, Fool, shall be subject to the hell of fire” (Matt. 5:21, 22). The law and the prophets He had vindicated. All must come to pass. Yet the law made nothing perfect. He speaks Who is above the law and gave fullness to all on His own authority.

Thus is the commandment made exceeding broad and deep. The ax is laid to the root of the evil tree. All violent feelings are judged as in God's sight, and every evil word of malice and contempt shown to be of sinful and dangerous consequence. As He said later in the same Gospel (12:37), “By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” Here He warns, not so much of every light word, but of wrath, hatred, and contempt. The Judge of all the earth, Himself despised by man and abhorred by the nation, as was soon proved, could not fail to discern aright.

The danger He denounced is the burning sense of self, of the old man set on fire of hell. Circumstances might hinder its expression; but it stays in the heart it ruled, and makes itself at length felt in its malignity. He that formed the heart knows it, as He detects a feeling so contrary to His own nature, not only unbecoming in man, but wholly inconsistent with the peacemakers, the pure in heart, the merciful, as well as the poor in spirit, the mourning, the meek, and those hungering and thirsting after righteousness, the blessed ones that suit the kingdom of the heavens. How too could it agree with being persecuted for righteousness' sake? how with being reproached, and having all manner of evil said and done against one falsely for Christ's sake, yet, rejoicing and being exceeding glad to be thus defamed and ill-used for His name?

But we know that very recently (Mark 3:1-6) the Holy and the True looked round with anger in the synagogue on those who watched with murderous hate, if He would heal a poor sufferer on the sabbath. Instead of shrinking from the issue, He bade the man rise up into the midst. They (the high and the broad) were silent; but the fire of their anger burned to destroy Him, after He also bade the man stretch out his palsied hand, restored on the instant. His holy anger was distressed at the hardening of their hearts who, in the vain confidence of tradition (ever spurious), were thus maddened against the active and blessed goodness of God as a reality among men here below.

Again, John the baptist said to the Sadducees coming to his baptism, Viper brood, who forewarned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce therefore fruit worthy of repentance; and think not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham for father. These were scathing words; but if anger dictated a word, it was unselfish and holy. It was indignation at men who sought a religious form to cover their unbelief and wickedness. And He, whose sandal-thong John counted himself unworthy to untie, pronounced woe after woe on these Scribes and Pharisees, albeit standing highest in Jewish estimation. Blind guides He called them, fools too and hypocrites and serpents; how should they escape the judgment of hell? Was not the blessed Lord fully justified in His words, overwhelming as they were to the highest degree? It was not enmity to tell an evil-doer the truth, that he might repent. Flesh hates fidelity.

If it be objected that so the Lord was entitled righteously to denounce, but no one else may, what are we to learn from one of like passions with ourselves? He on just occasion could say in the Spirit, to an erring saint at Corinth with questions about the resurrection, Fool! as he said before, Wake up righteously, and sin not; for some are ignorant of God: I speak to your shame. So in the next chapter he declares that if anyone love not the Lord, let him be Anathema Maranatha (accursed at the Lord's coming), 1 Cor. 15:16. The same apostle tells the saints (Eph. 4:26), Be angry and sin not. If one truly follow the Lord and the apostle, anger then is a duty, not a sin; yet one surely has to watch and pray withal.

The source, motive, and aim decide. If of God and for Him by the Spirit, anger has His sanction; if for self, it is evil that exposes to judgment: and so the Lord denounces on its various degrees expressed in a form familiar to Jews.

O my fellow-sinner, whose words have been habitually sinful, violent and ungodly, how can you, as you are, enter the kingdom? And if you cannot, what must be your end without end? The Judge tells you plainly. But He is now the Savior, the only perfect Savior. Flee, flee for refuge, for pardon, and a new nature, to Him Who alone can give all you need. The resource of God's grace is Christ. And if we believe on Him, His love constrains us to live, not to self, but to Him Who for our sakes died and rose again. Then only do we cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

The Coming and the Day of the Lord: Part 2

Here are the two opening verses of the chapter according to the ascertained ancient text, and correctly translated; for in the Text. Rec. and in the A. V. there are faults in both respects— “Now we beseech you, brethren, by (or, for the sake of) the presence (or, coming) of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in (or, from) your mind, nor yet troubled, either by Spirit, or by word, or by letter as through (or, from) us, as that the day of the Lord is present.” As in ver. 1 there is but one article binding together our gathering and the Lord's presence, the second “by” in the A. V. must therefore disappear. Again, in the last clause of ver. 2 “Christ” is read only in inferior copies and versions; “Lord” is incontestable diplomatically, and alone expresses the true aim. Lesser points we may dismiss.

But there remain the grave questions of rendering ὑπὲρ in the first verse, and ἐνέστηκεν in the second. As to the first, the connection with a verb of entreaty has not been adequately considered, and that connection the peculiar one of a motive from joy and hope to counteract a false alarm. As there is no other instance in the N.T., it is not surprising that the rendering “by” or some equivalent should be unexampled there. So therefore all our older English translations, with the Vulgate and most of the other ancient versions. Wahl in his N. T. Lexicon refers to 2 Cor. v. 20 as another instance of “by;” but the context there favors “for,” in the.sense of “on behalf of” Christ. Here such a force yields not this sense exactly, but “by” or “for the sake of,” as it appears to me for good reason.

As to the true and only legitimate meaning of ἐνέστηκεν, there ought to be no doubt. It was a word every day in Attic use, as we may gather from the Clouds (779) of Aristophanes, where it is said of a suit going on, and not merely close at hand.

Can anything be more decisive, outside the N. T., than the technical phrase of ὁ ἐνεστὼς χρόνος among grammarians for the “present tense”? Indeed it is the one and only meaning of the word in the known authors of Greece. Thucydides does not employ this form of the word; but it occurs in Herodotus, Xenophon, Polybius, and Dion Cassius; and in no sense save as actually existing or present. It is the same with the orators Isaeus and Isocrates, Aeschines and Demosthenes. So again the philosophers, Aristotle and Plato, employ it, but in this sense only. It would be easy to add more, but is not this enough? Where is a single instance of “imminent”? It does not occur in the Septuagint save in the Apocryphal writings; but there it occurs in 3 Esdras ix. 6; 1 Mace. xii. 44; 2 Mace. iii. 17; xii. 3, in all which it can only mean “actually there,” nowhere “imminent."

But say Webster and Wilkinson (G. T.), ἐνέστηκε everywhere else in N.T. means “present “; here, however, it has doubtless (!) the more ordinary classical meaning, “imminence,” to be close” at hand.” Now not only “the more ordinary” but the invariable classical meaning perfectly agrees with its uniform sense in the N. T. The instances adduced by Liddell and Scott (even in the seventh edition of their Greek Lexicon) for “pending” or “instant” really mean what was actually begun or present. And their vacillation in giving both for the same quotation is just like Bengel's, who here says, “great nearness is signified by this word; for ἐνεστὼς is present!”

Exactly so; and therefore great nearness is not meant. They seem all to have been misled by taking for granted that here “imminent” must be intended to make any tolerable sense.

In short the R. V. has here corrected a sure and evident misrendering, which owed its origin to theological error ancient and modern: the assumption latent and unsuspected, that the misrendering alone makes sense here; whereas it alters the meaning of the text and throws the reasoning into confusion. The sense it imposes is purely traditional, and opposed to the truth intended. The bad exegesis was probably what led to the unsound philology.

I am aware that the American revisers, though often right, here cleave to the misconception, and render it “is just at hand “; but can they point to a single case where any correct Greek writer ever employs the verb in this tense save for “present”? Long as the notion has prevailed, it is without foundation in fact.

Further, it is notorious that there is a quite different phrase (ἐγγύς) for “nearness” in the N. T. and in all other writings; and if emphasis were sought, the verb in the perfect was used (ἤγγικε); as also ἐφέστηκε (2 Tim. 4:6). But one had hoped that no exact scholar would sanction the laxity of supposing that the apostle confounds the meaning of two kindred words, each of which has its own precise sense, ἐνέστ. “is present,” and ἐφέστ. “is close at hand.” On the face of it the erroneous rendering makes the apostle contradict himself; for in Rom. 13:12 he tells the saints that the day is at hand, meaning no other than the day of the Lord, as all surely must admit. How could the misleaders in Thessalonica be charged with error, if they had only taught that the day of the Lord is at hand?

It is thus evident that these divines, like others before them, venture to conceive that the errorists gave out the substantially same thing that the apostle urged later as the truth of God. But no: the false teachers fraudulently alleged the apostle himself, as we shall see, for the untruth that the day of the Lord was (not ever so soon, but) actually arrived. And this error was filling the saints, not with enthusiasm of joy or the excitement of a spurious hope, but with panic, especially as inspiration was pretended, oral word, and even a suppositious letter as from Paul himself for it. Who can deny its effect according to the apostle to be agitation and trouble that the dreaded day was present, and in no way over-wrought warmth about His coming as very near? Thus in every point of view the old rendering is a manifest blunder which would set the apostle at war with himself, as it also conceives a state among the deceived Thessalonians which disagrees with what is clearly described in the same verse. Such a sense is really owing to theological bias, and the assumption (latent and unsuspected perhaps) that the unexampled rendering alone gives sense here. In fact it destroys the text and perplexes the context.

There is an indubitable sign of false teachers which is here commended to the notice of all Christians; for we need it in the days, and may need it yet more if the Lord tarry. Observe then that the false teacher ordinarily does one of two things, sometimes both. Either he lulls asleep those who ought to be roused, keeping them entranced in the deadly slumber of fallen nature; or he tries to alarm true believers by endeavoring to shake their confidence in the grace and truth of God, filling their minds with groundless alarm. Not possessing peace himself, he is often deceived as well as a deceiver; for he knows not in his own experience peace and joy in believing. The false teacher then either injures the children of God by weakening their confidence in God, or, along with this, he lulls with opiates those whom God would have to be awakened from their dangerous insensibility. In short false teachers flatter the world, or seek to alarm the true children of God. Very often they essay mischief in both ways.

The truth does exactly the contrary. It always has for its effect to rouse men from their state of guilty indifference or their self-confidence, setting before them their fearful danger for eternity. But it tells them of a divine Savior and a present salvation. Along with this there is the comforting, establishing, and leading on of the believers into all their privileges and responsibilities, their proper joys in communion with the Lord and one another, and their growth in the knowledge of His mind and ways for worship and service. For all these latter things pertain to the believer only.

It is striking in more ways than one, how John Howe (Works, v. 252, Hunt's ed. 1822) felt in his measure the force of this appeal, and commended it to others. “You shall hardly meet with a more solemn, earnest obtestation in all the Bible than this is: that is the thing I reckon it so very remarkable for. ‘I beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ;' by what he knew was most dear to them, and the mention whereof would be most taking to their hearts; if you have any kindness for the thoughts of that day, any love for the appearance and coming of our Lord; if ever any such thoughts have been grateful to your hearts: we beseech you by that coming of His, and by your gathering together unto Him, that you be not soon shaken in mind, that you do not suffer yourselves to be discomposed by an apprehension, as if the day of Christ were at hand. It may be thought very strange, why the apostle should lay so mighty a stress upon this matter, to obtest in it so very earnestly. And really I could not but think it exceeding strange, if I could be of the mind, that the coming of Christ here spoken of were only the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, and that the man of sin afterward spoken of were only meant of Simon Magus and his impostures, the feats that he was at that time supposed and believed to do; which certainly could be things of no such extraordinary concernment unto them that lived so far off as Thessalonica at that time, and much less to the whole Christian church.”

Not that Howe had any special light of scripture on the glorious counsels of God for Christ and the church. No Puritan was instructed in these truths more than Greeks, Romanists, Anglicans, Lutherans, or others; and his adoption of independency injured his intelligence of the church, as it must all Congregationalists in particular. But he was beyond comparison the most spiritual and profound of his class. At any rate I here quote him to show how a soul who loved the Lord and His word rose above the prejudices of his fellows, and that addiction to Plato, Plutarch, and other heathen, to which the Cambridge school of philosophic divines such as Cudworth and H. More, helped him. Though confused like all the rest as to the distinction of the Lord's Presence, and its appearing (or, the day), his logical and subtle mind could not overlook that the ground of the apostle's appeal in verse 1 was laid in the brightest hope and the deepest affections of the saints. Now this is peculiar to the Lord's presence for gathering His own unto Himself, as distinct from the subject treated of in the verses of chap. i. that precede, and in the verses 2 &c. of chap. ii. that follow.

The rendering of the Revisers, and many others, is avowedly because they assume that the apostle is entreating the saints in verse 1 in respect of what he had been just writing and was about to teach them more, for which περὶ would be the correct preposition, as we may see in John 17 and elsewhere. But if he besought them, as I am persuaded he did, by their joyful hope against the false notion of the day with its terrors as actually come, it is no mere question of the sense of here required, important as this is in such a context, of which there is no parallel known to me in the N. T. In other words, what led to the choice of “touching” here was an erroneous exegesis of the verse in which the preposition occurs. Had the real difference been seen, all would have acquiesced, if not in the “by” of the A.V. with most translators till of late, in the nearly equivalent for “the sake of,” which is its frequent usage.

What were those about who misled the Thessalonians? They pretended to Spirit, and word, for their cry that the day of the Lord was come. False teachers fall into such ways. But these did more; growing bolder in their impiety they pretended to have a letter of the apostle, affirming that “the day of the Lord was present.” I am aware that some learned and able men have conceived that they only alluded to the former Epistle. Thus Paley says that the apostle writes here, among other purposes, to quiet their alarm, and to rectify the misconstruction that had been put on his words; in that the passage in the Second Epistle relates to the passage in the first. But this is an oversight. It is certain from the terms employed that the epistle alluded to was not his; for he says “that ye be not soon shaken in your mind or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter AS from (or, through) us.” He thus intimates, not the letter that he had written, but a letter “as by us,” or purporting to be from us, with which he had nothing to do. It was a forged letter, not his First Epistle which we have.

The pretended letter was to the effect that the day of the Lord was (not “at hand” merely but) already there. Now the day of the Lord, according to the Bible in general, is to be one of trouble and anguish, a day of clouds and darkness for the world. You may read this abundantly in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, and the prophets generally. On what pretext then was the cry raised by the forger? The Thessalonians were suffering great trouble and persecution for the truth's sake. Indeed the apostle had in 1 Thess. 3:4, 5, expressed his concern lest the tempter might tempt them somehow through the tribulation they were passing through. But he gives no license for calling it the day of the Lord. The false teaching seems to have converted this (the existing fact of much trial) into that day, alleging that the day of the Lord was actually arrived. For in the O. T. certainly the “day of Jehovah” is repeatedly applied in a partial or incipient sense, e.g., in Isa. 13; 19, &c. All there indeed knew from 1 Thess. 5 that it would be a day of fearful trial, everything meanwhile growing worse and worse, till the evil is at length put down by the victorious power of the Lord.

Accordingly the apostle in 2 Thess. 1 points to the revelation of the Lord from heaven, with angels of His might, in flaming fire rendering vengeance to those that know not God (the Gentiles), and to those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ (wicked Christians or Jews, &c.), when He shall come [not to take up the saints for the heavenlies, but] to be glorified in His saints, and to be wondered at in all that believed.... “in that day.” Why fear it then?

On this occasion the misleaders had contrived to excite no little anxiety and trouble as if the day of the Lord had actually come. Not at all, says the apostle: how can you forget the bright hope that the Lord is coming to gather you to Himself? “We beseech you, brethren, by (or, for the sake of) the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to him, that ye be not soon shaken in your mind nor troubled.” He thus appeals in ver. 1 to a known motive of joy and confidence in their hope; and from ver. 3 he goes into the prophetic reasons which demonstrate its complete refutation. But, we may notice, it is never said that the saints await the day of the Lord to be taken up and meet Him in the air. The coming of the Lord effects their translation before His day as we shall see. They are to be an object of wonder in that day when seen glorified with Him.

Thus “the presence of the Lord” and “his day” represent two connected but different thoughts often confounded by men: the one (being said of the heavenly saints) consummating grace, the other executing judgment. There is the less reason why they should be, because the apostle had already spoken with clearness on them both in his First Epistle. In chap. iv. 15-17, he describes the coming of the Lord, not His day. “For this we say to you in the Lord's word, that we the living that remain (or, are left) unto the presence of the Lord shall in no wise precede those put to sleep. Because the Lord Himself with call of command, with archangel's voice, and with trump of God, shall descend from heaven; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then (ἒπειτα) we the living that remain shall be caught up together with them in clouds to meet the Lord in [the] air; and thus we shall ever be with the Lord.” This was a new revelation, as he implies in opening the subject (15). Not such was the day of the Lord; for there is scarce any great topic more frequent in the O. T. prophets from Isaiah to Malachi. Even where this phrase may not be employed, it is involved habitually. But in no case did it make known what the Thessalonian saints are here taught by the apostle. They are distinct truths.

Hence having finished the statement of the new truth at the end of chap. 4, the apostle turns to the old in the beginning of chap. 5 “But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that ye should be written to” [what a contrast with the foregoing new revelation!] “For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. When they may say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall in no wise escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness that the day should overtake you as a thief,” &c. Is it possible to conceive a sharper distinction? We see on its face what a mighty difference there is between “the coming of the Lord” and “the day of the Lord,” as the apostle describes them. Where among ancients and moderns does one find the same discrimination? or anything but the grossest confusion? Chrysostom had not his equal among the Greek fathers as an expositor; yet he (was he the first?) was so dark as to count death the Lord's coming to the saint! If it was, how many thousands of times He must have come! No, it is just the inverse: our going to Him, not His coming for us, when all saints up to then departed, and we the living that remain, are caught up to meet Him in the air. That is “the day of the Lord” comes later; His presence is to our everlasting joy, our great triumph over death, as the day is His unsparing judgment of the wicked quick. How astonishing that any saints should lump them in one!

This is confirmed by what was written some time after to the Corinthian Church in their First Epistle, xv. 51, 52. “Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all be put to sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in an eye's twinkling, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” The resurrection he does not call “a mystery,” when he wrote of it in this 'very chapter. Nor was it justly one; for the O. T. had revealed it. The early book of Job tells us the resurrection of man (14.); not only the privileged one of the just in chapter 19., but that of “man,” who must die and rise; yet not till the heavens be no more, in perfect accord with the two resurrections of Rev. 20. There is no “mystery” in the two resurrections. It was a truth for both just and unjust, which the Jewish adversaries also received, as Paul told them before Felix the governor. But the coming of the Lord, not only to raise the dead saints, but to change the living, and translate both to Himself, is the fresh word of the Lord in 1 Thess. 4 and the “mystery” in 1 Cor. 15.

Thus the Lord's coming with His saints was a truth announced by Enoch and again by Zech. 14:5. This was not a mystery, therefore, more than their resurrection. It is repeated in 1 Thessalonians 13, and elsewhere in the N. T. The “mystery” is in His coming for them as in 1 Cor. 15:51, 1 Thessalonians 4:13, &c., in order that they might come with Him as well as for other ends.

One of these objects for the earth which appear to have made the rapture to heaven requisite is the divine purpose to prepare a people here below for the Lord at His appearing. As grace had by the gospel and in the church brought in suitably for each the call of Gentiles to rejoice with His people, God would still work for a remnant from both during the frightful crisis when He would fill with His chastening judgments, which culminate in the Lord's personal infliction when He comes to judge and reign. The Psalms and the Prophets shed much light from God, especially on the godly remnant of the Jews, working by His Spirit on their hearts before and during the great tribulation. The evidence is so abundant that, if this were the time to furnish proofs, the difficulty would be which to select effectively to convince those to whom this side of the truth is not familiar. The Revelation is as plain at the end of the N. T., as the Gospel of Matthew at its beginning, that there is to be a wave of blessing for Jews and Gentiles during that brief and awful space, after the Christian witnesses are withdrawn and seen in heaven. Take Rev. 7 and xiv. as distinct testimonies to this, along with the fact that there is no longer a hint of a church on earth, and that a new sight is beheld above, the twenty-four crowned and enthroned elders, who, as is generally allowed, represent in symbol the saints of O. and N.T. in heaven round God and the Lamb. “The things which are” will then be past, and “the things which are about to happen after these” will be next accomplished.

1 Peter 4:7-11

Founded on the Lord's readiness to judge, in all its solemnity for man, is the reminder of the approaching end of all things which now subsist. This is supposed in such an intervention.

“But the end of all things hath drawn nigh. Be discreet therefore and watch (or, be sober) unto prayers, and before all things having your love toward each other fervent, for love covereth a multitude of sins; hospitable toward one another without murmuring; according as each received a gift, ministering it toward each other as good stewards of God's various grace: if one speak, [let it be] as oracles of God; if one ministereth, as of strength which God supplieth; that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, whose is the glory and the might unto the ages of the ages. Amen” (vers. 7-11).

The Holy Spirit keeps as constant and proximate, not only the bright hope of the Lord's coming for the saints, but the close of man's day for the earth. The world refuses or ridicules the warning. Even saints forget it as a living word from God for every day; and when mingling with human interests and men's thoughts, get weary, are ashamed of the truth, apologize for or gloss over the words of the Lord and the apostles, so as in effect to say, like the evil bondman in his heart, “My Lord delayeth:” alike the cause and the consequence of growing worldliness. Even watching for executive providence in the meantime undermines and destroys the separating and heart-elevating power of waiting for Christ.

But the word here flowing out of faith in the impending end of all things is, “Be discreet therefore,” that is of sound mind spiritually; “and watch,” or be sober, “unto prayers:” a very different attitude from absorption in the newspaper, and in each exciting movement west or east, so often to fade and disappoint the superficial readers of prophecy. Hope like faith looks to God, expects in patience, and does not make ashamed. The Christian ought never to forget that he is a Christian, and follows the crucified but glorified One, content—yea rejoicing—to endure till we reign together with Him at His appearing and kingdom. It is not our place to thunder and lighten, as those under the law were bound to do, at the revolt of Israel and at the passing enormities of the Gentile powers. When we are translated, it will be for the godly remnant on earth to take up the cry once more, “How long, Sovereign Master the holy and true, dost not thou judge and avenge our blood on those that dwell upon the earth?” Blessed saints will they be, but no more Christians in the full sense than the O.T. saints before us.

The saints now are exhorted to watch unto prayers; as another apostle bade his dear Philippians, with the Lord at hand, be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let their requests be made known unto God. Thus should the peace of God that surpasses all understanding guard their hearts and their thoughts in Christ Jesus. Such is true Christian experience. Still more wide and deep is the word in Eph. 6 where the apostle says “with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication.”

“But before all things” (for it ought in practice to take precedence of all), he adds, “having your love toward each other fervent, because love covereth a multitude of sins” (8): this last clause an application of Prov. 10:12. As hatred makes the worst of everything, love is entitled to bury things out of sight; and God endorses it as answering to His own nature. Needless to say that holy discipline retains its needed but sorrowful action.

Next (ver. 9) the apostle would have them, as another form of love, “hospitable unto one another, without murmuring.” Surely grumbling and grudging did not become a holy and a royal priesthood. Practical outgoing of heart in this way promotes fellowship, and strengthens the bonds of grace. It yields a fine contrast to man's selfishness, which seeks its own things, and complains of all else.

Gift too (vers. 10, 11), used according to God, subserves the same end as well as much greater ones, even the perfecting of the saints, for ministerial work, and for building up the body of Christ. But our apostle as usual is eminently direct and practical. “As each received a gift,” they were to minister it toward each other, “as good stewards of God's varied grace.” This is just what human organizing hinders. How sad for saints to sanction any meddling with God's will and ways It is not the right of each that is pleaded, but the obligation from gifts of God to use whatever it be in responsibility to Him. “It is required in stewards that one be found faithful” (1 Cor. 4:2) from the greatest to the least: else God's rights are infringed, and His grace is thus far suppressed.

The apostle divides gifts into two general classes, speaking or service otherwise. “If one speak [let it be] as oracles of God.” This does not merely mean according to scripture; which might be misdirected, and thus even do harm; as e.g. encouraging, when reproof was due, or the inverse. Not even a gifted man ought to speak without the assurance of God's mind for the moment and case in hand. How much would be spared, were this divine rule truly felt! Then again, “If one ministereth, as of the strength which God supplieth.” Creature advantages might be a snare on both sides. Even in temporal service, which is thus distinguished from the word, the right strength is that which comes from God, and not human ability, attainment, rank, or wealth. We may compare with this latter “ministry,” “giving,” and “showing mercy” in Rom. 12, and “helps” in 1 Cor. 12. It is remarkable how scripture in this differs, as usual, from the thoughts and language of Christendom. For so ignored is scripture, even by men zealous in dispensing it in all possible versions throughout the world, that they confine “ministry” to public speaking, and never consider that God thus dignifies all real service which is not of that oral character.

But “gifts” in either way are so designated by inspiration; and their free and holy exercise claimed as coming from such a donor; “that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, whose is (not merely “be”) the glory and the might unto the ages of the ages. Amen.” For thus the fervent spirit of the apostle poured itself out, as he wrote these things to the saints in Asia Minor; and God has kept them for us also.

The Hope of the Christian

BELOVED BROTHER,

I have been occupied for my own soul with the inquiry, what is the hope of the Christian; and I send you some points of the result, thinking they may be a means of cheering and encouraging some of God's dear children.

The first important point, which this result brings powerfully home to the heart and conscience, is the source of this hope. And the only right means of estimating it, the only sure ground on which the heart can rest in appropriating it, is that all I hope for is the fruit of the grace of Jesus. It is what His own heart finds its delight in giving to us; because it is that of which He knows the blessedness, and because His love is perfect toward us. His interest in us is as perfect as Himself. This is essentially characteristic of perfect love. All this, I need not say, is according to the Father's counsels. “It is not mine to give,” says Christ,” save to those for whom it is prepared of my Father.” For it is what He takes as man that He gives to us, in receiving it Himself as man from His Father, and delighting in it as the expression of the Father's love.

This brings out another simple, but, remembering Who Jesus is, a most blessed and wonderful truth; that where there is perfect love on the one hand, and capacity of enjoyment through possession of the same nature on the other, love will seek to bring its object into the common enjoyment of that which it possesses, and finds its blessing and enjoyment in. This is true of a friend, of a parent, and of every genuine human attachment; though of course in these cases imperfection is attached to the affection itself, and to its power of accomplishing its power to make happy. Yet the perfection of Christ's love does not (since it is love to us) make our introduction into the enjoyment of His blessedness a thing not to he hoped for, because it is too excellent, but just lays the sure ground for this hope. It is His own delight to make us happy, a part of the perfection of His nature, of His own satisfaction. “He shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied.”

It is to this I would first direct the attention of yourself and your readers. Christ finds His own delight in blessing us, and in blessing us with Himself, because He loves us. And this blessing must be according to the perfectness of His own nature; for it flows from Him and is to be enjoyed with Himself, and as He enjoys it before and with the Father. What a scene this opens before us, if we have indeed tasted His love! Yet it is all dependent on His own free goodness, and the fruit and display of it, the happiness itself being dependent on His own excellency. That His grace is the source of it every Christian will recognize; but you will find that, in taking scripture to guide us in the details it gives us of our future blessedness, this character of blessing shines out most evidently. The elements of our future which scripture affords I would present, though surely grace is needed to give them their value, which will be just proportionate to our personal estimate of Christ Himself, that is, to our spiritual knowledge of Him.

Our possession of the life of Christ, His being our life (so that it can be said of us in its nature and fruits, “which thing is true in Him and in you”), is the basis of our hope, and what makes us, in connection with His work on the cross, capable of enjoying it. He became man; and having first wrought redemption and glorified God in our behalf, and blotted out our sins and made peace, He (victorious over death and entering risen and glorified into God's presence) becomes the source of life to us, nay more is our life. We are thus brought into the place of sons, all the old thing—its nature and fruits—judged, condemned, and done away, whatever conflict and exercises of heart we may have with it, while down here. As alive in Christ we stand before God, consequent on the accomplishment of redemption, and in virtue of complete forgiveness. “He (God) quickened us together with Him, having forgiven us all trespasses.” We are introduced into the place of sons with Christ, as the result and fruit of redemption, and as really partaking of the life in which He lives.

See how the Spirit in 1 John (which specially treats of the existence, possession, and development of this life in Christ, and so in us. See chap. i. 1, 2; v. 11, 12, for the general principle) connects us with Christ in life, position, and consequently hope. “If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that everyone that doeth righteousness is born of him. Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God.” We have by adoption Christ's relationship with God, yet as really born of God possessing a nature displayed in the same qualities. “Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not (the true and perfect Son of God). Beloved, now are we God's children; and it is not yet manifested what we shall be; but we know that, when he shall be manifested, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone that hath this hope in him purifieth himself as he is pure.”

Blessed testimony in all its parts! Born of God we have the nature morally and the position of the true, blessed, and eternal Son made man, that in His glory we may be with Him and like Him. We are children of God, unknown by the world consequently as He was. We shall be perfectly like Him in glory, seeing Him as He now is above in heavenly glory, and hence can bear no lower standard now. Having this hope in Christ, reaching to and founded on Himself, we seek to be as like Him now as possible in the inner man; and in our ways we purify ourselves as He is pure. What a picture of the moral position of the Christian is here, through his living connection with Christ! It is sweet to say it is ours, sweeter to say we have it in Him, and He the perfection of it. If His life is animating us, through the strengthening grace and communications of the Holy Spirit, what a power and value will such a statement have for us living and dwelling in Him!

Here then is one great and blessed part of our hope, “we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” It is perfectness in likeness to Christ, in ourselves morally, in full result, for it is in glory; that is, all the fruit of the power of this life, as in Christ, produced even as to the body; while its internal excellence, likeness to Christ, is perfect, and no hindrance to its exercise, but, quite the contrary, a suited condition; and with the blessed consciousness that we are like Him, though we have it all from Him. We shall be like Him.

But, secondly, in this state we shall have the full blessed object in which this perfect nature delights, and in this state is capable of delighting in all its absolute and heavenly excellency before us—its satisfying object: an object which can keep all its powers in blessed and full exercise will occupy it with perfect delight. And yet while I delight in Him as supremely excellent, the full display of heavenly excellence, I know that I am like Him; I could not (my desires being fixed on this, having tasted its excellence) be perfectly happy were I not. However great our glory and excellency may be, it is only as being like Him. He is the thing we are like; He is it in its own proper and positive, substantive, being and existence. If I am adopted to be a son and am really born of God, behold, He is the Son. Hence all our excellence is the means of apprehending and adoring His.

We may remark that this is true both in moral perfection, and in relationship. God is perfect in Himself and for Himself. Love and holiness, as indeed every other attribute of God, have their joy in themselves, and of course perfectly and infinitely in God. But the creature needs an object to enjoy perfectly what this blessed nature is and gives, even when he possesses it. The new man delights in holiness; but the perfect holiness of God is needed for the perfect delight of our new and holy nature. The new man has a nature imbued with love, and so can delight in its exercise; but the perfect love of God, manifested in Jesus and known in communion is his delight. So in our relationship we are sons with God; but I must learn in Jesus what it is to be a son, and what the power of that word is, “the Father loveth the Son.” We share in the glory; but the glory in which we share is His.

In the hope then, presented to us in this passage, we have the Father's love as the source. Hence we are already children, so as to know the position; but this flowing from our being born of God from Christ being our life, and we as He, so that even the world does not know us, as it did not know Him. We are so identified with Him, that though what we shall be does not yet appear, we shall be like Him when He does appear, seeing Him in the very glory in which He now is as the Son, with the Father, viewed in manhood on high. It is not as the world will see Him, being blessed under Him, and seeing Him so far as He can be revealed to mortal eyes; but being like Himself and seeing Him as He is.

This leads to another part of the blessing, which is equally the joy of Jesus Himself. We shall be with Him Evidently if we love and delight in Him, this is needed for our full joy; and while He ministers this to us now by being present with us in grace, it is the object of our hope in its complete character and permanent fullness. “So shall we ever be with the Lord.” Remark here that the apostle, when here speaking of the Lord's coming, does not enter at all as regards our portion into the consequences in glory and dominion. This has its place; but what satisfies and fills the apostle's heart, when he has the revelation of the way in which God would call up the saints to their enjoyment, is (for his own feeling of joy and delight) all embraced in this, “So shall we ever be with the Lord.”

This is more than once brought before us by Christ Himself. “Father, I will that they whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory; for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” The connection of these last words throws light on the value and extent of this hope. The Lord continues, “O righteous Father, the world knew thee not; but I knew thee, and these knew that thou didst send me.” The Father had to decide, so to speak, between Christ and His disciples on one side, and the world on the other; for the moral separation was complete. What the Father was had been shown in Christ. The world could recognize nothing of it: there was no common principle or bond. The disciples had recognized at least, through grace, that He came from the Father.

He could not stay in the world: that was closed. His departure forms the ground-work of the whole chapter. Whether He or the world was to be owned of the Father could have no doubt. The Father, and necessarily so, had loved Him before ever the world existed; and if the world rejected Him, the hour was come for the Father to glorify Him with Himself. For the time, no doubt, the disciples were to remain in the world; but He had declared to them the Father's name and would declare it, that the love wherewith the Father loved Him might be in them, and He in them. Hence He would have them where He was. They would be able to enjoy it, since they knew the same love, and He was in them to be the power of the enjoyment. It was not only their desire and blessing but His. He would have them where He was, if He could not (and far better, surely) remain where they must be for the moment.

Mark here that this connects it with the Father's love, as it rests on Jesus. He desired to have them with Himself. It was part of His delight. He who had walked with Him in His humiliation would show them His glory. But, besides, there was the capacity of enjoying what He enjoyed along with Him; for the Father's name He had revealed as He knew it, that the love wherewith He was loved might be in them.

What a hope is this and (blessed be God) founded on a present blessing, only as yet in an earthen vessel, and known in present imperfection!

And if we are with Christ, it is in the Father's house, where He is in the Father's love. He is not to be alone, but gone to prepare a place for us; nor will He be content to send and fetch us: He will come and receive us to Himself, that where He is we may be also. The same chapter (14) shows us that it is our present knowledge of the Father as revealed in the Son, that is the means of knowing what this joy is, and coming to the enjoyment of it. We shall be there with the Lord, ever with Him: no interruption, no decay of joy, but rather increasing delight, as there always is when the object is worthy of the heart; and here it is infinite; and this in the relation of the Father's affection for the Son. We are to be with Him in that place, with Himself, and with Him in the joy, infinite joy, which He has in the Father's love, a love resting on Him as Son, but in His excellency as such, loved before the world, and now the accomplisher of redemption.

Some other passages will help to fill up the great leading traits here given, both as to the glory and our living with the Lord, showing our identification or association with Him, and the character of this blessedness. “The glory thou hast given me, I have given them,” the Lord says, “that they may be one as we are one, I in them and they in me.” If Christ is in us now the hope of glory, He will be in us then the display of glory; He will be glorified in His saints, and wondered at in all that believed. Here it is not mutuality but manifestation, manifestation through the fullness and excellency of that which is displayed, being in Him that displays it: the Father in Christ, and Christ in us. “Thou in me,” says the Lord. The Father is in Him in divine unity and fullness; and yet here, mark, Christ is spoken of as One to whom glory is given; that is, though a divine person, He is considered also as man. And then “I in them “; so that, as the Father is displayed in the Son, as in Him, so the Son, Christ, is displayed in us, as in us.

I will now refer to Psa. 16 and 17 which collaterally throw light on this part of our subject. In Psa. 16, which is with others quoted in scripture as showing the humanity of Jesus, His taking our sorrows, and position of dependence on and obedience to God (that is, our position as saints), it is written, “I have said to Jehovah, Thou art my Lord, my goodness extendeth not to thee—To the saints on the earth, In them is all my delight.” That is, having the divine glory, He associates Himself with the saints on the earth, the excellent in God's sight. At the close He says, that as One who is the head of these, the path of life is shown to Him; in God's presence is fullness of joy, and at His right hand pleasures for evermore. This then in principle is a part of our hope as His “companions,” though He be anointed with the oil of joy above us. We are in God's presence where fullness of joy is. Where God's presence is, it fills all things and excludes what is contrary to itself. It necessarily makes infinitely and perfectly happy. It sufficed for Christ's hope—He who knew it best and perfectly; surely then for ours; and as we have seen, we have a nature capable, without alloy or mixture, of perfectly enjoying that presence.

Let us add too that we shall not lose the Holy Ghost by being in glory: loss indeed it would be. Our nature of joy will be the new nature, the divine nature of which we are made partakers; our power of joy the Holy Ghost who dwells in us. It is striking that even Jesus, after His resurrection, gave commandments to His apostles by the Holy Ghost. Compare Rom. 8.

Psa. 16 gives the fruit of dependence; Psa. 17 what God will be found as a righteous answer to Christ's claim in virtue of His walk and obedience, to the beholding Jehovah's face and awaking after His likeness. Of this we have spoken on 1 John 3. The beholding God's face we find again in Rev. 22: only it is there in a general way the glory. God and the Lamb are thrown together so to speak. It is not the Father, and being with the Son. God and the Lamb that was slain are brought objectively into one point of view. The portion there shown to us is seeing His face, His servants serving Him, His name on our foreheads; that is, privilege in approaching, service as it should be, and the perfect and evident witness in us of Whose we are. This is a mere external part of the joy; but it is most precious, and not to be omitted.

Luke 9 will also afford us light both on the glory and on living with Christ. It is we know a picture, or momentary manifestation, of the glory of the kingdom. Moses and Elias are in the same glory with Christ. They are with Him, in all the intimacy of familiar conversation, talking with Him. They are talking of what necessarily most interests Christ Himself, and man too—of His death, and that in connection with the great change about to take place in God's ways, His death at Jerusalem. They do so with a divine knowledge, for it was not yet come. The excellent glory too is there: into it they enter. Remark that Christ speaks of the same things with the same familiarity to His disciples on the earth.

Another testimony (Rev. 2:17) gives what is more personal; for all we have spoken of is more common to all saints. We shall have a white stone, that is, the perfectly approving testimony of the Lord; and on it a name written which no one knoweth but he that received it. This is a joy and communion and personal knowledge of the Lord, which was for him alone that had it, between his soul and Christ.

We have thus spoken of what is personally or individually enjoyed. There is, besides all this, the presenting of the church to Christ; and the glory of the kingdom, if we look downward toward that over which we shall reign. These however are not at present my object. But how bright and blessed is the hope that is before us, founded on the acceptance of Christ Himself! To see Him; to be like Him, and with Him in His own relationship with the Father; to converse with Him with divine intelligence; to be before God with Him; to enjoy the unclouded, unmingled, blessedness of His presence, as He and with Him; yet to receive it all from Him, and owe it all to Him. Another point in the Transfiguration is worthy of all attention. Moses and Elias enter into the cloud. Now this cloud was the dwelling-place of the divine glory. Hence the three apostles feared, when Moses and Elias entered into it. But not so do we read of Moses and Elias. This then is another part of our hope. If a voice comes out of the cloud for those on earth, it is the home of those who have their place in the heavenly glory. Nor do I doubt that Psa. 145 gives us something analogous on earth to the intercourse between the Lord and Moses and Elias. If you look at verses 5-7, there is the intercourse between Messiah and the godly in the excellent glory of Jehovah; but this by the bye.

Let the reader remark how all this joy has its counterpart and commencement of realization down here, save the glory of the body alone. The heart knows that, how sweet soever the common joy of saints (a necessary proof and accompaniment of the holy liberty of the Spirit in a pure heart), yet in joys and sorrows there is a looking to Jesus, a communion with Jesus, a dependence of heart on His approbation, in which none can participate. On high it will be perfectly possessed and enjoyed in the white stone and the new name. The heart that knows Him could not do without this.

Remark too how various the joy is; and so it is now. I delight in the nature of God; I delight in a Father's love. I delight in the glory of Jesus; I delight in my intimacy with Him; I delight in the blessedness of being with the Son before the Father; I delight in His being a man with whom I am, yet one divinely perfect. I delight in God and the Lamb—the blessed and glorious display of redeeming counsels and divine glory. I delight in being like Christ. I delight in all the saints being like Him; I delight in His being glorified in them. I delight in adequate service, in a full and perfect witness, in a fit and heavenly worship. I delight in what is the glory of Christ Himself as such: it is what is common to all, and what is peculiar to oneself.

The Christian will remark too that, in enjoying Christ in glory, he will not lose the blessed feeding on a humbled Savior: we know this now also. We delight in communion and in hope in the glorified Lord; but we turn back and feed on Jesus, lowly and rejected on the earth. If He is what we hope for in glory, He is what we need on earth. But our heavenly state will surely not diminish our power of delighting in the perfection of that blessed One. And as the pot of the manna, which had nourished Israel in the desert, was to be kept in the ark in Canaan, that Israel in the rest might know what had sustained them in the desert, so we shall eat of that hidden manna which has fed and nourished our souls in our pilgrimage.

But I close. May hope be as living in the saints as the object is worthy of all their hearts. May they abound in hope by the power of the Holy Ghost. As throwing light on this, let me recommend Eph. 1, where our position before God, our relationship with the Father, and the difference between our calling and our inheritance, are very clearly brought out. J. N. D.

Jacob: 17. Rachel's Death

It was not without aim and interest that the Holy Spirit recorded the decease of Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, and the oak of weeping under which she was buried at Bethel. God means His people to feel the blank of a faithful domestic, and all the more if that fidelity covered a long space backward. Remarkable is it too that she should now be heard of, not in Isaac's tent but in that of Jacob. What many have inferred hence of Jacob's visits to his father ere this we leave: scripture is silent even as to when Rebekah died. But we may be sure that the aged nurse abode with her beloved mistress at least till then. A nearer bereavement was at hand.

“And they journeyed from Bethel; and there was yet some way to come to Ephrath; and Rachel travailed, and it went hard with her in childbirth. And it came to pass when it went hard in her bearing, that the midwife said to her, Fear not; for this also [is] a son for thee. And it came to pass as her soul was departing (for she died), that she called his name Benoni [son of my sorrow]; but his father called him Benjamin [son of right hand]. And Rachel died, and was buried on the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem. And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave, which [is] the pillar of Rachel's grave to [this] day” (vers. 16-20).

The moral government of God, now by the way, no more fails than His grace from the beginning to the end. Rachel had greatly sinned and kept her husband in the dark, when he unconsciously said that one guilty should not live. Her theft was not only a sin against her father, but in what she stole a heinous insult to God. And we have no evidence that there was soon adequate self-judgment. It is plain that Jacob at length became aware of idols in his household; the sin of which God's call to Bethel laid on his conscience as we have already seen. To take his beloved away was a chastening, not to her only but to him also.

1 Cor. 11:27-32 is a most instructive teaching on the application of this truth, in which we learn the security of grace on the one hand, and on the other the Lord's dealing with the inconsistent ways of those that are His. The ignorance of the truth even among pious men, notwithstanding their ability and learning is strikingly betrayed in the mistranslation of a word all-important for the true sense. It is not “damnation” but “judgment” in ver. 29, expressly contrasted with “condemnation” in ver. 32. The Lord was then judging by sickness and even death the faulty state and walk of the Corinthian saints, that they should not be condemned with the world, that is, because they were His and to be kept from “damnation.” They were judged in this temporal way for the blessing of their souls. It is a universal principle of God, and as real in the O.T. as it is plain in the N.T. For God is and must be God everywhere. Only the display of grace under the gospel brings out, not only His sovereign grace but His moral government with special clearness.

Rachel's name for the new-born child expresses her sorrow; Jacob, whatever his natural feelings over the dying wife of his heart, looks forward in hope. But it is not in any degree a heavenly hope in Benjamin, as Abraham had in Isaac, received from death to resurrection in a parable; it is the pledge of Israel in power, when she that represented the former state passes away by death. Israel must at the close be brought through deep if not deadly affliction before emerging into victory through their long disowned Messiah over all their foes on the earth.

“Fear not” from the attendant was well-meant. From the Lord it had been a word of power. But He was calling her away from a scene where she had failed in testimony to Him, and compromised her husband too. How could she be trusted in training her offspring in His fear? God had added another son, as she had said in faith, when her firstborn was given. It was fitting that she should depart.

Little thought Jacob, when he erected a pillar of thanksgiving at Bethel in the place where God talked with him, that he would so soon after erect another pillar, and this of sorrow upon Rachel's grave. But he bows to the hand of chastening: whom the Lord loves, He chastises, and scourges every son whom He receives. Jacob could not know, as it was not yet revealed, that near this very Ephrath should be born the King of Israel, the pledge and type of great David's greater Son, whose goings forth are from of old—from everlasting, the smitten Judge of Israel, who gave up His guilty people, but will restore them, so that they shall abide, and He be great unto the ends of the earth. And the day hastens.

Rachel dies, but the pillar that records it stands in Israel's land and history till the kingdom. And her weeping for her children, as the weeping prophet wrote, is with truth and pathos remarkably applied when the King was born, and preserved from the murderous intent of the usurping Edomite, the Rome-favored enemy within. Benjamin himself typifies Christ, not at all as head of the church, but as the conquering Son of might when the kingdom is established in the land as indeed the earth, and the enemies perish before Him. Thus the two wives of Jacob aptly represent, the fruitful Leah, and mother of the nations, and Rachel, Israel's first loved, but only a mother after Leah had borne abundantly. Then of her who typified Israel after the flesh comes Joseph, the bright witness of Christ sold and separate from His brethren, at the right of him who had the larger rule of the world while the Jews were disowned, But at length she dying gives birth to the son of her sorrow, but son of his father's right hand; who shall devour the prey in the morning and at even divide the spoil (Gen. 49:27). “Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong.”

The effort of ancient fathers and modern theologians to make every type point to Christian associations is the fruit of ignorance as to the extensive and varied glories of Christ, if not effacing yet assuredly lowering the proper brightness of His heavenly exaltation and of the church's union with Him. The late Bp. Chr. Wordsworth was a learned and pious man; but his commentary here and everywhere yields the fullest evidence of this theological bias, shared by the Puritan, the Low, and the Broad Schools, no less than by his own, the so-called High, little as he might relish such companions. Faith alone rises to the enjoyment of heavenly things. Tradition has classes in its school to suit the lovers of antiquity and of novelty, of the law and of free thought. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ our Lord.

Israel Holy to Jehovah: 10. Sanctity in the Priests

Here are given injunctions for securing holiness in the Aaronic priesthood. They are of course of a fleshly sort like the priests themselves; but as usual they shadow better things, when Christ came the High priest of good things to come; then the priesthood being changed, there was made of necessity a change also of the law.

“1 And Jehovah said to Moses, Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them, There shall none defile himself for a dead one (soul) among his peoples, 2 except for his kin that is near to him—for his mother, and for his father, and for his son, and for his daughter, and for his brother; 3 and for his sister a virgin, that is near to him, who hath had no husband, for her he may defile himself. 4 He shall not make himself unclean, [being] a chief among his peoples, to profane himself. 5 They shall not make baldness upon their head, neither shall they shave off the corner of their beard, nor make any cuttings in their flesh. 6 They shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God; for they offer the fire-offerings of Jehovah, the bread of their God; therefore shall they be holy. They shall not take to wife a harlot or one dishonored; neither shall they take a woman put away from her husband; for he is holy to his God. 8 And thou shalt sanctify him; for the bread of thy God he offereth; he shall be holy to thee; for I, Jehovah, who sanctify you, am holy. And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the harlot, she profaneth her father; she shall be burnt with fire” (vers. 1-9).

As duties flow from relationships, so do the first rise according to the second. It was because the sons of Aaron were priests and entered into the sanctuary as no ordinary Israelite could, that these ordinances were imposed on the sacerdotal family. For the first of all obligations is to God, who gives added weight to all the rest. Hence as God was unknown to the heathen, their ethics (and they are the moral code of philosophers to this day) were fundamentally defective. Israel too, being under law, might pursue but could not attain, just because it was “a law” of righteousness they pursued. It was of works, not of faith. Law works out, not love, but wrath. Therefore says the apostle, unlike those of faith, such as are of law-works are under the curse, instead of being blessed with the faithful Abraham. But the Christian has now (as the same apostle intimates in Rom. 4) the great advantage over even him, that Abraham did not go beyond promise, for no more then could be. He was fully persuaded that what God had promised, He was able also to perform; wherefore also it was accounted to him for righteousness. But we believe on Him that raised from out of the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered for our offenses and was raised for our justification. The gospel is not mere promise but accomplishment, which much enhances the grace that is now enjoyed by faith.

We see then that the priest must not defile himself by approach to death, save for the near of kin which were carefully defined. Others might incur the effect; lint it was not compatible with such as drew near to Gods presence, the living God. For his immediate relation, he might defile himself: this the law suffered (2-4), for it made nothing perfect. But they must not, like the heathen, make baldness upon their head, nor shave off the corner of the beard, nor cut into their flesh, as those did who had no hope. God was in none of their thoughts which were ruled by demons, and these last excesses were forbidden to Israelites in general. They profaned the name of their God, and were intolerable in those who presented the fire-offerings of Jehovah, the bread of their God as He graciously called them.

But some living ones were also forbidden to the priests: a harlot, a dishonored woman under a cloud, or one put away. Whatever wives might be for others, the priest was holy to his God. And Moses was charged to sanctify him, as the highest authority in Israel: so his estimation was required in Lev. 27:2, 4. His fellows might be too flexible in such exigencies.

There was another possibility provided against: the priest's daughter might profane not herself only but her father by playing the harlot. This drew out the terrible doom of burning her with fire. Jehovah is not mocked but sanctified in those that are near Him. It is divine government for those under law.

Now the only priests Christianity recognizes are the confessors of Christ. They are a holy and a royal priesthood. The Epistle to the Hebrews exhorts them in the use of more than Aaronic privilege, as do the apostles John and Peter. It is the unbelieving pride of theology to apply priesthood to the gifts of Christ or to local charges as elders. Not once do we find this in the N. T. which in spirit and letter so designates every Christian. There is no such application to ministers in the word. Their function from God is to preach to the world, or to teach the saints. Priests have the wholly distinct place of drawing near to God in prayer and praise, offering up “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” They are therefore bound to keep clear of spiritual death, and leave the dead to bury their dead. They are to reckon themselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus, their consciences purified from dead works for religious service of a living God. Christ is now their life who by His death and resurrection gives them the victory. All things are theirs, not life only but death, things present and things to come. Even Christ's judgment-seat has no terror for them, but awakens earnest pity and zeal to persuade the perishing for whom they know how awful it will be, unless they repent and believe the gospel.

But the Jewish priests of old, the sons of Aaron, were the enemies of the Lord beyond the infatuated people; they and the voices of the chief priests prevailed against the less hardened and heathen Pilate. They are now broken off the olive tree and have lost their standing till mercy work their revival at the close. Hence as there is the setting aside of the commandment going before for its weakness and unprofitableness, the way lay open for the introduction of a better hope, through which we draw nigh to God. Christians exclusively are priests now by virtue of Christ's work and God's call. To make ministers such, and even of a higher grade, is ominously like the gainsaying of Korah: the presumption of the Levite to take the place of the Great Priest. As priests are we called of God, not to uncleanness in any way or degree, but in sanctification as the condition that characterizes the partakers of a heavenly calling.

Proverbs 19:1-7

In a general way these maxims of divine wisdom are meant to comfort the upright and considerate poor, apt to be despised by others of less moral worth. They are instructive to all who have the fear of God, and to the Christian especially, who is told to honor all men as such (1 Peter 2:17). There is nothing akin to the assertion of man's rights and the exclusion of God's, seeking one's own will, advantage, honor, and power.

“Better [is] the poor that walketh in his integrity than one perverse in his lips (and) who is a fool.

Also a soul (person) without knowledge [is] not good; and he that hasteth with [his] feet maketh false steps.

The folly of a man perverteth his way; and his heart fretteth against Jehovah.

Wealth bringeth many friends; but the poor is separated from his friend.

A false witness shall not be unpunished, and an utterer of lies shall not escape.

Many court the favor of a prince; and every one [is] a friend to him that giveth.

All the brothers of the poor hate him; how much more do his friends go far from him? he pursueth [with] words: they are not (or, these hath he not)” (vers. 1-7).

To walk in integrity is the fruit of divine grace. Faith alone can thus enable anyone in a world of vain show and with a nature corrupt or false, and vain or proud, either way given to self-complacency and open to self-conceit. If ever so poor, how much better is the upright walker than the man however rich that talks crookedly and is a fool (ver. 1).

There is no excuse for anyone who hears the scriptures to be without knowledge, and knowledge of the deepest value, perfectly reliable and accessible. What is to be compared with the written word of God, even when it was but partially given? To be without that knowledge was not good but evil in an Israelite: how much more in a professing Christian! Without knowledge, one is apt to act precipitately and fall into sin—how often through haste! Man needs to weigh his words and ways (ver. 2).

The foolishness of a man exposes him to evil ways; and all the more, because the more foolish, the less is there self-judgment. If one but felt his folly before God, and therefore looked up for wisdom, how surely He would give it without upbraiding; if he trust himself, he perverts his way more and more. What is worse still, his heart frets or rages against Jehovah. His folly grows impious at length even to casting the blame on Him Who only is absolutely wise and has never done him harm but good. It is a common case (ver. 3).

The covetousness of man betrays itself in the eagerness of men in general to be friends of the wealthy; nor less in the coolness that separates the poor man from his neighbor's interest and care (ver. 4). How little is God in their thoughts! Yet withal they may flatter themselves with loving God and man. Let them think of the good Samaritan.

False witness is a heinous sin in Jehovah's eyes, who pledges Himself that it shall not go without punishment, and that the untruthful man shall not escape. A Jew was no doubt more guilty than a heathen if he thus boldly ignored Him who hears every word; and much more inexcusable is the Christian, now that Christ has come, the true and faithful Witness. Israel was called to be the arena of Jehovah's government; but it utterly failed through their forgetting the ground of promise to faith, and resting all on their own obedience of the law. No sinful man, nor indeed any, can stand on such a tenure. For as many as are of law-works are under curse; as it had been so strikingly anticipated in Deut. 27 where the Spirit reports the curses on Ebal, and does not notice the blessings on Gerizim, though no doubt proclamation was made historically on the latter as much as on the former. But all men who take this ground of their obedience reap, not blessing, but curse. Blessing for a sinful man can come only by faith. And we find men after the law even more heedless of truth than they were before the law, yea even saints. But in Christianity we have not only the truth, but truthfulness consequently, as never before.

The selfishness of human nature is shown out in vers. 6, 7. “Many court (or, entreat) the favor of a prince; and every man is a friend to him that giveth” (ver. 6). It is not all that can get the ear or eye of a prince to curry favor. But a liberal man is as the rule easy to reach and ready to listen. No doubt it is a temptation even to a Christian in distress. But why forget that He whose is the earth and its fullness has His heart ever open to his cry? How comely then it is to be anxious for nothing; to let our gentleness be known to all men, self-assertion to none; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving to make our requests known to God.

What a graphic picture ver. 7 presents in following up hateful self-seeking! “All the brothers of the poor hate him; how much more do his friends go far from him! he pursueth with words: they are not.” Even the nearest ties of relationship break before the needy one. Still less are friends faithful to him who sinks into poverty. The very sight of such a one is a bore, and a signal to be off. In vain the debtor pursues with his words of appeal. The old friends disappear; and all fails. Such the prodigal found the world, when his profusion left nothing more to spend: no man gave to him. God is the gracious giver, and the only One changeless and effectual, when every resource is gone, and the sinner bows to Him, though he have nothing but sins. But for him, however ruined, that believes, God has Jesus and with Him freely gives all things, as the day will manifest. It is of importance to realize this by faith now, that we may honor Him in thanksgiving and praise, and in willing service, as it becomes every Christian to do.

Gospel Words: Brotherly Reconciliation

The Lord was not content, with authority peculiarly and emphatically His own, to lay down the hateful evil of anger in heart and word, even if not in violent deed. He proceeds to carry out the revealed mind of God for the kingdom by requiring reconciliation if any had stumbled one's brother. Throughout, disciples are in view, not mankind in general. Sin in disciples is exceeding sinful: good is peremptory (surely not evil) for the kingdom of the heavens.

“If therefore thou be offering thy gift at the altar, and there remember that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Make friends (or, be of good-will) with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the official, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say to thee, Thou shalt in no wise come out thence till thou have paid the last farthing” (Matt. 5:23-26).

It is no less evident that Jewish disciples as yet under the law are those addressed. This is as plain in vers. 20, 21 as in those we are now considering. In fact it is the rule in this Gospel as a whole and in the others; and it must be so, till in the death of Christ the middle wall of partition was broken down, and thus the way was opened to reconcile both Jew and Gentile that believed in one body to God, the enmity being slain. The discourse of our Lord anticipates no such unity, nor even the call of the Gentiles, in any one clause. But it is a profound mistake that this indisputable fact takes away the profit of a single word from the Christian, though we stand now in a position of grace which could not be then. There is the richest instruction morally for every one who honors Him who spake as never man spake; a spiritual estimate of unequaled depth for those who know redemption and have the indwelling Spirit to enter in far more fully than those who heard His words of divine truth at the time He uttered them.

Thus the Lord enjoins the disciple who was bringing his gift to the altar, if he remembered that his brother had anything against him, to stop short of his devoted purpose as to God Himself, and be reconciled to his brother, before returning to offer his gift. What tenderness of conscience was looked for, brotherly affection, lowliness of mind, readiness to own wrong, and desire to win an offended brother! It was the very reverse of anger, contempt, or hatred, which He had just treated, as His servant in measure re-echoed at a much later day (1 John 3:11-15). And that reverse was the Jews' case. For absorbed in bringing their offering to the altar, they were blind to their wrong against Him who deigned to be their brother, with far more than brother's love, born for adversity as they knew not. But they refused to be reconciled, and persisted in their offering, however offensive to God. It was presumptuous sin, and high-handed self-will under cloak of religion.

What follows points to a still more solemn consideration. Who that weighs scripture can doubt that the Lord in vers. 25, 26 refers to the position in which the Jew then stood with God? This was a far deeper consideration than any other brother aggrieved: their Lord became their brother. The awful truth is that He who loved Israel and would die for them, Jehovah-Messiah, was made their adversary by their perverse disobedience and blind unbelief; and His presence, which had been their salvation and best blessing if received, must bring on the inevitable crisis by their utter rejection and hatred of Him. The Lord at this point avails Himself of the occasion in His infinite grace to urge their agreeing, or making friends, with their adversary quickly, whilst in the way with him. How His heart yearned over them, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings! But they would not. Their deadliest aversion was to their loving Messiah.

Hence the case was just about to come before the Judge, and the Judge would deliver to the official the convicted one, and he must be cast into prison till the last farthing be paid. It is no question here of eternal judgment, but of divine government morally on the earth; but all is plainly true of His people found guilty and consigned to suffer long. In that prison still lies the guilty debtor, till his heart turns to the One he despised. Then the word shall go forth, Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye to the heart of Jerusalem, and cry to her, that her time of sorrow (or, suffering) is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received of Jehovah's hand double for all her sins (Isa. 40:1, 2). Who is a God like unto Thee, that forgiveth iniquity and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? (Mic. 7:18.) Is not this the true unforced hearing of our Lord's words? One may apply it to Christian use or unchristian warning. But it is an evil to twist scripture or to complain of those who bow to its full force. Such ignorance has led men into the fable of purgatory.

But let me appeal to you, my reader, who may excuse yourself because you do not profess to be a disciple. How will this avail when you stand before the great white throne? By your own plea to escape responsibility you incur certain and everlasting perdition. You know that your works are evil, and that dying as you live, you are utterly unfit to be in heaven with the Holy One of God. He whom you refuse as Savior now will then be your Judge. You turn away from the Lord, you neglect so great salvation; your name is not in the book of life; your works are selfish, vain, proud, willful; addicted to lustful passion, rebellious against God, you serve Satan, and therefore must your portion be with the enemy of God and of His Son, as you have been here and are now.

O be warned in time. For the end of all things is at hand, even if you live; and your life at best is but a vapor. You know not what a day may bring forth. God was in Christ reconciling, not only embittered, or self-righteous Jews, but a world to Himself, not imputing their offenses to them. But all was vain for either: they hated both the Son and the Father. A great king, a mighty conqueror, would have been to their taste. How would that have blotted out their sins, or given them a nature to serve God on earth and enjoy Him in heaven? In divine wisdom and grace their hatred was allowed to culminate in His cross; and thereby sin was judged, themselves who believe cleansed from their iniquities, and made God's righteousness in Christ. O harden not yourself for hell-fire. God as it were beseeching by us, we pray for Christ, on His behalf who died for you: be reconciled to God. The work is done, according to His will, to save you forever. Repent and believe the gospel. What could be done to compare with that which God has done?

The Coming and the Day of the Lord: Part 3

The sealed of Israel's tribes, and the countless crowd out of all the nations are in different ways objects of divine goodness at that season of trouble. They are not joined together in one body, as it must be in the church. They are separately blessed at this preparatory epoch, as they will be in the millennial reign, when (as will not be disputed) Israel will form the nearest circle on earth, the nations blessed richly but willing and glad that the firstborn son of Jehovah should have the first place in honor and dominion here below. What confusion it would make to conceive the church here co-existing with this! Take a Jew converted by the gospel of the kingdom, and looking up for Christ's redemption by power; and consider the perplexity, if he heard the church with Jewish and Gentile distinctions effaced, praising in the Spirit, for a redemption by His blood already enjoyed, and for Christ in each the hope of heavenly glory with Himself on high. Which, says he, am I to receive and confess? These heavenly glories with Christ the Heir of all things, and this union in one body, so opposed to Law, Psalms, and Prophets? Or my portion in distinction from the Gentiles, and waiting for the Messiah to accomplish, for us the children, the promises to the fathers and the new covenant to both houses of Israel?

The book of Revelation clears all up, as it presents the saints of the heavenly calling on high, and earthly saints, Jewish and Gentile, on earth during the tribulation, both awaiting the Lord's appearing for the glory to be manifested both in heaven and on earth.

There is also one evident reason on the heavenly side which calls for the heavenly saints to be with the Lord above before He and they are manifested in glory. Each of us shall give an account concerning himself to God. We shall therefore all be placed, though in differing times and for opposite ends also, before the judgment-seat of God (Rom. 14); and it is to Christ personally that we shall then bow. For we must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ, that each may receive the things [done] through (or, in) the body, according to those he did whether good or bad (2 Cor. 5). Now this will evidently take place for the saint in his glorified state (and what a comfort this will be, however solemn!), but as evidently before the Lord comes in His kingdom; for the respective place of each in the kingdom is determined by that manifestation of us to Christ. How very striking it is that the glorified saints are shown as perfectly at home above in God's presence, from Rev: 4 to 19, during the sad season of earth's greatest darkness and abomination and misery; and that only before the bridals of the Lamb come we hear of His wife making herself ready! Can anyone suggest anything but that manifestation to Christ as needful for her? Then the marriage of the Lamb is followed by His appearing and His saints with Him. They had been caught up and in the Father's house long before, as is evident.

It is only lack of spiritual perception which has pitched on the Lord's coming or presence in one particular form to deny it in others equally but distinctly revealed in scripture. There are three applications of His presence at three separate occasions—to the Christians, to Israel, and to the Gentiles. Even the hottest partisans for merging all in one must on calmer reflection allow that Matt. 24:31 wholly differs from that in Matt. 25:31. The latter is severed from the former by an interval of some, and probably from the nature of the case considerable, length. If the Jews, or Israel rather, be thus plainly dealt with before the Gentiles, it is the right order for the earth. But proof is at least as strong that the Lord's first and highest object is to receive to Himself on high those destined to be with Him where He is in the intimacy of divine love and heavenly glory, as well as to reign over those delivered Jews and saved Gentiles.

Ample proof is given in scripture that the heavenly saints take precedence and are caught up to be with the Lord for the Father's house before these Jews or Gentiles on earth are converted. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so surely is Christ's taking His bride above; and this, because Christ's rejection by Jews and Gentiles on the earth gave occasion to God's highly exalting Him above after a new sort. To rail at this clear truth of God as “a new god come newly up,” “as a Jewish fabrication,” with many another equally childish, unfounded, and unseemly imputation, must be treated as at best mere and impotent ill-feeling.

The ignorance too is fathomless; as, for instance, the impossibility of “preaching the gospel [of the kingdom] to the world while actually keeping satanic saturnalia.” It is the Lord who predicts this very fact at the very time, “before the end,” when Satan, the Beast, and the False prophet prevail. Can any instructed Christian deny it? See where a false system leads its votaries.

Those who assume the identity of the Lord's presence here with that in Matt. 24 and kindred scriptures would do well to weigh what has satisfied their brethren that they refer to distinct acts, and differ in nature, each with its own personal object, the latter for the earth and the former for heaven. That there will be points of resemblance between them is natural, because their respective objects are to be blessed after a new and wondrous sort above and below. But ours will be by a rapture on high characterized only by grace; theirs by a judgment that overwhelms their enemies below. In 1 Thess. 4 none are spoken of but the risen and changed saints to be with Him, then and always. Only those are concerned who hear His call, and, seeing Him as He is, are henceforth like Him, their body of humiliation transformed into conformity to His body of glory. In Matt. 24. it is a question of “flesh” being saved through the antecedent perils, without a hint of resurrection or change when they see the Son of man, for it is in this character He appears. And then shall all the tribes of the earth or land mourn, which is plainly foreign to 1 Thess. 4 “And they shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory;” yet nobody then is said to be changed by it. On the contrary after this He is said to send His angels with a great sound of trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect (from context here, of Israel) from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other: a description widely differing from the heavenly saints changed and caught up to Him on high, as in 1 Cor. 15, Phil. 3, and 1 Thess. 4.

But Col. 3:3, 4 goes farther and positively excludes Matt. 24 from the possibility of being classed with these scriptures. For it definitely lays down, that there is no appearance of the Lord to any alien eye of all mankind, when He comes for His joint-heirs, till they are already changed and manifested with Him. Whenever Christ, our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also be manifested with Him in glory. Till then our life is hid with Christ in God. When He appears, we (are not caught up, but) appear with Him in glory. How God-fearing men can refuse submission to the evidence of His word in distinguishing these two acts of the Lord's presence might well seem beyond belief, if we did not know the fact, and its sorrowful consequence, both in its darkening power on the subject generally, and in the sore feeling it engenders.

Do you doubt that this is so? Hear then some words of an aged and respected clergyman: “Are the scriptures in these days tortured by any evangelical believers? wrested, at least, to their own injury? in union with scorners or heretics? What degree, &c., exists of the temper that God loves, of trembling at His word? &c. Are there in these last days any supplemental addenda to the Holy Word to be received as God's revelation as the book of Mormons is received? Was the faith once for all delivered to the saints? or was it not? “Do I wish to give pain to him or his friends who have deemed such utterances becoming or justifiable? Not in the least degree, more than they affect one with other feelings than sorrow for themselves, and a solemn sense of the false teaching which produces such bitter fruits, utterly out of measure, place, and season. For they know that we are no neutrals in divine truth, but appreciate the strongest indignation where Christ and His work are assailed, or any other vital truth. Another fact is clear. The apostle had in 1 Thess. 5 explained the contrast of “the day” with “the presence” or coming of the Lord for His own. The latter was a new revelation which they had not known before. As to the former, they knew accurately that it comes as a thief in the night. Whenever they may say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction comes upon them, as the throes upon her that is with child, and they shall in no wise escape. But the apostle's assurance is distinct that this was for the sleeping world, not for sons of light and day as they all were. Hence it was as inexcusable, for the Thessalonian saints to listen to the fraudulent alarm of their misleaders that the day of sudden destruction had arrived, as for others who to our day confound these two things so different, the joyful meeting of the Savior and the saved above, and the day of terrible destruction on the men of the world. It is this confusion that underlies the misrendering of ὑρὲρ in 2 Thess. 2:1, and of ἐνέστηκεν in 2:2.

Nearly all teachers take for granted that in the former the apostle alluded to that concerning which he was about to teach them. It is, on the contrary, an appeal to the comforting hope of the Lord's coming and their gathering together unto Him, as a motive for rejecting the false teaching about His day. Further, from ver. 3 he shows the prophetic grounds why that day, not His coming, could not arrive till the evils were fully and openly out which are to be then judged. The Revisers, like Bp. Ellicott and Dean Alford, have corrected ver. 2; but they left ver. 1 worse than in the A. V.

Again, it is urged with unwarranted confidence, that the saints only go up into the air to meet the Lord there, and forthwith come down with Him. For this where is any attempt at proof? They may press into the service Matt. 24:31. But this demonstrably applies to the gathering of the elect of Israel after the Son of man is seen coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. In this connection there is no hint of the resurrection nor yet of the translation above.

As this chapter of Matthew has been examined rather closely of late, there is the less need for discussion now. But Col. 3:4 seems plain and conclusive that the words of Matthew do not and cannot legitimately apply to the risen saints. For the apostle there lays down that “when Christ, our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also (not be caught up, but) be manifested with Him in glory.” The reference of Matt. 24:31 cannot be to the glorified ones spoken of by Paul. For this Gospel treats of elect Israelites gathered from all parts of the earth to the Son of man after His manifestation; the apostle treats beyond doubt of Christians manifested along with Christ in glory when He who is now hidden is manifested. In short, the Epistle excludes all question of Israel here, as all would admit, and means only the saints changed into the likeness of Christ's glory; whereas the context of the text in the Gospel is occupied with the future saints of the chosen people on the earth, and has nothing to do with the risen for their rapture or their manifestation with Christ. The earthly people are in view, and the Son of man coming to judge and establish His kingdom here below.

Nor is this by any means all. In the latter half of Rev. 19 we have the beginning of the day of the Lord (or the presence of the Son of man). It is the prophetic description of what the apostle briefly sketched in 2 Thess. 2:8, when the Lord Jesus shall destroy the lawless one with the breath of His mouth and shall annul Him by the appearing of His coming. As to this there can be no fair question. But here we are told, not of the saints being caught up to meet the Lord in the air, but of the armies in heaven following the Lord when He emerges to judge and make war in righteousness. That those armies are saintly and not angelic (though angels are not to be wanting then) is clear, among other proofs of special association with Christ, from their garb of “white pure byss” ( just before interpreted as “the righteousnesses of the saints”). The glorified saints therefore follow the Warrior-King out of heaven: a truth which had been already and necessarily implied in Rev. 17:14 of which more will be said anon.

Indeed, the just preceding scene (19. 6-9), the marriage supper of the Lamb beyond controversy in heaven, proves still more strongly, that the saints who form the Bride were already there; and if the evidence be traced in the book, they are seen there from chaps. 4, 5, where they are symbolically shown to be. For who but the least intelligent can think of separate spirits being seated on thrones? So little is it scriptural to say as in a little tract on “The Time of the End,” that “when His presence—His Parousia—as announced by Himself is ‘seen like the lightning from the east even to the west,’ the wedding feast shall be kept.” No, my brother, prejudice and passion have misled you. The marriage is in heaven and before that day. Dare you deny it in flat contradiction of God's word? Tremble for yourself, and beware of such temerity.

The coming or presence (παρουσία) of the Lord is a wider term, embracing the day as well as what is just before the day. It may be qualified by “the Son of man,” that is of the Lord in a judicial point of view, so as to coalesce with “the day,” and imply not His presence only but its display, as in the phrase, “the coming of the Son of man.” His coming applies to His day; but the appearing, manifestation, revelation or day, is fixed to the time when He comes with all His saints to set up His kingdom by judgments. The first object is to gather home those He loves. Love would always secure the object of affection first. Think how blind one must be to assume that taking vengeance is the primary object.

The coming of the Lord then is bound up closely with the gathering of the saints; the day of the Lord as clearly with the judgment inflicted on His enemies here below. Hence we find here, “let no man deceive you by any means.” It is evident there might be a great deal of mistake on this subject; “for it [will not be] except there come the falling away (or apostasy) first.” “That day shall not come” is an insertion of our translators, marked therefore by italics, though substantially correct. The day was not to be till the apostasy have first arrived, the public abandonment of Christianity throughout Christendom. O how men deceive themselves when they think that all goes on to progress and triumph for the gospel or the church through existing means!

Victory will be when Christ comes, not before. What is revealed is a very different and more humbling prospect. God's distinct intimation is that “the day” is not to be except the apostasy come first. And what is the character of modern infidelity, but preparing the way for the apostasy? people bearing the Christian name, yet giving up all the Christian substance? leaders who still carry on the dead forms while the spirit has fled? This will grow and extend, and men little think that they rapidly get ready for it. The outward and public recognition of the truth is being destroyed everywhere on earth. There will soon be no outward homage paid to Christianity in Europe. It is too plain that the governments of the world are gradually stripping off all real respect for the Bible as God's revelation, even if they yet keep up their connection with the Christian name. How many even in England think this a great boon! Though without practical interest in or affinity for an established religion, I cannot but think its rejection criminal and profane; and that this will turn out more serious than the so-called reformers expect.

It was a most seductive evil when the Christians accepted an alliance with the world; but it is a totally different and most solemn issue for the world, when it casts off all its profession of Christianity. Deep was the Christians' loss when they sought the world's recognition; but what an awful day for the world when it is so tired of the union as to throw off Christianity! The consequence will be that the very slender tie which binds and attaches men severally to the reading of the Bible or attending service will be broken. Granted that there is no reality, no divine life, no true or acceptable honor paid to the Lord, in carrying on a merely outward profession; but people who go to church (as it is called) hear the word of God and Christ named with honor. When this is no longer recognized, they will give it up as an antiquated prejudice, and go to shoot, fish, ride, or drink on His day. They will occupy themselves in reading anything but the Bible. The most rapid decay will ensue. Not so with the elect of God. As the evil progresses, the real saints will then become the more evident. They will by the Holy Spirit rest only on the word of God and such testimony of Jesus as is then rendered; but unbelieving men will be engulphed in the apostasy.

Is not this what is before the world as its doom? Is it not the written word which says so? What is the worth of any human forecast? Men prefer to look for a pleasant prospect, because they dislike and dread the divine warning. But this unbelief only hastens the evil day.

The first Epistle to the Thessalonians was the first written by the apostle; the second, from the nature of the case, was written shortly after. Thus, from the beginning of revealed Christianity, from the first communications of the Spirit of God to the churches, such is the solemn result of which they were warned. Those who profess the gospel will abandon it ere the end come as it surely will. For that day is not to be “except there come the falling away first.” It is not merely “a” falling away here, and a falling away there, but the falling away, the apostasy in the fullest sense.

Further, “That man of sin will be revealed, the son of perdition.” There was once a man of righteousness, the Savior; but He was rejected. There will be a man of sin, the son of perdition, “who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped.” We are aware that many people apply this to the Pope of Rome. Now we cannot honestly accept this, though regarding the system as a frightful delusion, even Babylon. How can men believe that “the apostasy” has arrived yet? It is a sorrowful thing even unconsciously to use scripture with a party aim, or for controversial objects. In the presence of growing evil, which pervades both Protestant and Catholic countries alike, it is beneath the truth to cast such a stone from one to the other. No, the apostasy is the result of despising the gospel, of trifling with the truth, of keeping up forms that are unreal, and then rejecting them and all divine revelation with shame, or without it, in cold, proud, reckless, and definite unbelief.

The apostasy will be the result as far as Christendom extends. Wherever the gospel has been preached, or at any rate the Lord professed, the apostasy will be the issue, whether of Romanists (for none are really Catholics) or Protestants” whether of Lutherans or of Calvinists, Greeks, Nestorians, or any others; such will be the result, not outside but within Christendom. It does not mean the end of the Jews, or of the heathen. The apostle is here speaking of that broad scene wherein the Lord's name has been professed. No doubt Papists are now and long the most opposed to the gospel and the most persecuting in spirit; and therefore Protestants assume that theirs is the apostasy But not yet is it come for Christendom to abandon openly and avowedly the N. T. as a falsehood and the Savior as an impostor. It is surely coming for Protestants as well as Papists, and all the rest. The day which is to judge the lie, and worse still, cannot be till all is fully out. “Because [it will not be] except the falling away shall have first come, and the man of sin been revealed.”

It is still the mystery of lawlessness at work, which was working when the apostle wrote: so early had the principle of utter ruin entered. There is piety in all orthodox sects, and even in Popery, where, spite of its corruption and idolatry, the fundamental truths of the Trinity and even of the atonement are owned more than in many Protestant sects. The present mixed state is not what is here meant by the apostasy, any more than the Gnostic departure of “some” from the faith referred to in 1 Tim. 4:1-3. It is general, complete, and open.

The climax is the lawless one who “exalteth himself.” Jesus humbled Himself, and only exalted God, Himself God but become man, the Man of righteousness. Here is a man, the man of sin pre-eminently, the opposer, and self-exalter against all called God, or object of reverence, the personal adversary of the Lord Jesus. And, as the Lord said to the Jews, they would not have Him who came in His Father's name, so they will receive him who comes in his own name (John 5:43). At the end of this age he will come, and accordingly he is found as Satan's winding-up, not merely of apostate Christendom, but of apostate Judaism also, indeed of man, Jew, and professing Christian in revolt.

The connection with Christendom has been already shown; but now we may briefly touch on Judaism. For this personage “opposeth and exalteth himself exceedingly above all that is called God or object of veneration; so that he himself sitteth down in the temple of God, showing forth himself that he is God.” As the true church began in Jerusalem, the great result of the apostasy will find itself conspicuously in Jerusalem. It was this city which saw Pentecost; so far as the world could discern, it beheld on the earth the assembly which belongs to heaven. Jerusalem will see the judgment of that which, long a counterfeit, will end in a manifestation of hell—the fruit of the amalgam of Christendom with Judaism.

Those who are under the impression that the apostasy is already consummated, and that it is thus found in Romanism, do not assuredly think worse of it than myself, who may speak without presumption of being farther from its evil dogmas, forms, ways and worship, than they even profess. But, while we utterly abhor the Papist system, scripture, and the chapter before us with others, speak of a still more awful revolt from the gospel, the church, the Christ, the Trinity and of God's revelation as a whole before the end comes, or even the revelation of the lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus is to destroy, personally appearing for this purpose though for other blessed objects.

Under that impression they consider that the Papacy is this adversary and enemy, of course a succession during the centuries, and not the haughty individual antagonist of Christ, the last antichrist of John's Epistles, who denies the Lord Jesus as the Christ, and yet more as the Son, and of course the Father, both the hope of Israel and the truth of Christianity. Hence they adopt the view of the Fathers from Irenaeus to Cyril Hier., Chrysostom, and Theodoret, &c., among the Greeks, and to Tertullian, Augustine, Jerome, Lactantius, &c., among the Latins, that the Roman empire is the restraining power, which when broken would leave all open for the man of sin. There is however this great difficulty for the Protestant view, that the Fathers with one consent looked for a single personage to fulfill this and other predictions, to be destroyed by the Lord, the son of perdition by the Savior, the King of kings and Lord of lords.

Dr. Wordsworth makes much of Chrysostom's remark that, if the apostle had meant the Holy Spirit when he speaks of the power that restrained, he would have spoken plainly and said so. This is a hasty supposition; as it is hardly decorous to predicate why the apostle, or the inspiring Spirit rather, refrained from giving all that man might wish. It is assumed by him, like the Fathers and the moderns too, that the restraining means was some power which Paul had mentioned to them by word of mouth; that he practiced reserve concerning it in writing; and that the reason for this oral mention only must have been fear of the consequence from the empire for himself and his brethren if he had written of it openly in scripture.

But this reasoning is quite unfounded, and no bad instance of the slovenly way in which the scriptures are read and pressed into service. The apostle does not say that he had often spoken to the Thessalonians of the restraining power, or that he had told them what it was. He speaks in ver. 5 of what he had said of the coming apostasy, and of the man of sin, with his blasphemous assumption and defiance of God in His very temple. “Remember ye not that, being yet with you, I told you of these things?” It is after this that in ver. 6 he goes on, “And now ye know that which restraineth, that he may be revealed in his own season.” He does not say that he had mentioned or explained the restraining power to them, but that they knew that by its action the man of sin could not be revealed till his own season. They may have gathered it from the known place of the Holy Spirit as exercising power for good.

But without dwelling more on this, let us test the notion with what scripture does say of the time when there is no restraint more. When that evil hour arrives, the powers that be, at least as far as the Roman earth is concerned, will no longer be ordained of God. The dragon will give its emperor its power and his throne and great authority (Rev. 13:3). For the ten horns, his satellites, as they receive authority as kings for one and the same hour with the Beast (the symbol of that Empire in its last form), so also have one mind and give their power to the Beast (Rev. 17:12, 13). And Beast and False Prophet perish awfully together, as do the kings and their armies. The Fathers were right in seeing portentous personages with their followers, not a succession in history, but the divine judgment at the close, coming into collision with the Lamb appearing from heaven to their destruction. If the Beast that rises from the abyss were now and for more than a thousand years in power, there could be, where his influence extends, no powers ordained of God. This will follow when the restraint is gone. The Roman empire is long gone; but He that restraineth is still here. And He will restrain, till the moment comes for that very empire (which existed when the apostle wrote, and ceased to be as now for so many centuries) to emerge from the abyss, and is to be ordained of Satan on its revival, to its everlasting destruction.

So far from the truth of God is that patristic tradition as a scheme. Yet, as a passing fact, it is true that while the Empire was in power, God owned it, heathen though it was; and the restraint still wrought. But the Empire fell in the fifth century; and the man of sin did not yet rise. God's providence wrought, and owned in His providence the Teutonic hordes, and the kingdoms which took the shattered empire's place, as He did the Romans before, and does the powers that be still. The restraining power still works, and will till the dreaded time when the church joins her Head for heavenly glory. For a while too after that event the Holy Spirit will work and control, according to the Apocalyptic expression of “the seven Spirits of God sent into all the earth.” For it is only in the latter half of the unfulfilled seventieth week of Daniel, the 1260 days of which the Revelation treats, that Satan plays that terrible game on earth, when he sets up the Beast, and the man of sin sits down in God's temple.

Now if this be simple and sure truth as scripture puts it, we can better understand why the apostle was reticent. God may not have revealed to him as He did through the beloved disciple, that strange quasi-resurrection of the fallen Roman empire (under the authority of which the Lord of glory came in His humiliation) destined to rise again under Satan's power, when the restrainer is gone, but to receive, from the same Lord appearing, its doom on the person of its eighth head in the lake of fire. The Spirit of God, as a spirit of government has restrained all through and will till just before the end of the age. When the dragon is allowed to govern, without a check for a brief space, He, will cease to restrain. To imagine that He has nothing to do with the powers that be, since the Papacy, is as great an error as to overlook the Satanic reign of terror and blasphemy during its allotted “little while,” before the Lord is revealed in flaming fire to destroy it, and to bring in His own world-kingdom in power, righteousness, and glory.

The truth of the Spirit governmentally restraining meanwhile may have been known to the Thessalonian saints in a general way, but not written down for wiser and better reasons than any dread of the Roman government. Daniel had already given its destruction, as foreshown to Nebuchadnezzar in chap. 2:34, 35, 40-44, and to himself in chap. 7:7, 8, 19-26; as it was yet more fully in Rev. 13; 14, 16, 17, 19, after the death of the apostle Paul, so that the dread imputed to the inspired writer can scarcely stand its ground.

At most the Roman empire may be said outwardly to have hindered the uprising of the last imperial adversary, because it was ordained by God as all powers are till Satan's short time, when he is permitted to ordain him. The traditional view has proved imperfect when examined in the light of scripture. It was a narrow and short-sighted application, in no way meeting what the word elsewhere says and demands, but provisionally true while the Empire held its place. “The son of perdition” suits the personal antichrist, not a succession of pontiffs, not a few of whom were the vilest of men, and the office itself an imposture. But to characterize the succession as denying the Father and the Son is not merely uncharitable but senseless. Why strain scripture derogatorily to God and dangerously for the man, however sincere and well-meaning, who is guilty of such a license? When the man of sin appears, there will be no doubt about it for all who have the fear of God.

The truth is that the old traditional view is not only unfounded as a question of full truth; it is also manifestly illogical. For if the Roman empire were the absolutely real barrier against antichrist, and the Christians in the fourth and fifth centuries prayed for its continuance against that dreaded foe, what could be in such a declaration, however open, to arouse its hatred and draw out persecution? It would naturally tend, if known, to give them confidence in the church as the warm and not quite disinterested supporter of the empire before God. It is extraordinary that men so able as Dr. W., and a crowd of others who are no friends of tradition as he was, should use an argument so suicidal.

The Thessalonian saints, like others, who believe in that unspeakably terrible consummation at the end of the age, knew that it will be the allowed apparent triumph of the lawless one, the instrument of Satan to the last degree. They knew therefore that God, working by His Spirit as He had ever done, and now especially to Christ's glory since Pentecost, alone could hinder that cherished aim of the arch-enemy. The Roman empire while it lasted might be and was an outward hindrance; and when it fell, other governors, ordained of God stood in its way. To have named it only would have been a mistake, which divine wisdom avoided. The particular barrier, τὸ κατέχον, might vary, as it did; but ὁ κατέχων, the restrainer, abides to use providentially the powers that be till the Roman empire rises from the abyss for the final crisis.

Further, being both a power and a person (that 4 is, spoken of as neuter as well as masculine) it is not rightly said of an empire, and can apply to none so well as to the Spirit of God. He still, to sustain His testimony to Christ, and for the sake of the children of God, continues to hinder the final manifestation of Satan's power. But when the church is gone up on high, it seems that the Spirit will act not only to convert souls, but as a spirit of government (Rev. 6) till God allows Satan to do his worst for his short time. The Spirit of God will then indeed cease to restrain the working of the Evil One, who will dare all things against the Lord.

“And then shall the lawless one be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall destroy with the breath of his mouth, and shall annul with the appearing of his coming.” The Lord Jesus is the appointed destroyer of this fearful being, the one who is elsewhere called the antichrist. Even now there are many antichrists, says John; when the antichrist comes, he will be brought to naught by the Lord Jesus in person appearing from heaven and publicly. The critical addition of “Jesus” is put in, because it is certainly genuine; and as it gives more definiteness to the expression, so it excludes any mere dealing in providence.

Here recall the first verse. The apostle does not say the day of the Lord, nor the appearing of His coming, when Christ gathers the saints. “We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto him.” And these two wondrous events are so closely associated by one article in the Greek, that the second “by” in the A. V. is an impertinent and injurious intrusion. But, when the destruction of the man of sin is in question, he speaks, not of His coming merely, but of the appearing, the epiphany, of His coming If it were a display when the Lord comes to gather His saints, why should “the appearing” of it be expressed in ver. 8 only? Why is its “appearing” avoided when He comes (ver. 1) to gather together His saints to Himself? Is it not manifest from the phrase itself that the coming of the Lord does not of itself imply His appearing? How else account for the difference in the wording of verse 8? It was necessary, when His appearing was meant, to say so; and this is when He judges. When it is the dealing of His grace in translating us to heaven, His coming or presence is named; but not a word about His appearing. When the lawless one shall be destroyed, it is not merely His presence or coming, but the appearing of it. He could not appear without coming; He might come without being seen beyond what He pleased; but now we hear of the display of His presence. When He comes to take up His saints, what will the world have to do with it? It was His own love which saved them. They belonged to Him, not to the world. He comes to claim His own. He does not make the world a spectator before He appears in glory for the destruction of the antichrist.

1 Peter 4:12-14

The apostle next turns definitely to suffering of the severest kind which they were called to endure, not as a question of right or wrong, which any upright brother might and does face, but for Christ's name which in a greater degree draws on faith.

“Beloved, be not surprised at (count not strange) the fire among you that cometh for your trial, as though a strange thing were happening to you; but inasmuch as ye share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice, that in the revelation of his glory also ye may rejoice exultingly. If ye are reproached in Christ's name, blessed [are ye], because the [Spirit] of glory and the Spirit of God resteth upon you: [on their part he is blasphemed, but on your part he is glorified]” (vers. 12-14).

Blessed is a man that endureth temptation or trial, and the more fiery it may be, the more blessed he that endures; because when thus proved he shall receive the crown of life which the Lord promised to those that love Him. The danger is of entering into temptation, as even the apostle knew too sadly, when he forgot the Lord's warning in the confidence of his own love, and denied Him thrice. But grace began to restore him, when the Lord re-called to His poor servant His admonitory words, and never stopped till he could be so re-instated before his brethren, as to have His sheep and lambs entrusted to his care. Nor was this all. For the redeeming work of Christ so completely purged him, as it does every worshipper (Heb. 10:2), that he could boldly charge the men of Israel with their denying the Holy and Just One. Once for all purified, he had no longer any conscience of sins: that sin and every other were effaced forever. Such is the Christian's initiatory privilege.

Who then was more fitted than this apostle of the circumcision to strengthen the hearts of his brethren at the fire among them coming for their trial? They should not count it strange but an honor from God, especially as they had, what the apostle had not when he was tried, the Holy Spirit dwelling in them, as the fruit of Christ's accomplished work. Had not the Lord said to His disciples, “Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from them, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as wicked, for the Son of man's sake”? Had He not bidden them to “rejoice in that day and leap for joy; for, behold, your reward is great in heaven, for according to the same things did their fathers to the prophets”?

The apostle had already exhorted them (in chap. 2:20, 21) to endure as a grace and honor if one for conscience toward God endured griefs, suffering wrongfully. For as he admirably argued, what honor is there, if when sinning and buffeted ye shall endure? But if doing good and suffering ye shall endure, this is grace, or acceptable, with God. There too he points to Christ's suffering for us, as the great model to follow. This he followed up more briefly but with sharp pungency (in chap. 3:17, 18), as better, if God's will should will it, to suffer as doing good rather than doing evil, with the same One before our hearts in His once for all suffering for sins, as He alone could. Here he goes beyond suffering for righteousness and as well-doers; and in accordance with the fiery persecution in view, he reminds them that inasmuch as ye share, or have fellowship in, the sufferings of Christ, it was theirs to rejoice, that in the revelation of His glory also they may rejoice with exultation. The Spirit was afresh applying what the Lord at the beginning laid down on the mount, the surpassing excellence in His eyes (and who such a judge?) of being reviled and persecuted with every wicked thing lyingly said against them for His sake. Blessed they that were persecuted for righteousness' sake, because theirs is the kingdom of the heavens (Matt. 5:10); but in the next verses 11, 12, He rises higher, and addresses personally, and no longer as before in the abstract, “ye” that suffer for His sake. These were to rejoice and exult, because their reward was great in the heavens.

Here too His servant was given to add, “If ye are reproached in Christ's name, blessed [are ye]; because the [Spirit] of glory and of God resteth upon you. Christ was not here, but in the glory of God; and thence came the Spirit, sent by the Father in His name, and by Himself from the Father to abide with them and be in them (John 14, 15). How fitting and full of comfort the reminder! He was the seal of their accomplished redemption, and the earnest of the glory coming to them. He is the Spirit of God, which is more and better than glory. Such was the Spirit that rested on them, both for energy to endure and for joy now and evermore. No doubt, it is generally true of all the sons of God, for He is the Spirit of sonship, which believers receive since redemption (Gal. 4:4, Eph. 1:13, 14); but it is here said with emphasis to sustain the sufferers for Christ's name. The latter part of the verse is quite true, and said in substance elsewhere; but omitted as the words are by the best MSS. and most ancient Vv. and looking like a gloss, they are here bracketed as of doubtful authority. There is an addition also to the Spirit of glory and of God, “and of power” in A P, half-a-dozen cursives, some ancient versions, &c., even expanded in to; but the Vatican MS. and other good witnesses oppose; and indeed it seems still less in accord with the context.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Peoples Associated With Israel in Latter Days

Q.-Psa. 120:5. Have you any light on the peoples so remarkably associated with Israel in the latter day? The commentators seem perplexed by these names, and without anything of moment to suggest. W.

A.-It may be fairly asked if the construction of “sojourn” does not point to “with” Meshech, rather than “in” (as Psa. 5:5 (4); as also the preposition “with” is really meant, and not “in,” the tents of Kedar. Hence it is not dwelling among these enemies that is intended, but their hostile proximity to the sobs of Israel in their land. The difficulty supposed from the one belonging to the far north, the Muscovites once inhabiting the country near the Euxine, but afterward with others migrating to the land of Magog or Russia, and the other to the north-west of Arabia in the south, is exactly what gives point to the plaint. The Psalm refers to the last part of the latter day crisis, when Gog (as in Ezek. 38; 39) comes up to crush the restored people dwelling in their unwalled villages. Little does the great and last north-eastern chief of Rosh (the Russians), Meshech (the Muscovites), and Tubal (the Tobolskians), know that Jehovah-Jesus is their King, and that he with his vast hordes, not only of Gomer and Togarmah, &c., in the north, but down to Persia, Cush, and Phut, and as here Kedar in the south, only come up to be punished for their unbelieving greed and presumption, that Jehovah may make Himself known in the eyes of many nations, at the beginning of His glorious Kingdom for a thousand years. It is of interest, one may add, that the Assyrian inscriptions connect two of the three, Mushai and Tuplai; as Herodotus much later the Moschi with the Tibarini. In the Byzantine historians, οἱ Ῥὼς is used for the Russians, the very name by which the Septuagint long before rendered the Hebrew Rosh employed by Ezekiel.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Union of the Divine and Human in Christ

Q. 1.-What took place on the cross when God forsook Jesus, as He said? Was the divine entirely withdrawn, leaving only the human, or, if not, what? C. B. St. G.

A. 1.-The union of the divine and the human in the Person of Christ was indissoluble from the moment of the incarnation. It was an error distinctive of the Gnostics to imagine a separation when He was about to suffer atoningly and die. And the error is fatal to the divine efficacy of atonement, as well as to the abiding glory of His Person. He had been a sufferer from man all His days on earth, and these sufferings were intensified as He hung on the cross: how did not dogs and bulls of Bashan, as Psa. 22 expresses it, vent their shameless spite and unbridled rage then! But the psalm opens with the new and infinitely solemn fact that God forsook Him—forsook Him when man failed, even His disciples forsaking Him and fleeing, when He most of all needed sympathy. But no: He must drink the cup to the dregs, be made sin, and bear our sins in His body on the tree, have God, His God, dealing with Him, as thus giving Himself as a sacrifice up to God for sin, where all was darkness and not a ray of kindly light could enter. Till then He had walked in the unclouded enjoyment of His Father's love; but then He must taste, as He did to the uttermost, what God feels and must execute as the Judge of sin, and (in His case) of all the sins which were laid on His holy head. This was the perfection of His suffering, not merely from man for righteousness and love, but what was peculiar to Himself, and peculiar to that time of atonement, suffering from God for sin because He was faithful to man and came to save sinners. Only thus could God be glorified about sin; only thus could the unjust be justified to God's glory and the full proof of divine grace also, as laying the ground for the righteousness of God in Christ. Never was the unfathomable love for God and man so proved in Him as when thus bearing our judgment at God's hand on the cross; but for that very reason it could not be a time for Christ's enjoying the communion of His love and delight as ever before and since. This was the necessary change then.

Scripture Queries and Answers: "Spirit" in Romans 8:10

Q. 2.-Why should you think the word “spirit” in Rom. 8:10 means the Holy Ghost and not man's spirit? C. B. St. G.

A. 2.-It is evident if we examine the context that the “Spirit” in the verses before and after the text referred to means the Spirit of God, variously characterized in ver. 9 and especially 11, but none other than the Holy Ghost. The spirit of man introduced in any of these cases would not only weaken and destroy the truth intended, but render the reasoning null and void; and so it is down to ver. 16, where first we hear of “our spirit,” and here only. For in vers. 23, 26, 27, it is beyond doubt the Holy Spirit. It is true that ver. 10 implies that we are quickened inwardly, but the inspired word goes further. It is not that the “spirit is quickened,” but that “the Spirit is life.” This could only in my judgment be said of the Holy Spirit. The continuation of the argument in ver. 11 confirms this, because the same Spirit is not only “life” in the believer now, but shall also quicken our mortal bodies by and by at Christ's presence, and thus complete the work of grace by a deliverance even of the body from the last vestige of the power of death. It is so, because of “Christ in you”

Scripture Queries and Answers: Marrying "Only in the Lord"

Q.-1 Cor. 7:39. Does this scripture mean that a sister, or a brother, was allowed to marry, if so led, but “only in the Lord,” that is, a fellow-Christian? YOUNG DISCIPLE.

A.-In my judgment the apostle meant more than that. A Christian is called to walk by faith in everything, and how much he needs it in a step so important to his future here below! He might be attracted by a sister, who so differed from himself in habits, circumstances, and age as to make it unseemly for others and unhappy for themselves, but by the still sadder fact of such fleshly or worldly mind as to endanger his soul and his testimony, and all the more, if he had been of spiritual mind or sought to.be. This scripture therefore seems to cover more than the bare fact of being in Christian fellowship, and teaches that the marrying should be in the Lord, that is, guided for their good to His glory, and so by His direction. This appears to be “only in the Lord.”

Published

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Jacob: 18. Israel Put to Shame and Isaac's Death

Jacob had not yet reached the end of his journeyings, any more than of his sorrows, a man of the most varied experience among the fathers, as Isaac had the least. So he said later to Pharaoh, Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. Yet this painful experience under the governing hand of God was blessed to his soul; and the Spirit of God marks it here by the name of “Israel,” not conferred only but here used historically, as we find it again when years after he took another journey still more eventful (chap. 46:1, 30; 48:2, &c).

“And Israel journeyed, and spread his tent on the other side of Migdal-Eder (Tower of the flocks). And it came to pass when Israel dwelt in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine; and Israel heard of [it]. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve: the sons of Leah, Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, and Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and Issachar, and Zebulun; the sons of Rachel, Joseph and Benjamin; and the sons of Bilhah Rachel's handmaid, Dan and Naphtali; and the sons of Zilpah Leah's handmaid, Gad and Asher. These [are] the sons of Jacob that were born to him in Padan-Aram. And Jacob came to Isaac his father to Mamre, to Kirjath-Arba, which [is] Hebron; where Abraham had sojourned, and Isaac. And the days of Isaac were a hundred and eighty years. And Isaac expired and died, and was gathered to his peoples, old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him” (vers. 21-29). There is a day at hand when Jehovah will assemble her that halteth, and will gather her that is driven out, and her that He hath afflicted; and He will make her that halted a remnant, and her that was cast off a strong nation. And Jehovah shall reign over them in mount Zion from henceforth even forever. And thou, O tower of the flock, hill of the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come, yea the first dominion shall come, even the kingdom to the daughter of Jerusalem. So brightly Micah (iv.) was given to prophesy of the flock of Israel, as in the next chapter of the Shepherd through whose sufferings alone could come such blessing and glory. Meanwhile he, the father of the twelve tribes, halted slowly in his keenly felt bereavement, who had known both to be driven out and afflicted. But the time was not come for Him whom he too awaited, even to be smitten on the cheek, much less for the birth of that grand change when He returns in power. In that land, which is to be the glory of all lands, through Him who will restore all things to God's glory, dwelt the desolate man. It was a lingering that presented a dismal snare to his firstborn, and, sad to say it, to the concubine of his father, the mother of his brothers Dan and Naphtali. Dinah had been a grief already; but what was that compared to the two-edged dagger that pierced his bosom? “Israel heard of it.” But we are not told of a word that escaped him then. It was a grief too deep, if not for tears, for a passing burst of feeling; but his heart had sense of it when the sons gathered together round his dying bed, and he was given to tell them what would befall them at the end of days, not for the eternal scene, but for “the regeneration” and indeed before this comes. The dishonorer of his father, and in a way not even among the Gentiles that know not God, was forgiven, but lost his birthright and could have no pre-eminence either now or when God's kingdom comes for the earth, and Jesus is the head over all things heavenly as well as earthly.

The enumeration of the family is pathetic at this point in the patriarchal story. No flesh shall glory. Let him that glorieth glory in the Lord. Yet God takes pleasure in recording their names, both early and late in the O. T., and finally in the last book of the N. T., but with instructive variations. For the Bible is not only God's word, but an intensely moral book, little to be discerned by those who make mind their all.

The death of Isaac, with his great age, exceeding Abraham's, is here named, though we must bear in mind that it did not happen till Joseph was not only sold into Egypt but rose, unseen and unknown of Israel, into the seat next the throne. But here it is recounted, as the burial at Mamre brought again together the two sons in a sorrow that set aside strife. Notwithstanding the hatred which God hated was to come out afterward even to the close of the O. T. It must meet its doom in the day of Jehovah's indignation against all the nations, and His sword shall come down on Edom, when the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose, and Carmel and Sharon shall see the glory of Jehovah, the excellency of Israel's God.

Israel Holy to Jehovah: 11. The High Priest to Be Unsullied

HERE it is not the general sanctity of the Aaronic line, but the holy character incumbent on their chief because of the anointing of his God.

“10 And the priest that is greater than his brethren, upon whose head the anointing oil was poured, and who is consecrated to put on the garments, shall not uncover his head (or let the hair of his head go loose), nor rend his garments. 11 Neither shall he come near any person dead, nor make himself unclean for his father nor for his mother. 12 Neither shall he go out of the sanctuary, nor profane the sanctuary of his God; for the consecration (or crown) of the anointing oil of his God [is] upon him: I [am] Jehovah. 13 And he shall take a wife in her virginity. 14 A widow or a divorced woman or one dishonored, a harlot, these shall he not take; but he shall take as wife a virgin from among his peoples. 15 And he shall not profane his seed among his peoples; for I Jehovah sanctify him” (vers. 10-15).

It is not merely as the highest of the sacerdotal that these injunctions were bid. The Spirit of God does not fail to keep before us, even in the O.T. when the first man was being put to the test, that He ever looks on to the Second. Thereby the believing reader, who believes in spirit while the letter is seen, was also taught to look for Him. So we saw in the early part of Lev. 4 as compared with the rest. Again, a similar principle is observable in chap. viii., not in a negative way but more positive, in the anointing itself. Further, though in a still more different manner, we may discern in the singular place of the great priest on the atonement day (Lev. 16). And so is it here also.

Literally the anointed priest must not yield to the exigencies of mourning or the defilement of death, no, not for his father or for his mother, whose honor is so specially maintained in the Ten Words. In Christ as Priest we have superiority to death made most conspicuous. Nor is it only in the striking type of Melchizedek and his “order,” as we see it applied in Heb. 7 for which the mode of notifying the royal priest of Salem gave occasion: “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life.” Even when the exercise of priesthood is introduced according to the Aaronic pattern, the priesthood that does not pass to another is pressed, as constituting Him able to save completely those that draw near to God through Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them: an element as foreign to Melchizedek as offering sacrifice or burning incense.

Next he was not to go out of the sanctuary, nor profane the sanctuary of his God. This was as absolutely true of the Lord in every respect, as it could not be of any other. For He was the Heavenly One; yea even on earth, He could be, and He describes Himself as, the Son of Man who is in heaven; “was” or “will be” falls quite short of this reality as a divine person. He was indeed the Holy One of God: so even unclean spirits could not but own, as this was to them the source of their deepest awe and alarm.

Then he was restricted as to the choice of a wife. A widow or divorced woman, or one dishonored, a harlot, was expressly forbidden. He was to take as wife a virgin from his peoples. Need one say how God provides for the nuptials of the Lamb above the church which He loved? Her He will present to Himself glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. It is true that she had nothing but sins. But He gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. It was all His suffering, and doing, and giving, in a love with which nothing can compare. It is as sure by His work for redemption as His blood has infinite value in God's eyes, Who had this purpose of grace before the world's foundation, as He has accomplished the deepest and most wondrous part and made it known for the blessing and joy of faith, and is about to fulfill all that remains for the body and the inheritance in due time, a time that hastens.

Proverbs 19:8-14

The value of right feeling (“heart” literally, or sense) is enforced and contrasted with the folly and evil of deceit, both for the life that is, and for that to come; the uncomeliness of self-indulgence, and the admirableness of forbearance; the comfort of royal favor, as against the fear of its displeasure; the grief where family relationship is in disorder, and the manifest blessing where she who shares the guidance walks and judges wisely.

“He that getteth sense loveth his own soul; he that keepeth understanding shall find good.

A false witness shall not be held innocent, and one uttering lies shall perish.

Luxury is not seemly for a fool; much less for a servant to have rule over princes.

The discretion of a man maketh him slow to anger; and [it is] his glory to pass over a transgression.

The king's wrath [is] as a lion's roaring; but his favor [is] as dew upon the grass.

A foolish son [is] the calamity of his father; and the contentions of a wife [are] a continual dropping.

House and riches [are] an inheritance from fathers; but a prudent wife [is] from Jehovah” (vers. 8-14).

It is not only lax and dissolute ways that lead to ruin. How many perish by the indifference which gives a loose rein to folly! There is no fear of God in either; and where this fear is lacking, all must be wrong. Before, we were told that the fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom, as it also tends to life. This may be even now before peace with God is enjoyed; for such peace comes only through the faith which rests on Christ and His work. But it remains true, that he that heareth reproof getteth sense, and he that getteth sense loveth his own soul. The other word that accompanies this is of great value, “he that keepeth understanding shall find good,” and good better than silver or gold. It is well to get, and better still to keep, what is so excellent.

Those who hear and say much have to lay to heart the next solemn warning; “a false witness shall not be held innocent, and one uttering lies shall (not merely be punished, but) perish.” It is most hateful to God and most injurious to man. No one can say where the evil may spread, or how it may end here; but we do know how the Lord judges it forever.

Luxury is good for none; but it is above all unseemly for the fool who makes it his enjoyment and his god. The wise man was given to add that worse still is it for a servant to have rule over princes: who so vain and tyrannical?

To indulge in anger hastily is ever a danger, as it is true discretion to be slow in yielding to it. Better still is it to pass over an offense however real. It is his glory. He that is higher than the highest sets the pattern of grace.

On kings it is peculiarly incumbent how they dispense their censure or their favor. If they mistake either way (and there is no small danger of it), the effect is pernicious beyond measure. How happy for the believer to have to do readily and directly with the Highest who never errs, though we are so prone to mistakes.

The next words take up the afflictions of family life; and give us salutary judgment. It is not merely a fool here, but “a foolish son,” and he surely is “the calamity of his father.” There is another who brings the calamity nearer still and more constantly, a contentious wife. Her cross and fractious spirit is a continual dropping. Not a spot in the house is safe from her turmoil.

Hence the importance of so looking to the Lord for a gracious and faithful counterpart. If house and wealth are an inheritance of fathers, as it generally was in Israel, a prudent wife was from Jehovah. What were the rest, however choice or abundant, where the meekness of wisdom failed in her who shared it all? If all else materially lacked, what comfort and happiness in having one from Jehovah who had His light within and around her?

Gospel Words: Impurity

Throughout it is not mere acts the Lord demands, but state; the spiritual condition suitable for the kingdom of the heavens. As in the verses immediately preceding the Lord insists on a spirit of lowly grace, going immeasurably beyond Thou shalt not kill, so now on a purity as far beyond the non-commission of adultery.

It is plain also that here, as everywhere in the so-called Sermon on the Mount, it is not the grace which saves the lost sinner who repents and believes the gospel. The state of soul that befits entrance into the kingdom of the heavens exclusively occupies the Lord: He is teaching the disciples what suited the Father's name which He made known to them. All that He laid down therefore manifestly presupposes that one is born of God, as the essential requisite for His kingdom, not acts merely if they could be good, but renewal of heart. Christ Himself was the blessed pattern of perfection.

“Ye heard that it was said, Thou shalt not commit adultery; but I say unto you that every one that looketh at a woman to lust after her committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye stumbleth (or, ensnareth) thee, pluck out and cast it from thee; for it profiteth thee that one of thy members perish, and not thy whole body be cast into hell. And if thy right hand stumbleth thee, cut off and cast it from thee; for it profiteth thee, that one of thy members perish, and not thy whole body be cast into hell.”

Violence and corruption are the sad characteristics of man's fallen estate. We see them marked in the antediluvian world, at least as the general signs of a ruined state, whatever the specific evil which aroused divine indignation and unsparing judgment. Throughout man's history as traced in the Bible, and particularly in the favored circle of Israel under the law, they are ever before us. Christ came, and grace and truth through Him, and redemption through His blood, everlasting redemption, to say nothing now of heavenly counsels made good in His person and place, and communications to the Christian and to the church. But man is essentially unchanged, and even avails himself of grace to become the worse. “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set to do evil.” “But when thy judgments are in the earth,” says the prophet, “the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.” Showing favor to the wicked, who believe not, emboldens them to persevere. And as the Jew was no exception who dealt wrongfully in the land of uprightness and would not behold the majesty of Jehovah, so will the Gentile reject the gospel to his perdition, and be cut off irretrievably. The time also hastens.

But as of old, so now are the faithful men, of whom the world is not worthy, who lived and suffered as seeing Him who is invisible. And the Lord did not lower the standard but raised it, clearing it of letter and of all accretions or diminutions. He has the godly remnant in view, still Jewish as He spoke, who not only entered the kingdom, but had higher relations intimated as His rejection set in, till His session at God's right hand and mission of the Spirit gave all necessary to reveal and make good in the saints what had been ever hidden heretofore.

As violence then was judged and excluded in any shape for the disciples, so was impurity. The avoidance of the extreme act might satisfy a Pharisee or Scribe; but the Lord could not dispense with anything short of truth in the inward parts. To look at a woman lustfully was to commit adultery with her already in his heart; and it is not the outside only that God regards but the heart above all. It is only a new nature that delights in holiness; and he who has it by grace answers to the will of God his Father; and abhors himself if he slip even into a wrong look, as unworthy of his calling and hateful to Him who loves him.

But the Lord follows up His stringent condemnation by the call to deal promptly and unreservedly with anything that acted as an incentive. Therefore He specifies that which is part of ourselves, and when rightly used of the greatest value. Not even the right eye, or the right foot, can be allowed in presence of His displeasure which the saint fears, because he is a believer and God's child; as the Lord said elsewhere, “Be not afraid of those that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will tell you whom ye shall fear. Fear him who, after he hath killed the body, hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say to you, Fear him.” It is not the highest motive, but it is an imperative and most solemn and urgent appeal.

Therefore says He now, “And if thy right eye stumbleth thee, pluck out and cast it from thee; for it profiteth thee that one of thy members perish, and not thy whole body be cast into hell. And if thy right hand stumbleth thee, cut off and cast it from thee; for it profiteth thee, that one of thy members perish, and not thy whole body be cast into hell.” The right eye and the right hand present forcibly the mortifying of our members that are on the earth, to hinder sin against God. At all cost must the believer deny self; as we find elsewhere he must hate father, mother, wife, children, brethren, sisters, yea and his own life also, or he cannot be Christ's disciple.

O my fellow-sinner, you know that this is wholly beyond you. You do not, will not, make any such sacrifices. Nothing but Christ, the new life, can so feel and act; and you have only your depraved life of sin and self. Are you then to despair? Yes, despair of yourself. You are truly lost, as the Lord says. But He came to seek and to save the lost. Tell God of your guilt and ruin, but plead the name of Jesus whom He has sent. He is a present and everlasting Savior. Doubt not, but believe what God declares of His Son. Life in Him answers to the appeal of Jesus, when you rest on His redemption; and the Holy Spirit will strengthen you accordingly.

The Coming and the Day of the Lord: Part 4

ALAS! we are told in terms of uncalled for vehemence that in no school of French or German rationalism is there a bolder subversion of the predictions of God than in this fable! that 1 Thess. 4:16, with of course 2 Thess. 2:1 (which, as all admit, synchronizes), is, or could be, unheard by the world. But where is, or what implies, the world here? The apostle is showing how God will bring with Christ the departed saints. The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a call of command (κελεύσματι), with archangel's voice, and trump of God. It is exclusively to raise the sleeping saints and change us who remain alive for His presence, when both are caught up together in clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Not a word implies that the world hears at that moment, not a word that earth and heaven are shaken. Not only is there total silence as to these bold importations, but we are expressly taught by the same apostle that, “when He shall be manifested, then shall ye also be manifested with Him in glory.” We must therefore have been caught up before the common manifestation of Him and His in the same glory. This violence is beneath a sober believer. It is absurd to say that the archangel's voice or the trumpet of God must be heard beyond the saints concerned. When the day comes for man to be raised for the resurrection of judgment, we are told of neither. The voice of their Judge will raise for their doom those that believed not but did evil. We may not add more without divine authority. We have seen how different it will be when the Son of man comes on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory to gather together His elect of Israel from the four winds. Here the rapture on high is not hinted. It is His presence for the earthly people, and therefore as expressly for all on earth to see (Rev. 1:7); as the other was to gather on high the heavenly ones. Only ignorance can set the one in opposition to the other; and ignorance is apt to be impatient, self-willed, and abusive against what it has not learned from God in scripture. But such a spirit condemns itself to considerate children of God.

The distinction therefore of 2 Thess. 2:1, and 8 (the presence of Christ simply, and the appearing of His presence) is precise, instructive, and undeniable. The one is to gather together the saints to Christ above; the other is for Him (and we may say for all His saints thus gathered to appear with Him) to crush His enemies. It is then that every eye shall see Him, as it concerns every soul on earth. Timothy was solemnly charged in the First Epistle to keep the commandment spotless, irreproachable, till the Lord's appearing; because responsibility always refers to that day. The rapture is grace to all the saints equally caught up to Christ on high. The appearing will manifest the fidelity or the failure of each saint. Hence the apostle still more straitly testifies by, or charges, His appearing and His kingdom on Timothy in preaching the word and in all his other service; and he connects the crown of righteousness, which the righteous Judge will render “in that day” (not at His presence simply), with His appearing to those who love it.

It would be crass indeed for any to say that the epiphany or appearing of Christ is secret. The question is entirely whether the Spirit of God does not draw a plain and sure distinction between the presence of the Lord to gather His own, and the appearing of His presence to destroy the lawless one and his adherents. If His presence necessarily conveyed appearing, how could the apostle write as he did in the same context, 2 Thess. 2:1 and 8? If he meant us to learn the distinction, how could he have intimated it more exactly? It is well to leave it to the late Prof. Jowett and the incredulous school to teach that the apostle wrote loosely and reasoned ill.

The world will have bowed down to the antichrist. Gentiles as well as Jews will have accepted him. Just as the blessed Lord Jesus is both the true Messiah and the God of Israel, so this lawless personage, the man of sin, will set up to be both Messiah and Jehovah of Israel; and kings, classes, and masses, will be led away by the fatal delusion. The same unbelief which rejects the true will cringe abjectly to the false. It is Satan's woe for the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea, for those of settled government and for those in a revolutionary state. These are the dismal prospects of the world according to the scriptures. A far different future fills the imagination of men generally. Why wonder at this? How can they truly prognosticate what is to be? No man can discern the future unless by faith he profits by the light of God's prediction, and declines going beyond it.

What is particularly awful for that day is the intimation in verse 12 of our chapter, which connects with the lawless one. “Whose presence is according to the working of Satan in all power and signs and wonders of falsehood, and in all deceit of unrighteousness to those that perish, because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. And for this reason God sendeth them a working (or, energy) of error, that they should believe the lie, that they all might be judged who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Here we see that Satan will work in imitative counteraction of God's power that wrought in Christ. It is no trickery of priests or monks, no winking Madonnas, or liquefying blood, or profane fire ostensibly of the Holy Ghost. The same terms are here used of Satan's energy in the man of sin, as Peter employed in Acts 2:22 of the Lord Jesus as demonstrated by God to the Jews. On the other hand God will give up men by a judicial blindness to believe the lie of Satan that man, and especially this man of sin, is supreme God; so that he even dares to sit down in the sanctuary, showing that he is God. It will be divine retribution. They had rejected the truth, they had no love for it that they might be saved. They imputed the undeniable works of power and wonders and signs of the Lord Jesus to Beelzebub; they ascribe to the only God those of Satan by this minion of his, the man of sin. As the Jews were at last given up to blindness for their unbelief, so will Christendom be. Jews, professing Christians, &c., will combine to worship the son of perdition, as Jews and Gentiles united to crucify the Lord of glory. And the last will be worse than the first. “I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.”

But at this very time among the distant and till then heathen nations will be a great and true work of God's mercy, when godly Jews, forced to flee from the scene of the antichrist in Jerusalem sustained by the dragon-honored Roman Emperor, are used of God to win a countless throng of Gentiles by preaching the gospel of the kingdom; as we learn by comparing Matt. 24:14 with 25:31 to the end, also with Rev. 7:9, &c., and 14:6, 7. It is an “everlasting gospel.”

The lawless one as here depicted must await the dreaded hour when God sends judicial darkness, and the western powers and the Beast animated by Satan like the False Prophet combine against Jehovah and His Anointed. But the Lamb shall overcome them (for He is Lord of lords and King of kings), and they that are with Him, called and chosen and faithful (Rev. 17:14; 19:14).

Of course many will tell us how dangerous it is to predict; and so it would be for them, us, or any uninspired men. But the study of prophecy is calculated and meant to keep us from predicting. Those who value and study the written word should be humble enough to praise God for the lamp of prophecy. If you despise the inspired prophecies, you may set up to be a prophet; and if you do so, who can wonder if you are a false one? God alone knows and can tell the future. But God has revealed it; and we have the responsibility of believing or of being infidel, A man cannot truly believe these things without their leaving a divine impress upon his soul. If you have Christ the hope in your heart, show it in your hand and on your forehead, seeking to stand true to Him whom you believe. The Lord Jesus is coming; but He is to appear also. He is not merely coming to receive His own, when the result will be in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye (1 Cor. 15:52). That the world should see the change and translation of the saints, as it is unknown to the scriptures, so it seems neither necessary nor fitting.

The Lord has many ways of taking His own to Himself without death. Suppose the Lord were to cause a tremendous earthquake to happen, would not the wise men of the world say that the Christians had been swallowed up in the earthquake? It is easy enough to conceive a way in which the Lord could conceal the matter; but He does not conceal from us, nor will He from men, what He will do to the misleader of the Roman world or others. He will not conceal His judgment from the world, and even the various forms and times in which it will fall. Then certainly He will be manifest to every eye. Hence we find that, whenever judgment is in question, manifestation characterizes it.

When the Lord Jesus in His sovereign grace called Saul of Tarsus, his companions were allowed to feel the tokens of some extraordinary action going on, though they knew nothing about it really. There were not a few in the throng going to Damascus, yet only one man saw the Lord Jesus. All the rest heard but an inarticulate sound. They did not hear the words of His mouth; Saul of Tarsus did. Then, again, we find Philip caught up and carried to another place; but what did the world know of all that? There was a subsequent occasion when the apostle Paul was caught up into the third heaven. But this was so far from being divulged for the sake of the world, that the apostle says only “whether in body or out of the body, I know not: God knoweth.” Nothing, then, is easier than for the Lord to conceal or show things partially on these occasions; but He will display them on a grand scale when the judgment of the world comes, after taking on high His people previously.

But as already said, there is a bearing on service. Timothy was to keep the injunction, laid on him, spotless, irreproachable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 6:14). There is a pressure of responsibility; and responsibility in scripture attaches to His appearing, as sovereign grace does to His coming and receiving us to Himself for the Father's house. But it is the merest fallacy to conclude that our abiding on earth till then is implied in keeping it, any more for us than for Timothy. Neither departure to be with Christ nor being caught up to be with the Lord at His coming hinders like fidelity on our part or on his. But another principle is involved.

It is the same principle in 2 Tim. 4:1, 8. Responsibility is again impressed, and with especial force not only for Timothy but for all saints who love His appearing. The verse is as plain as it is solemn and important. “Henceforth is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord the righteous Judge will award to me in that day; and not only to me, but also to all that have loved (and do love) his appearing.” His coming for us would here be quite inappropriate, because it would simply imply being caught up to be ever with Him But His appearing is the day when faithfulness will be revealed publicly, and the work of each be made manifest; and if it abide the test of that day which declares, each shall receive reward according to his own labor. Besides, even now to love His appearing, who will judge every evil thing and set right the world long disordered and envenomed by the Serpent, is not only a joy, but the deeper because all will be to His praise whose appearing will alone bring it to pass. Were one filled with earthly care, or courting wealth and honor of men, how could one love His appearing who will judge it all and establish His righteous reign? It is indeed a “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13), though there be what is incomparably more in being with the Lord Himself in the Father's house, and beholding His glory outside and above the world (John 17:24).

Let us refer to one scripture more and a solemn one, Rev. 17. Two evil objects of judgment are set before us; one called the great Harlot, the other the Beast. The first object is seen sitting upon many waters, “with whom the kings of the earth” &c. (verses 1-6). At first they are together: the corrupt woman, seated upon a well-known and remarkably characterized Beast; the Beast with seven heads and ten horns, the meaning of which symbols is not doubtful. Much may be gathered by comparing verse 1 here with verses 9, 10 of chap. 21. “And there came unto me” &c. Is it not plain from the comparison, that the one is the counterpart of the other? that Babylon, the harlot, is Satan's sad contrast to the bride, the Lamb's wife? As the one is the holy city having the glory of God, the bride of the Lamb, the other corrupts herself with the kings of the earth, to their corruption also. This explains why she is styled “Harlot.” She is the great ruling city of the world, which has her kingdom over the kings to their ruin. Not so the church glorified, the body of Christ, the Lamb s wife. “And the nations shall walk by her light; and the kings of the earth bring their glory unto her” (the heavenly city). The bride is said to be “the holy city, Jerusalem,” that comes down out of heaven from God. This, then, is the holy (not the great) city. If we read in the ordinary text “He showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem,” the word “great” ought, as is known, to be expunged, and the word “holy” transposed to take its place, “the holy city, Jerusalem.”

But still the very fact that the holy city, Jerusalem, is the church glorified, gives no little help for understanding Babylon. What is the religious body which under the shelter of Christ's name, pretends to be the mother of all the churches? Can anyone hesitate? Was there ever a system of such varied idolatry, hypocritical corruption, and atrocious cruelty in the Savior's name?

Granted, that much evil has been done by mischievous men actuated by strong feeling in so-called established churches, the national body of this country, the national body of Scotland, and that of any other land; but what is this in comparison with the pretensions of her that claims all countries and tongues, kings as well as subjects? Can there be a question who and what she is? Has there ever been any but this one, the great harlot that sits upon the many waters?

There can be no reasonable doubt about the meaning of Babylon; but, as if to preclude the possibility, we have several marks. First, she dominated once the Beast as none ever else did, arrayed in all the world's splendor, and earth's richest ornaments. Next, she abandoned herself up to illicit union with the kings of the earth for their gifts of power. Then, her golden cup was full of abominations, and “the unclean things of her fornications” beyond all rivalry. Lastly, she is a vindictive claimant, the most unrelenting of persecutors, drunk with the blood of the saints. Have you not heard of an ecclesiastical body which thinks it her duty, for the love of God and the good of men's souls, to exterminate heretics? She is herself as innocent as Pilate. She kills none; she only hands them over to the civil power to be punished! Alas! there never was a Pagan power, nor the worst of Jewish fanatics, nor the most frenzied of Mohammedan scourges, which so tortured the saints of God as Babylon has done. So clear is her identification that one needs not even to tell her very name. Surely the truth must be very evident when it is unnecessary to say who she is to the most unlettered, where the Bible is read.

Nor is this nearly all we are told here. The last verse says, “The woman is the great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth.” There is a distinction we may note here. The chapter does not confound the harlot and the woman. It is the woman that is declared to be the symbol of the ruling city. This is unquestionable, for there never was one that ruled as this city did. The better history is known, the more it will be felt that Rome only it can be. That one city ruled more and longer than any other since the world began; and everybody in the apostle's day would know where that city lay and what was its name.

It was not Athens; for Athens could never for any considerable time rule even Greece. It was not Jerusalem before, nor Constantinople since. Some think that this refers to a future Babylon in Chaldea; but such a city must be built on the plain of Shinar. How then could it be truly said to be built on seven hills? So many heaps of her ruins could hardly be an answer. The old Chaldean capital had been a. great city; it passed away, and only remains to occupy the curiosity of learned men. Here was one ruling over the kings of the earth. But one city could be said so to reign in the days of John, and no city ever has so reigned since. London, vaster than any and of world-wide influence, is in no sense reigning over the kings of the earth.

This city was to become the harlot, and so to exercise power over the Roman Beast or empire, the Beast of seven heads and of ten horns. But at first sight there is a difficulty here; for the Roman empire has disappeared. It existed and has fallen. How then are we to understand the chapter? The historian tells us that the Roman empire long ago declined and fell. There he stops; he could not lift the veil; and alas he believed not in God's revelation. Not history explains prophecy, but prophecy explains history. Prophecy is the, true and divine key to the prospects of the world. Accordingly here is the explanation—the Beast that then was, the Roman Beast, would cease to exist. “The Beast that thou sawest was, and is not.” Its vast power was to perish; and the infidel historian chronicles the fact. But behold in the word another thing which history could not divine. If God's word is true and sure, the Roman Beast is to revive. It is well known that its revival has been essayed. Charlemagne tried; Napoleon the First tried; Napoleon the Third would have liked well to have tried. Not that one has sympathy with those who pretend to forecast the person. There were many that fixed on the last-named fallen potentate; and a few cling still to the notion of a relative. They are premature: better leave guess-work to such as do not search into prophecy.

Here is the word of God. Why should any predict? You had better not pretend to it; the word of God has spoken already; be content with His predictions. Now the word of God has said nothing of the sort; it speaks of the Beast that should ascend out of the bottomless pit (or, abyss), and go into perdition. Why add to this? Why speculate? Let us only believe. The restrainer will then be gone. Diabolical power will revive the Roman empire. And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the Beast that was, and is not, and—. The common reading “and yet is” (καίπερ) is incorrect. “And shall be present” καὶ πάρεσται) is the true reading and sense. Here, then, we have the clearest intimation that the Roman empire is to be reconstructed, under the most fatal influence for a little, before the age ends and the Lord returns in judgment.

Let us look back for a moment at the history of the world, and compare it with the present and the future. In the time of John the Roman empire ruled the known world. The empire had then but one governor or chief. Gradually the power began to weaken and wane. First came the division into east and west. Then some time afterward the Germanic barbarians broke up the Western empire and founded those separate kingdoms of Europe, which, after feudalism, passed into the constitutional monarchies of modern times. Such has been the result of the breaking up of the Roman empire. Here we find the two conditions: the Beast that was, and the Beast that is not. But it “shall ascend out of the abyss (or, bottomless pit).” This will be a new trait in the world's history. The worst of powers is better than anarchy; the most grinding tyrannies are safer than no authority at all. But a new state is to rise for the old power, absolutely without God, and under Satan's unhindered agency, drowning men in perdition.

It is evident that, whatever changes may have occurred in the world's affairs, there has never been a power without the sanction of God, bad as its exercise of authority may have been. The letting loose of the power of Satan is not yet, because there is One who withholds now (2 Thess. 2); but when He withdraws the hindrance, the beast ascends out of the bottomless pit. Here John of course speaks symbolically of the Roman empire in its last Satanic uprising to power. In the end of this age Satan will be allowed by God to re-establish that great object of human ambition. Men are even now yearning after an energetic central authority in the West. It is the plain fact that the ten horns, or kingdoms (supposing for the moment that the kingdoms of Western Europe comprised just ten), have no political coherence. One of their marked features has been that they are constantly in danger of war with each other. They have sought, by what they term “the balance of power,” to maintain a measure of mutual understanding, peace, and order. But in consequence of this very arrangement no one power has been allowed to get the upper hand.

Many have desired it; but the result of their policy, when action has been tried before the time, is that such prove abortive and perish. By and by it will be accomplished. Then the Beast will be reconstituted. There will be unity, one central authority, without extinguishing the separate kingdoms, save that the little horn acquires three. Thus there will be the revived Roman empire with distinct kingdoms. The future state will consist of the imperial headship, along with the subordinate kingdoms of the once united western empire. The balance of power will then be required no longer in the West. But in the East and North there will be mighty adversaries whom some so ignore that they confound as if they all were the same, though one will besiege, and the other be besieged. Between them all the day is coming when Satan will deceive the world. God will accomplish His own purpose of gathering out His saints to Himself. Then the world is allowed to have its little moment, when Satan has consummated his power on earth. (See Rev. 17:12, 13.)

The state here described is perfectly unexampled before or since the fall of the Roman empire. One knows the independence of even the least of the kingdoms. They do not like others to interfere, if they be ever so little. Several too join—some for, and some against. Such is the way things have long gone on in the political field of the West.

Here the principle of national independence will have disappeared. Separate or party action is all gone. The time is come for a vast change in the world. This will be the character of it: a great imperial power, called the Beast; not absorbing all, but wielding the separate powers of the west. The Beast is a type of strength, no doubt, but absolutely destitute of reference to God. So it has been really throughout; but then boldly and avowedly rejecting God at the close. The western imperial system will have thrown off all care for God or thought of Him, yea it will defy Him. Apostasy will have prepared the way. This imperial power will have the direction of the properly Roman dominion, the western nationalities of Europe. The separate kings will be flattered with the idea that they have each a separate existence and will. But they are only as the sinews of the strong man who sways them all. What follows their destruction of Babylon? “These shall make war with the Lamb.”

What a difference from the blessed reign of peace and righteousness, no less than from what men dream as the gradually optimist future! On the other hand, the saints come from heaven, being with the Lamb when the conflict arrives. (Compare Rev. 19:14.) Being changed, they are forever with the Lord, and follow Him out of heaven. So, when the final contest arises between the Lord Jesus and Satan represented by the leader of the West, the Lord is accompanied by His saints. They are here styled “called, and faithful, and chosen.” Some have thought they must be angels; but this they are not. For angels are never called “faithful.” And, again, they are said to be not merely chosen but “called.” How could an angel be “called”? Calling is an appeal of grace, which comes to one who has gone astray in order to bring him back to God. But this is never true of an angel. The gospel is God's calling fallen and guilty man to give him, through faith and because of redemption, a place with Christ in heaven. Those who believe on Him are here shown to be with Him; and they are “called, and faithful, and chosen.” They have been there from Rev. 4 or rather just before, as the chapter implies.

But there is more. What becomes of the woman? We hear about her too in verse 15, where we discern her vast quasi-spiritual influence. It is not a national body (inconsistent with the true nature of the church as this must be), but an idolatrous, persecuting, pretentiously religious system, claiming to be the spouse of Christ, but really an unclean harlot that extends her corruption over all the world. For if Rome be her center, she sits upon the many waters, peoples, and crowds and nations and tongues. How easily seen who and what she is, and what only such a system can he! There is but one such in Christendom, though she has daughters too.

Further notice (as in verse 16), what a change takes place! Instead of these horns, or kings of the West, being any longer subjected to Babylon, they turn furiously with the Beast against her. Would it not be an incredibly strange thing for the Pope to turn against his own church or city? Hence the Pope is not the Beast, and has nothing directly to do with Babylon's destruction. It is the symbol of the empire in its last phase, when the Beast from the abyss is thus joined by the various leaders of the different kingdoms of the West against that proud and most guilty system.

Babylon had long intoxicated men, persecuted the saints, and dallied with the kings of the earth. Now the turn of the tide comes: Babylon was not of God, but a corrupt idolatrous imposture. But there is nothing of Christ's mind in her destroyers. It is Satan against Satan, and his kingdom shall come to naught. The end of the haughty world-church is come, and, soon after, that of her destroyers. The Beast and the ten horns, throughout the Western empire, have their one mind in this revolt from the Roman harlot, to strip, eat, and burn her, according to the language of the prophecy.

There are solemn premonitory signs even now. Let me mention only one fact noticed by both Romanists and Protestants. You are all aware of Ecumenical Councils lately held in Rome. One distinctive character is remarkable, as emphatically indicative of the change that has taken place even among the Western powers. For the first time the Pope could not ask one Catholic sovereign to sit in the council. It was composed simply and exclusively of priests. Not a single ambassador or representative of the crowned heads was there. There never was such a state of things before in medieval or modern Europe. Originally indeed, at Nice, it was not the Pope who convened or took the lead but the Emperor, who at least kept the turbulent bishops in a measure of order.

Granted, that infidelity underlies the change. It is overflowing even now everywhere, as by and by the Beast will be steeped up to the eyes in blasphemy. He and the horns will be given over to the hatred of God, while at the same time they will at last hate the Harlot which had deceived them so long. It is a violent reaction against the vileness of Babylon, but no less a rejection of divine truth. You see its spirit in our own country and day. Leading men glory without shame in spoiling the religious dignitaries and their earthly goods. This is going on in all lands; but the end of it will have a deeper dye. Do men call it “the Eternal City"? Alas! the Romish priests keep it hidden from their hearts that Babylon, the great city of the west, is doomed to be thrown down and found no more at all, but her smoke to rise up unto the ages of the ages, everlasting like Sodom and Gomorrah, when the Lord reigns over the earth, and the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.

It is not of course meant that we are yet come to the Beast and the ten horns of Rev. 17. But enough has been said to show the rapid trend of the present times—the strong way in which the wind blows in the West. Men prepare to turn violently against what they had been so long enslaved to. As the end approaches, the word of God asserts its majesty and power to men of faith, as fresh as at the beginning, but by the mass is more and more slighted and scorned. We are verging toward the close of the profession of Christianity on the earth, when the Lord again leads His own to go forth and meet the Bridegroom. Besides, we have these admonitory symptoms that the world gets weary of hollow earthly religion, and becomes ashamed of forms which are themselves no better than empty superstitions. And no wonder, for there is not an outward ordinance remaining, scarcely even a form, which has not been utterly perverted, as well as the truth itself to a great extent ignored or denied.

A Christian must be beyond measure prejudiced by his earthly system and too excited against the fuller and heavenly truth, who could dream of saying, “Coming to take vengeance is the primary object of His leaving heaven.” Had he annexed and limited vengeance to “the day of the Lord,” he might perhaps be justified; but it is so flagrantly opposed both to 1 Thess. 4:16, 17, and to 2 Thess. 2:1, that God's word condemns the unspiritual deliverance beyond appeal, and proves the importance of distinguishing between “that day” and “the presence of the Lord” which has for its primary object the gathering of His saints to Himself above. Not a hint is breathed in 1 Cor. 15:56, more than in those Epistles of vengeance or judgment in awry form or degree. The one speaks of “a mystery"; because to raising the dead saints, which is no mystery but an O. T. truth, the apostle adds the new revelation that “we” (Christians) “shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in an eye's twinkling, at the last trumpet; for it shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” The other says, as an equally new revelation, that after the dead saints rise, we the living that remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall be always with the Lord. They are the divine expression of grace, and of nothing but grace.

Shortsighted brethren (and they are many, if this be a comfort to them) confound this heavenly gathering together with the wholly different gathering together of the “elect” of Israel, as in Matt. 24 where not a word implies any catching up to join the Lord. They are scattered to all quarters and need to be gathered, when the time comes for the Son of man's presence for the earth. They are expressly called His “elect” in Isa. 65:9, 15, 22, as in Matt. 24:31. As in the same verse “a great sound of trumpet” summons the elect of Israel, so in that day (Isa. 27:12, 13) a great trumpet shall be blown summoning them to worship Jehovah in the holy mount at Jerusalem. This the Lord clears and confirms in Matt. 24. The context alone can decide whether the elect be of Israel, of the church, or of Gentiles; for it is true of all three as the different parts of the Lord's prophecy on Olivet prove. But blessed as they are to be on earth, it is quite distinct from those caught up to meet Him for heavenly glory. From these all thought of vengeance is excluded. Israel's deliverance is accompanied by the destruction of their enemies. Our rapture to the Lord is entirely and exclusively a question of sovereign grace in its consummation for heaven and in being thus ever with Him, our best and brightest privilege. But even His presence for the earth, though necessarily involving vengeance on the wicked, has for its “primary object” the deliverance of the sorely tried and scattered or beleaguered Jews, and the gathering of His elect of Israel.

The want of eye-salve is not duly felt. They are rich and increased with goods, especially the old clothes of Judaism and the new suit of philosophy; and they have need of nothing. Hence, by not distinguishing things that evidently and profoundly differ, the whole truth on this subject is embroiled and thrown into confusion. For the kingdom of God embraces earthly as well as heavenly things. How sad to misuse the less to darken or deny the greater! There is to be the Father's kingdom where the righteous are to shine as the sun; there is to be the Son of man's kingdom where His earthly people shall be blessed and honored as never before; but in order to this last the sword of divine judgment must clear the way for the Lord's righteous scepter. No such earthly dealing applies to the heavens, or on our behalf before going on high. There the Lord went up triumphantly and in peace; there and thus at His call shall the heavenly saints be caught up. How can saints overlook the contrast or fight against it!

The “desperate shifts” are exclusively with those who are blind enough to swamp grace and judgment, heaven and earth, heavenly family and earthly people, in one strange conglomeration.

Assuredly scripture gives no countenance to such disorder. It is ignorance or calumny to say that any one sought to discredit the champion of this Babylonish system. God allowed that he should also fall info the wildest delusion, to say nothing now of the gravest error as to Christ which he himself acknowledged and in part recanted, many of his chief associates more fully than was charged on any of them. But, apart from this, what does an excuser mean by such a cry? Is he not aware that the one he thus goes out of his way to defend taught openly and definitely, that the church is to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent in the day of glory? See “Thoughts on the Apocalypse,” pp. 45-51 (1843). Is this, or is it not, heterodox and even, blasphemous? Was it ever retracted? Surely it is “a crooked device” to ignore such extravagant and fatuous falsehood, and to impute deceit, wanton cruelty, and unscrupulous misrepresentation to brethren who had to clear the Lord's name from being a cover for this and many other serious errors.

1 Peter 4:17-19

The apostle had put forward the sufferings of the saints as fellowship with Christ's sufferings. They could not share His grace without sharing what this entailed on Him in an evil world where God is hated quite as much as He is dreaded by a bad conscience and an unbelieving heart. They were therefore to count persecution no strange thing, but to be expected where sin pervades and prevails, where darkness is put for light and light for darkness, where good is called evil and evil good, where sweet is accounted bitter and bitter sweet. If the foundations be destroyed, what can the portion of the righteous be but the rejection which their Lord had? The disciple is not above his teacher, nor the bondman above his lord. Every one when perfected shall be as his master. It was saintly privilege and to be accepted with thanks and exultation. It was to be reproached in His name, the Spirit of glory and of God resting on them that their groans might have a divine and unselfish character, and themselves be strengthened with all power according to the might of His glory unto all patience with joy.

Now he turns to the moral side, after an earnest exhortation against the dangers for a Christian in the midst of the worst examples. Assuredly if God judges, it is for good reason; and judge He must, according to His holy nature, what is inconsistent. with it, and lifts itself proudly and rebelliously against Himself. Already too men slept, and the enemy sowed darnel, and the evil could not be expelled till the consummation of the age when the Son of man takes it in hand with power and glory. The Holy Spirit was sent for the good news, the saints, the church, but not to apply remedy to the ruin. This is reserved for the Lord who will at His appearing bring in times of restoration of all things, as the prophets spoke and God through them since time began. 2 Thess. 2, one of the earliest communications to the church, is explicit that the mystery of lawlessness was already at work. This is the succession that is never interrupted, though kept in check by the Spirit of God till He departs, and the apostasy ensues, which culminates in the lawless one fully displayed in his audacious taking of his seat in God's temple, showing himself that he is God.

Hence says our apostle, “Because the time [is] that judgment begin from the house of God; and if first from us, what [shall be] the end of those that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous is with difficulty saved, where shall the impious and sinful appear? Wherefore also let those that suffer according to the will of God commit their souls in well-doing to a faithful Creator” (vers. 17-19).

So it had been in the awful judgment which befell Jerusalem and the Jews as described by Ezekiel. “Begin at my sanctuary,” said Jehovah, where man assumed indefectibility; and such is the vain confidence of tradition, in the face of the plainest testimonies to the contrary in the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Revelation. The glory of Jehovah refused to dwell in His house defiled by abomination, and yet greater abominations, the last of which was that eastern attitude which has ever stamped the idolator, never the true worshipper of our God and Father. No doubt, salvation ever was of God and in sovereign grace; and this in Christianity is made more evident and indisputable than it ever had been. But God from the first maintained His title to judge every departure from Him; and none ought to be so ready and so thorough in confessing their sins as those who own that all they enjoy and boast is of His grace. Whereas the plague-spot in Christendom, as in Israel, is to claim for its most guilty and apostate state the immunity that belongs to the counsels of grace. Never was Judah loftier in its pretensions and louder in its sense of security than on the eve of unsparing judgment. And now it is still more guiltily the fact with Christendom.

Here it is where even real disciples sadly fail. Party-spirit blinds; for what is Christendom but a scattered group of parties? As another apostle taught, there were schisms even then; and there must be heresies or sects as it really means, the inevitable effect if not corrected by self-judgment; and these we now see all around and unblushing. Those that carry the head highest can hardly deny it. Their own association is of course the true one, if not quite immaculate in their eyes; but they must know of souls on earth more than themselves subject to the word and Spirit of God, devoted to Christ's name, and separate from the world. This might pierce their conscience, and lead them by grace to discover the overwhelming ruin underneath the haughtiest prejudice. But the darkness which besets all who yield to the fatal assumption of indefectibility in the Christian profession hinders the entrance of divine light as to this into their souls. The testimony of Paul has been alleged; here before us is that of Peter. Jude is in prophetic vision as distinct and pregnant, as he is brief. “Woe to them, because they went in the way of Cain, and gave themselves up to the misleading of Balaam for hire, and perished in the gainsaying of Korah.” John penetrates deeper than all when he calls it “the last hour” of many antichrists come, the heralds of the antichrist.

But where is this felt by saints generally and confessed with grief before God and with shame before men? If they go so far as to protest against this evil or that, they are satisfied with their part, even though they in fact join in with what they own as deplorable, or alas! seek to explain away.

Let them heed the way of the godly in Israel, though surely the Christian is bound to go farther still and judge more profoundly through far more light. From Moses to Samuel how much is there to learn in presence of the people fighting against God! From Jeremiah and Daniel, from Ezra and Nehemiah, what agony over the remnant's short-coming, what bearing the burden of all Israel's sins, of people, priests, and kings! Is the church to have no such sense of responsibility? Is the Christian, because he has eternal life and is justified, to have no sorrow because of the beautiful flock of Christ harried and scattered, and of the rashness, heats, and self-will which oft caused it?

Undoubtedly scripture provides to faith and fidelity a clean path outside corporate as well as individual defilement. But if there be not a spirit mourning and broken that precedes recourse to it and that is kept up ever after, a hard and cold self-righteousness will rush in there, the sure proof of failure that only adds sin to sin, and that forebodes worse evil still. If we are of the church, Christ's body, it is a heartless thing that we are only to feel what wrong we have personally done. The true principle is that, if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; and of this suffering the spiritual are deeply sensible. But the self-satisfied is quite indifferent. He has his party, and is content. In Christ we see the perfection of His love in this respect as in all others. He bore on His spirit the burden of every woe He relieved by His power: how much more did He feel all the unworthy selfishness which impeded and weighed down His beloved ones! We are entitled and bound by grace to share this divine affection with Him. The faith which refuses sin works by love to warn the saints who yield to it, but also to intercede on their behalf. Christ would have us wash one another's feet; but what lowliness and love we need to do it aright!

Now if judgment begin from the house of God, as it does and ought (compare Amos 3:2), what must be the end of those that obey not the gospel of God? This is the only obedience to which the unforgiven is called. What a proof of blind wickedness that any sinners should refuse! For the gospel of God is the glad news of full remission of his sins in the blood of Jesus. Yet what thousands and millions dare hell-fire rather than believe on Him. What shall their end be?

No wonder that the apostle speaks of the righteous saved with difficulty. Yes, the obstacles are many and immense; and there is no good thing in them, that is, in all naturally theirs, while even as saints, what weakness and exposure! “Who then can be saved?” said the disciples, when they heard of special difficulty for the rich, who, as they thought, had such advantage over all others. But Jesus looking on them with His unfailing love replied, “With men this is,” not difficult, but “impossible “; but (thanks forever to His name!) “with God all things are possible.” Salvation is of God, as His is the gospel which proclaims it to everyone, poor or rich, that believes. But all the more appalling is the lot of those who not only violate His law but scorn or neglect His gospel. Where shall the impious and sinful appear?

God is not only the One that raises the dead, as already shown us in Christ for the deliverance of our souls; He does not cease to prove Himself “a faithful Creator” to such as suffer on earth. “Wherefore also let them that suffer according to the will of God commit their souls” to Him thus “in well-doing.” He is tender to His creatures; how much more to His children, suffering wrongfully for a little while! The sentiment is closely in keeping with the testimony to such Jews as were now Christians.

The Four Witnesses

The Lord Jesus, as a Divine Person, was His own adequate witness: “Though I bear record of myself,” He says, “yet is my record true” (John 8:14). But here He presses on the Jews the important fact that, apart from His own, the testimony to His paramount and exclusive claims is fourfold. In truth, it was not possible that the testimony to Christ should proceed from Himself alone. The record of such as could produce no corroborative witness must be, He tells us in this chapter, self-condemning. And then the blessed Lord informs His hearers who His witnesses are. First the Baptist, then the supreme testimony of the Father, thirdly the Son's works, and lastly the scriptures—the three last, needless to say, unfaltering; the first marked by the short-coming inseparable from men. But this was at a later day, when John the Baptist apparently yielded for a moment to the depressing influences of his prison-house, and sent his disciples to ask Jesus if He really were the Messiah.

This seems indubitable, and the words of our Lord in reply, “Go and tell John,” do not bear out the surmise of some that he sent his disciples to Christ for their sakes alone. Yet had his testimony been most clear and cogent, befitting one who was a burning and a shining lamp, as the Lord (reversing the position, and bearing witness to His “Messenger”) calls John in this chapter. “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” “Behold the Lamb of God” (John 1:29 & 36). Is it not striking that the one who was sent in Elijah's spirit and power, in a spirit of judgment and condemnation of evil, should be the first to point to the Lamb of God as the Sin-bearer? So it was “one of the seven angels that had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues” that showed to another John the bride, the Lamb's wife. So the Christ, the King of Judah, came “meek, and sitting upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass “: there is, as one has said, “the meekness of the Lion of Judah, and the wrath of the slain Lamb.”

Next comes the greater witness of the Father, notably evidenced at our Lord's baptism, where indeed we see the three Persons of the Trinity manifested, and likewise at a later day on the Mount of Transfiguration, when a voice came from the excellent glory, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” But no doubt our Lord was alluding to His baptism on this occasion. It was not the last voice from heaven to sustain Him for we read in chapter xii. of this Gospel how there came an answer to His cry that the Father would glorify His name. That cry was answered; the immediately preceding one, “Father, save me from this hour,” was, one might almost say, recalled by the Holy Sufferer; and so the Father witnesses.

The works constitute the third witness, or “signs,” as they are so habitually called in John's Gospel. And this naturally links them with testimony. Jesus did a beginning of “signs” in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth His glory. The other words, used in scripture to describe our Savior's mighty works, viz, “wonders,” and “powers,” point to certain essential characteristics of His operation. It is natural that He whose very name is “Wonderful” (Isa. 9:6) should do “wonders;” as also that “power” should proceed from Him who is the Mighty God, as we read in the same passage of the great evangelical prophet. When Christ speaks of “virtue” going out of Him, in the case of the woman with the issue of blood, the word in the Greek means “power” (Nvaptc). It is not the same word as in Matt. 28:18, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” There it should be “authority.” So likewise in John 1:12, “To them gave he authority", or title, &c.

But though our Lord's works be both “powers” and “wonders,” neither of these characteristics seems to be what the Holy Ghost would bring most prominently before the believer's mind, but rather that they be regarded as “signs” (σημεῖα). The Latin-English word “miracle,” as is obvious, directs attention more to their strangeness and surprising character, and it is somewhat unfortunate that Christ's works should be habitually designated by so inadequate a term.

It is interesting too, and somewhat confirmatory of the above reflections, that when the Holy Spirit characterizes the evil works and miracles of antichrist, they are called “lying wonders” (2 Thessalonians 9), though “signs” is also among the designations. More corroborative is the verse, “all the world wondered after the Beast.” At any rate, though Christ's works are sometimes called “signs” alone, and “powers” alone, they are never called “wonders” alone. “Signs” then they are preeminently, signs of the presence of One greater than Moses, greater than Solomon, and greater than the temple. They were the suited, appointed, and inalienable concomitants of the Incarnation.

Here a wide vista opens out, for all those works of beneficent healing (two only of Christ's miracles were destructive, of the fruitless fig tree, and of the unclean swine, for which there were wise and right reasons—contrast the many judicial miracles of Moses) have each their special place in setting forth the varied glories and the different aspects of the work of the Divine Redeemer. And they are living now.

Lastly, we have the testimony of the scriptures. At a later day the Lord, unto the favored two who journeyed to Emmaus, expounded in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself. “All things had to be fulfilled that were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms” concerning Himself. We, happily, need no assurance that so it is, and that both in O.T. and in N. T., implicitly or explicitly, all points to Christ-sacrifice and sacred vessel, an Abel, an Isaac, and a David. In short, the scriptures testify of Him, and, as the Lord bore witness to John the Baptist (who ought even to have borne unwavering witness to Him), so He vindicates the holy scriptures with the finality of His word. The Pharisees admitted they told of eternal life, yet neglected them in all but a superficial and mechanical interest. It was but an otiose acceptance, not an honest belief. Had they believed Moses, they must have believed Christ and believed in Him too, which is a further thing.

Moderns (sad to say, but alas! the too notorious fact) are bolder than the Jews; for they (professing Christians) deny that the Bible contains words of eternal life. The spirit of criticism has become a craze, almost a mania of unbelief. There is legitimate criticism, no doubt; but how little of this latter-day variety is such? It was strikingly remarked in a recent defense of God's word, that no spirit is more unlike the spirit of the Bible than the modern critical spirit. This witness is true. The critics seem incapable of seizing the vital force and divine beauty of the scriptures. But it is strikingly in accord with what is written, that the “natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God.... because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). Meanwhile the hungry sheep are not fed, while those who take the place of teachers, if not shepherds, would reduce God's word to the level of a literary phenomenon. But, as was finely said by a preacher recently deceased, “Jesus is not a phenomenon; He is bread: Christ is not a curiosity; He gives the water of life.” And in the scriptures alone is the truth concerning Him, and they, not the church, nor the creeds (useful as these may be when sound), are the sole and authoritative standard. Thus as they have a double function (for directly they do bear witness to the Christ), they also contain the record of His wonderful “signs,” and of the supreme testimony of the Father. “Him hath God the Father sealed” (John 6:27). R. B.

GOD'S INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES, by W. K.,
cloth, 5/-

Published

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Jacob: 19. Jacob and Joseph

All thoughtful readers will understand why the purpose in hand excludes dwelling on Gen. 36 Jacob has nothing to do with the chapter. It has its own important place of sketching the earthly lot of Esau. Indirectly however it is instructive, as showing that which is natural first coming into power, afterward what is spiritual. The family of promise remain shepherds and herdmen, wandering here and there, without the land and within it, and even grievously oppressed; while the generations of Edom rise rapidly into importance, away from Canaan, in Mount Seir. The posterity of Edom claim soon the distinction of chiefs. “These are the dukes of the sons of Esau: the sons of Eliphaz the firstborn of Esau; duke Teman, duke Omar, duke Zepho, duke Kenaz, duke Korah, duke Gatam, duke Amalek. These are the dukes that came of Eliphaz, in the land of Edom; these are the sons of Adah. And these are the sons of Reuel Esau's son; duke Nahath, duke Terah, duke Shammah, duke Mizzah. These are the dukes that came of Reuel in the land of Edom; these are the sons of Bashemath Esau's wife. And these are the sons of Oholibamah Esau's wife: duke Jeusb, duke Jaalam, duke Korah. These are the dukes that came of Oholibamah the daughter of Anah, Esau's wife. These are the sons of Esau, and these are their dukes: the same is Edom” (36:15-19).

Others, too, posed as grandees, the sons of Seir the Horite or cave-dweller, the inhabitant of the land, summarized in vers. 29, 30: “these are the dukes that came of the Horites: duke Lotan, duke Shobal, duke Zibeon, duke Anah, duke Dishon, duke Ezer, duke Dishan. These are the dukes that came of the Horites according to their dukes in the land of Seir.”

Nor was this the acme of their development. “And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the children of Israel.” No less than eight kings are successively traced from Bela to Hadar, though it is carefully said that we have Esau's dukes again (vers. 40-43); and so we hear in the song of Moses (Ex. 15:15), but “the king” in the later history.

Even in chapter 37 it is much more the history of Joseph that now begins, typifying the Lord in humiliation, and how He fared at the hands of His brethren according to the flesh. Our present task is to mark Jacob in it.

“And Jacob dwelt in the land of his father's sojournings, in the land of Canaan. These [are] Jacob's generations. Joseph, [being] seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and he [was] a lad (or, doing service) with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father's

wives; and Joseph brought their evil report to his (or, their) father. And Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he [was] son of his old age; and he gave him a coat of many colors. And his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren; and they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him. And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told [it] to his brethren; and they hated him yet more. And he said to them, Hear, pray, this dream which I have dreamed. And, behold, we [were] binding sheaves in the midst of the field; and, behold, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about and bowed down to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Wilt thou indeed reign over us? or wilt thou indeed rule over us? And they hated him yet more for his dreams, and for his words. And he dreamed yet another dream and told [it] to his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun, and the moon, and eleven stars bowed down to me. And he told [it] to his father, and to his brethren. And his father rebuked him, and said to him, What [is] this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall indeed I and thy mother and thy brethren come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth? And his brethren envied him; but his father kept the saying” (vers. 1-11).

We leave the early piety of Joseph till its own season, and the divine communications with which he was favored even as a youth. But it falls within Jacob's history to note the special affection which bound Joseph to him, and the dress of honor which was to play a heartless and cruel part toward their father in the unscrupulous revenge on Joseph with which they answered all. Jacob, though moved by the singular honor implied in the second dream, could not but treasure up its as yet dim import. Joseph's simplicity and candor, for there was an absence of all presumption, only kindled more fiercely the spite of his brethren, which soon found occasion to vent itself in outrageous malice. How like the way of the Jews with Him who was long after to be the blessed Antitype!

“And his brethren went to feed their father's flock in Shechem. And Israel said to Joseph, Do not thy brethren feed [the flock] in Shechem? Come, that I may send thee to them. And he said to him, Here [am] I (or, Behold me). And he said to him, Go, pray, see after thy brethren's welfare and the flocks' welfare; and bring me word again. And he sent him out of the vale of Hebron; and he came to Shechem. And a man found him, and, behold, he was wandering in the field; and the man asked him, saying, What seekest thou? And he said, I seek my brethren: tell me, pray, where they feed. And the man said, They are departed hence; for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. And Joseph went to his brethren, and found them in Dothan. And they saw him afar off, and before he came near to them, they conspired against him to slay him. And they said one to another [lit. a man to his brother], Behold, this master of dreams cometh. And now come, and let us slay him, and cast him into one of the pits; and we will say, An evil beast hath devoured him; and we shall see what will become of his dreams. And Reuben heard, and delivered him out of their hands, and said, Let us not take his life. And Reuben said to them, Shed no blood: cast him into this pit that [is] in the wilderness; but lay no hand upon him (in order that he might deliver him out of their hand, to restore him to his father). And it came to pass, when Joseph was come to his brethren, that they stript Joseph of his coat, the coat of the colors that [was] on him; and they took him and cast him into the pit; and the pit [was] empty: [there was] no water in it. And they sat down to eat bread; and they lifted up their eyes, and looked, and, behold, a caravan of Ishmaelites came from Gilead; and their camels bore tragacanth and balsam and ladanum, going to carry it down to Egypt. And Judah said to his brethren, What profit [is it] if we slay our brother and conceal his blood? Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he [is] our brother, our flesh. And his brethren hearkened. And there passed by Midianitish men, merchants; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty silver [pieces]; and they brought Joseph into Egypt. And Reuben returned to the pit; and, behold, Joseph [was] not in the pit; and he rent his clothes. And he returned to his brethren and said, The child [is] not; and I, whither shall I go? And they took Joseph's coat, and killed a buck of the goats and dipped the coat in the blood, and they sent the coat of the colors, and they brought it to their father, and said, This have we found: know now whether it [be] thy son's coat or not. And he knew it, and said, [It is] my son's coat: an evil beast hath devoured him; surely Joseph is torn in pieces. And Jacob rent his clothes and put sackcloth on his loins, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons rose up, and all his daughters, to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted, and he said, For I will go down to my son into Sheol mourning. And his father wept for him. And the Midianites sold him into Egypt to Potiphar, chamberlain of Pharaoh, captain of the guard” (vers. 12-36).

Jacob had yet much to learn experimentally of God as well as of himself, even though then he was disposed to have his idols. His most recent lesson was in Rachel's death, his new one prolonged it every way in Joseph her firstborn, his most loved son, not dead, it is true, as he feared, but only at length found to be risen into that exalted seat of honor which disconcerted even him when first announced. Like the Lord was Joseph in his measure, a vessel of divine wisdom in humiliation deepening into the shadow of death, rejected and scorned most by his brethren, and sold to the Gentiles: the very errand of love on which his father sent him to them furnished the opportunity for wreaking their hatred on his lowly and blameless head. How little his envious brethren could anticipate that in the approaching hour of the earth's need and distress he alone was to bear up the pillars, and deliver from death not the chosen family alone but the world of that day, and turn by his wisdom a tribulation so deep and widespread into the greater glory of the sovereign power which exalted him! More than this, as we learn later on, his brethren were to be brought down to true self-judgment and have their hearts opened to grace when he should lead them into the truth, and at last make himself known to them as their savior, the savior of the world too in the figure, he once humbled to the uttermost, and then highly exalted, entirely outside and above Jewish limits. But we forbear to anticipate more, even of what the history of Jacob makes known necessarily.

Israel Holy to Jehovah: 12. Defective Priest

The law made nothing perfect. Priests and people were alike liable to blemish of all kinds. Hence, even if of Aaron's line, such might be forbidden to serve in the sanctuary.

16 And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying, 17 Speak to Aaron, saying, Whoever of thy seed throughout their generations that hath a defect, he shall not approach to present the bread of his God. 18 For whatever man hath a defect, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or one limb longer than the other; 19 or a man that is broken-footed, or broken-handed; 20 or humpbacked, or a dwarf, or that hath a spot in his eye, or is scurvy or scabbed, or hath his testicles broken. 21 No man of the seed of Aaron the priest that hath defect shall come near to present Jehovah's fire-offerings: he hath a defect;. he shall not come near to present the bread of his God. 22 He shall eat the bread of his God, [both] of the most holy and of the holy. 23 Only he shall not come in unto the veil, nor shall he draw near unto the altar, for he hath a defect; that he profane not my holy things (or sanctuaries); for I Jehovah sanctify them. 24 And Moses told [it] to Aaron, and to his sons, and to all the sons of Israel” (vers. 16-24).

The sons of Aaron were thus compelled to take note of that which became the presence and service of their God. They had no immunity from the effects of sin over a ruined world and in a ruined race. Their descent from Aaron or Abram availed not against the rights of Jehovah. They shared the consequences of the fall with the Gentiles, even the most debased and idolatrous. Some defects might be life-long; others only for a season; but while these defects lasted, they were bound not to approach, and their brethren not to suffer it, if themselves were impious enough to presume.

But the N. T. brings before us an incomparably higher standard. Aaron himself (however free from the specified defects, and if he had never been compromised in the molten calf which he had fashioned with a chisel from the gold the people gave him to make them a god, yea, if he had never been guilty of a single fault) was wholly beneath the Anointed Priest whom God had in view, the great High priest passed as He has through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, who sits on the throne of grace, that we approaching with boldness may receive mercy, and find grace for seasonable help. In Heb. 5 the distinction is pointed out with a firm and precise hand. “For every high priest being taken from among men is constituted for men in things relating to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins; being able to exercise forbearance toward the ignorant and erring, since he himself also is compassed with infirmity; and on account of this he is bound, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins. And no one taketh this honor to himself, but one called by God even as Aaron also.”

Think of the blind temerity in reputed Christians of great learning and ability, who applied this to the Lord Jesus, instead of perceiving that it is the contrast of the Jewish high priest, who was only man and needed to offer a sin-offering for himself quite as much as for the people. Whatever the analogy, here as elsewhere, the express aim is to mark His blessed superiority. Even He did not glorify Himself to be made a high priest, but after His worth was saluted by God as such forever according to the order of Melchizedek (Psa. 110), as He was owned to be His Son when begotten in time (Psa. 2:7, 12), being Son in the Godhead eternally as shown in the Gospel and Epistles of John. His priesthood was founded on His Person, born here, as Son of God; as Psa. 110 declares His office as addressed to Him with the oath of God, and connected with His sitting at God's right hand. Here it may be observed that His being man is, as before in chap. 2:17, 18, introduced most touchingly to show how eminently fitted He is from His experience in the days of His flesh to feel for His tried and needy ones whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren. No one fathomed the anguish as He who never spared Himself but glorified God at all cost; He who as a Divine Person spoke and it was done, commanded and it stood fast, learned (how new a thing to Him!) obedience, and in the deepest way, from the things which He suffered, and, having been perfected, became author of eternal salvation to all those that obey Him.

Nor is it different now with those that are His, notwithstanding their old nature of enmity against God, aggravated by wicked works, and having still that old man which never improves and needs to be mortified as it was also crucified with Him. Yet this same Epistle testifies that both He that sanctifies (Christ) and those sanctified (Christians) are all of one; as other epistles develop, in varied terms appropriate to the bearing of each, the abundant grace in which we stand by Him, having had it by faith and still having it. For we received not a spirit of bondage again (as once) to fear, but a spirit of sonship whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself, that convinced us of our guilt and of indwelling sin, bears witness with our spirit, that we are children of God; and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.

Hence, through His redemption and a new creation in Him, we are entitled to say, The old things are passed; behold, new things are come in; and all things are of the God that reconciled us to Himself through Christ. The same death of Christ has rent the veil, which, instead of keeping us without, is to the Christian a new and living way in. We have therefore boldness for entering into the sanctuary in perfect peace, which even Aaron never possessed typically, having to take the utmost care on rare occasion lest he should die.

Nor is it only the Epistle to the Hebrews which thus affirms for Christ an incomparably better priesthood, and implies our own priestly access in chap. 10. The apostle Peter also in the second chapter of his First Epistle distinctly says that, coming to the Lord, the true and living Stone, we as living stones are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ. Indeed the N. T. now acknowledges no other priesthood besides. Gentile priesthood never had a divine sanction; and Jewish priesthood now has emphatically His curse, through despising that blood which has blotted out our manifold defects. For whatever we were (and we were, each in His own way, all far from God, hateful and hating, false and foul), we are now washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

Indeed the Epistles of Paul as a whole, from one to the Roman saints to that for the Hebrews, are explicit that every Christian has a far better title of nearness to God than the sons of Aaron, or Aaron himself. But it is spiritual yet most real; whereas the Jewish was type and shadow, and has now lost all value in God's sight. Ignorance and unbelief set up a vain imitation in Christendom.

Our last surviving apostle attests the same priestly privilege for the believer now. “To him that loveth us, and washed us from our sins in his blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father: to him be the glory and the might unto the ages of the ages. Amen” (Rev. 1:5, 6). Christ is the High priest; Christians the priests. Any priesthood besides is now grievous sin and mere imposture. By one offering Christ has perfected continuously the sanctified. There is no defective or blemished person in the Christian priesthood. He was ever perfect morally; we are perfected by His one offering. It is not a question of flaws in walk.

Proverbs 19:15-22

Dangers and helps are plainly pointed out; for the fallen earth is full of the one, and Jehovah fails not for the other. There is a great need of vigilance, and man is shortsighted, to say the least.

“Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep; and the idle soul shall suffer hunger.

He that keepeth the commandment keepeth his soul; he that despiseth his ways shall die.

He that hath pity on the poor lendeth to Jehovah; and his bestowal will he pay him again.

Chasten thy son, seeing there is hope; and let not thy heart cause him to die.

A man of great wrath shall suffer punishment; for if thou deliver [him], thou must do it yet again.

Hear counsel and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end.

Many thoughts [are] in a man's heart, but the counsel of Jehovah, that shall stand.

The charm of a man [is] his kindness, and a poor man [is] better than a liar” (vers. 15-22).

Even when man was unfallen, he had responsibility. He was called to till and keep the garden, planted exceptionally by Jehovah Elohim with every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. When fallen, as the ground was cursed on his account, he had to eat of it all the days of his life with toil. Thorns and thistles it yielded unbidden; so that man had to eat bread in the sweat of his face all his diminishing life. Slothfulness therefore ill became his position, and all the more when he faced adversity through his own fault. The sun arises, and, the wild beasts get them away to their dens, but man goeth forth to his work till the evening; and, as he is it is well ordered for him. But slothfulness traverses all, and casts into a deep sleep while it is day, and pays the penalty. If any will not work, neither let him eat. The idle soul shall suffer hunger.

Man was made in God's image after His likeness. He had dominion given him over fish and fowl, cattle and reptile, and over all the earth too. Yet was he put under commandment. And “he that keepeth the commandment keepeth his soul; as he that despiseth,” or is reckless of, “his ways shall die.” So Adam proved, and no less Adam's race.

Even when no open sin was, man must bow to God. To seek independency of God is his ruin. To look up in gratitude and obey Him is not only the first of human duties, but vital to man whose breath is in his nostrils, and his life but a vapor. When sin entered and death through sin, how very evident and urgent it was that he should be dependent on that God who forthwith held out a Deliverer from the power of evil before banishing him from the paradise he had lost by his disobedience!

In such a world of disorder, of violence and corruption, we have always with us the poor, whom no man that has eyes or ears can fail to meet. This tests the heart practically; for to say, Go in peace, be ye warmed and filled, and to give them not the things needful for the body, is to cheat ourselves quite as much as them. Man was to represent God who loves a cheerful giver in a wilderness world, and here encourages the man to pity those that have not. “He that pitieth,” or is gracious to, “the poor lendeth to Jehovah,” as He deigns to count it; “and what he bestoweth He will pay him again.” What security can match this? Think too of the honor of being creditor to Him

But there is also another duty in which a parent ought to resemble Him, care for his offspring. “Chasten thy son, seeing there is hope.” The young twig is pliant, and may be bent aright or pruned to bear fruit. Love is not indifferent but takes pains; and chastening is a greater sorrow to a father than to the son that needs it. To allow evil, whatever the plea, is to set one's soul on causing “him to die.” We, Christians on earth, endure for chastening; which, though painful for the moment, yields afterward peaceful fruits of righteousness to those exercised thereby.

Look next at one not accustomed to bear the yoke in his youth. He is “a man of great wrath,” overcome by any word or work which does not please his rash mind: what is the result? He “shall suffer punishment “; and the sad thing is that neither he nor anyone else can say what may come next. Love him as you may, his hasty temper is a constant danger. “For if thou deliver, thou must do it yet again.” Christ is the sole adequate Deliverer, and this not only by His redemption but by the virtue of abiding in Him. “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall come to pass for you.”

Very fitting accordingly is the next word: “Hear counsel, and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise in the latter end.” What counsel can compare with that which God gives, what instruction equals the scriptures! Speculative men talk of the Bible as fragmentary and occasional; but under such an appearance there is the completest provision, and suited to every need that ever did or can arise. Men of faith find it out to their everlasting comfort, and are responsible to show its treasures to those who fail to see; but they reap the blessing in wisdom from the first to their latter end, as every believer proves.

Outside the field of divine teaching is the perplexity of man's thoughts, let him be ever so abundant in ideas or devices. “Many thoughts are in a man's heart, but the counsel of Jehovah, that shall stand.” This is what makes wise; and firm as well as happy he who learns and cleaves to His counsel. It is the great lie to deny the truth; and Christ the Personal Word, scripture the written word, is the truth, which the Holy Spirit makes a living thing to the believer.

Nor is this all the comfort he enjoys. “The charm of a man (or that which maketh a man to be desired) is his kindness.” There too he is privileged to follow in the wake of God, who is good and doeth good. For this reason its claim too often is substituted for the reality; and good words usurp the place of good deeds. Nor do any fail more than those whose large purse accompanies a narrow heart and a polite tongue. Hence we have the pithy adage that “a poor man is better than a liar.” It is God's word which strips. men of their robes and lays bare their true character. May we have grace to be truthful and loving, without pretension.

Gospel Words: Purity in Divorce

In connection with the light of heaven on the lusts of the heart, the Lord adds His word on the permission of divorce in Deut. 24. It is here the woman protected against hard-hearted man. Positive sin in violation of the marriage tie alone calls for divorce. Men abused the license beyond measure, as if the permission were a precept; and any vexation sufficed. But Jehovah hates putting away, as the last prophet testified to the Jews in their evil day.

In chap. 19 of this Gospel the question distinctly proposed to Him by the Pharisees, Is it lawful to put away one's wife for every cause? And He answered and said, Have ye not read that He that made from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be united to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh? So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God joined together, let not man put asunder. They say to Him, Why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorce and to put away? He saith to them, Moses for your hardness of heart allowed you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it hath not been thus. But I say to you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, not for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery, and he that marrieth one put away committeth adultery. His disciples say to Him, If the case of man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. And He said to them, All cannot receive this word, but those to whom it hath been given.

Thus was the mind of God made clear. The indulgence of lust is incompatible with entering the kingdom of the heavens. The law forbade the act of adultery; the Lord condemns even the looking licentiously as adultery committed already in the heart. He insisted therefore on the most unsparing decision with all that gave occasion. Was it not better to pluck out the right eye or cut off the right hand, rather than the whole body be cast into hell? Here (as in all the chapters of the first Gospel before chapter 13 where He begins as the Sower), it is not seeking sinners in sovereign grace, but saints, as He enjoins on the twelve in chap. 10. “Into whatsoever city or village ye enter, inquire who in it is worthy” (ver. 11). So the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount (chap. 5) describes what spiritual characters suit the kingdom, as the end (chap. 7) declares that none shall enter but he that does the will of His Father that is in the heavens. Not even prophesying or miraculous powers, were it casting out demons through the Lord's name, could be a passport to the workers of lawlessness. Practical obedience of His words alone should stand. The rock here is spiritual reality. His word was incomparably more withering to self-righteousness than the law of Moses.

There is power of God given exceptionally to be above marriage, and live only to Christ here below. But, to far the most, marriage is God's order for man on earth. And the monkish rule with high pretension leads into horrible evasion, hypocrisy, and corruption even contrary to nature and abominable. God's mind is clear from the first; adultery alone justifies divorce.

Hence the necessity would be felt urgently and absolutely of receiving a new nature and an everlasting redemption in the Savior. No interpretation of our Lord's words here or elsewhere is more radically false than that He puts believers under the law as their rule of life. He is really condemning unbelievers and hypocrites far more stringently than the law did, and those sayings of the elders which took advantage of a legal permission for carnal indulgence and unfairness to a wife who through any cause became less attractive to her selfish husband. Such souls were inadmissible to the kingdom. Only the godly remnant are here contemplated, who abhor corruption as they do violence. The presence of Christ, not of the law given by Moses, was the suited moment for defining the character and conduct proper to the new thing He would set up. He was the standard of what pleased God, and must mark those who are His. “The law made nothing perfect” was a hard lesson for Jews; it seems quite as hard for those who inherit the traditions of fallen Christendom, and not less for Protestants than Papists.

To be content with being nobody in the world, and despised by its religion, is impossible to human nature; to be mourners as Christ was, feeling for God's will and majesty where lawlessness pervades; to be meek now, waiting for the glorious inheritance in God's time, instead of clamorous for our rights; to hunger and thirst after (not ease or wealth, or power or honor, but) righteousness, cannot be without partaking of a divine nature. Harder still was the actively gracious spirit of mercifulness, purity in heart, and peace-making according to God, with the persecutions which such righteousness entails, and especially such maintenance of Christ's name as effaces ours.

Our Lord accordingly singles out of the Decalogue the two great prohibitions of murder on the one hand and of adultery on the other. Assuredly He came not to make void the law or the prophets, but to give their fullness. He not only went farther than either, but declared that a righteousness surpassing that of the Scribes and Pharisees was indispensable for entering the kingdom of the heavens. He most pointedly sets His word with divine authority, so as to contrast what He laid down far beyond the claims of the law. In the case before us, as looking lustfully convicts of adultery before God, so whosoever put away his wife, save for cause of fornication, made her commit adultery, as well as him who married her. Thus He established a moral basis, not for a nation of mixed character, but fit for God's family and kingdom, which judged the heart's evil and allowed no concession to hardheartedness. And what can be plainer than on this later occasion (chap. 19) His going up to the beginning, long before the law, to God's instituted order and word in Gen. 2? There again His own word is full and final authority, for the Messiah was the Jehovah God of Israel. Whatever had been allowed by Moses, He is Mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises. It is God speaking in Him who is Son: “But I say to you.”

Now, I appeal to your conscience, my reader. Can you face the light of God, which our Lord is, on these evils of man's fallen nature? Are you not utterly convicted by every saying of His, who is the Judge of living and dead? And if such be the truth, O spread it out, and yourself as verily guilty before God. Presume no more to stand on your own foundation. You are lost: own it truly and humbly and in earnest. The Lord Jesus is not Judge only; He is the real and the only and the present Savior of the lost. But you must be in the truth of your guilt in God's sight, if He is to act toward you in the truth of His salvation. That is repentance toward God; this is faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.

There is for faith the blood of Jesus that cleanses from all, from every, sin. There is also life in Him, the Son, for every believer in Him. The one is as indispensable as the other. That life is the spring of the new nature which produces every good fruit and detests every evil work, word, and feeling; and now that one rests on His work of redemption, the Holy Ghost is given as divine power to strengthen the new man and mortify the old. It is true, that dependence on Christ, abiding in Him, is needed all the way through, and His words to abide in one, and prayer suitably and with confidence in divine love. But this is just practical Christianity so far; and we are sanctified by the Spirit, not to independence which is sin, but to obedience, the same blessed filial obedience as Christ's, our blessed Lord.

The Coming and the Day of the Lord: Part 5

Beware, brother, of a zeal not according to knowledge! Have you not too good reason to pause and consider yourself, when you compare the heavenly side of Christ's future presence to “a new god newly come up”? On the face of things we go up, not to the “old paths” of O.T. prophecy, but to the apostolic and prophetic revelations of the N. T., where alone specifically Christian truth is brought fully out. Meet, if you can, the clear indications of Christ's presence in these distinct aspects, as we gather from a full induction and a careful study of God's word. We do not expect help from Christendom as it was and is. It is not we that forget the presence and power of the Holy Spirit to lead into all the truth; still less take refuge in such dumb or blind guides, as the post-apostolic fathers, who were either altogether silent on the great and distinctive privileges of the Christian and the church, or fell into exclusively Jewish hopes with grotesque exaggeration, in denial of all the prophets' testimony to the restoration of Israel, the center of all the nations in their due place of blessing. Everything brought in since the apostles is a novelty which we repudiate, far more decidedly than such as proclaim themselves our adversaries and manifest a spirit both unreasonable and implacable. Why should our pointing to the heavenly truth they ignore sting them to such childish wrath?

Again, let us consider the testimony which 2 Thess. 1 renders. It is certain that here is the execution and display of the Lord's retributive judgment. The aim was to make known the general character of the day, before taking up and refuting the false teaching that the day of the Lord was arrived, as in chap. ii. 2. The apostle boasts in them, as he says, in the churches of God for their endurance and faith in all their persecutions and tribulations they were sustaining. This he calls a manifest token of God's righteous judgment to the end of their being counted worthy of His kingdom, for the sake of which they also suffer; “if at least it is a righteous thing with God to award tribulation to those that trouble you, and to you that are troubled rest with us [who were no less fellow-sufferers], at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven.” This implies, of course, His presence; but it says more; it will be His unveiling, after being hidden from view, His heavenly saints being already with Him. For His revelation is described as with angels of His power, in flaming fire taking vengeance on two classes, those that know not God, and those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus [Christ]; “who are such as shall pay as penalty everlasting destruction from the Lord's face and from the glory of His might, when He shall have come [not to receive His own to Himself, but] to be glorified in His saints and wondered at in all that believed (for our testimony unto you was believed) in that day.”

Such is the character of “that day “: not sovereign grace in associating saints with Himself for heaven and the Father's house, but righteous requital on both sides of friends and foes, to the wicked trouble, and repose to saints whom they once troubled. The trouble now would be vengeance of flaming fire on unbelieving Gentiles and Jews, excluded forever from the Lord's face, and from the glory of His might. But at the selfsame time the Lord will have come to be glorified in His saints and to be wondered at in all that believed. His saints, all that believed, come with Him.

It is not said, we may just observe, “in all them that believe “: this is a vulgar error. No doubt a great harvest of blessing would begin on earth, not for Israel only but for all the nations. Here it is all the saints who come with the Lord in that day. The lost had no excuse. There had been full testimony; and the Thessalonians by grace had profited and would share in that display of glory. Part in that hope to which we are called, and in that faith of the unseen which accompanies it, was closed; though there would be exceptional favor to the Apocalyptic saints who are to suffer death for Jesus subsequently. Henceforward it would be for the world to “know” that the Father sent the Son and loved those heavenly ones as He loved Christ (John 17:23). For the world would see Christ and His own in the same displayed glory. 2 Thess. 2:3-12 gives us the awful introduction which brings on that day; for this was the subject, not the Lord's coming which was a motive to cheer, but His day.

This display of judgment coalesces with the narrower application to Israel given in Matt. 24 It is about the same time. No one cavils at its being “seen” as the lightning, or would weaken its plainly expressed meaning. And 1 Thess. 5 pronounces it “sudden destruction.” It will be both “sudden” and “seen.” But it wholly differs from 1 Cor. 15:51, 52, 1 Thess. 4:16, 17, and Jude 24, where indisputably we are given the previous dealing of the Lord's grace, that when He will thus come in public judgment of His living enemies, the heavenly saints might accompany Him in manifest rest and glory before all eyes. No one is entitled to imagine lightning or flaming fire when the Bridegroom comes for His bride. Any such judicial terms or thoughts are then and there entirely absent. Those who foist them in are without the smallest justification. To everything there is a season; a time to love, and a time to hate. Invincible disproof appears elsewhere; but this we need not anticipate. It is enough here to say that there is no evidence for any such incongruous mixture. It is the unfounded assumption, not to say the gross interpolation, of an unsound hypothesis, the essence of which is an effort to exclude the first heavenly joy, and reduce all to the earthly expectation of the godly Jewish remnant of the future, which will be gratified in “that day,” when the sons of God are revealed, yea the Firstborn among many brethren, to the deliverance of the whole creation groaning and travailing together in pain till then (Rom. 8:19, 21).

“The revolt” goes farther and deeper than thought the Reformers and their followers since, who were limited by the pressure of the enormities of Romanism. The apostle discloses a still more guilty and rebellious reality still future. The apostasy means, on the part of Christendom, Protestants as really as Papists, the coming abandonment of all revealed truth. It far exceeds the departure of “some” “from the faith,” as we read in the earlier verses of 1 Tim. 4 This was realized first in Gnostic folly, and yet more in the determined, durable, and systematic departure of Romanism. 2 Tim. 3:1-9 (though, like the former express saying of the Spirit, having its application then when written, it bore yet more distinctly on the independent and heady self-assertion of Protestants) was still far short of the apostasy, when all form of godliness will be discarded with scorn.

But the man of sin revealed, the son of perdition, issues from the apostasy, and is its crown of shame. All of old admitted that he is the antichrist of John, though most confound him with the first Beast of the Revelation, the head of the civil power in defiance of God at that day; whereas he is clearly the quasi-religious but really most irreligious chief that rivals Christ's position, no longer as Priest (which is exactly the Pope's atrocious pride), but as Prophet and King. He has accordingly not seven horns and seven eyes (the seven Spirits of God), nor even three, but “two horns like a lamb.” Nor need we wonder at the common confusion; for these two Beasts equally cast off God and slay His saints, and are as closely allied as their great enemies, the final Assyrian or king of the north, and Gog, Prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal, who sustains his ally, foes to the emperor of the west, and the willful king that is to reign in the land. It is not surprising that when grace wrought to deliver nations and countries from the wickedness and domineering of the Popes, those who took part in that great movement and suffered not a little should have it to be the predicted lawless one; for Popery was then the worst evil in Christendom, the most offensive to God in all the earth, as any can see if he weigh the denunciation of the great harlot in Rev. 17, 18.

Still even there it is apparent, that this corrupt, cruel, and idolatrous system is expressly “a mystery,” the loathsome counterpart of Christ's bride, and quite distinct from, though long associated with, the Beast or imperial power and its vassals, who at last turn against her in hatred, strip, devour, and burn her It will be no longer the mystery of lawlessness then, of which she when she sits a queen is so great a part. The man of sin will next be revealed, and the Beast and the willing kings, of whom the False Prophet is the director in that day. Here it is that the Protestant commentators, like the Fathers, fall so short of the written word as to the future. One has the fullest sympathy with their conscience awakened to judge and quit the iniquities, pretensions, and horrors of Popery. But they were notoriously ill versed either in the church's heavenly character, in the Christian hope as well as worship, and in the prophetic word, yet worthy of exceeding love for their work, their faith, and their sufferings.

Some of the Popes were monsters of impurity, deceit, and cruelty; others of egregious worldly-mindedness, and political ambition, and of outrageous vanity and pride. Others were reputable persons, and some few of piety when days were dark and evil. It is therefore untrue that they could be all fairly called “the man of sin, the son of perdition.” Scripture never speaks in terms of exaggeration. Nor does such a moral description, any more than the ominous repetition of the traitor's doom, suit a succession. They point to a person surpassing all others since the world began, in the crisis of the present evil age, reserved for condign punishment at our Lord's appearing. An office as a king or priest, admits of a succession; but here it is a person emphatically distinct and alone.

This is confirmed by the words of verse 4, “That opposeth and exalteth himself against (or, above) all that is called God or object of veneration, so that he should himself sit down in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” The lawless one is to be a sinner beyond sinners, the man of sin, and affecting to be God, claiming the honor of the Supreme on earth, in His temple, not in mere earthly things, or personal vain glory, like Herod in Acts 12. The Christ who was God became on earth a bondman to glorify His God and Father at all cost. It is a mere imposture for the Pope to dub himself vicar of Christ, and head of the church on earth, while acknowledging formally the Lord in heaven. But for this reason he does not fulfill the arrogant self-exaltation of this adversary, who raises himself above all that is called God or object of religious veneration. And the temple of God literally, in Jerusalem before the age ends, will fall in with his blasphemous claim; for many of the Jews will be back there in unbelief, whilst a godly remnant hold aloof and flee as the Lord directed. It is not well to pare down scripture to pile the agony against the Pope; and it is a danger for men who are not papists to exclude the extreme pit of destruction as only for others to their own peril.

Hence it appears that though the apostasy is the starting point, the man of sin revealed is a great advance of an audacious and unbounded impiety under Satan's power, to which the total abandonment of the Christian revelation leaves the door open. Grace scorned and Christ the gift of God for sinful men utterly derided, the man of sin follows; man not only without God, but ignoring and spurning all divine restraint; atheistic lawlessness denying sin and wallowing in it without shame or fear. As God was Himself in Christ, the image of Him who abides invisible, the man of sin will be His personal adversary, exalting himself above all that is called God or object of veneration. “Who is the liar, but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22). Though beginning as a false Christ, at last He will flout the hope of Israel, no less than the Christian testimony. As the culmination of the extreme pitch of defiance, in claiming to be God supreme, he seats himself in the temple of God. Thus apostate Judaism amalgamates in that hour with Christian apostasy; and the first temptation for man to become as God ends in the lie of man ousting God and showing forth himself to be God in His very temple.

As for the alleged difficulty raised on the sitting of the man of sin in the temple of God on Mount Moriah at the end of the age, it is essential to bear in mind that the apostle here incorporates the testimonies of two prophets who treat of Jewish iniquity at that very time. The first of these, Dan. 11:36-39, is explicit of the place. It is no other than the land of Juda. The second, Isa. 11:4, is equally clear that he is the “lawless one” destined to his awful doom at the breath of the lips of Jehovah Jesus. Into neither scripture can one foist Christendom. Haggai also enables us to see that, whatever be the iniquity, destruction, or renewal, the house of Jehovah has its unity to the ear of faith. “Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes as nothing? Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith Jehovah; and be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high-priest I will fill this house with glory, saith Jehovah of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith Jehovah of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, saith Jehovah of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith Jehovah of hosts” (2:3-9). Neither the hostile Antiochus IV. nor the evil patronage of the Idumean Herod, nor the blasphemous self-deification of the antichrist, destroys God's title and rights. It is His house throughout, whatever the faithlessness of His people, and the seeming triumph of Satan meanwhile; and the end will be glorious and permanent, and forever.

The apostle predicts a time when the church will have been gathered on high, the Jew and the once professing church becoming alike apostate, and the man of sin revealed, the awful contrast of His revelation, who, though true God, became the most humbled bondman for our redemption to the glory of God. Thus there is no real difficulty in the lawless one seating himself in the Jewish temple to show off as God. This is very different from the pretended successor of Peter, the spurious Vicar of Christ, and hypocritical servant of God's servants; nor is there the least ground in God's word to call St. Peter's at Rome, the house of God, or to allow that the Pope so sits in Christendom as a whole, seeing that half or more utterly reject his assumption. Again, while succession is quite allowable in the office of a king or a priest, it is quite excluded from the description of a personage so unique as “the man of sin,” “the son of perdition,” the lawless one here portrayed, no less than his awful end. But is it not plain on the face of our chapter that the lawless one opposes and exalts himself against all that is called God or that is worshipped? This the most aspiring of the Popes never did on any fair interpretation of their words and deeds, however dissolute and flagitious in life, however arrogant and ambitious in sacerdotal or secular power. Many and various antichrists there have been; but they all point to one individual at the end, who as here written will surpass every person that preceded in impious and audacious setting up to be God in His own house, Jew and Gentiles uniting to worship him as they did of old to crucify the true King of Israel, yea the true God incarnate.

But from apostolic days the germs were sown and actually there, which were to bear these fatal fruits when the divine restraint (6, 7) should be removed, and the season come for their full display. The departure in the churches of Galatia from the sovereign grace of God that saves sinners was an early stage in declension. So was at a later day Satan's effort at Colosse to interpolate philosophy, the principle of Gentiles, and religious ordinance, the principle of Judaism, between Christ the head and the members of His body; for both principles struck a death-blow at Christ's union with the church. Other evils already noticed in the two Epistles to Timothy contributed their quota; and so did that slipping back or away, of which Heb. 6 and x. treat; which, if yielded to, could only end in apostasy and irremediable ruin. How could it be otherwise, if those, who had in any measure enjoyed the effects of the Holy Spirit's presence, or who had owned Christ's sacrifice and eternal redemption, renounced that only salvation of God's grace and power? All this was but the mystery of “lawlessness” at work, which when the apostles were gone rushed on to greater ungodliness, with tradition, human and angelic mediators, Mariolatry, transubstantiation, earthly priesthood, the mass, the confessional, relics, Papal assumption, and all the other, heterodoxies and horrors of Rome.

Yet will the end be still worse, not corruption but rebellion against God bold and open, as our chapter intimates. For the Popes confess their sins to a priest, and worship God, Christ, with the Virgin, &c. The Popes enjoin worship divine, and human in varying degrees, to save appearances. How can fairminded men say (in the face of such worship of God, wretched as it is, with abundant idolatry) that they oppose and exalt themselves above all that is called God or object of veneration? How contend or conceive that this rather polytheistic character of Popery agrees with setting up self in the temple of God, showing forth one's self as God?

One could not expect the men who took the Protestant view to know that the Restrainer will be out of the way only when the saints are translated, in whom Be dwells individually and collectively; and then the temple of God will be no longer on earth in a spiritual sense. Nay, some little after that, He ceases to act in ordaining the powers that be. Satan's brief season will then come, and the season proper to the revelation of the lawless one, the man of sin. Dan. 11:36-39 is plain and positive proof that his field of operation is “the glorious land “; and it is no less plain that the apostle applies that prophecy to the personage he here describes for his blasphemous self-exaltation and self-deification above every object of reverence or worship, real or false. It is also equally plain that he applies Isa. 11:4 to the Lord's slaying him with the breath of His mouth, the true reading of ver. 4. This again confirms the locality of this wicked person. It has nothing whatever to do with the church or professing Christendom; for all that will either be gone, or have sunk into the apostasy and the blasphemous worship of man as God. All these texts explain why the daring apotheosis will be in the temple of God in Jerusalem. There the blessed Spirit came down and filled all the confessors of the Lord Jesus. At this time He will be clean gone; and Satan will have filled his minion, the antichrist, worshipped as God in the temple by Jews and Gentiles banded against the true God. But the Reformers and their descendants have been slow to believe the prophets, being absorbed in the urgent questions of Popery, and hence indisposed to allow the uprise of an evil even more appalling than that which was the worst then extant.. Who can wonder at this? But the revival of the true hope has given a great impulse to the prophetic word also, so that the truth of the future has shone out brightly in precision and full extent according to scripture.

But one error leads to many more, as for instance to the unsound interpretation that prevailed and still does among Protestants that “consuming with the spirit of His mouth” means the gradual and gracious work of the gospel; whereas it is solely the Lord's immediate and destructive action at His appearing, as the last clause of Isa. 30:3 may convince the most stubborn, if there be subjection to scripture. The gospel is certainly not like a stream of brimstone, which destroys judicially.

Though it cannot be drawn from the words of the text that the apostle had explained to the saints the details of the restraint and the restrainer, yet it is not improbable that he told them of these things also. What he says is, “And now,” i.e., since things are so, as he had set out in vers. 3, 4, “ye know that which restraineth as to his (the man of sin's) being revealed in his own season.” God raised a barrier meanwhile. “For the mystery of lawlessness already worketh: only [there is] he that restraineth at present, until he be gone out of the way.” Every saint ought to know Who that mighty agent is, now here below, to resist the overflow of Satan's power. It may be that the apostle taught those young believers who He is in a general way. Assuredly they to whom “our gospel” came, not in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance, should of themselves be conscious that neither the church nor any world-power could avail to keep down the frightful energy of Satan if let loose to do his worst.

That the church has the chief place as an instrument of that restraint, they might readily conceive who had just experienced God's power in gathering to Christ's name in truth, peace, and love, Jews and Gentiles that believed on Jesus, notorious for implacable hostility, especially in the religious domain. How could there be that renunciation of this grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ as long as He was here? Is not God's house on earth, a living God's assembly, pillar and basement of the truth? As long as such a witness of the mystery of godliness bore up, Satan could not force his scheme to efface or trample down the truth, and set up undisputed his lie.

The empire too had its authority from God, as the apostle Paul in particular and indeed all the apostles were careful to affirm, whatever its abuse in the hands of its head; and never was a more extravagantly wanton one than when the Epistle to the Roman saints laid subjection down as the Christian's duty. But even then it was enjoined in terms so broad as to cover all change in the form of government. “Those that be” are set up by God. As long as this authority from God subsists, believers were bound to respect and be subject, not only for wrath but also for conscience. It was not merely the empire but any government divinely! sanctioned. Satan they knew could not set up his man of sin supremely, as long as there were rulers in God's providence. It is not likely that these young saints were instructed in the possible control of the Spirit governmentally for a while after the rapture of the saints, till the last half-week of the Seventy of Daniel, when all restraint ceases, and the dragon in a great rage and knowing his short season, begins the final campaign of this evil age on the earth given up to his worst.

There is an element in the restraint far more direct and influential as well of nearer interest, which seem to have escaped the tradition-mongers old and new. For the Spirit of God has in the church a most special and congenial sphere of loving care and continual action personally in connection with the Father and the Son. To it He has imparted unity, constituting believers, Jew or Greek, the one body of Christ; as also by His indwelling He makes it God's house or habitation. No factor in the barrier against the antichrist is so decided as this, which has been ordinarily left out of the account, because the real and exceptional character of the church was so quickly lost by all of old, and is in general so little apprehended still. He is here acting in power according to Christ's victory over Satan, not only in life, but in redemption. Who but the Spirit could adequately restrain Satan? He made use externally of an earthly government and yet more the church; yet who but He working on earth could be the real restrainer? Of course the Holy Spirit has no such close or intimate relation to any world-power. Yet when the Roman governor talked of his having authority to crucify as well as to release, the Lord told him what to the Gentile that knew not God must have sounded strange, but is the truth, Thou hadst no authority against Me except it were given thee from above. The powers that be are ordained by God, and the Spirit is the agent in their unsuspected control also; so that, however godless the nations or their rulers may be, the issue is by His determinate counsel and foreknowledge; and the Jews and their rulers, because in unbelief they knew not their own Messiah, fulfilled also the voices of the prophets, read every sabbath, by condemning Him.

His presence in the church then, as long as it is here, is much the weightiest part in that restraint; and thus Satan cannot go beyond “the mystery of lawlessness,” while the great mystery as respects Christ and as respects the church is being carried on. Hence the man of sin cannot be revealed till his own season shall have come: the restrainer forbids it. When that heavenly work is completed on earth, and the last member of Christ's body in his place, the Lord will come and receive to Himself not only them but all that were His from the very first. Though the rapture will close that peculiar association here, the Holy Ghost will still act for a time as He did before Pentecost, as it appears, spiritually and governmentally. Both Jews and Gentiles, not then joined in one body as now, will be brought to a saving knowledge of the truth, as is plainly taught, where above all we might expect it, in the Revelation; which also discloses the later epoch, when for the first time in the history of man not God but Satan ordains the Roman empire in its last and fatal form, and empowers the False Prophet, who shall reign as king in the holy land (Dan. 11:36-39, doing his own will, as Christ ever and only His Father's will.

These are the proofs and marks that the Restrainer will be then and there clean gone (ἐκ μεσοῦ γένηται).

Almost all versions unwittingly add to the word here. For it is not said “taken,” as might well be of an earthly power, or person, that does not vacate but is forcibly removed (ἀρθῇ). Not so the true Restrainer, behind all the visible and varying forms of the restraint; He goes of Himself, and quits the scene, judicially left open for a while to Satan's abominable pride and mischief. It means “till he become out of the way,” which as I believe precisely suits the Holy Spirit. But it suits no other person so well; still less that traditional impediment, of which some are confident still, though evidently long falsified by the event. Yet the Fathers, who furnished that tradition, looked for the personal antichrist, whom the Lord Jesus personally is to destroy. And so Dean Alford and Bp. Ellicott, &c., concede in deference to the terms of plain and positive scripture.

Observe another plain disproof of the application to Popery in vers. 9, 10, however earnestly able and pious men have argued to that effect. The true force points to an evil not yet accomplished and far more tremendous in the personal antichrist. “Whose presence (or, coming) is according to the energy of Satan in every power and signs and wonders of falsehood, and in every deceit of unrighteousness to those that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” For it is a very mistaken enfeebling of that awful fact then allowed to Satan in an exceptional way, that they are the mere juggling tricks of a deceitful priesthood, or “lying wonders” as in the A. & R. Vv.

As the Lord will manifest His presence in overwhelming power and glory, so will the presence of the lawless one be according to Satan's energy in every form of power and signs and wonders of falsehood to deceive and destroy. The same incredulity which refused the evidence of God's power and truth in Christ will fall under Satan's lie in these powers and prodigies. They are superhuman. Wonders were wrought to a certain point by Pharaoh's magicians; as in another way we see surprising effects by natural agents in Job's trials. But here similar language is employed about the man of sin, as the apostle Peter used about the Righteous One (Acts 2:22). They were real miracles to promote falsehood, not pretended ones; and the issue will be, not only his own perdition, but the deceiving of all his abettors to ruin everlasting, because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. His lie, the deceit of unrighteousness, was incompatible with salvation by Christ and the truth. They all perish without doubt: is it so with every Papist? I dare not so say.

1 Peter 5:1-4

Now the apostle turns to such as took the lead in governmental care among the saints, as he had already exhorted gifted persons (chap. iv. 10, 11), after urging the more general call to fervent love and ungrudging hospitality (8, 9).

“Elders [therefore] that [are] among you I exhort that [am] fellow-elder, and witness of the sufferings of Christ, that [am] also partaker of the glory about to be revealed: tend (or, shepherd) the flock of God that [is] among you, exercising oversight, not by necessity but willingly, not for base gain, but readily, nor as lording it over your allotments, but becoming models of the flock. And when the Chief-shepherd is manifested, ye shall receive the unfading crown of glory” (vers. 1-4).

As the apostle's heart may well have bounded in writing the early verses of chap. ii. which recalled the memorable passage in his life when the Savior gave him his new name, did it not also swell with deepest gratitude and lowly praise in now writing to elders as he recalled the grace that before his brethren reinstated the one who had thrice denied Him? Feed My lambs; tend (or, shepherd) My sheep; feed My sheep (John 21:15, 17, 18). Yes, Peter was brought to feel and own that his love to the Savior of which he once boasted had so utterly failed, that only the Lord who knew all things could see it at the bottom of his self-confidence. Notwithstanding all, the Lord did know that he dearly loved Him! To him then and there He confided what was dearest to Himself, His lambs and His sheep, to tend and feed His flock. In like love he in his measure appeals to elders as a fellow-elder. Though apostle he takes common ground as far as this was possible, as grace gladly does to further its unselfish purpose. All service, as well as rule, is founded on love; and the love of the servant flows from that of the Savior. But self needs to be judged in its pride, vanity, and worthlessness, in order that love may be divine and true.

Men soon perverted service into lordship, though our Lord took pains to anticipate and warn of the danger, and to implant the principle of grace which is suited if held in faith to guard from it and form the heart according to God. So bold and inveterate was this evil that it followed the apostles themselves up to the last Passover and the Lord's Supper. “There was also a contention among them which is accounted the greater. And he said to them, The kings of the Gentiles have lordship over them; and they that have authority over them are called benefactors. But ye [shall be] not so; but he that is greater among you, let him become as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.” Blessed Lord, Thou Thyself wert in the midst of them as He that serveth! then on earth, now in heaven, by-and-by in glory, not only in that day but forever. When the kingdom is given up, all things having been subdued, even then wilt Thou the Son be subject to Him that subjected all things to Thee, that God should be all in all! This will be perfection in all fullness, as it is Thy grace to make it good.

But what corruption in Christendom, a loud contradiction of Christianity, to turn the service of the Lord into worldly rank and means, to emulate the pride of life with claim of superiority over rival grandees, in the name of the Crucified One, who here had not where to lay His head, and laid down that it is enough for the disciple to be as his teacher, and bondman as his lord!

Nor was it only departure from scripture in worldliness; it is as plain ecclesiastically. For the accepted tradition among the ancient systems, Catholic and Protestant, is that to the bishop or overseer belongs the authority of ordination, consecration of persons and places, and excommunication. Now the written word is positive, that what is called ordination belonged solely to apostles, or an apostolic delegate, like Timothy or Titus, commissioned for definite action in a given time and place. Even when the church looked out God-fearing men for external or diaconal service, like the seven in Jerusalem, the apostles set them over this business (Acts 6:3). But the church in scripture never chose elders; nor did elders, but only an apostle or an envoy by his authority. Hence we read (in Acts 14:23) that the apostles Paul and Barnabas on their return to the gathered saints chose for them elders in every church. Is it needful to say that at a later day Timothy and Titus followed this model, when authorized to act similarly where Paul could not be? Their instructions are simple and clear, as we can see; and they were faithful. Even the competent advocates of Episcopacy acknowledged that in apostolic times there were elders in each local assembly, and that these elders were bishops, the distinction which is found in the second century being unknown in the first, not even a leader among equals. “The” bishop first appears in the letters of Ignatius, who (if not the inventor of that hitherto unknown official, nay in defiance of all scriptural facts and order) is the first to assume its existence and lofty position. His jurisdiction was limited to those in the city. The diocesan bishop later was another and considerable step away from scripture, as were other superior dignitaries, as the church lost its true character and sunk into, or rose in, the world, till the rivalry of the bishops of Rome and Constantinople became a struggle for primacy in honor of old or new Rome, as mistress of the earth, the office as set forth, in God's word being long forgotten and despised.

For therein eldership is never confounded with gift, whether the χάρισμα of Rom. 12, 1 Cor. 12, and 1 Peter 4, or the δόμα of Eph. 4. For this depends on Christ as the giver, and the Holy Spirit as the power, and never required human choice or appointment, as elders did. The Lord gave them direct. Neither evangelists nor pastors and teachers admitted of intermediate action, any more than apostles or prophets (who constituted the foundation, and therefore were not continued). Apostolic succession is a mere romance, conceived in honor of the bishop when elevated, after the apostles were gone, into an oversight of the overseers, to say nothing of all others, and in fact a creator of them, and thus present that three-fold singularity of which so many have been and are enamored, the bishop, presbyters, and deacons, undergoing another transformation of presbyters into priests, a change still more opposed to Christianity and the church.

The claim to ordain like an apostle or his delegate would be soon made. To consecrate persons and places would and did follow ere long, although altogether foreign to the New Testament, and as clearly borrowed from the heathen rather than Judaism, which recognized but one sacred center. The title to excommunicate was a bold contradiction of the Lord's will and word in committing that solemn responsibility to the assembled saints judging in His name (1 Cor. 5). The apostle Peter dealt personally with a husband and a wife who were guilty of a hypocritical lie to which both had agreed. The apostle Paul could and did deliver blasphemers or other great offenders to Satan; but we may be assured that neither would usurp the function of the assembly in putting away from itself those members that were guilty after previous warning if persisting unrepentant in sins incompatible with His presence. And we have the latter enjoining on the assemblies distinct action in clearing the saints of what was thus done to their defilement and His dishonor. He (though at a distance) had reliable testimony and quite enough to judge the deed; but he insists on the necessity of their judging such evils as he indicates. “Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened. For our passover hath been sacrificed, Christ; wherefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.... For what have I to do with judging those that are without? Do not ye judge those that are within, whereas those that are without God judgeth? Put away the wicked man from among yourselves,” Such is the Lord's commandment to the assembly, not to “the bishops,” not to the elders, not to the gifts, many as they were there, but to the entire church in Corinth. Who can deny it?

Elders then are here exhorted by him as fellow-elders; but one who was “witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also partaker of the glory about to be revealed.” It is a fitting and precise description of the facts, and exactly in keeping with his Epistle. He was truly one of “the apostles of the Lamb,” as we hear of them in Rev. 21:14. It has been well remarked, how distinct was the place which divine grace gave to Paul; for his it was in the sovereignty of God to be witness of the glory of Christ, and also partaker of His sufferings, beyond the lot of any other in both respects.

It was and is of all moment to regard “the flock” as God's; and all the more, because it is the habitual way even of excellent souls to forget this truth and assume that the sheep whom they feed and tend are their flocks. Such a thought betrays an unwitting denial of God's rights, and falsifies the relation of His sheep, and engenders erroneous interpretation of His word to the hurt of His servants themselves as well as of the saints. Take the common misuse of Heb. xiii. 17, implying that those that guide, or have the rule, have to give account of the souls who are exhorted to obey them, The truth is, that the guides are called to watch in their behalf as having to give account, not of the sheep, but of their own conduct toward them before the Lord. Again, the unity of the flock of God is undermined by not a few who talk without the least warrant of its consisting of many folds. The Lord on the contrary is showing in John x. not only that He quits the Jewish fold, and leads His sheep out, but that He has other sheep not of that fold, Gentile believers; both of whom were about to constitute the one flock, as He is the one Shepherd. There was to be no such thing henceforth as a fold, still less many folds, but His new flock. The one flock of Christ contains all Christians. The sheep might gather to His name here, there, and everywhere, with many an under-shepherd; but as He says, “They shall hear my voice; and there shall be one flock, one shepherd.” This is Christian truth.

“Tend the flock of God that [is] among you, exercising oversight, not by necessity but willingly, nor for base gain but readily.” It is not under law but grace, and the zeal of love brightened and cheered and strengthened by the crown of rejoicing in those tended, in the presence of the Lord Jesus at His coming, the contrast of base gain in this life.

Of another danger they are warned: “nor as lording it over your allotments, but becoming models of the flock.” If the property which flesh counts our own is not really so to the man of faith, but rather the goods of the Master entrusted to his stewardship, how much more have elders to beware of lording over the allotted charge as if it were theirs? No, they are to become models of the flock in the constant remembrance that it is God's flock, and that they must render account to the Lord how they guided His sheep, as well as of their own walk day by day.

Who then, said the Lord, is that faithful and wise steward whom his lord shall make ruler over his household to give portion of meat in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Of a truth I say to you, He will make him ruler over all that he hath (Luke xii. 42-44). So the apostle speaks here: “When the chief-shepherd is manifested, ye shall receive the unfading crown of glory.” Alas! ere long the blessed hope faded from their hearts, and the work of oversight was changed into a title of earthly honor and emolument, and the position a lordly installation if not an enthronement; so that Peter, if allowed to see things as they are now, could not recognize the office, as it was according to God, under what it is become according to man in Christendom. Is this to exaggerate, or to say the truth in love? How deep the fall!

GOD'S INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES, by W. K., cloth, 5/-

THE LORD'S PROPHECY ON OLIVET, 9d.

Short Introduction to Paul's Epistles, 1/- & 1/6

LIFE ETERNAL, 2d.

P.E.R. Heterodox on Life Eternal, other Divine Truths, and above all Christ's Person, paper, 10d., limp cloth, 1/-.

F.E.R. Heterodox on Christ's Person... id.

GATHERED TO HIS NAME ld.

THE APOSTLE PETER ON BAPTISM ... id.
EZEKIEL'S LAST PARABLE, by Mrs. Bevan, cloth, 2/6.

Published

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row

Published Monthly

Jacob: 20. Sons of Jacob Contrasted

As the chapters henceforth till much later refer rather to Jacob's sons than to himself, there is the less reason for dwelling on them now; they may, at least most of them, come for more particular notice under the proper head. But as they furnished not a little for the experience of Jacob, also under divine government, we may survey them by the way.

“And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his brethren, and turned in to a man of Adullam whose name was Hirah. And Judah saw there the daughter of a Canaanitish man whose name was Shua; and he took her and went in to her. And she conceived and bare a son; and he called his name Er; and she again conceived and bore a son; and she called his name Onan. And again she bore a son, and she called his name Shelah; and he was at Chezib when she bore him. And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of Jehovah, and Jehovah slew him. And Judah said to Onan, Go in to thy brother's wife, and fulfill to her the brother-in-law's duty, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed would not be his; and it came to pass when he went in to his brother's wife, that he spilled [it] on the ground, lest he should give seed to his brother. And what he did was evil in the eyes of Jehovah; and he slew him also. And Judah said to Tamar his daughter-in-law, Remain a widow in thy father's house, until Shelah my son is grown; for he said, Lest he die also as his brothers. And Tamar went and remained in her father's house. And the days were multiplied when the daughter of Shua, Judah's wife, died.

And Judah was comforted, and went up to his sheepshearers, he and his friend Hirah, the Adullamite, to Timnah. And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold, thy father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep. And she put off from her the garments of her widowhood, and covered herself with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in the gate of Enaim, which is by the way to Timnah; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given to him as wife,” &c.

The chapter needs few words to impress its proofs of Judah's low state morally, as the next does for displaying Joseph blessed and a blessing. The name of “Jehovah,” not “God” merely, is marked in both: in chap. 38 judging the manifest violation of His will, in chap. 39 causing him to prosper who sought to please Jehovah, and this in the most adverse circumstances, first as a slave, secondly as a prisoner, through the wickedness of Jew and Gentile. And we may notice that it is not Reuben or any other of the tribal heads, but Judah that proposed the sale of Joseph, and now evinced in his house the evil which drew down curse on curse, till its chief had to own the sad shame of Tamar, more righteous than himself who adjudged her to die by fire. Yet by this guilty Judah, and by Tamar came He who cleanses from all sin by His blood and will reign over the universe to God's glory, far beyond all that Joseph prefigured, as He went far lower in humiliation and suffering.” And Joseph was brought down into Egypt; and Potiphar, a chamberlain of Pharaoh, captain of the life-guard, an Egyptian, bought him of the hand of the Ishmaelites that brought him down thither.

And Jehovah was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And his master saw that Jehovah was with him, and that Jehovah made all which he did to prosper in his hand. And Joseph found favor in his eyes, and he served him; and he made him overseer over his house; and all he had he put into his hand. And it came to pass from the time he had made him overseer in his house and over all that was his, that Jehovah blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake; and the blessing of Jehovah was upon all that was his in house and in field,” &c.

It is as lovely a picture in the simple fact of grace moving under Jehovah's guidance in purity and integrity where man and woman had dealt villainously, as Judah and his house, passing from one shame to another under His chastising hand, are a serious and humbling lesson.

Israel's Practical Sanctification: Part 1

The first place is given, as is meet, to heinous rebellion against Jehovah in an Israelite or a sojourner in their midst. This is followed up by an awfully dark list of enormous wickedness, which opens with reviling one's father and mother. Setting up one's own will against a parent's authority is akin in a lower way to renouncing the true God for a false one. Hence it is that not a few connect ver. 9 with the preceding paragraph rather than with the subsequent one. Indeed the “For” with which it begins, if so rendered, goes to support it. On the other hand, revolt from Jehovah makes a good division.

“9 For everyone that curseth (or, revileth) his father and his mother shall surely be put to death; he hath cursed his father and his mother; his blood [is] upon him. 10 And a man that committeth adultery with a man's wife, that committeth adultery with his neighbor's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. 11 And a man that lieth with his father's wife hath uncovered his father's nakedness: both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood [is] upon them. 12 And if a man lie with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death; they have wrought confusion; their blood [is] upon them. 13 And if a man lie with a male, as he with a woman, both of them have committed abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood [is] upon them. 14 And if a man take a wife and her mother, it [is] enormity (or, incest), with fire shall they burn him and them, that there be no enormity among you. 15 And if a man lie with a beast for copulation, he shall surely be put to death; and ye shall kill the beast. 16 And if a woman approach unto any beast to gender with it, thou shalt kill the woman and the beast: they shall surely be put to death; their blood [is] upon them. 17 And if a man take his sister, his father's daughter, or his mother's daughter, and see her nakedness and she see his nakedness, it [is] a disgrace: and they shall be cut off before the eyes of the sons of their people. He hath uncovered his sister's nakedness; he shall bear his iniquity. 19 And if a man shall lie with a woman in her infirmity, and uncover her nakedness, he hath laid naked her flux, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood; and both of them shall be cut off from among their people. 20 And the nakedness of thy mother's sister and of thy father's sister thou shalt not uncover; for he hath laid naked his own flesh (or, near of kin): they shall bear their iniquity. 20 And if a man lie with his aunt, he hath uncovered his uncle's nakedness: they shall bear their sin; they shall die childless. 21 And if a man take his brother's wife, it is uncleanness; he hath uncovered his brother's nakedness: they shall be childless” (vers. 9-21).

Here then we commence with open and deep dishonor to one's parents, which was to be punished with death. And the same sentence is pronounced upon the nearest and deepest wound one man can inflict on another, a sin not foully wrong only but in despite of Jehovah who instituted married union from the beginning. His law was as extreme against these sins, as against what denied Himself.

But greater impurity prevailed among the heathen, and especially those who occupied the promised land. The sons of Israel too were soon to be exposed to their shameless example. He who gave them Canaan knew their hearts far better than they themselves did. Hence these solemn and painful denunciations of incest, &c. Flesh is the same root of vileness in a Jew as in a Gentile. Restraint may hinder its outbreak; but evil lusts are there, ready to carry away the impulsive and headstrong beyond all bounds.

The Lord Jesus is in every way the Savior; not from divine punishment only but from sins. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of offenses according to the riches of God's grace; but in Him we have life also, life eternal, for He is the Son, and gives nothing less than this life to everyone that believes on Him. And life in Christ is the indispensable basis of the new nature, and of our new relationships and duties, affections and privileges, crowned since redemption with the indwelling Spirit for the Christian and for the church, that both might have an immediate link with God and power from Him.

Is the flesh then gone in fact? By no means; but it is gone for faith, as condemned by God in Christ's cross, where our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be annulled, that we should no longer serve sin. We are entitled therefore to say henceforth, that we died with Him, not only to and from sin, but from the religious elements of the world and its philosophy; and our life is hid with Him in God. We are not of the world as He is not; and we await His coming, not to be unclothed but with our eternal house from heaven, when the mortal shall be swallowed up of life. Meanwhile we are exhorted and bound to mortify our members which are upon the earth, instead of gratifying unclean lust or passion; also to put off those of violence, and not to lie one to another. We have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man that is being renewed unto full knowledge according to the image of Him that created him. Thus Christ is the all, and in all.

But for practice everything turns on our dependence by faith on Christ every day and all through it. Nor is anything more dangerous or ruinous than the highest truth without such dependence. Apart from Him we can do nothing, On the other hand, If ye abide in Me, and I in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall come to pass to you. So even the Ephesian saints, addressed in the most elevated of the Pauline Epistles, were told, Let the stealer steal no more. Let no corrupt word go out of your mouth. Be not drunk with wine wherein is riot and debauchery. What dishonor to the Lord, what pleasure to Satan, that they should be entrapped into these evils or even worse! What need to be kept of God!

Proverbs 19:23-29

As it had been already laid down that the fear of Jehovah is the beginning and the discipline of wisdom, so does it prolong days, whereas the years of the wicked shall be shortened. Here we have more said of its virtue.

“The fear of Jehovah [tendeth] to life; and he shall abide satisfied; he shall not be visited with evil.

A sluggard burieth his hand in the dish, and will not even bring it to his mouth again.

Smite a scorner, and the simple will become prudent; and reprove the intelligent, he will understand knowledge.

He that ruineth a father [and] chaseth away a mother is a son that causeth shame and bringeth reproach.

Cease, my son, to hear instruction [causing] to err from the words of knowledge.

A witness of Belial scorneth judgment, and the mouth of the wicked swalloweth iniquity.

Judgments are prepared for scorners, and stripes for the back of the foolish” (vers. 23-29).

Now that we know the manifestation of life eternal in Christ and its gift to the believer, how greatly is the maxim enhanced! What satisfaction can there be outside Him? “He that hath the Son hath life “; and Christ is the food of that life, both as the true bread out of heaven, giving life to the world, and not to Israel only, by faith, and in raising up at the last day. But there is the further privilege since His death, even to eat His flesh and drink His blood, and thus to dwell in Him, as He dwells in the Christian. He is the Deliverer; what shall man or Satan do to hurt? How shall not God also with Him freely give us all things?

The faith that fears Jehovah is earnest. The sluggard on the contrary is so besotted to self as to bury his hand in the dish, and will not so much as raise it to his mouth again. So he lives, dies, and perishes.

To smite a scorner may and will be lost on him; but the simple take heed, gather profit, and become prudent. The man of intelligence lays admonition to heart, and apprehends a knowledge before unknown. Thus simple and wise are gainers.

As a scorner is worse than a sluggard, more guilty still is the son that plunders a father and chaseth away a mother and her loving appeals. What shame and dishonor he brings!

In such a world of sin the enemy finds no lack of mischievous men and women, who not only stray away from the words of knowledge but take pleasure to misguide the unwary. Cease, my son, to hear such fatal instruction.

Still more daring a witness of Belial is he that mocks at judgment; and the mouth of the wicked drinks down iniquity. But soon or late God is not mocked, if man is deceived; for whatsoever a man shall sow, that also shall he reap.

Therefore is it true that “judgments are prepared for scorners, and stripes for the back of the foolish.” It is not that God desires any man to be reprobate; but what if He, willing to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much long-suffering vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction? They gave themselves up to their own will, which is nothing but sin, and had a ready helper in the arch enemy who makes them his slaves. But that God might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, He in His grace prepared them before for glory. All the sin is in and of the creature; all the good is of God. This is the truth as to both God and man, whose only resource is by grace in Christ.

Gospel Words: Swear Not at All

Here again the teaching of our Lord far transcends what was said of old. His presence brought in the light of God, and it was addressed to a new and divine nature in those who believe. It dealt with the root of every question, not merely with the fruit or overt acts.

“Again ye heard that it was said to the ancients, Thou shalt not swear falsely, but shalt render to the Lord thine oaths. But I say to you, Swear not at all; neither by (in) the heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is his feet's footstool; nor by (toward) Jerusalem, for it is the great King's city. Nor shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your word be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay; but what exceedeth these is of evil (or, the evil one).”

Thus the Lord goes far beyond perjury or breaking a vow. He prohibits swearing altogether in the intercourse of daily life. Our word therein is to be, Yea, yea, or Nay, nay. That which is more than these has no sanction from God, and is therefore of evil, or the evil one, the enemy of God and man. All such asseveration as the Lord illustrates from the facts of Jewish habit arose from the constant experience of men in deceiving or evading. They therefore resorted to such means of insuring the truth. But these efforts defeated themselves; for we know from a reliable Jewish contemporary of the N.T. inspired writers that oaths by earth, heaven, sun, stars, and the entire universe, were not counted binding. Only those obliged the conscience which were by God's name direct and express; nay others might be transgressed. As the Lord supposed in those He addresses poverty of spirit and purity of heart, He proscribed absolutely all such swearing as offensive to God and incompatible with the place of His sons.

Nor is it only Jews then, but professing Christians now, that show themselves as indifferent to the Lord's authority as if He had never thus solemnly uttered His mind. Among Protestants there is some little care to avoid profanity by adopting light and foolish exclamations, or by repeating heathen terms derived from their Greek or Latin reading, forgetting that if the idols are nothing, the demons behind them are real and evil. Romanists are much less scrupulous. It is sad to think how perverts go farther in excuse for their blasphemous phrases than those born and bred in their vain superstitions.

Take the following proof from the late Cardinal Newman's “Lectures on certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans in Submitting to the Catholic Church “: “Listen to their conversation; listen to the conversation of any multitude, or any private party; what strange oaths mingle with it! God's heart, and God's eyes, and God's wounds, and God's blood: you cry out, ‘How profane!' Doubtless; but do you not see that the special profaneness above Protestant oaths lies, not in the words but simply in the speaker, and is the necessary result of that insight into the invisible world which you have not? You use the vague words, ‘Providence,' or ‘the Deity,' or ‘good luck,' or ‘nature'; where we, whether now or of old, realize the Creator in His living works, instruments, and personal manifestations, and speak of the ‘Sacred Heart,' or ‘the Mother of Mercies,' or ‘our Lady of Walsingham,' or ‘St. George for Merry England,' or ‘loving St. Francis,' or ‘dear St. Philip.' Your people would be as varied and fertile in their adjurations and invocations as a Catholic populace, if they believed as we” (Ninth Lecture, p. 232).

It is grace alone which delivers from Popery and even Protestantism, and makes it a divine joy to be a Christian, neither more nor less. Irreverence of every sort, worldly or superstitious, becomes intolerably evil in one's eyes; and it is the first of duties for the believer to hear these words of Christ and reduce them to practice. But is it not an awful instance of Satan's blinding power, that while none but the vilest of Protestants would think of excusing his own ungodly badinage, a grave clergyman in his new born (or at least early open) apology for the shameless fooling of Papists should plead so barefacedly, not only for such ebullitions in word, but for turning the Last Judgment into a play of fireworks, and argue for it that “they are making one continuous and intense act of faith” (p. 237)?

But we must carefully remember, that our Lord in no way forbids an oath before the magistrate or judge. This is not of evil; but of good, being of divine authority. For men swear by a greater, and the oath is a term to all dispute as making matters sure. To refuse it is to deny God's authority in any who represent Him in earthly things, and hence called by His name and translated “judges,” as in Ex. 21:6; 22:8, 9, 28. See also Psa. 82:1, 6. The principle is asserted in Lev. 5:1, to which the Lord, far from setting aside on the mount, bowed when adjured by the high priest (Matt. 26:63, 64), though silent before.

In like manner James 5:12 with marked earnestness forbids swearing either by heaven or by earth.

These were not judicial adjuration, which does not fall under people's swearing. It was rather being sworn in God's name. Nor did our Lord any more than His servant prohibit such appeals to God as in Rom. 1:9, 1 Cor. 15:31, 2 Cor. 1:23, Gal. 1:20, or the like. The scruple of Friends or Separatists has no foundation in scripture. But how and where do you stand, my reader? Have you owned yourself a lost sinner, and the Lord Jesus the only, the willing, and the perfect Savior? Believe in Him, and thou shalt be saved. So said Paul and Silas to the Philippian jailer, suddenly arrested, and not to him only, but also to his house. And the same night he was baptized, and all his straightway. Why not you too? The same Lord is open to you. May you exult as he did, having believed with all his house in God, the God of all grace.

The Coming and the Day of the Lord: Part 6

Now no Pope ever wrought a miracle, nor even, for aught one knows, pretended to it. What strange exaggeration then to ascribe this awful power of Satan to the Pope! What equally strange prejudice to deny it to the man of sin, whom the Lord at His appearing is to annul! The apostle gives the moral reason for a judgment so stern. “And for this cause God sendeth them a working of error that they should believe the falsehood, that all might be judged that believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (ver. 12). God's sending a working of error is judicial hardening at that crisis; and Satan follows with his deceiving marvels of power to drag down all its votaries to perdition. It is divine retribution at the last. They renounced the truth and salvation with it; they loved the lie, and must perish. But the heights and depths of Satan far transcend Popery and belong only to the consummation of the age. The elect of that day solely escape by divine grace, as this is at bottom true of all the elect in any day. How strikingly portrayed in contrast with the perdition of that awful time are the position and privileges of the Thessalonian saints, as the apostle depicts! “So then, brethren, stand, and hold fast the traditions ye were taught whether by word or by our letter.” As all scripture was not yet written, they were called to heed what they had been orally taught as well as by the apostolic letter. They were beloved by the Lord, chosen of God unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and faith of the truth, whereto He called them “by our gospel” to obtaining our Lord Jesus Christ's glory. “Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father that loved us and gave everlasting comfort and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and stablish [them] in every good work and word” (vers. 13-17). The judicial hardening, the energetic action of the enemy, and the day of the Lord were to fall exclusively on those who despised Christ and renounced the gospel; everlasting comfort and good hope through grace, were the portion of those who believed; and present establishing in every good work and word were besought on their behalf.

It may interest and profit some if we here notice a scripture, which is adduced more frequently perhaps than any other to oppose the rapture, at least before the day of manifestation. We refer to the parable of the wheat field, and the Lord's explanation, in Matt. 13. We refer to the only similitude in the chapter that is historical (ὠμοιώθη, “likened,” not merely “is like"). The bondmen of Him that sowed the good seed proposed to root up the darnel of the enemy's sowing. But no: their work is that of grace. “The field is the world,” let commentators say what they may. It is not the church, where discipline is essential; but the kingdom where they must be left for judgment at the end, when it is no longer in patience but comes in power. “Suffer both to grow together unto the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers (or harvesters), Gather first the darnel, and bind it in bundles to burn it; but the wheat bring together into my granary.” The crop was spoiled; and no effective remedy can be, till the end of the age arrives, and its judgment.

The harvesters, unlike the bondmen, are angels. It will be for these, not for those, to bind in bundles the sons of the evil one, at the fit moment for their activity, and as their first revealed act; for the time of harvest is not an epoch, but a period. The angels are instruments of divine providence; and at that season they will be employed in a measure, even before the sons of the kingdom are translated to the granary above. The wicked in the field will, by this instrumentality or means, be brought into close association, with a view to burning them (πρὸς τὸ κατακαῦσαι αὐτά). It is not yet the penal execution that awaits them, but the preparatory act of God's providence which disposes them suitably for their doom. Nobody, one hopes, can be so ignorant as to conceive such a work by visible angels before Christ takes to Himself the saints on high. Probably most persons have no definite judgment about it.

Not indeed that anything transpiring at present is the accomplishment of this act: it will devolve by-and-by on His angels. But it is a grave thing to recognize in the actual combinations of our day; rife all over the world as never in the past, how the, coming event casts its shadow before. For men, without the fear of God confederate by all sorts of unions, to overawe or embarrass, and thus effect their selfish ends. The Lord will employ His angels (for the saints are still on earth), evidently before He appears to do this work perfectly with a view to His further aims. At present real Christians are mixed up in these fleshly and worldly combinations. But when the harvest season begins, it will not be so. The bundles will be made up exclusively of the guilty objects for His judgment. None but the wicked will be collected and bound for the purpose: this the angels can effect, as man could not, and saints are forbidden. It might be providentially at any unknown moment.

The wheat, the sons of the kingdom, are not left like the darnel on the field, but next brought together into Christ's granary. This, we all surely agree, means and must be to meet the Lord, who deigns to descend into the air; when at His call all the saints, dead and alive, are changed in a moment, and caught up to join Him, “and so shall we always be with the Lord.”

The Lord's explanation as usual adds to the original parable. Here the very momentous information is given of what will be manifest to all eyes. In the providential action the bundles were not said to be removed from the field; according to the figure they were left there to await their awful end. But later on during harvest “the Son of man shall send His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all offenses and those that do lawlessness, and they shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.” The other side of glory is equally clear: “then (not before) shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He that hath ears to hear let him hear.” It is not the rapture to heaven but the revelation from it. This may wound many a prejudice; but the truth is well worth it. It is the display of His presence, the appearing of His coming, His day, when the saints are beheld with Him in the heavenly glory. Christ and they are manifested together: they already with Him, not He alone before them, nor yet coming for them.

Thus, as it quite appears, on a closer study than is usually given to this most instructive parable and the Master's explanation, everything here is consistent with that later word which the apostle divulged in the Lord (1 Thess. 4:16, 17). As both are parts of the truth of God, they harmonize perfectly; while each contributes its own portion suitably to the divine purpose on the appropriate occasion. No doubt it is the future that we await in a perfect peace that rests on the blood of His cross; and in a fullness of joy created by His love which is as rich in grace and glory, as it is altogether beyond the mere creature, and as sure as God's word can make its revelation.

So, in the parable of the seyne or sweep-net (Matt. 13:47), we have the distinction kept up between the angels who executed the judgment, and the fishers, who drew it to shore and sat down and gathered the good into vessels but cast out the worthless, a work peculiarly suited to closing scenes. The Christian laborer is occupied with the good; he is an agent of that grace which saved himself. The worthless he leaves aside for those who excel in might, whose function it is to deal with them individually. For it is no more a question of discipline with the fish than with the darnel. And all the talk about wheat becoming darnel, or vice versa, is outside the word of the Lord. There is no question of a good fish turning worthless, or of the worthless rising to good. The bondmen like the fishers have a charge only to secure the good. This was a right and intelligent work: the contrast of the bondmen's readiness, ignorant of self and of God's ways, to uproot.

Here commentators are either silent or no less mistaken than as to the darnel. It is the kingdom again, not the church. Who can fail to see that they are plainly distinct? The kingdom was a familiar truth, though it took the form of “mystery” now. The church is first announced in Matt. 16:18, 19. The confusion of the two is not only a doctrinal blunder in theologians generally, but it has wrought great practical havoc in all ages to this day. Thus in the church we are bound to judge evil (1 Cor. 5); in the kingdom we are forbidden (as in ver. 30 of this chapter). Punishment is a work for angels' hands; not for Christians, who are called not to resist evil but to suffer, giving God thanks. Donatists and Catholics were utterly astray, understanding neither what they said, nor whereof they confidently affirmed. The truth of both kingdom and church was lost since apostolic days, as all may see who have light from God on these things. How far is it recovered to-day?

But here again we find that “in the end of the age the angels shall go forth and sever the wicked out of the midst of the righteous, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.” As there was a providential gathering of the darnel before the execution of the judgment, so there was a spiritual work by saintly men in sorting the good into vessels, before the execution of the judgment to clear the wicked out of their midst. There is the great common principle that this judgment belongs to the angels, not to the saints; but there is a marked difference in that the gathering of the wheat was immediate into the heavenly garner, but the darnel were subjected to a longer process, with the same sad end as the worthless fish. Only it is the inverse now; for these wicked ones are severed from among the righteous there, as the worthless were taken out for the terrible judgment of everlasting fire. In vain can one search for consistency of interpretation as to either of these parables in the moderns any more than in the ancients. Even the best vacillate strangely, partly through lack of duly distinguishing the kingdom and the church, partly through no less lack of discernment between the coming of the Lord for the saints, and His day with its terrors and destruction, when His own shall be manifested together with Him in glory.

But it is plain that not a word implies any visible act in the binding of the darnel into bundles first, and then of the sons of the kingdom, the wheat, gathered at once into the garner. No doubt the Lord comes down into the air and the changed saints are caught up to meet Him there. The garner is not on earth or in the air but in heaven. Thence in due time, the saints follow Him out of heaven (as Rev. 17:14; 19:14, distinctly teach) for the day of the Lord and His judgment of the Beast and the False Prophet, the kings of the earth, the darnels too, and every other object of divine retribution, the judgment of the quick or living. This quite falls in with the added explanation of both parables: on one side the display of the glorified saints, shining like the sun in the kingdom of their Father; and, on the other, of the Son of man through His angels clearing out of His kingdom all offenses, and those that work lawlessness, into the furnace of fire.

The day of the Lord is the open introduction of the age to come by terrific judgments, and never in scripture mixed up with His coming to receive His saints to Himself for the Father's house. And hence we saw, that the apostle appealed to His presence to gather the saints to Himself, as their bright hope, against the false and foolish notion, introduced by fraud, and calculated to agitate and alarm, that the day of the Lord had actually arrived. Its imminence was not the error; for it is an indisputable truth, often taught in scripture, and by Paul himself, of no small moment practically for souls. But people, fancying that this was too strange a delusion to enter, gave the verb a sense which it never bears, and thus lost all real understanding of the passage, by adopting a false rendering which has plunged men into mistake ever since.

A favorite argument among some is that the church must be on earth till the Lord appears, because Timothy is, exhorted to keep the commandment spotless, irreproachable, until the appearing of our Lord. This however has been already shown to be a mere fallacy. Scripture connects responsible service, and also the walk of all saints with the day or the appearing, never with His coming as such or our translation to meet Him on high which is a matter of nothing but sovereign grace. But responsibility attaches to His appearing because, when we come with Him, our place is decided according to our measure of fidelity. To confound the two things is to lose the distinct truth and the special blessing of each to the soul. We are called to wait for Him with unclouded joy; but we are also bound, each to his particular work, and all of us to watch, abounding in mutual love, in order that our hearts be confirmed blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus.

It might have been hastily anticipated that this would be when He comes for us. Such however is not the teaching of 1 Thess. 3:12, any more than of kindred scriptures. It will be at His coming with all His saints. Infinite love gave us the holy nature capable of so walking, in giving us Christ as our life even now, to walk in love accordingly. This will have its consummation in that day, and in the communion of all who share it when the Lord comes to be glorified in all that are His in the fullest and most evident way. The establishment in holiness by love of the saints toward each other would go on and stop not short of that glorious day when the Lord is wondered at in all that believed; and this is only by their manifestation with Him in glory. How admirable is scripture in thus binding up every day's walk as saints with Christ's appearing in glory and of us together with Him in it!

Thus the argument betrays a want of spiritual understanding and right use of scripture. Besides, when looked into, it is quite inept. For employed as it is, it would deprive of its profit not only Timothy but all other men of God who pass hence before the Lord appears, and confine it to such as then remain on the earth. Whereas according to its real bearing it applies fully to him and all that follow in the same path of devoted obedience to the end. Asleep or alive when He cones, they will have their due place in the day of His appearing. And if this is true manifestly of the responsible servants in the word, still less can the mistaken notion apply to the church. In short it in no case implies remaining on earth till that day, which directly contradicts Col. 3:4, and is quite inconsistent with other scriptures which reveal the glorified saints accompanying Christ, and out of heaven too.

It is remarkable, and apparently little known, that the late Mr. B. W. Newton, the keenest advocate for identifying Christ's coming with His appearing or day, was in effect compelled to bow to the evidence of Rev. 19, and to confess that it “opens with one of the great results of the resurrection of the saints” (Thoughts on the Apocalypse, p. 297). Again (p. 290), “The saints have joined Him and fall into the train of His glory.” He does not contest that the marriage of the Lamb is in heaven, and the bride there before then. But this assuredly surrenders the principle, for which his disciples vainly contend with no small outcry. It is the grossest error therefore to look for the resurrection of those that compose the church, or of the O. T. saints in Rev. 20:4. Both are there undoubtedly, but already changed, in those seated on the thrones, to whom judgment was given. The raising from the dead which then follows is exclusively of the Apocalyptic sufferers, slain after the first general class of the glorified were caught up to be with the Lord. The two classes of martyrs (for there are two) are now seen to be raised, in order to share the reign with Christ for the thousand years. On all this the views commonly held are vague and erring. But the light conveyed by the scripture is as bright and simple as possible.

It is useless to search the Reformers any more than the Puritans for any real grasp or right estimate of sovereign grace in its heavenly portion. Their hearts did not dwell on or even turn to the rapture. Take the learned John Jewel, who wrote expressly on the Epistles to the Thessalonians (the only Exposition in his Works), edited by the Parker Society. But he never seems to rise beyond the Lord's coming to judge the quick and the dead. His descent in 1 Thess. 4:16 only draws out for comment, “Here is laid for us the true manner of the terrible judgment of God”... “Such shall be the show and the sight of the Son of God: He shall come down with majesty from heaven; the trumpet of God shall sound, and be heard from the one end of heaven to the other; and whosoever shall hear it shall quake with fear. [What! the bride at the Bridegroom!] Then shall He be the Judge over all flesh. Then He shall show Himself to be King of kings, and Lord of lords.” Even on ver. 17 he can only say, “We which shall see all these things shall also be caught up ourselves. But here you must notice that Paul speaketh not this of his own person, and of them that lived in his time, as if they should continue alive unto the end, or that the world should have an end before they should die; but he showeth what shall be the state of such whosoever shall then remain alive.”

Now this is to miss the beautiful intent of the Spirit through the apostle's words. If the meaning the then Bp. of Salisbury put into them had been intended, it would have been easy and alone correct to have written, We that must die shall rise first; then the living that remain shall be caught up together with us in clouds to meet the Lord in [or into] the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Surely those caught up should not be confounded with “all flesh.” The apostle (even in correcting the unfounded fancy that the deceased saints of their company must miss their part in that hour of unmingled joy) takes pains to confirm them in constant waiting for His coming. The bishop's view loses sight of the Holy Spirit's care to keep the saints in habitual expectancy, and therefore left, always uncertain when He might come, to look for Him day by day, hanging evermore on His assurance of love, “I am coming again” (John xiv.), without one word to fix a date, or cloud the heart, or delay the hope. To begin to settle that it cannot be in our time, is it not to say in the heart, “My lord delayeth,” the inlet to self-seeking and overbearing? Certainly not a hint was ever given by an inspired man that he or others then alive must survive to the Lord's coming, still less to the world's end. But the Christian was expressly set to wait and watch for Him as his most cherished object, and expressly kept always so looking, because he knows not the moment. It was in divine wisdom for the best good to be so ordered.

On 2 Thess. 2 the learned bishop starts off to warn against Popery, says not a word on the weighty opening verse, and on the second gets into the theme of “crafty and false teachers.” When he does speak of the advent, beyond quoting words of 1 Thess. iv. he looks for judgment and the passing away of heaven and earth, without any adequate sense of the revealed blessedness of our gathering together unto the Lord.

Nor is there in Protestant writers any more than Popish a sound conception of the awful revolt that is to befall professing Christians at the end of the age, or of the still more audacious rising up that follows of both the civil Beast of Rome, and the quasi-religious Beast of Jerusalem, in the power of Satan. For it will be a travesty of the three persons of the Godhead, and arrogate divine power and glory to the exclusion of the only true God, especially of the Father and the Son, through the energetic, and no longer checked, working of the evil spirit.

The exaggeration of truth is never the truth; and the exaggeration of the evil that now exists, whilst the mystery of lawlessness works, exposes souls to shut their ears against the divine warning, that the time hastens when the unconverted of Protestantism and of Popery will join the ever-growing host of open skeptics, all of whom will form Satan's human array in the last daring denial and defiance of Jehovah and His Anointed.

The Heavenly Hope: The Rapture of the Saints: What Saith the Scripture?

When a bitter adversary of the Christian's heavenly hope sought many years ago to stigmatize it as having a foul and even Satanic origin, there were questions in which he was compromised, too serious for any who weighed their import to notice so unworthy an insinuation. It is much to be doubted that the late Mr. J. N. Darby saw or heard of it; nor did I ever meet with it till lately, long after its dispersion far and wide. A recent American journal brought it first under my notice; but the idea was probably derived, directly or indirectly, from that source. I quote from a “little booklet” written with no small warmth on our side of the Atlantic by a clergyman. This one could appreciate if Christ's person or work were assailed; but is it not extravagant, if not unaccountable, in such a question where all agree in the general truth?

“I am not aware that there was any definite teaching [i.e. in the early days of the Plymouth movement] that there would be a secret rapture of the saints at a secret coming until this was given forth as an utterance in Mr. Irving's church, from what was there received as being the voice of the Spirit. But whether anyone ever asserted such a thing or not, it was from that supposed revelation that the modern doctrine and the modern phraseology respecting it arose. It came not from holy scripture, but from that which falsely pretended to be the Spirit of God; whilst not holding the true doctrine of our Lord's incarnation in the same flesh and blood of His brethren, but without taint of sin.”

What must one think of a polemic who would extract an envenomed shaft to injure, if he could, the apostle Paul's preaching and teaching of “salvation,” from the utterance at Philippi of the maiden with a spirit of Python? “These men are servants of the Most High God that announce to you the way of salvation.” The then instrument of Satan was not so openly hostile as the slanderer of J. N. D. On the contrary the enemy adopted the craftier policy of commending the apostolic testimony. But Paul, distressed by it, for it went on for many days, turned at length, and in the name of Jesus expelled the unclean spirit, disdaining such an ally. The spirit's talk of “the way of salvation,” however, did not hinder him or his companions from proclaiming “so great salvation,” which having been spoken by our Lord, was confirmed by those who heard, God also bearing witness with them. Argue, as adversaries might, from the fact that the apostle never wrote a word on the way of salvation before the evil spirit proclaimed this as his errand, he was not to be driven from the truth by the wiles of the devil; and woe would surely be to such as availed themselves of that craft to turn away from the glad tidings of God.

But let us turn from surmise to such facts as exist; for both assailed and assailant are departed. Though Mr. D. in general used to say little of himself, he does speak, in two pieces which appear in his Collected Writings, of the way in which light dawned on his heart as to the future according to the scriptures. The first bore on the change in the divine dealings with men at the end of this age. “But I must, though without comment, direct attention to chap. 32 of the same prophet [Isaiah]; which I do the rather, because in this it was the Lord was pleased, without man's teaching, first to open my eyes on this subject, that I might learn His will concerning it throughout—not by the first blessed truths stated in it, but the latter part, when there shall be a complete change in the dispensation, the wilderness becoming the fruitful field of God's fruit and glory, and that which had been so being counted a forest, at a time when the Lord's judgments should come down, even great hail, upon, this forest; and the city even of pride be utterly abased” (Proph. i. 165, 166).

Of that light which later shone on the heavenly side of the Lord's coming he speaks rather differently: “It is this passage [2 Thess. 2:1, 2] which, twenty years ago [i.e. from 1850 when he then wrote], made me understand the rapture of the saints before—perhaps a considerable time before the day of the Lord (that is, before the judgment of the living).” The difference is this that he expressly excludes “man's teaching” in the first case, which he does not even imply in the second. There he simply says that it was 2 Thess. 2:1, 2, which made him understand the rapture of the saints to be before the day of the Lord, but not a word about the Lord pleased to open his eyes in the same way: how he does not say, as there was no call for it in his criticism of M. Gaussen on Daniel the Prophet.

Now it so happens that, during a visit to Plymouth in the summer of 1845, Mr. B. W. Newton told me that, many years before, Mr. Darby wrote to him a letter in which he said that a suggestion was made to him by Mr. T. Tweedy, (a spiritual man and most devoted ex-clergyman among the Irish brethren), which to his mind quite cleared up the difficulty previously felt on this very question. No one was farther from lending an ear to the impious and profane voices of the quasi-inspired Irvingites than Mr. T., unless indeed it were J. N. D. himself who had closely investigated their pretensions and judged their peculiar heterodoxy on Christ's humanity as anti-Christian and blasphemous. As to this anyone may satisfy himself by the Collected Writings, xv. the first two articles of Doctr. iv., with strictures in six other vols., to which may be added, in a new edition, a longer paper that has been discovered since.

On the other hand Mr. Newton knew, as well or better than most at this time of day, such of the Newman St. oracles as reached ears and eyes outside. But he also knew that no serious brother in fellowship regarded them with less than horror, as emanating not from human excitement merely but from a demon accredited with the power of the Holy Spirit. Their sorrow was great over E. Irving as a man of rare ability, large gift as a preacher and teacher, and zealous to live the truth in faith and love. Though he was carried away pitiably by the claim of tongues and miracles, and by the yet more dangerous pretension to restored apostles and prophets, they thankfully observed, what was his humbling admission, that he received no such endowment. It was a striking difference from his associates; that he, much the most eminent of diem all spiritually, should have been unvisited by the alleged new power from on high. Yet Irving was bolder than any in affirming the fundamental heterodoxy as to Christ's person, nay that His sinful humanity (may God forgive the blasphemy!) was the basis for the divine gifts, the spirit (whatever its source and character) coming as its seal.

But Irving was at least honest and outspoken; and however erring as he surely proved, God kept him personally from the evil energy which wrought in those to whom he bowed down with abject superstition, and took him away comparatively young but worn out, contrary to their confident predictions. Their apostles and prophets with the rest of what they called the fourfold gifts, shuffled and prevaricated in the way habitual among men under demon powers. Take a single sentence of his out of many, “I believe it to be most orthodox, and of the substance and essence of the orthodox faith, that Christ could say until his resurrection, Not I, but sin that tempteth me in my flesh” (The Orthodox Catholic Doctrine of our Lord's Human Nature, p. 127, London, 1830). And when Mr. Robert Baxter challenged this doctrine as false, Irving could reply that the spirit in their prophetess, Miss E. C., had laid down that B. had departed from the truth which I. had maintained, the Lord being pleased with him for it. This was confirmed by another prophetess, Mrs. C. (Baxter's Narrative of Facts, &c. pp. 104, 105).

But I willingly bear my testimony to Mr. N. that he never to me thought of attributing the source of the so-called doctrine, the rapture of the saints, to that seducing spirit. It was new however to hear that Mr. Tweedy, who died full of blessed labors in Demerara, was the one who first suggested, as a decisive proof from scripture, 2 Thess. 1; 2 I so implicitly believed that he told me the truth as conveyed in Mr. D.'s letter to himself, that it did not occur to me to question Mr. D. about it. I knew the latter to be generous in acknowledging readily any debt of the kind he owed to other brethren, having experienced it in my own case and in that of Mr. Bellett, if not of more still. Indeed it was very touching to observe that one, to whose richly suggestive help so many were indebted, was himself so frank to own any fresh thought of value in another, and to manifest his simple-hearted pleasure, not only in hailing the accession but in adding to the evidence of its truth, as he so well could and did, while pointing out its importance.

Further, when Mr. N. named to me the disclosure of Mr. D.'s old letter, things had reached a very high temperature, and on no question more than the one before us. Mr. N. had issued the first edition of his “Thoughts on the Apocalypse” in parts, completed in 1844; and Mr. D. was at that very time bringing out in parts his “Examination” of it, as able a volume as he ever wrote, not only in my judgment thoroughly subversive of the “Thoughts,” but establishing on a sound basis the grand truths which were sought to be undermined. Now B. W. N. was no neutral, but abhorred it in divine things as much as J. N. D. or anyone. Christ's relation to God had not yet come into controversy, nor the righteousness of God; but he was quite right in feeling the immense moment of God's revealed mind as to the Lord's coming, the heavenly calling, the church of God, &c. These truths he opposed through his prophetic system which was sadly narrow and crude, however assured he might be of its certainty. His antagonism to Mr. D. and his teaching as incompatible had already come out clearly and decidedly, though the open breach did not occur till some months after.

On that humiliating breach there is no call to speak here. It was followed about two years subsequently by the distressing discovery of a systematic heterodoxy, one part of which, singular to say, appeared in the Second edition of the vol. ii. of the Plymouth “Christian Witness,” an article of B. W. N. on the Doctrines of Newman St. The Editor (J. L. H.), through the loan to his wife of MS. Notes on Psa. 6, divulging doctrine revolting to his spirit, deemed it his duty to Christ and the church, that it should appear with his comment, no matter what the secrecy enjoined might be or any possible consequence. Mr. N. hastened to defend his scheme of thought, and thus first laid open what had been working too long in the dark. J. N. D., providentially detained beyond the time when he meant to go abroad, was thus called to deal with it searchingly, and with such effect that the most trusty of N.'s fellow-workers who remained broke down in confession of their fatal departure from the true Christ, owning the evil to be worse than what was known and laid to their door. Even B. W. N., threatened with the desertion of his friends if he did not retract, sent out (26th Nov., 1847), “A Statement and Acknowledgment respecting certain Doctrinal errors.”

But this failed to satisfy those aggrieved. Mr. N. did confess his awful sin “in holding that the Lord Jesus came by birth under any imputation of Adam's guilt, or the consequences of such imputation “; but he put a similar issue on His being made of a woman. Think of including Christ with the many constituted sinners! This he gave up; but he never disclaimed the horrible falsehood that He was under the curse of a broken law as a born Israelite, not vicariously, but in His own relation to God. No one any longer alleged against him his perversion of Rom. 5:19 (first half); but he gave no sign that he renounced his evil teaching against the Lord, as “come of a woman, come under law.” On the contrary, in a “Letter on subjects connected with the Lord's Humanity” (Oct. 1848), the latest known to me in which Mr. N. brought out his own doctrine on Christ's relation to God, he maintained the principles of the obnoxious tracts withdrawn for reconsideration—all, save involving Christ in Adam's guilt. He had “used wrong theological terms, and a wrong application to the fifth of Romans” (p. 32)!

It is plain that this system is semi-Irvingite, and though rejecting sinful humanity, comes to the same result of overthrowing His person directly, and indirectly the work which depends on His person. No doubt he wrote often on His work, and on justification by faith; but what is the value, as I told an eminent religious leader, of faith in a false Christ? Living faith is in the true Christ of God. Now it is one fully implicated in his kinsman's heterodoxy who dared to impute to an Irvingite spirit the doctrine of the church's rapture! Far from me to say a needless word of one who is no longer alive to speak and explain. Now I was not with the new departure of Park St., nor approved of proceedings that led up to and followed it, and have reason to feel grief for that which there is good ground to impute to others. But unbroken deep regard to a great and good man, an uncompromising I champion for Christ's glory and God's truth, makes it an imperative duty to expose so low an effort of polemical rancor.

If there had been no letter from Mr. D. to Mr. N. stating the actual source, it was a rash and wicked surmise to say or think that “it was from that supposed revelation that the modern doctrine and the modern phraseology respecting it arose.” That a vexed and vindictive spirit might thus imagine under a lamentably sad temptation, one can readily understand. But can any fair mind in God's presence, if he knew no other facts, conceive a greater improbability than J. N. D. adopting the utterance of what he believed a demon as a truth of God?

On the face of it, the “supposed revelation” declared that, within three years and a half, the saints would be caught up to the Lord, and the earth wholly given up to the days of vengeance. The power came upon another at the same time, confirming the rapture of the saints within three years and a half. Mr. N.'s words are purposely quoted from the article in the “Christian Witness,” though at hand is Baxter's Narrative from which he drew the information. This betrays a source and character totally different from Mr. Tweedy's suggestion, or Mr. Darby's letter, for the doctrine which became a factor of force not only among brethren so-called but among saints of God largely throughout the world.

The oracular utterance was grounded on the ordinary system, which Mr. B. W. N. shared, of making the Lord's coming a link in the chain of prophecy. The rapture was to be within three years and a half from the time of prediction; as the voice then or afterward taught that those described in Rev. 7 and xiv. (for they confounded the two companies) would be the saints caught up. But all such ideas are baseless, and prove the absence of all real intelligence as to the book of Revelation. In neither case is there a translation to heaven, which takes place between Rev. 3 and iv. For the saints are still viewed as in the churches on earth according to the one chapter; and in the other they are seen under the symbol of the twenty-four crowned and enthroned elders. During that interval Christ comes to fetch them on high. The hope is thus carefully kept in scripture from confusion with the prophetic account of God's dealings with Israel and the Gentiles which follow. The like distinction is not less carefully marked by the coming of the Lord in 1 and 2 Thessalonians with other corresponding scriptures, and has nothing in common with the Irvingite voice in its unfounded and false application to the prophetic part of the Apocalypse.

Whatever men think, scripture (in the capital seat of the revelation of Christ's coming for the church, 1 Thess. 4) is express, that 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. All must believe in this rapture at some time; for it is surely the common hope of Christians. The humbling fact, even among prophetic students, is that it has occupied so little their hearts and lips. But allowing this, why should any who wish to decry its prominence rush to the malignant conclusion, that it was derived from an Irvingite source, by those who are and have ever been as far as possible from such teaching, and who deem it as utterly anti-Christian?

Ah, yes; but the “modern phraseology” —that tells the tale! Is it then that “the rapture” betrays the tainted source beyond a doubt? What a blinding preoccupation must have possessed the mind which drew such an inference! It is true that in the Dictionary of Dr. Johnson, and even in that of the much lauded Richardson, “rapture” is wholly absent in the sense before us. Webster, and Worcester also ignore it. It is an inexcusable blank. For it is not a modern “phraseology,” but employed as in this case two or three centuries ago by well-known authors of choice expression.

An early use of the word “rapture” for actual removal out of the present scene by power is by Shakespeare (Pericles, Act II, sc. 1, near the end). This however applies, not to the Lord for heaven, but to the sea, “the rapture of the sea.” As there is no other expression for the idea in our tongue, we cannot afford to lose it. But in fact it did not become obsolete. On the contrary it is employed, and in its scriptural application to divine power catching up to heaven, by men of celebrity for their language. John Milton, who, whatever the splendor of his style in prose and verse, is not one to be relied on for soundness in the faith, or decent respect for prelates, however pious, did believe that “Thou, the eternal and shortly-expected King, shalt open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the world,” and of course to reward so sober, wise, and religious a commonwealth as that of England! But no reference of his to heavenly hope do I know; and hence he had no need of such a word. But in the same literal sense he does use its kindred “rapt” in Par. Lost, iii. 522, “Rapt in a chariot drawn by fiery steeds,” and in Par. Reg. ii. 39, 40, “For whither is he gone, what accident hath rapt him from us?” Nor is he by any means the only old English poet who so wrote.

But let us pass to the graver roll of divines, which any can verify without trouble. Bishop Joseph Hall in the most popular of his writings, “The Contemplations,” so entitles Elijah's translation to heaven, “The Rapture of Elijah” (Hall's Works, II. p. 80, Oxford, 1837). A second is Dr. Thos. Jackson, Dean of Peterborough, born after Bishop Hall but deceased before him; in whose second folio (p. 1068) we read of the “taking up” of Enoch and Elijah, yet in the Table of the third it is their “rapture” (ed. 1673). A third and later witness is the still more celebrated Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who in vol. vi. 548 of his Whole Works, a new ed. 1828, uses “rapture” twice over for Paul caught or rapt up; and he has the credit of being considered one of the refiners of the English language.

From the Episcopalians of that early day I turn to Nonconformists, not so far back but by no means modern; Matthew Henry's Exposition of the O. & N. Test. vi. on the scripture before us. “At, or immediately before, this rapture into the clouds, those who are alive will undergo a mighty change,” &c.

The last that we need is the respectable Dr. John Guyse, who wrote the Practical Expositor (i.e. of the N. T. in three 4to vols.). The Second ed. of 1761, now lies before me. In his paraphrase of 1 Thess. 4:17, he says of the dead saints raised, “and we with them shall be carried up by a divine rapture,” &c. These quotations are the more seasonable, as whether Anglicans or Dissenters they were little conversant with the blessed hope. Nor was anyone more uninstructed than Dr. G. For in the Lord's call he hears only “an awful summons,” and he confounds the glorified saints when caught up with the sheep or blessed of all the nations (Matt. 25:34). Like all the theologians and their Oxford critic, Prof. Jowett, he, with even more evident blundering, makes the apostle entreat them by “the awful coming” of the Lord to the final judgment at the last day, and by their hopes of being then gathered with us to meet the Lord in the air. That is, he makes Paul treat of the same subject in his true comfort and in the falsehood he refuted. Yet even Dr. G. did not go so far as a highly respected Bp. of Carlisle (an Oxford double first), who translated ἐνέστηκεν will immediately come. Dr. G. was more grammatical; but all err who deny it to mean that the day of the Lord “is present.”

It is no question of omniscience in man, but of the inspired truth God was pleased to give. The confusion, not merely among Christians little conversant with prophetic scripture, but in those who fully look for the Lord to return in His kingdom and fulfill the predicted times of refreshing for the earth, is deplorable. Take, as an instance out of multitudes, the words of the late Dean Alford in his Prolegomena on 1 Thessalonians, Sect. II. 6, 4th ed. p. 46. “Their attention had been so much drawn to one subject—his preaching had been full of one great matter, and from the necessity of the case, so scanty on many which he desired to lay forth to them, that he already feared lest their Christian faith should be a distorted and unhealthy faith. And in some measure Timotheus had found it so. They were beginning to be really in expectation of the day of the Lord (iv. 11 ff.)—neglectful of that pure and sober and temperate walk, which is alone the fit preparation for that day (iv. 3 ff.; v. 1-9)—distressed about the state of the dead in Christ, who they supposed had lost the precious opportunity of standing before Him at His coming” (4:13 ff.).

Here the mistake corrected in the First Epistle is mixed up with the error which the Second dispels. They are quite distinct. The first was not restlessness in expecting the day of the Lord, but was unintelligent sorrow over departed brethren, because they were supposed by death to lose their place in the cortege of glory. This gave occasion to the fresh revelation in 1 Thess. 4 of the Lord's causing the dead in Christ to rise first, while it is also shown that both dead and living saints are to be caught up together into the air to meet the Lord; and thus shall we ever be with the Lord. After the removal of their needless grief, disturbing alarm befell the saints by the unfounded rumor that the day of the Lord was actually there, in all probability confounded with their sore trials and persecution from their worldly countrymen and the unbelieving Jews, embittered by envy against the gospel and all who had received it. This the apostle clears away by setting before them the true nature of that day, which will display their enemies as the objects of retributive punishment, and Himself glorified in His saints and marveled at in all that believed. He next beseeches them, by their bright hope of His presence and their gathering together to Him, not to be shaken quickly from their mind, nor yet troubled by this false report; and then he proceeds to prove that there must be the apostasy first, and the man of sin revealed, not before the Lord comes to receive His own, but before they come with Him from heaven to accomplish that tremendous day (2 Thess. 2).

Again, what misconception of the hope as a whole can be more profound than to represent that the later epistles gradually modify the earlier “expectation of His almost immediate coming” (Sect. iv. 8, p. 49)? “9. And in this, the earliest of these epistles, I do find exactly that which I might expect on this head. While every word and every detail respecting the Lord's coming is a perpetual inheritance for the church—while we continue to comfort one another with the glorious and heart-stirring sentences which he utters to us in the word of the Lord—no candid eye can help seeing in the epistle, how the uncertainty of the day and hour ' has tinged all these passages with a hue of near anticipation: how natural that the Thessalonians receiving this epistle, should have allowed that anticipation to be brought even yet closer, and have imagined the day to be actually already present. 10. It will be seen by the above remarks how very far I am from conceding their point to those who hold that the belief, of which this Epistle is the strongest expression, was an idle fancy, or does not befit the present age, as well as it did that one. It is God's purpose that we should ever be left in this uncertainty, looking for and basting unto the day of the Lord, which may be upon us at any time before we are aware of it,” &c.

Thus then the rapture of the saints is not a mere catching up into the air in a moment, to come down again with the Lord the next, which seems to be the strange, hasty, and narrow conclusion of some men; but even Matt. 13 might correct them. For the saints are transferred from earth to heaven to be forever with the Lord, as the wheat from the field into the barn. No doubt it is the harvest season, and after the darnel are collected by the reaping angels into bundles for the purpose of burning them. It is Christ's presence who calls and assembles the saints to Himself above. The consummation of the age is not a point of time, but a period which consists of successive events highly important, distinct, and even contrasted; for after the rapture beyond controversy the darnel are consigned to the furnace and burnt; and then do the righteous shine out, not on the earth, but as the sun in the kingdom of their Father, the heavenly region of the kingdom of God. Antichrist is not destroyed till then, whereas before it the marriage of the Lamb is celebrated above. Other scriptures of more formal and comprehensive prophecy, as the Revelation, enable us to see the interval, and to learn the momentous aims which it subserves for the divine ways of both judgment and mercy, almost quite lost in the superficial and confused view referred to.

Psa. 110, so often and boldly urged for Christ's rising from the Father's throne at once to take His own in the new age, leaves room for these great events which lay outside of Israel's hopes, and are here passed by in silence. The notion (Five Letters p. 58) that for a time the “saints in their risen bodies will be in the midst of those who remain unchanged: a terrible sight bursting suddenly as in a moment upon the slumbering world—the Lord over them in the air in His glory, and raised saints near and around them”! is a dream worthy of the Shepherd of the Pseudo-Hernias, and beneath even the Pseudo-Barnabas.

Not less suicidal is the notion that after Christ has received the wheat and executed final sentence on the darnel in Christendom, the lawless one “was still existent,” and “undismayed by all he had witnessed,” instead of being annulled by the appearing of the Lord's presence (Thoughts on the Apocalypse, 1st ed. 298). But what destroys the entire scheme is the admission (in the page before, 297) that the saints “are recognized in the commencement of this chapter [Rev. 19] as being above with the Lord in the glory.” This is indeed quite true; but how, does it consist with the systematic effort to jumble all up in a single act at the moment of His presence? It is not for me to defend his spurious idea in the same pages, “that the moment when the Lord terminates the history of Christendom, and takes His saints to meet Him in the air is the moment when He also gives His final blow to Babylon.” To Babylon! Why, this is another absurd contradiction of his and almost every one else's fundamental principle, that the vials like the preceding series of judgments are God's activity, before Christ comes judicially; and great Babylon came in remembrance before God to give her His cup of wrath in the most extreme form before the Lord with all His saints left heaven to deal with the Beast and the False Prophet, &c.

Now this is the staunch champion of the school implacably hostile to allowing any but one act of coming. Yet on Rev. 19:11-14 he concedes (in Thoughts, 299) that the saints have joined Him, and fall into the train of His glory. Yet he knew, as do his followers, that the Lord must have come into the air to receive them, before they could thus follow Him out of heaven to execute judgment on the most blasphemous and daring of all his enemies.

Magna est veritas et praevalebit. Who before could anticipate such an acknowledgment from B. W. N.? For he thus acknowledges the principle, without having learned that the only true time for the rapture is at the close of Rev. 3 and before the scenes of Rev. 4, 5. But even he was compelled by the force of scripture to confess that Rev. 19:14, to say nothing of the preceding vision of the heavenly bridals, compels the admission of Christ's having come for His saints before He arrives, and they with Him, manifested together in glory. Granted the great truth of His coming for the saints in sovereign grace before they follow Him from heaven for His overwhelming judgments on the earth, the interval is quite secondary; but this too can only be learned satisfactorily from scripture. Surely acrimony might be well spared in searching into such a detail, though of no small interest and importance.

The criticism then, in order to deny the “rapture,” evinces not only a captious spirit but real ignorance. “Rapture” in the usage required is a word familiar to English Christians from earlier days, and gives no ground of offense save to an evil eye.

Need it to be pointed out that “the modern doctrine,” if of any weight, assumes that the rapture of the saints by Christ to the Father's house is not the doctrine of God? But this is the question for revelation to decide. We on the contrary here join issue, being assured that no other conviction truly answers to the inspired testimony, only let scripture he fully taken into account, and adequate room left for what it speaks about Jews and Greeks, and the church of God, as the apostle says. The failure to distinguish Christ's coming, or Presence for the Christian (for the phrase bears a generic sense), from that later aspect of it which is specified as “the day,” throws even careful minds into confusion, and creates sure collision with scripture. Where for instance is the force of the apostle's appeal in 2 Thess. 2:1, 2, when they are mixed up? Distinguish them, and chaos is reduced to divine order, and the argument is seen in all its cogency without strain or effort.

Take this illustration from a still more solemn subject, though not strict but sufficient to help, if the enemy were seeking to destroy faith's confidence by the terror of the great white throne. We beseech you, brethren, for the sake of (or by) the known grace of Christ and the life eternal and the everlasting redemption we have in Him, that ye be not soon shaken in (or from) your mind, nor troubled, either by spirit, or word, or letter as by us, as that the eternal judgment will bring perdition on you. That awful doom is to be at the close, long after you have been caught up to heaven; and it will fall on the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and fornicators and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars: their part will not be in a new heaven and a new earth, but in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone; this is the second death.

GOD'S INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES, by W. K.,

cloth, 5/-
THE LORD'S PROPHECY ON OLIVET, 9c1.

Short Introduction to Paul's Epistles, 1/- & 1/6

ON THE REVEALED EVENTS BETWEEN THE RAPTURE AND THE RESTITUTION OF ALL THINGS, BY J. S. F. Cox... ld.

Published

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

Jacob: 21. Jacob's Lowly Son Exalted

HERE we must be brief, as we have to do, not with Jacob, but with his sons; so that a mere sketch is all that we would now attempt. As man's and his brethren's part was evil toward the righteous Joseph, God wrought in His admirable providence, and caused what they did to injure only the more to accomplish His purpose of good, as well as to set him in honor who deserved it, but had to pass from one humiliation to a worse.

First we see Joseph concerned with the unhappy looks of Pharaoh's chief cupbearer and chief baker, bound in the same prison with himself. They had each his dream, and were grieved that there was none to interpret. But Joseph, replying that this belongs to God, asks to hear, and furnishes the desired light; which was exactly verified in the death of the baker and the restoration of the cup-bearer (chap. 40.). Next, Pharaoh, at the end of two full years of prison trial to Joseph, has his dreams which not all the scribes nor the sages of Egypt could explain. This woke up the forgetful heart of the restored chamberlain who tells the king of the Hebrew youth; and he, hastily sent for from the dungeon, disclaims any source but God for the king's need. But on hearing he is equally clear that God had sent the dreams to Pharaoh, and enabled him to let Pharaoh see what He Himself was about to do. The word came so simply yet convincingly home to the king and his servants, that none was so fit to direct aright the divinely given light as he who had been the means of making it known; and at one bound Pharaoh set the captive over all the land of Egypt, next to himself on the throne. And here again the prophetic dreams were punctually fulfilled to the immense relief of suffering man (chap. 41.). Among the sufferers (42, 43.) were Jacob and his sons, all but Benjamin being sent by their father to buy the food which Joseph alone could supply. “And Joseph knew his brethren, but they knew not him” (8). And a marvelous forecast follows of the way a greater than Joseph, first suffering from His brethren and the Gentiles, interpreter too of God's wisdom in His humiliation, and exalted to the right hand of the Highest, not only administers the richest blessing to the Gentiles, unknown to His Jewish brethren in their dark unbelief, but adopts deep and efficacious means to bring them to repentance and make Himself known as their Brother and gracious Friend in the day of His glory.

On the details, however instructive and necessary to a life of Joseph, we need not here dilate, beyond pointing out the critical part of the contrivance to make Benjamin prisoner, which drew out Judah's confession and plea at all cost to let this youngest brother return to his father (44). Thereon follows (in chap. 45.) Joseph making himself known to his brethren. And here we look on all as living pictures of that great event which will as surely be accomplished when all Israel shall be saved, by a distinct act of divine grace and power, when the fullness of the Gentiles shall have come in (Rom. 11:25-27). As touching the gospel the Jews are still enemies for the Gentiles' sake; for God is still working among the nations, and not at all yet in a national way with the Jews, who are still unbelieving that He who came of themselves, the rejected Messiah, is exalted on high and has long been the source of salvation and blessing to the Gentiles.

But assuredly the time is at hand when the famished Jews will be brought under His gracious hand, and after secret mercy will be brought to own that the man of God's right hand, the Son of man whom He made strong for Himself, is none other than He whom they so shamelessly rejected and forced on the Gentiles to crucify Him, who in His glory will not be ashamed to call them brethren. In order that this should be a real work in their souls, not as often of old a mere external deliverance, but truly of those written in the book and characterized by genuine faith and repentance, they must pass through a special tribulation which will be disastrous to all who having no conscience toward God become apostate. But it will be blessed greatly to those who are born of God and exercised by their most bitter experience, and at length are brought to fully judge all when they behold in His glory for their rescue and blessing Him whom they recognize as the Messiah they had pierced.

The Psalms and the prophets, as well as the prophetic part of the Revelation, to say nothing of the synoptic Gospels also, cast much light, not on the glorious change only, but on the process employed by the Lord to make Himself known to His brethren. Here tradition has been guilty of a double wrong: by appropriating to Christians all that divine light which will surely be afforded gradually and increasingly when God begins to prepare His ancient people in darkness and error and suffering through a work of grace, however ignorant at first, for the blessed and exalted place they are to have under Messiah and the new covenant in the days of the kingdom, the kingdom no longer in mystery but in manifestation. And how precious will those chapters be, when conscience is truly awakened and exercised, and light dawns surely if slowly on their souls, and the true Joseph is at length made known to His brethren! The work will not be complete, until the sins are judged in the light of His personal presence, His glory and His grace. And what type could be clearer than this chap. 45 affords us! Does this diminish our interest and profit too in anticipating the future? Nay, nor this only; for we may see in Joseph's marriage and his sons the shadow of Christian or church blessing, while He is not yet at all known to His brethren as such.

How sad it is to realize, as we enjoy the various light of Christ's humiliation and glory, that the very principle of the higher criticism is nothing but withering and blinding unbelief. For if there be anything more distinctive of it than another, is it not the denial of true prophecy? And what can be more characteristic of scripture than that such simple narratives as this should be so pervaded with that light divine? Alas! it is equally blind to the heavenly light of Christ, of which His miracles were a very real though far from the highest part. For this reason the apostasy is worse in Christendom than in Israel, however grievous and gross this may have been.

Israel's Practical Sanctification: Part 2

The closing paragraph of the chapter is of a more general character, and opens with that obedience to which Israel was called. The law given through Moses defined it. If Jehovah called a people to be His, they must be conformed to His word. They had to learn that, being sinners, they had no power to please Him, but continually failed. If they kept not His covenant and refused to walk in His law; if they forgot His doings, and His wondrous works that He had shown them in Egypt, in the desert, and in the land of Canaan, still less did they judge themselves and remember His promises or look on to the Messiah in faith. And thus their unbelief has brought on them the sad fate, to be driven out of the goodly land as the Amorite should have been before them. Can they deny its righteousness? It was not only Israel greedily lapsing into idolatry as keenly as the Gentiles, but even Judah's favored remnant sent back to their land by Cyrus according to the prophets guilty of rejecting their own Messiah, and the chief priests professing the apostasy of the people in the renegade sentence, “We have no king but Caesar.” What could God do to them in adequate retribution, but send the Romans to take away both their place and their nation?

Nevertheless scripture is no less clear that, if God tells us the sad tale of their ruin through trusting themselves and unbelief of His grace, He will surely and soon work for His own glory in the Messiah risen and exalted to prove Himself their merciful and faithful Savior God. For He will restore health to His people, in spite of the multitude of their iniquity, and will heal them of their wounds however deserved. Do men call them an outcast, and say that none cares for Zion? Thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will turn again the captivity of Jacob's tents, and will have compassion on his dwelling-places, and city and palace and temple shall rise never more to fall as long as earth endures. And everlasting joy shall be theirs under the reign of Jehovah-Jesus. Nor shall they be small but exalted beyond all nations, and their oppressors punished by Jehovah. Not the Jews only, but all the families of Israel shall be His people as they never were, and He their God in sovereign mercy rejoicing over judgment.

But here we have the humbling story of their responsibility before they are brought to say, Blessed is He that cometh in Jehovah's name. No believer should wonder that “this generation” came to naught—that such a fig-tree bore no fruit, nothing but leaves. Grace, will create a generation to come. No doubt that sovereign grace has called in us of the Gentiles who believe, while the Jew holds out in his incredulity; but the same grace will bless them, beginning with a remnant when we are caught up, and issuing, after awful judgments which cut off the wicked, in His people being righteous and mighty, the days of their mourning ended forever.

“22 And ye shall observe all my statutes, and all my judgments and do them, that the land whither I bring you to dwell therein vomit you not out. 23 And ye shall not walk in the customs of the nation which I cast out before you; for all these things they did, and therefore I abhorred them. 24 And I said to you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you for a possession, a land flowing with milk and honey: I [am] Jehovah your God who separated you from the peoples. 25 And ye shall make a separation between the clean beast and the unclean, and between the unclean bird and the clean; and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast or by bird, or by anything which creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean. 26 And ye shall be holy to me; for I Jehovah am holy, and have separated you from the peoples that ye should be mine. 27 And if there be a man or a woman in whom is necromancy or soothsaying, they shall certainly be put to death: they shall stone them with stones; their blood [is] upon them” (vers. 22-27).

Yet there stands written not less indelibly the history of Israel in flagrant derelictions, notwithstanding a patience on Jehovah's part as admirable as it is affecting. They fell in their way like Adam in his. And Christendom has followed not less but more than man or Israel. Happy they who find in the Second man the only refuge, salvation, and rest for the guilty and lost. “This is the victory which hath gained the victory over the world—our faith. And who is he that gaineth the victory over the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?”

Those who looked for His coming alone sought to please God in heeding His statutes and doing them. They abhorred the unnatural horrors of Canaan. They felt God's goodness in giving them the land flowing with milk and honey. They bowed to each mark in daily life whereby He had severed them from their heathen neighbors, and recognized that they were bound to be holy to Him, because He was holy who separated them from all peoples to be His people. And their hearts would go with His burning anger against such as in the face of all lent themselves to the old enemy in necromancy and soothsaying as unworthy to live in His land.

The great error of foes, and even friends sometimes, lies in making this to be a question for Christians. It was really so for Israel. Christians are a heavenly people, with a calling on high, which the New Testament defines and expounds. Their responsibility is wholly distinct, being under grace, not law, as Israel was if we defer to the authority of the apostle of the Gentiles, as we surely ought. Yet it is our privilege to profit by the teaching of the older scriptures, and to draw out the divine principles which underlie even the least shadow of the Levitical economy.

But we stand on a ground different from that of Israel. The coming of the Son of God and accomplishment of redemption made the way for this. The rent veil has for the present closed the Mosaic system, and opened the door for the better hope by which we draw nigh to God, as no Jew could.

We are now free and exhorted to enter boldly into the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus. He is become surety of a better covenant. There are moral truths which ever abide as faith in God and obedience of His will; but as Israel had marked peculiarities, so has the church what rises immeasurably higher, and distinct even from what Israel will have in the day of the millennial glory. However blessed, and they will be so richly, they do not cease to be an earthly people in that day. We are even now heavenly, according to 1 Cor. 15:48; and then we shall bear the image of the Heavenly One, instead of suffering with Him till He come again.

Proverbs 20:1-7

Here are brought together the great danger of certain follies on the one hand, and the value of wisdom and fidelity on the other.

“Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler: and whoso erreth thereby is not wise.

The terror of a king is as a lion's roaring; he that provoketh him to anger sinneth against his own soul.

It is for a man's honor to keep aloof from strife; but every fool will rush in.

The slothful will not plow by reason of the winter: in harvest shall he beg and have nothing.

Counsel in man's heart [is] deep water; and a man of understanding draweth it out.

Most men will proclaim every one his own kindness; but a faithful man who can find?

A righteous one walketh in his integrity: blessed [are] his children after him” (vers. 1-7).

There is no creature of God which has not an important place if used aright. But men blind to His will seek their pleasure heedlessly, and are thus enticed to open sin and grievous hurt. This is eminently the case with wine and strong drink; the one deceives, the other maddens. The warnings are so many and evident on every side, that such as err thereby have only to blame their own folly and self-will.

Rulers are not a terror to good work but to the evil. Nor does the king bear the sword in vain. He is ordained as God's servant, an avenger for wrath to him that does evil. The terror he inspires is therefore as a lion's roar. To provoke his anger is to sin against one's own soul. That again is sheer folly and wrong. Would you then have no fear of an authority so able to punish? Do that which is good, and you shall have praise from it.

Nor is there a more common snare than meddling where we have no business or duty. To this the self-sufficient are prone. Their vanity leads them to accredit others with failure, and themselves with wisdom. They are the men of common sense and of righteousness, if others are more brilliant. Hence in their folly they rush into that strife, from which the right-minded hold aloof to their honor.

But there is also danger from one's own slothfulness, which is exemplified in its paralyzing the ordinary call to labor. It is ordered of God as the rule that plowing time should not be when things grow, and still less when they ripen. But a sluggard finds an excuse for putting off his duty in the cold weather which invites him to strenuous industry. Does he plead the winter against plowing? Then shall he beg in harvest and have nothing.

If there be thus from laziness danger of neglect in the proper season, and from officious vanity whenever a thorny question arises, it all goes to show the worth of intelligence, and the need of taking pains in order to arrive at it. For the truly wise are not superficial; but counsel in their heart is “deep water,” instead of bubbling over on every occasion however slight. And few things mark a man of understanding more than discerning ability to draw it out.

It is the common failing of men to affect a world-wide benevolence, and to cheat themselves into the belief that their talk and tears over the widow and the orphan are real kindness of no ordinary sort. Let us beware of walking in so vain a show, and remember that the word of God raises the question whether the reality is in deed and truth. “A faithful man who shall find?”

Such souls however there are in a world where faith is rare, and most love glory from men rather than glory from God, though the one be as evanescent as it is vain, and the other as everlasting as it is substantial. “The righteous walketh in his integrity: blessed [are] his children after him.” God is a rewarder of them that seek Him out; nor is it only the blessing of a good conscience in his walk, but God does not forget his children after him. So even King David could not but feel toward Chimham, if Barzillai sought nothing for himself.

Gospel Words: Resist Not Evil

The Lord here advances beyond all Jewish and indeed human thought, when He enjoins on His disciples patient grace on all kinds of inflicted wrong. To resist it is forbidden. He cites from the law the principle of talion, as it is styled, or retaliation, expressly to abandon it. It was particularly open to abuse; but even when applied with the strictest justice, and acting as a powerful check on human vindictiveness, how far was it from the mind of heaven which Christ was manifesting on earth, and laying down as the only conduct proper to the sons of His Father! Can we conceive a greater shock to Jewish feeling?

“Ye heard that it was said, Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I say to you not to resist evil; but whoever striketh (or shall strike) thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And to him that would go to law with thee and take thy vest (or tunic), leave him thy coat (or mantle) also. And whoever shall impress thee for one mile, go with him two.”

No doubt that on such a ground the world could not enter. To the natural man the rule of the heavens is impossible. Yet it is a favorite theme for such persons as believe neither in the Deity of the Lord nor in His atoning worth to descant on the Sermon of the Mount as the perfect ideal of Christian legislation. It is no more than an academic recitation. Nor is it that they have the most distant notion of obeying it themselves, nor do they expect others to exhibit such unworldly traits. If wrong were done them in person or property, as the Lord describes, they utterly object to its applying as a living authority. Even pious men help their unbelief by crying out against understanding His words as they read, and argue for spirit against letter.

Now it is true that here as everywhere mere letter fails. One might imitate the outward acts described and come short of what the Lord aims at throughout His entire discourse. The most rigid obedience of His sayings in order to life and the Father's love would in such a case prove a more fiery law than that of Sinai. For the Lord begins with spiritual qualities in His own, in vain sought in fallen man, and such as characterize a divine nature of which grace gives the believer to partake. Blessed indeed are such, as He pronounced them, and the more, not less, when persecuted on account of righteousness in a world of lawlessness; and if reviled and persecuted for Christ's sake, called to rejoice and exult, because their reward was great in the heavens. What can man do to hurt those who are happier the worse they are treated? The secret is that they are more than conquerors through Him that loved them, and abjure all merit of their own. But they have a new life (and it is the life of the Second man, not of the first) whose internal marks were displayed practically, as the Lord described in the opening verses of the Sermon (Matt. 5:1-12), and their separate position before men follows (vers. 13-16). In all that thence is given us the Lord enlarges the law and the prophets, so far as to rise above them immensely in scope till, as here, we have grace in suffering from evil instead of punishing it as the law provided.

It was what God had sent His Son to manifest here below, and none fully follow. But suffering for His sake might be our portion as it often has been of our brethren. Thus all our meetness for God's presence depends on His death and resurrection, as our pardon on His blood; and we own our absolute indebtedness to His grace for both. It is our duty and joy to follow and imitate, as indeed He is our life; and He is the standard in not resisting evil.

But cavilers who would pare down and fritter away His words are not ashamed to argue that He meant them not literally, because when struck on the face for His answer to the high priest, He calmly remonstrated, while bowing to the insult. Was this paying evil back in its own coin? On the contrary it was One who did no sin nor was guile found in His mouth, who when reviled, reviled not again, and when suffering threatened not. In fact He presented far more than the other cheek, for they spit in His face, and buffeted Him; and struck Him with the palms of their hands with the utmost contempt. No! the Lord yielded to wrong instead of resisting it; and such is the true calling of the Christian.

Here we may if need be follow Him in spirit and letter. As man is tenacious of his little goods, the Lord puts the case, not of offering personal violence only, but of depriving him of what attaches to man by a legal suit. What then does He call for? “To him that would go to law with thee, and take thy vest, leave him thy coat.” How much better to lose one's clothes than consistency with Christ? The spirit of the injunction goes farther than the one cheek or the outer coat. What men seek is to evade all suffering and hold their human rights in defiance of His words, thus losing the reality of Christianity and retaining not even its semblance.

There was another claim in those days of which the Jews were prone to complain as an intolerable hardship. The imperial government authorized its officials, on their errands, in certain cases to require personal attendance, and with their beasts of burden too. How men are apt to be vexed with what after all is no great burden, and none so much as a people like the Jews under their heathen lords! The Lord would raise His disciples above all such self-will. “Whoever shall impress thee for one mile, go with him two!” With what simplicity and force He provides His own with a spirit to carry them in meek dignity above the squabbles of the world! How unworthy of Him would be the letter of refusing to go four or five miles, if such were the requisition, because the Lord had said, “Go with him two!” The real mind of the Lord is that he should willingly exceed what he was asked. It is grace in patience.

Can anything convince you, my reader, that you can neither be nor do what is essential to enter the kingdom of the heavens? There is but one way, Christ; and this way you can only get by renouncing yourself. So inseparable are faith and repentance. He saves by giving not redemption only, but a new and divine nature which hates self-will, and which loves and does God's will. Hence you obey according to the law of liberty, as contrasted with the Jew under the law of bondage.

The Heavenly Hope: Part 1

There is another aspect in which scripture presents the coming of the Lord. It is part of that immense change intimated in the Gospel of John, when the public testimony was closed, and the Lord unbosoms Himself to the family of God, before He gave Himself up to the band led by the traitor for His apprehension and death. He had already and publicly announced His crucifixion (John 12:32). The time was come to leave the world.

John 13 introduces the new subject. It is a distinct transfer from earth to heaven. Messianic hopes are wholly eclipsed. The chosen nation are no more in evidence than the city or the sanctuary. It is not the Lord correcting the earthly expectations of the disciples as they drew His attention to the buildings of the temple, or predicting that not one stone should be left upon another, but be broken down. Nor is it the chief disciples coming privately to Him on Olivet and asking, When shall these things be? And what shall be the sign of Thy presence, and of the consummation of the age? Here we breathe a wholly different atmosphere; and the Lord by deed and word leads on His own to unprecedented dealings of grace soon to dawn on them, in proper Christian privilege and responsibility, for which the cross as seen in the light of God laid the basis.

“Now before the feast of the passover, Jesus (knowing that his hour had come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father,) having loved his own that were in the world loved them unto the end. And supper being come, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot Simon's [son] that he should betray him, He, knowing that the Father had given him all things into his hands, and that he came out from God and goeth to God, riseth from supper, and layeth aside his upper garments, and took a linen towel and girded himself; then he poureth water into the basin, and began to wash the feet of the disciples, and to wipe them with the linen towel wherewith he was girded. He cometh therefore unto Simon Peter. He saith to him, Lord, dost thou, wash my feet? Jesus answered and said to him, What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know afterward. Peter saith to him, Never shalt thou wash my feet. Jesus answered him, Unless I wash thee, thou hast no part with me. Simon Peter saith to him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. Jesus saith to him, He that is bathed needeth not to wash save his feet, but is wholly clean: and ye are clean, but not all. For he knew his betrayer: on this account he said, Ye are not all clean” (vers. 1-11).

What could be more impressive? and all the more, if Peter who expressed what all felt had but known that the Lord's washing their feet was in view of His departure, to be with the Father in heavenly glory. This was the truth they had all to learn, the earth being henceforth left behind for things above; not of course absolutely, but now for the Christian, as for Christ. Thus to stoop was a wholly unexpected exercise of His love; and how far was it from being realized yet! He was conscious that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that as He came out from God He was going back to be with God, the unsullied but rejected Holy One of God. From the earth and the earthly people, about to consummate to their own ruin that rejection which their state had implied, He was passing to the Father who ever loved the Son, and now all the more because the evil was only the occasion of proving His entire devotedness at all cost to the Father's will and glory.

If He thus left this world, He would demonstrate His love to His own that were in it, after a sort beyond all thought even of those who had been learning it in every form they then needed and could bear. Associating them while here with Himself for that glory into which He was going, He must and would counteract every defilement of their way inconsistent with that association. Such stains were incompatible with heaven, whither He was going as their forerunner. Of the kingdom they had learned not a little from the O. T., and yet more from Him who added so much that was new to the old things. But the Lord here provides for them a fellowship with Him on high, transcending all previous thoughts, when He should ascend where He was before; and His love would carry them through every need, obstacle, and danger. No wonder that Peter who had confessed His personal glory, revealed to him by the Father that is in the heavens, was lost in astonishment at Christ going down so low to clear away their soils as saints. Yet was he to learn soon afterward that the reality in heaven would enhance the wonder beyond measure.

The Lord on earth sets forth by His action on the disciples what He was about to do for them in heaven. We have an Advocate with the Father if one sin. It is expressly not for the unclean as such, but for those already washed if the feet get defiled. It is untrue that those washed all over do not need to have any subsequent impurity removed; or that, if defiled after the washing of the person, they need this to be renewed. The washing of regeneration abides in all its value, but demands the cleansing of the soiled feet.

It is the glorified Jesus who assures His own of His persistent and all-efficacious love in carrying on this most needful work at God's right hand, acting on His own here below by His Spirit and word; as it is said in Eph. 5:26, purifying by the washing of water by the word, consequent on giving Himself for the church on the cross. The restoration of our communion when interrupted by sin is as essential as the new birth or as justification. He has set Himself down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, having made the purification of sins; but this finished and accepted and abiding work, instead of dispensing with further call, makes Him the more solicitous to clear away every inconsistency that would otherwise sully its luster, displease our Father, and leave ourselves in unavailing shame and grief. It is His action of grace on high which gives us to confess the sin and prove how faithful is the God of all grace. “He that is bathed needeth not to wash except his feet.” The blessed relationship of the Christian abides intact; but the Lord, even in the glories of heaven, occupies Himself with every failure to efface it holily, turning it to our needed humiliation but to fresh blessing in His infinite love.

Why is this wondrous grace here enlarged on? It is part of the characteristic blessedness of the Christian, as it was wholly new to the disciples when the Lord set forth its type before their eyes so vividly. It was a necessary provision for them during His absence, which they would soon learn is fraught with far higher privilege than could be possessed or known during the days of His flesh. It would endear Him yet more when they knew it shortly afterward, as they did not and could not know it then. They were aware of His exceeding condescension, and deeply moved that He should do the work of the meanest slave on their behalf; but only after His death, resurrection, and ascension would they learn by the Holy Spirit what His mystic washing of their feet really meant.

But there is another and still more stupendous communication which the Lord made in this chapter. It also is part of our Christian heritage, going far beyond any prophetic account of our Lord's atoning death in the O. T. such as Isa. 53, precious and bright as it is in itself, and as it will be to the generation to come of Israel. The going out of Judas (after Satan entered in) on his awful errand of perfidy gave the occasion. “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, God also shall glorify him in himself, and straightway shall glorify him” (vers. 31, 32). No more pregnant revelation of the Savior's death as made sin on the cross is anywhere found, nor one so distinctly lit up with Christian light and result for God's glory now that it is fulfilled.

As Son of God He had glorified His Father in a life of unwavering and absolute obedience: a savor of rest such as had never before risen up to heaven from man on the earth, though all in Him here below was a perfect meal offering. But the exit of Judas was the signal of death on the cross. Would the Holy One of God bow to the bearing of sin, whatever it might cost at God's hand? He had vanquished the living temptations of Satan by obeying the written word. Was He willing through death to annul him that has the might of death, and deliver all those that through fear of death were all their life subject to bondage? Would He take upon Himself the sins and iniquities of God's people, the most loathsome of burdens, to make propitiation for them? Would He by the grace of God taste death for everything, and thus break the yoke of bondage under which all the creation groaned, as well as bring many sons to glory as the author, or leader, of their salvation perfected through sufferings?

The Lord here reveals the deepest and most marvelous contest ever engaged on, wherein the otherwise impossible was achieved, and the insoluble as plainly solved to God's glory and the everlasting deliverance of those that lay under guilt and judgment. Good and evil here strove for decision; and where evil seemed to have all its way, good triumphed to all eternity. Man was seen at his worst, hating the Father and the Son, hating without a cause God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Satan here swayed, not the heathen only but most fatally God's people and above all their religious leaders, scribes, doctors of the law, Pharisees, Sadducees, priests, chief priests, and the high priest himself. Roman justice proved shamelessly unjust. Jesus was condemned for His good confession, and for the truth counted imposture and blasphemy. The disciples forsook their Master and fled, one betraying Him for the price of a slave, another and not the least denying Him repeatedly and with oaths. And in the shame and agony of the cross, God, His God, hid His face and forsook Him: the bitterest of all His sorrows, the most intolerable of His sufferings. But so it must be, if He were made sin, and bowed to what it deserved at God's hand, that the divine majesty and holiness might be perfectly vindicated, and salvation come to sinners through their judgment falling on Him, and grace issue in God's righteousness justifying the ungodly who now believed. There and thus only all the attributes of God are brought into mutual harmony. Elsewhere if love pleaded, justice opposed: sin is not canceled so. But here mercy and truth met together, righteousness and peace kissed each other; and this not for earth only but for heaven and all eternity. In the Lord's own words, the Son of man was glorified, and God was glorified in Him, where unbelief saw nothing but failure and ignominy. And what was the result? God shall glorify Him in Himself and shall straightway glorify Him. It is Christ's work seen in God's light, estimated and honored by God Himself on high.

On this Christianity is based, while Israel passes into its long eclipse. Hence flows the gospel of grace to the lost; hence, according to God's secret purpose, the call of the church for union with Christ by the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven, and baptizing the saints, Jew or Gentile matters not, into one body, Christ's body. Even the apostles were then and afterward full of the earthly hope, and restoring the kingdom to Israel. Not so; instead of the unintelligent confusion of theology also, instead of the throne of David or even the dominion of the Son of man over all the peoples, nations, and languages, Christ was to be glorified, not only in heaven entirely separated from the world, but in God Himself, and this “straightway,” in emphatic contrast with the future kingdom which He will by-and-by receive, and return to put down all adversaries in power and glory. Christianity has heavenly and eternal things revealed to faith now.

With this the hope revealed in chap. 14:1-3 is in perfect keeping. Here the land and the city, the people and the temple, vanish into nothingness. Not a word about misleaders, false Christs, or false prophets. We hear not of wars or rumors of wars, of nation rising against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, of famine, of earthquakes in places; nor yet of tribulation and murder, or of hatred from all the nations for Christ's name, nor of internal discord and treachery and hatred, as the love of the many decayed, while some would endure throughout, and God would see to it that the glad tidings of the kingdom should be preached in the whole inhabited earth for a testimony unto all the nations. Still less is there room here for the special and awful sign, according to Daniel's prophecy, of an idol standing in the sanctuary, the harbinger of speedy desolation when the godly in Judea must flee immediately to save their lives or yet worse. Not a hint here of the tribulation beyond parallel to fall at the close on a nation of meting on meting and of treading down, whose land the rivers have spoiled.

In our chapter we have a wholly different state; we see souls about to be severed from such anxieties, and elevated by incomparably higher associations, who have no fears of flight in winter or on sabbath, and are in no way warned for themselves against the cry of Messiah here or there, or the great signs and wonders which Satan will be let work in the hour when God retributively sends an energy of error that they all might be judged who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Still more complete and manifest is the difference of the Christian hope in John 14 from the Presence of the Son of man in Matt. 24, “As the lightning goeth forth from the east and shineth to the west,” especially with the accompanying words, “wherever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered.” Beyond mistake this is the Lord coming in the accomplishment of His judgment, not of His love; for the earth, not for the Father's home above. The figures employed point only to His judicial dealings, with which sun, moon, and stars sympathize. For “immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened, and the moon 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 land (or earth) lament, and they shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send forth his angels with a great sound of trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other.”

Here is no gathering of saints to Christ in heavenly glory, but the Son of man to whom all judgment is committed; and His appearing is as sudden as the lightning flash: where the carcass is, there the birds of prey flock. The governing powers, supreme, derivative, and subordinate, no more do their office; all shall be shaken. The sign is not as before of apostate religion for the godly to flee and escape, but of their Deliverer to destroy those that destroy the earth. The Son of man appearing in heaven is the sign of His speedily coming to the earth to judge the quick and the dead. Hence it is no longer those in Juda, but “all the tribes of the land” (or earth) that lament, and see Him coming; whereas when Christians are concerned, they are manifested, neither after nor before, but in glory with Him. While He is hidden, so are they; when He is manifested, so are they, having been previously caught up. It is His elect of Israel accordingly who are gathered together when He sends forth His angels with a great sound of trumpet and comes in His kingdom.

It is plain that when the Lord presents Himself for the earth and the earthly people, these traits characterize the solemn event: the apostasy, and the man of sin usurping God's prerogatives even in His temple; the desolation and the tribulation that ensue beyond all that ever had been, or that is to be; and the Son of man appearing to take vengeance on the portentous and blasphemous lawlessness, and to deliver Israel by the destruction of their enemies.

Ours is the wholly distinct lot of His coming to receive us to Himself for the place which He is gone to prepare for us in the Father's house, that where He is (and what Christian doubts it?) we may be also. It is the consummation of the sovereign grace which has associated us with Him, so that we are risen with Him even now, one spirit with the Lord, and can say with the beloved apostle that “as He is, so are we in this world.” But we await His coming to be caught up together with the dead in Christ risen first, in clouds to meet the Lord, into the air, and thus to be ever with the Lord. We are not of the world as He is not, and we look for Him to make it good by being taken up to heaven, as He Himself ascended there, not by judicial dealing with our enemies to make the earth the scene of His righteous rule, but by giving us part with Himself in His joy and glory on high, though we shall also reign over the earth when He takes His great power and reigns.

These are the words of the Lord and they are worthy of all heed. “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe on (είς) God, believe also on (είς) me. In my Father's house are many abiding-places; were it not so, I would have told you; because I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I am coming again, and will receive you unto myself, that where I am ye also may be.” Simpler words there could hardly be; but what depth of feeling, and height of glory Jesus was departing, despised of Israel; their beloved Lord, yet one apostle the traitor, another His denier; who could wonder if all the eleven were troubled? Let them be assured that grace would turn all for good and to God's glory. “Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe on God” though ye never saw Him. “Believe on me” when I depart unto the Father, and ye cease to see Me. Let your faith rise from its Jewish form to its Christian character and fullness. Compare John 20:29.

Even My earthly people shall yet say, Blessed is He that cometh in Jehovah's name. Meanwhile I am re-entering heaven to give you who have fore-hoped in Me the Christ a better portion, even a part with Me on high. Instead of abandoning you, I will as your divine Savior both prepare you for the place as already set before you, and prepare the place for you by going to the Father's house. But My heart is fixed, as is the Father's will, on bringing you there. “In my Father's house are many abiding-places.” No doubt you have never aspired to such a home. You have expected Me to abide forever with you in your house, when I have purged it of all adversaries and evils by the power which I have even to subdue all things to Myself. But there is ample room for you as well as Me in that intimate home of divine love and heavenly glory. “If it were not so, I would have told you, because I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go, and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will receive you unto myself, that where I am, ye also may be.”

This is a hope far beyond that of the fathers; though they waited for the city that has foundations whose artificer and demiurge is God, and were eager for a better country than Canaan, that is, a heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God. But now to Christians, or saints being called, He is not ashamed to be Christ's Father and our Father, His God and our God. Such since redemption is our association with Christ. And our hope rises proportionately, however unbelief may try to level down, and contend for a monotonous unity which is at total variance with scripture, and God's ways, and above all His counsels.

No truth more sure or important than the love the Father bears the Son, and all the more. when for the glory of God He became man, and died atoningly that the salvation of the lost might be not only of grace but righteous, God's righteousness; and that the same death of Christ might be the basis for all blessing and glory forever in His universe, His unbelieving enemies alone excepted. “This is my beloved Son, in whom I found my complacency” (Matt. 3:17, &c.). “The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things [to be] in his hand '' (John 3:35). But the Son Himself tells the Father later before the disciples that He loved the saints as He loved the Son (John 17:23). It is this accounts for their future display in the same glory. But it also accounts for that which was in His hidden purposes still deeper, more tender and intimate, the hope of Christ's coming for the Father's house, and fetching us into the place He prepared for us there, that where He is, we too might be. Thence He passed, out of this world which crucified Him, unto the Father. There God, who was glorified in Him here at infinite cost, glorified Him in Himself. There our life is hid with Him in God. There shall we be introduced when He comes and takes us unto Himself. How bright the glimpse of it we have in John 17:24! “Father, I will (desire) that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovedst me before the world's foundation.” To those that love Him this far transcends the glory that He gives us and that we share along with Him before every wondering eye of man; when the very world shall know by that display that the Father sent the Son [for how else could we be thus blessed?], and that He loved us as He loved the Lord; for we. appear in the same glory as the standing demonstration of it.

Indeed the facts, that He deigns to prepare a place for us in the Father's house, so much above the hopes of saints and prophets, and that He personally comes into the air for the wondrous meeting there to fetch us into His heavenly house, bespeak love unmeasured. We know how to show honor to our friends, when we do not let them come to us as best they can, but send some trusty person to conduct them, or it may be a member of the family. If greater attention were called for, the wife of the busy head might go. But if the utmost were intended, the head of the family would set aside every hindrance and come to meet the most loved and honored object. O how wondrous, that for us the Son comes thus, as we think of Himself and ourselves! But it is here love beyond all thought or comparison for that supreme moment, and all that follows is in keeping with it. Sovereign grace, known as far as it can be revealed, in its depths for us, lays the ground. Unfailing grace in its faithfulness, notwithstanding every strain through our weakness and unwatchfulness, exposed to the profound spite and the sleepless malice of our—of His—great enemy, guards and preserves us all the way through. Triumphant grace, in its heavenly height, at length consummates the love of Christ. “I am coming again, and will receive you unto myself, that where I am, ye also may be.”

Besides, there is the context which follows the hope, and confirms the essentially Christian character of these communications the Lord was then giving. For He proceeds to explain to His disciples that gift of the Spirit which is peculiar to the individual and the assembly, as says another apostle: the distinguishing privilege and power since His redemption and ascension to heaven. “For the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” Nowhere is the divine personality of that gift more clearly asserted or implied than in these chapters 14, 15, and 16 of this Gospel. It is the other Advocate whom the Father would give and send in His name, whom He Himself would send from the Father to be with them forever and in them; the Advocate who was to come, because Jesus went away to heaven and sent Him unto them to be abidingly with us and in us.

It is extreme prejudice which alone hinders the believer from apprehending that such is the new and characteristic provision for the Christian and the church while the Lord Jesus is at the right hand of God. It is in the Spirit that we cry Abba, Father, and are each guided in right dependence. By Him one enjoys the deep things of God, otherwise beyond all comprehension. By Him we walk, witness, and worship. So it is that one is enabled to preach the gospel or teach the truth. Through Him we by faith wait for, not righteousness which we have in Christ, but the hope of righteousness in the coming glory. Again, it is by, or in virtue of, one Spirit that we were all baptized into one body; as we are also builded together for God's habitation in Spirit. Only a part of what we now owe to the presence and action of the Holy Spirit is here passingly alluded to; for in truth He covers and gives a new and divine character to every exercise of the new creation, through the word revealing and glorifying Christ to us. To put honor on Him was the Spirit now sent forth from heaven. Hence it was expedient for us that Christ should go away, great as the loss seemed to the sorrowing and troubled disciples. For if He went not away, the Advocate who was to be expressly our helper in every exigency (and this in the recall of all Jesus had said and been and done, as well as in the revelation of all His glory on high) should not come unto us. But Christ went, and sent Him unto us: the pillars of Christianity.

When the Spirit came, it was the demonstration to the world of its sin in not believing on Jesus; of righteousness, because He is gone to the Father, rejected by the world that sees Him no more as He was, but as the Judge; and of judgment, because this world's ruler who led to His rejection has been judged. The Spirit's presence, outside this world which beholds and knows Him not, can (now that redemption is made) guide the believers into all the truth, taking of Christ's things and reporting them to us, and also the things that are to come.

Now all this wondrous manifestation of the truth to the Christian depends on three things: the period of the Son as come in manhood here below; the accomplishment of His work of reconciliation on the cross; and His ascension as the risen accepted Man according to divine counsels, who has sent the Spirit that we might have this divine Person dwelling with and in us forever to make good subjectively what we behold by faith objectively in the Lord, the blessed image of the invisible God. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life; and now that, dead and risen, He is gone on high, we have not only the unique hope beyond all others of His coming again to receive us unto Himself, to be in the Father's house where He is, but we have by the Spirit unfailing power of communion with the Father and the Son, a fountain of blessing within, fresh and perennial, and rivers of living water flowing out, through that Savior living above for them, as they live because He lives.

All is new and Christian truth; the foundation as here made, not merely in view of our need met, but of God glorified as such to our immeasurable blessing; the necessary purifying from every defilement in our walk which Christ effects all the way through for us associated with Him for heaven; the heavenly hope for us destined to be with Him where He is, altogether outside and above the world, whatever else we may share; and meanwhile all the gracious help and power suitable for those so blessed and with such a hope, while we wait for Him in the world which with its ruler is already judged.

It may be added that the allusions to Judas Iscariot in the middle and to Peter at the end of chap. 13 were not without importance for the Christianity about to replace Judaism, as well as to strengthen and comfort those who were to labor, suffer, and share its privileges. The Lord made known to them in presence of the traitor not yet indicated, the awful course he was about to take, that their faith in Himself might be more established, instead of being shaken, and followed it up with His very solemn deliverance: “Verily, verily, I say to you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me” (20). No mistake was made either in His sending the guilty man or in others receiving him. He was an apostle sent by the Lord. It was a divine message heard from his lips; though he himself had neither saving faith nor life eternal, but was the son of perdition: the sad witness that the greatest external and official nearness to Christ, where that life is not, only exposes to the worst sin and ruin, And John could add at a later day, “Even now are there many antichrists.”

But there was another lesson yet more widely needed by the Christian in Peter's case, not so fatal but most humbling. The Lord, in view of His going soon whither they could not as yet come, presses that new commandment which was an old commandment that they had from the beginning, and was to become true in them as it was in Him, love, love one to another, the love not of a neighbor only, but the deeper love of God's family. Then Peter, confiding in his love, expresses his readiness to follow the Lord into the unknown, to follow Him now, to lay down his life for the Lord's sake, however others might hang back. Was it that he did not truly love Him? He loved Him well; but he was utterly wrong to confide in his love: self-confidence is the feeblest of reeds. And this he was soon after to learn, and walk entirely dependent on Christ as a Christian. But now he must prove that flesh is no better in a saint than in a sinner “Verily, verily, I say to thee, A cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice.” And so it was that night, not for his profit only but for every Christian's.

Let us turn to other scriptures, and see whether the Holy Spirit does not present the heavenly apart from earthly admixture, and distinct from the events of prophecy: a hope dependent on nothing but the secret of the Father's purpose, and the Son's faithfulness to His word and love to us. In 1 Cor. 15:51, 52 is “Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in an eye's twinkling, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”

It is not that the resurrection of the dead is “a mystery,” nor even the resurrection of the righteous as a distinct act from that of men generally. Of the latter we read in Job 14:1-12. “Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not. And dost thou open thine eyes upon such a one, and bringest me into judgment with thee? Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one. Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass; turn from him that he may rest, till he shall accomplish as a hireling his day. For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? The waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up; so man lieth down and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.”

Now the more familiar a believer may be with God's final revelation of things to come unto eternity itself, the more will he see the exact agreement of this early disclosure of resurrection with that latest one of the unjust. It is man, the prey of sorrow, decay, and death, without one ray of divine light till all ends in utter gloom, but not of actual extinction. Yet it is a sleep only broken when “the heavens are no more.” How striking the coincidence with Rev. 20:11! For it is not only after the resurrection of the blessed and holy to reign with Christ, but when the thousand years of their reigning are over, after the last insurrection of released Satan's deceit shall have ended in total destruction. Then is the great white throne for the judgment of guilty unbelieving man. For the portion of men is to die, and after this judgment; in contrast with the believers' portion, which is Christ, once offered to bear the sins of many, appearing a second time apart from sin to those that look for Him unto salvation. For He is the Savior of the body also.

But the resurrection of the saints, which at the last is called “the first resurrection” was not in those early days unknown to the much enduring elder. “O that my words were now written! O that they were inscribed in a roll! That with an iron pen and lead they were graven in the rock forever. For I know that my Redeemer (or Kinsman-vindicator) liveth, and that he shall stand up at the last upon the earth (or dust) [while the earth and still more the heavens continue]; and after my skin hath been destroyed, yet from (or in) my flesh shall I see God, whom mine eyes shall behold and not another” (Job 19:23-27). Nor can it be denied that the orthodox Jews in N. T. times did confess that there is to be a resurrection both of just and unjust (Acts 24:15).

As this was commonly believed save by the skeptical Sadducees, we may observe how properly the apostle does not speak of a mystery when he discusses the resurrection of the faithful in the earlier part of the chapter, and proves it to be the complement of Christ's own rising from among the dead. He tells them a secret or “mystery,” a N.T. truth now revealed, when he speaks of our being changed, without dying, at Christ's coming. “We shall not all be put to sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in an eye's twinkling, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” No intimation of this change of the living saints had ever been made, though now that it is, we can see a gleam preparing the way for it in the translation of Enoch in the ante-diluvian world, and in that of Elijah in the world that is now. And we can also read the words of the Lord in the days of His flesh, which were only written down in John 11:25, 26, after the Epistles of Paul. “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth on me, though he have died, shall live; and everyone that liveth and believeth on me shall never die.” Here we have the grand result at His coming, the dead saints raised, the living believers changed without dying; as the Lord then enunciated, but left to be written and understood at a later day.

It is observable how completely earthly objects are outside the description in 1 Cor. 15 Nothing is named but the resurrection of those that are Christ's, besides the living Christians who are changed if possible more gloriously at the same time, This last it is which involves “the mystery.” It is a superficial mistake to think that the last trump has any reference to the seven trumpets of the Revelation, which are the loud warnings of divine judgments in providence, after the seven seals of more reserved dealings have been opened. At length are poured out the last vials of God's wrath before the Savior appears in personal display of judgment.

“The last trump” seems a figure drawn like others here and elsewhere from the familiar facts of an army at the moment of leaving its encampment. Previous soundings were the known and necessary signals usual among the military. But the Spirit of God avoids more here and concentrates anything answering to them in the “last trump,” when the instant arrives for those that are Christ's to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Nor has error the least place in the scene of heavenly glory, but the gracious power of His resurrection distinctly now proved as the Resurrection of the dead saints and the life of those alive on a scale and pattern altogether transcending the raising of Lazarus or any other during the days of His flesh, to a life in the flesh. The unclothed will be clothed as never before, and the surviving saints clothed upon, that mortality, the mortal in them, might be swallowed up of life (2 Cor. 5:1-4). There is therefore an evident contrast with the awful sound of the trumpet at Sinai, and but one plain link of connection with “the great trumpet” of Isa. 27:13, Matt. 24:31; in that the loud sound accompanies the gathering together His chosen people on the earth, “the holy mount at Jerusalem,” as the trump of God is to gather the changed to the Lord for heaven. One readily understands that the aim, when God was about to speak His ten words to Israel, was to fill sinful trembling man with overwhelming awe, not only by thunders and lightning and thick cloud, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud, but Sinai altogether on a smoke, because Jehovah descended upon it in fire with blackness and darkness and tempest and a voice more terrible than all. But here it is exclusively the one fashioned, even in the body, in accordance with the likeness of Christ's glory, loved of God as He was loved, and about to be with Him in the Father's house. Solemn grandeur will be there, but not an atom of fear before His perfect love as befits God's glory.

Magnificent results will follow for the earth, for Israel, for all the nations, when Jehovah will destroy “in this mountain” the face of the covering cast over all people and the vail that is spread over all the Gentiles. But the resurrection of the just, the glorification of the family of God for the heavenlies, must precede even the taking away the rebuke of His people from off all the earth. Then indeed Jehovah's hand will accomplish what His mouth promised. A woman may forget her sucking child, and have no compassion on the son of her womb; yet will not Jehovah forget Zion. Behold, He has graven her upon the palms of His hands; and her walls are continually before Him. And kings shall be Zion's nursing fathers, and princesses her nursing mothers; they shall bow down to her with face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of her feet.

But the heirs of God and the joint-heirs with Christ have a place as elevated in the heavens as Israel will surely have on the earth. And this everlasting purpose of His must be made good in sight of the principalities and powers in the heavenlies, before the dealings of God begin to awaken and lead on into blessing the nucleus of His firstborn for the earth, and to put down their Gentile foes in every form and degree. For the secret of His will, now made known to the Christian (never before), according to the good pleasure which He purposed in Himself is that, for the administration of the fullness of the seasons He will sum, or head, up together in one all things in Christ, both those in the heavens, and those on earth, in Him in whom we were also allotted our inheritance. This we are to share with the Heir of all things; and the final touch He will put to fitting His joint-heirs will be done when He receives them to Himself on high for the Father's house, before the judicial measures begin to chastise the usurpers of the inheritance, and the gracious measures concurrently to prepare a people for the Lord when He with His heavenly ones appears in glory to possess Himself of the earth and fill it with the blessings of His reign.

1 Peter 5:5

The apostle was fond of the word “likewise” in a spirit of grace where nature would never have thought of it but rather resented. Thus the latter part of chap. 2 in this epistle is addressed to domestics; and as he had pressed on the saints in general submission to every human institution for the Lord's sake, so he urges it on them particularly to their master in all fear, not only to the good and gentle but also to the crooked. For this is grace; and we are called, every one of us, to walk in it as we were saved by it. As law characterized Israel, grace should stamp the Christian, even as Christ was full of grace and truth; and who walked submissively as He? To endure when sinning and buffeted, what glory is it? But if when doing good and suffering ye shall endure, this is grace with God. And there too throughout His life Christ is the model, and above all in His death, where He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that being dead to sins we might live to righteousness: an all-important issue, to convict those who misrepresent, hate, and deride grace. “Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands” (chap. 3:1), says the apostle, and in ver. 7, “Ye husbands, likewise, dwell with them according to knowledge.” Such was the order in which the Holy Spirit appealed.

Here the exhortation was first on the apostle's part as fellow-elder to the elders among them; and then he adds, “Likewise, ye younger, be subject to elders,” which evidently goes beyond those in official place to all whose years clothed them with title to moral respect if spent in faithful service to the Lord. Indeed it is to be noticed that among the Jewish saints, and in Jerusalem itself, we have no record of a formal introduction by apostolic authority as ruled in the Gentile assemblies (Acts 14:23, Titus 1:5). They are first mentioned as subsisting in Acts 11:30 and recognized in their place by Barnabas and Saul. The fact is strikingly confirmed by Acts 15 wherein they are repeatedly mentioned with honor. Yet the peculiarity alluded to is no less plain in the critical text of ver. 23, which is the opening sentence of the decree determined at the council. It runs, if we heed the Vatican MS., the Alexandrian, the Sinaitic, the Rescript of Paris, and Beza's of Cambridge with other good support, not as in the A. V., “The apostles, and the elders, and the brethren,” but “The apostles and the elder brethren “; and this is adopted in the Revised Version, as by Alford, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, &c. The reading of the later copies, seems due to conforming the phrase with ver. 22. But this was implied here, as it was there expressly asserted to be “with the whole assembly.” Nor was it the least likely that the ecclesiastical copyists would have dared to introduce a phrase so alien to their habit of helping on hierarchical distinction. Even Luther, Calvin, and others down to our day have felt constrained to yield to the larger sense of elders and youngers in this context.

“Likewise, ye younger, be subject to elders; and all of you bind on humility to one another; because God setteth himself against haughty ones, and giveth grace to lowly” (ver. 5).

Both exhortations have fallen too often on deaf ears. When the apostles passed away, the presbyters easily persuaded themselves, that order called for one of their number to receive or take a chief place over his fellows in a city; especially as the angels of the seven Asiatic churches in the Apocalypse could by a ready mistake be thus construed, until it rose by degrees to be a diocese of any extent. A presbyter, says a grave commentator (in loco), is not called a bishop by ancient ecclesiastical writers, but a bishop is often called a presbyter. Had he overlooked the fact, that the Holy Spirit in Acts 20:17, 28 does call the elders of the church in Ephesus “bishops” (ἐπισκόπους)? Does not inspiration outweigh all ecclesiastical writers put together and demonstrate their unsoundness when they venture to differ? So the apostle addresses the saints “in Philippi with bishops and deacons.” Titus 1:5-7 is almost equally plain. No doubt it is as much opposed to Dissent as to Episcopacy, “the minister” being as antiscriptural as the traditional trio, bishop, priests, and deacons. After the death of the apostles the lawlessness secretly working before grew apace and became bold. The sole divine authority as to this attaches to what they authenticated in the scriptures.

As the elders by unbelieving development sunk into various sorts of clerical irregularity, so did the youngers lose all sense of their due place of subjection. It was an early error that they began to choose bishops on the plea that the multitude of the disciples were allowed to choose men full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom for the apostles to appoint over their diaconal work. For where elders or bishops were appointed among the Gentile churches, the disciples never chose, but the apostles for them, as in Acts 14:23; or if an apostle could not go, he wrote (not to any church but) to an apostolic man like Timothy or Titus, to appoint elders. For the principle is as plain as it is important. As the church contributed its means, it was allowed to choose those it confided in for due administration. But apostles, not the church, had spiritual discernment of the qualities suitable to preside or rule; and they therefore chose elders. Besides, there were endowed with power men that were the gifts of Christ, such as evangelists, pastors, teachers, &c., who were never appointed (like elders locally), but acted freely in their work as they were led by the Spirit in the unity of Christ's body, the church.

In our day both the clerical spirit and the democratic are so rampant that there is all the more need to heed the gracious appeals of the apostle. Let those who guide never forget that the flock is, not theirs, but God's; and that they are to be models to the flock, not lords. Let the younger be subject to elders on principle, instead of seeking their own will or innovations so natural to youth. No doubt blind guidance ends in a ditch; but such direction is not of a Christian type, which is rather the seeing leading the seeing, with eye and heart fixed on Christ, who thus gives singleness of purpose.

“Yea, all of you bind on humility to one another.” The more numerous authorities read “all of you, being subject to one another, bind on humility,” but some of the best MSS. and versions drop “being subject,” which results in what has just been given. “Clothed” is too vague here. It is a word unique in N. T. usage, and occurs but rarely elsewhere. The figure is taken from the apron a slave girt on to do his work earnestly without soiling his dress. The Lord from a far different motive stooped lower still when He girded Himself with a linen towel to wipe the feet of His own which He washed clean from defilement. This was holy love; and this alone constrains us to bind on lowly-mindedness, to which we are all exhorted by the apostle who had not forgotten his sad ignorance and error on that memorable and touching occasion.

But he also fortifies the call with the solemn admonition, that God opposes Himself to haughty men, and gives grace to humble, the same quotation word for word as in James 4:6. See Prov. 3:34, and Rom. 12:16. Thus indeed it is a moral principle on both sides which runs through scripture; and it is a lesson for every soul in the church from day to day which none can afford to overlook. It is the more needed, because there is a ready danger of being haughty under a misapplied idea of position and duty, and of losing the grace God is so willing to bestow through failure in cherishing that lowliness which is only found perfectly in Christ.

Jesus Only

Exceedingly blessed is the grace that the Lord is come, the power of God within the sphere of human misery, which extreme as it may be does but make that power evident. If I look around as a man, I am lost. I cannot unriddle the history of the world: abominations in Christendom committed in the name of the Lord; Himself rejected by His people Israel, and crucified by those Gentiles to whom God had entrusted the government of the world, Mahometanism, heathenism. What kind of a God have you, says the reasoning heart, when it is such a world? But in the gospel I see the Lord came down into all the wretchedness, sickness, sin; and my heart is drawn away from pleasure and sorrow to Him. How beautiful to see heart after heart brought around this One, the only true center, soon to be the risen Head of the new creation, Himself the object drawing out feelings and affections of which He alone is worthy—Him who by His excellency gives excellency, and by His gracious thoughts toward us produces and draws out gracious thoughts in us. Next, our hearts are fixed just so far as we have an object, fixed according to God when we have Christ Himself before us. How can I love if I have nothing to love? A man is what he feels and likes and thinks. If my soul lives and feeds on that which is most excellent, Christ the bread of GOD, Christ becomes in a practical sense formed in the heart. In Him, the man Christ Jesus, God has had all His delight, and the display of it too. J. N, D.

GOD'S INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES, by W. K.,
cloth, 5/-

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row,

Published Monthly.

Jacob: 22. Israel and His Sons Go Down Into Egypt

Parental affection answered in Jacob, both when he believed not for joy fainting at the news that Joseph was alive and governor over all the land of Egypt, and reviving when he said “It is enough: Joseph my son is yet alive, I will go and see him before I die.”

But it was not quite enough. Divine goodness wrought in his soul when he reached the southern limit of the land. “And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beer-Sheba, and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. And God spoke to Israel in the visions of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here [am] I. And he said, I [am] God, the God of thy father; fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation. I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up; and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes” (Gen. 46:1-4);

What grace on God's part! Abram had gone down into Egypt through the pressure of famine, and sadly failed there, whatever riches he gained. Isaac too, when famine in the land might have drawn him off like his father, was expressly forbidden to go thither and enjoined to dwell in the land under the assurance of His blessing. Israel needed and had God bidding him not to fear going down there, where He would make of him a great nation, with special comfort nearer still to his heart.

The rest of the chapter from ver. 5 presents the chosen family in Pharaoh's wagons with their cattle and goods, “Jacob and all his seed with him: his sons, and his sons' sons with him, his daughters and his sons' daughters, and all his seed brought he with him into Egypt.” In the list that follows Joseph's sons are given in their due place according to Hebrew usage. “And he sent Judah before him to Joseph, to direct his face to Goshen; and they came into the land of Goshen. And Joseph made ready his chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen, and presented himself to him; and he fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while. And Israel said to Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou [art] yet alive” (vers. 28-30). The close of the chapter gives Joseph telling his brethren what he proposed to say to Pharaoh, that they might have Goshen to dwell in.

In chapter 47 we have them presented to Pharaoh accordingly; and the still more interesting interview of Jacob with the king. “And Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to Jacob, How old [art] thou? And Jacob said to Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage [are] a hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went out from before Pharaoh” (vers. 7-10).

How wondrous the grace of God toward Jacob! It was his to bless Pharaoh. Abram deceived the Pharaoh of his day and for Sarai's sake had “sheep and oxen and he-asses and men-servants and maidservants, and she-asses and camels “; and he again deceived Abimelech similarly; as did Isaac at a later day in like forgetfulness of his Almighty protector. Not so the “worm Jacob.” In weakness was he made strong, and enabled to bear himself with dignity before the greatest man on the earth. Not a favor did he ask, when, we may be sure, he might have had anything. He blessed Pharaoh when he went in, and before he came out. “And without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better.” Yet there was in this neither vanity nor pride, but a soul that had come to know divine goodness; and then a better thing was his portion than the world could confer. Besides there was treasure enough in God for Pharaoh; so that his heart overflowed on the king's behalf.

As to Joseph's administration of which the body of the chapter (11-26) treats, this is not the subject in hand. But the latter part tells us of Jacob's living in the land of Egypt seventeen years more; and the time drew nigh for Israel to die. So he called Joseph; and with the same solemnity as Abraham employed in sending Eliezer for Isaac's bride, he made Joseph not only promise but swear to carry his body out of Egypt and bury it in the burial-place of his fathers. Joseph's splendor did not in the least wean his heart from the land of promise. There would he be laid, as his spirit waited for the King of glory and the kingdom.

Israel Holy to Jehovah: 13. Priestly Privilege and Responsibility

This chapter continues, as in the preceding, the like strain of imperative sanctification in the priestly family to Jehovah. Here it is not indelible disqualifications, as in the last section, but passing defilements. But no defilement was to be treated as a light thing. Reverence was due to Him who is a consuming fire. His will and word ruled all, and especially such as drew near to Him.

1” And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying, 2 Speak to Aaron and to his sons, that they separate themselves from the holy things of the children of Israel, and that they profane not my holy name [in] what they hallow to me: I [am] Jehovah. 3 Say to them, Whosoever of all your seed among your generations that goeth unto the holy things which the children of Israel hallow to Jehovah, having his uncleanness upon him, that person shall be cut off from my presence: I [am] Jehovah. 4 Whatsoever man of the seed of Aaron [is] a leper, or hath a running of the reins, shall not eat of the holy things, until he be clean; and whosoever toucheth anything unclean of the dead, or a man whose seed passeth from him; 5 or whosoever toucheth any reptile whereby he may be made unclean, or a man from whom he may take uncleanness whatsoever uncleanness he hath; 6 the person that hath touched any such shall be unclean until even, and shall not eat of the holy things, unless he wash his flesh with water. 7 And when the sun is down, he shall be clean, and shall afterward eat of the holy things, because it [is] his food. 8 That which dieth of itself, or is torn, he shall not eat to defile himself with it: I [am] Jehovah. 9 They shall therefore keep mine ordinance lest they bear sin for it, and die therefore, if they profane it: I Jehovah sanctify them. 10 No stranger shall eat the holy thing: a sojourner of the priest, or a hired servant shall not eat the holy thing. 11 But if the priest buy a person with his money, he shall eat of it, and he that is born in his house; they shall at of his meat. 12 If the priest's daughter also belong to a strange man, she may not eat of an offering of the holy things. 13 But if the priest's daughter be a widow, or divorced, and have no child, and is returned to her father's house, as in her youth, she shall eat of her father's meat; but no stranger shall eat of it. 14 And if a man eat the holy thing unwittingly, then he shall put the fifth thereof to it, and shall offer [it] to the priest with the holy thing. 15 And they shall not profane the holy things of the children of Israel, which they offer to Jehovah; 16 or suffer them to bear the iniquity of trespass when they eat their holy things; for I Jehovah sanctify them” (chap. 22:1-16).

The care with which Moses was charged by Jehovah, and the sons of Aaron through him, is most impressive (1, 2). Compromise in divine things is hateful to God. It is the boast of men, and especially in these days where liberalism is the popular idol, in opposition to the old idol of man's tradition and sacerdotalism, which theoretically is unbending but in practice accommodating enough for a tariff of sin. The priests of Jehovah were bound under the strictest obligation not to profane His holy name in the holy things of Israel.

There might be uncleanness from day to day known only to each priest himself. Conscience was thus tested, and the fear of God. He might easily hide his uncleanness from his fellows, and from the children of Israel; but he could only do so at the peril of being cut off from Jehovah's presence (3). His being of Aaron's seed gave him no sanctuary shelter; but the contrary, whether he suffered from leprosy, or an issue from the reins, or even from the touch of the dead, or of one under an unclean infirmity, or of a defiling reptile, or the like. The variety or the degree might differ; but Jehovah tolerates no uncleanness in those that draw nigh. He must at least be unclean till evening, and not eat of the holy things till he wash his flesh with water. After that he was free to eat of them; for the Holy One is merciful and gracious (4-8).

Jehovah is the living God. Death is sin's wages; not all indeed, for judgment remains as every Christian should know, Christ revealing the whole truth. Hence the touch of death defiled anyone; much more the priest. No Israelite was free to eat even what was torn of beasts of the field, but called to cast it to the dogs (Ex. 22:31). “I [am] Jehovah” debarred the sons of Aaron beyond all. They were therefore to keep His ordinance, lest they should bear sin and die in their profanation. He sanctified them pre-eminently (9).

But the inverse was equally binding and expressed. No stranger was to eat the holy thing. He who separated Israel to Himself separated the priest by a closer severance. A sojourner of the priest even had no license, nor a hired servant however at home or valued. But one that belonged to the priest, bought or born in his house, was allowed that privilege: they might eat of his meat (10, 11).

Then we have modified cases distinctly provided for. Were the priest's daughter married to a strange man (i.e. outside the Aaronic family), she forfeited for the while her title to eat of an offering of the holy things. But if she became a widow, or divorced, without a child, back in her father's house as in her youth, she resumed her title, and might eat of her father's meat; she was no longer a forbidden stranger (12, 13).

Again (14), a man might eat the holy thing unwittingly, and in this case he was enjoined to add the fifth of it, and to give it to the priest with the holy thing, as a double tithe of trespass. There was no superstition or human exaggeration. The true God must of necessity be a jealous God; yet He weighed all considerately.

But as we began with the responsibility attached to the priests, so this section ends. They in particular were not to profane the holy things of the children of Israel which they offered to Jehovah, nor to lade themselves with the iniquity of trespass in eating their holy things, remembering that Jehovah it was that sanctified. Alas! it was just here they failed, not only as we have seen before their consecration was complete, but more and more till they became leaders, not only in profanation but in the grossest impurity (Sam. 2:12-22). And the prophetic word through a man of God came that the high priest's sons should both die in one day, and that Jehovah would raise up a faithful priest to do according to what was in His heart and in His mind, for whom He would build a sure house, Himself as King before His anointed forever. Messiah is the only full answer to both Priest and King.

Proverbs 20:8-14

Here we have maxims laid down from the king on his throne down to the commonest trickery of life in everyday transactions, with moral cautions salutary to all.

“A king that sitteth in the throne of judgment scattereth away all evil with his eyes.

Who can say, I have cleansed my heart, I am pure from my sin?

Divers weights (a stone and a stone), divers measures (an ephah and an ephah), both of them [are] alike abomination to Jehovah.

Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work [be] pure, and whether right.

The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, Jehovah made even both of them.

Love not sleep lest thou come to poverty; open thine eyes—thou shalt be satisfied with bread.

Naught, naught, saith the buyer; but when he is gone his way, then he boasteth” (vers. 8-14).

If ever there was a king sitting on the throne, whose eyes in large measure scattered away all evil, it was he who wrote these words in the Spirit. Yet we have the sad tale of failure, so characteristic of man, and his eyes at length sanctioning evil most dishonoring to Jehovah and destructive to Israel. But He that inspired Solomon has ever a greater in view. “Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment.” The time hastens.

Righteous souls may and do meanwhile groan; but they murmur not, still less resist the power, which is God's ordinance, nor plead conscience to evade law, but contrariwise are willing to suffer in obeying God. They know what man's state is, and that none can truly say, I have cleansed my heart, I am pure from my sin. Their boast is in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom they now received the reconciliation.

But there is no excuse for cheating; against which high and low, poor and rich, yea, and dishonest no less than honest, exclaim loudly. What is more than all, such deliberate roguery is an abomination to Jehovah, who is infinitely removed from all selfish feeling.

Evil may for a time be hidden under many a plea or cloak. But good needs no commendation. Even a child is known by his doings: a pure or a right work is plain.

The hearing ear is a wonderfully beneficent mechanism, the seeing eye of still wider scope for the race in matters of this life. How humbling is the unbelief of the would-be wise who try to persuade themselves and others that Jehovah made neither! Even a heathen like Galen felt and confessed that the hand which made them was divine. If Gnosticism is impious pride, Agnosticism is man sinking to the brute, yet boastful withal.

If man has no heart to thank God for his rest by night, and to seek His guidance and blessing by day, the very sun that performs His bidding calls man to go forth to his work till the evening, as much as he chases the beasts of the forest into their dens. To be an idler, a sleeper, during the hours of light, is to court poverty. To open one's eyes fittingly, i.e. for work, is to be satisfied with bread. None needs to beg if in earnest.

How low is the effort to deceive the seller by depreciation! How false to boast of the mean advantage, if it succeed (ver. 14)! But such are the ways of covetousness, as common a snare as can be found for the heart of man, and most hateful to the God of all grace.

Gospel Words: Giving

In this verse we have a grand principle for the Christian. It comes in at the close of the exhortation to resist not evil, but rather to suffer it, privately, by perversions of law, or from public demand. Christ is the pattern for the disciple; and no sound exposition can explain His word away, however distasteful to flesh and blood. The new nature goes along with it loyally as the perfect law of liberty. Only the fleshly mind seeks evasion by every disingenuous means.

“To him that asketh thee give, and from him that desireth to borrow of thee turn not away.”

The disciple learns from God that he is a debtor to grace, not only in the outward mercies of every day which he shares with all mankind, but in that still deeper love which quickened him from moral death, death in offenses and sins, when a child of wrath by nature. Here a Jew or a Gentile made no difference: as far as we all were concerned, it was a hopeless case of irremediable evil. But God who is rich in mercy, because of His great love wherewith He loved us, quickened us together with Christ, raised us up together, and made us sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus; that He might display in the coming ages the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.

Those whom the Christ then addresses had tasted already that the Lord is good; but they were soon to be brought into its full compass when He died, rose, and ascended on high, and sent forth the Holy Spirit in glorifying Him to guide them into all the truth. The Lord, having before Him such fullness of grace which we were to receive, looks for our appreciation of it by faith and the action of the Holy Spirit on our souls correspondingly. As He said elsewhere, Freely ye received, freely give. It is the mind of heaven reproduced on that earth which was full of sordid selfishness. None were more characterized by covetousness than the Jews, who, having for the time lost their place as Jehovah's witnesses, sought a vent and excuse for their energy in heaping up wealth; to which end cheating their Gentile masters only gave a greater zest. No wonder that souls so blessed by grace should be called to an entirely new walk and an equally new worship, unintelligible to such as do not enter into the Christian calling and hope. Yet the apostle says plainly that we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God before ordained that we should walk in them.

But Christ came to save not only from wrath but ruin, not only from penalty but from sin, and to form a new character in those that hear His voice and follow Him. It was and could only be His own character. For what was that of Socrates, or of Antoninus Pius, of Gautama Buddha or of Confutse? Shades of vanity or pride, in comparison with Him who never did His own will but that of God the Father who sent Him, His only-begotten. It was His to come into this world of sin and self to give Himself up as a sacrifice, thus bringing God into it to put sin out of it, as He assuredly will in power as the glorious issue of what He has already done and suffered.

Therefore, as a part of the spiritual process, He would impress on His own the character of grace, and not mere law like a Jew, in which He was the constant witness and blessed perfection. Was there ever a need, a want, a suffering presented to Him without an answer of divine grace and power, and in all human tenderness? He that was about to give Himself up to God for us, what of good did He ever withhold? Money was too small and mean to give, save as meeting the temple-tax. “Take that [from a strange bank!], and give it to them for Me and thee.” Hence the words in Luke 6:38, “Give, and it shall be given you, good measure, pressed down, and shaken together and running over, shall be given into your bosom; for with the same measure with which ye mete it shall be measured to you again.” It is literally “they shall give,” but so often in Luke impersonally stated, and really pointing to God. Thus as His grace produces its like, so will He never forget it, however man may.

Now, my dear reader, you know that this is far beyond your heart and life; and that, if you strove to emulate such giving, you would soon weary, and find it a law more fiery than the ten words of Sinai. Only Christ set the example; only Christ gives the power. But you must first be at His feet as a lost sinner, casting your soul with all your sins on Him for life, for pardon through His blood, and peace. It is in vain for you to think of giving of your means, till you have come to Him as the neediest of all to receive of His fullness. Only then, when you have Him as your unfailing treasure, will you have the faith and love to make to yourself friends with the mammon of unrighteousness. Only then will you, with single eye and liberal heart, “give to him that asketh of you, and not turn away from him that would borrow of you,” be he of the world, or of the household of faith; only then not grievingly, nor of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver. And He is able to make every grace abound toward you, that, having in every way always all sufficiency, you may abound to every good work. When grace has saved you by Christ to God's glory, then it will be your joy to follow Christ; and you will shun and hate what is inconsistent with Him, both from your new nature, and in obedience to the word of God.

The Heavenly Hope: Part 2

Before entering on the examination of other testimony, I take the opportunity of noticing the blighting effect of the earthly or Jewish side of the Lord's coming on those who would thereby swamp the heavenly. A dear brother in the Lord from a distant land (whom I have no reason to consider heterodox, only one-sided and enthusiastic and exclusive in seeing nothing higher than the kingdom) broached, when pressed with the hope as set before us in John 14, that there is no future whatever in the opening verses of this chapter. He would have it that it reveals nothing to come, but only what we now enjoy as part of our Christian privilege. He laid stress on “many mansions,” or abiding places, and argued that we have all that is there adduced by our Lord to comfort the disciples fulfilled in the precious fact that we are already in Christ in the heavenlies.

To this one wholly demurs, insisting that the Lord spoke of their being with Him, “that where I am, ye also may be,” not at all here of being in Him. Of this we do hear in the quite different intimation of ver. 20 where, as He said, “In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” This beyond question is realized to-day; nor need anyone contest that so it is in the context both before and after, where the Lord says, “I will not leave you orphans (or desolate), I am coming unto you” (18), and, “If one 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” (23). But in ver. 3 there is distinctive care to preclude the confusion, as the word is “I am coming again, and will receive you unto myself.” It is not the spiritual coming of the Father and the Son to abide with the obedient saint here, but Christ's personal coming again, to receive us unto Himself, that where He is (that is, in His Father's house of many mansions, in which He even then speaks of Himself as in xvii. 11), we also may be.

Can one conceive of greater havoc done through Judaizing the hope than such an effect on one who sincerely and earnestly loves Christ's appearing? In an experience by no means short and with a heart I trust far from narrow toward the saints, poor or rich, lowly or noble, learned or unlettered in many lands, never have I known any truth as to which the least taught had more hearty communion with the most deeply instructed than in looking onward to be with Christ on high according to this promise of our Lord. What makes its denial more startling is that it came from an active partisan, though neither extreme nor virulent, of a prophetic school which more than most pleads the voice of early tradition for its shade of premillennialism, and certainly with more reason than the historicalists, such as even the late E. B. Elliott. But tradition is an echo of uncertain sound for the truth, and sure to betray its advocates into more or less of human accretion and divine loss. Both the O. T. and the N. T. revelations of God solemnly warn against the danger; as the new nature under the action of His Spirit assuredly repudiates aught but His word for our hope no less than our faith.

Nor did the mischief end with unbelief as to John 14:1-3. It was equally marked when Zech. 14:5 was cited to show that the O. T. recognizes the coming of all the saints at Jehovah's advent and day. But, admitting that the holy angels will be there, it seems strange to question what is so distinctly taught in 1 Thess. 3:13; 4:14, 2 Thess. 1:10, Jude 14, Rev. 17:14; 19:14. in some of which texts the accompanying terms exclude angels, though elsewhere these may really be meant. Is it not sad to see how a partial apprehension of the truth works to obliterate what is heavenly? Yet Daniel the prophet does not fail to discriminate the saints of the high or heavenly places (vii. 18, 22, 25, to whom judgment was given as in Rev. 20:4), from their “people,” who have the greatness of the kingdom given them “under the whole heaven.”

It would however be altogether unfair to put this great defect on a level with a horrid delusion which has lately come to light in a work called “Parousia,” by Dr. J. Scott Russell, and cried up in the late Dr. R. Weymouth's Version of the N. T. in Common Speech, as well as in a volume of discourses entitled “Maranatha,” by the Rev. F. B. Proctor. Whether such strange doctrine prevails beyond a small admiring circle is not known. Mr. P.'s volume fell under my eyes quite recently, and the version named still more so. But they are evidence enough, that the supposed “great book” of Dr. R. is in truth a mischievous blunder, the revival in spirit of that early imposture of which the apostle speaks in 2 Tim. 2, “that the resurrection is passed already.” The assumption of these dreamers is: Christ came finally and so fully at the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, that all scripture about His “parousia” was then exhausted.

None need wonder that in this as in other systems of error, not a little truth, generally overlooked, is interspersed, so as to give a fair color to the lie. These men, like Hymenmus and Philetus of old, overthrow the faith of some; for no lie is of the truth. And this lie denies necessarily the resurrection of the body, the triumphant rapture of the saints to Christ, our future abiding place in the Father's house, no less than the awful judgment of the quick in the day of the Lord, when the Satanic trio condignly suffer, and the displayed world-kingdom of our Lord and His Christ shall come in power and glory, to the deliverance of the still groaning creation. Then the purpose of God shall be fulfilled for the administration of the fullness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and those on the earth; in Him in whom also we were given inheritance as His joint-heirs.

Take this sample from p. 116. “We believe that a great wrong is done—because it misleads—when we speak of the church of Christ as a Bride mourning her absent Lord; as is done in some of our hymns. The fact is that He is not absent; He has come and is here—a Real Presence abiding with His church forever. We are bound to believe that the Lord did come in or about the year 70, and then fulfilled all His predictions and promises concerning the second coming.” Again, in p. 119, G. A. Smith on Isa. 7:14 is cited, “God with us is the one great fact in life,” with the comment, “We may add, it is the greatest fact in history. For what else has ever happened to be put in comparison with it?” [Yet the volume opens most inconsistently, with the admission that, not the Incarnation, but the atoning death on the cross, is the true central point, whereon all turns for God's glory, man's salvation, and the reconciliation of all things, though the last needs His future revelation with His saints to give it effect. For in the cross, not before, was sin judged by God on the holy and divine Savior]. “But if so much can be said of His first advent (which was but temporary!), how much is the fact intensified when we apply it to His second coming and abiding Presence, which took place within the life-time of a generation of people who heard Him speak? Which also the apostles constantly recurred to as to a point in history at which a new era would commence.”

The error comes out plainly in the remarks on John 11:25, 26 (p. 153, &c.). “Now, this great saying does not mean that resurrection is a matter of course, nor does it speak of a distinct resurrection at some indefinite last day [the very thing our Lord taught unmistakably and four times over in John 6:39, 40, 44, 54!]; least of all does it allude to a graveyard resurrection such as is commonly believed in. But His words mean what they say: Jesus is Himself the resurrection and the life. They are only inherent in the race as in Him.”

But this show of truth is as false as Satan can make it. For the real bearing is that Christ is the power of resurrection and life in His person, as being the Son and God; He was therefore able to raise Lazarus there and then to life in the flesh, as He will at the due time raise the dead believers and change the living ones: had Martha this faith? In order to do so, at the last day, consistently with God's nature and our sins, He must Himself die and be raised again. For as John 12:24 tells us, “Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.” Life in resurrection power is to have life abundantly. Hence since He rose believers are now quickened, who were dead in offenses and sins, yea, quickened together with Christ, and raised up together and made to sit together in the heavenlies in Him.

This in no way supersedes but is rather the ground of our being changed, even our body of humiliation transformed into conformity with His body of glory, when He comes from the heavens as Savior in full, not of the soul only as now, but of the body also at that glorious hour. Life and resurrection are not inherent in the race. The believer has life, but it is in the Son. All depends on Him. We live because He lives; and the life as a believer I now live in flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me (Gal. 2:20). But though heavenly as of the Heavenly One, we still bear the image of Adam, the man of dust; when the body is raised in in-corruption, glory, and power at His still future coming, we shall bear the image of the Second man, the last Adam.

Thus the notion, that the second coming of Christ is come, is a dream which avails itself of truth unknown in the great or the small denominations, to destroy the truth of His next advent and of the resurrection from the dead, which flows from Christ's rising as the foundation of Christianity, and looks on to that bright consummation. The blessed hope is annulled. The kingdom no doubt is already set up in mystery; but their fond fancy, which makes what we now have to be all, annuls what we await. Satan shall then be crushed under our feet, and the power of the Lord so established that not an idol shall remain, nor a blade of grass that shall not flourish under His glory. For then God heads up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things on the earth; and we shall share with Him all the inheritance, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. It is a cruel cheat of the enemy, that the day of manifested power and glory is begun, or never to be. Though the Lord is received up in glory, He is hid in God; whereas then He will be manifested, and we too in glory. The world to come is not come, but is surely coming.

It is all well to quote John 5:25, “Verily, verily, I say to you, The hour cometh and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that have heard shall live.” This is not what He wanted in Martha; but it is the faith that must be now, if souls are to be quickened and not perish. But why is not the further truth added of verses 28, 29? “Wonder not at this; for an hour is coming [which now is not] in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth: those that have done good unto a resurrection of life; and those that have done ill unto a resurrection of judgment.” Here in the same context is the truth to which the Lord attaches the same solemn mark of divine truth; He affirms the absolute certainty of that which this spurious Parousia school audaciously denies.

It is not that any rise again independently of Christ; for as He is the giver of life eternal, God also gives to Him the prerogative of all judgment, as the despised but glorious Son of man. It is His voice that expressly calls for what is here sneeringly called “a graveyard resurrection;” for “all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice,” just or unjust, well-doers or evil-doers. Hence there are to be two resurrections bodily, as we read prophetically in Rev. 20:4-6, and 11-15: a resurrection of life and reigning with Christ; and a resurrection of judgment and endless woe. We need not wonder at the quickening of the spiritually dead, when the Lord will call from their tombs the actually dead to come forth, the godly and believing who have life in Him now unto a resurrection of life, and the worthless unbelievers unto a resurrection of judgment issuing in the lake of fire.

No wonder that for free thinkers “a translation of translations” should be sometimes preferred to a faithful and close version. No wonder that the Christian's belief in the apostle's warning of ever-growing failure and ruin, till Christ personally arrive for heavenly glory and earthly judgment, is treated as “pessimism,” and as “the Christian's worst enemy.” Christ is not on His own throne to reign yet, but as the world's despised and crucified on the Father's throne. “In the world ye have tribulation,” said the Lord; not a special one, as retributively for Jews and Gentiles at the end of the age, but ever and anon in our pilgrimage, the very apostles the last, though in the church the first, a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. It was the volatile and worldly-minded Corinthian brethren who took the place of filled, and rich, and reigning “without us” (the apostles): “and would that ye did reign, that we might reign with you,” said the large-hearted Paul. But it was a mere delusion.

If we died together with Christ, we shall also live together; if we endure (or suffer patiently), we shall also reign together. As Christians we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him. “For I reckon that the sufferings of the now time are not worthy to be compared with the glory about to be revealed to usward.” Christ is not reigning yet, still less is He administering the affairs of the world. It is a falsehood which these theorizers share with the Papacy on the one hand, and the Mormons on the other, who both seek, and not they only, present power and glory. Even the last time or hour (1 John 2:18-27) is marked by the prevalence, not of Christ but of many antichrists, the sad harbingers of the Antichrist, whom the Lord Jesus shall appear to destroy, as 2 Thess. 2:8 tells us. The Father's kingdom will not arrive for the heavens, nor the Son of man's for the earth, till He shall come to judge the quick, and all lawless ones be cast out of His kingdom into the furnace of fire, and the righteous shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

One may not value the tradition through Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine, and may incomparably prefer the living and gracious light of the inspired scriptures. But those western chiefs did not destroy either the foundations, or the hope, like these strange fanatics of the misbelieved and perverted “Parousia.” For theirs is an utter misuse of precious truth which leaves nothing but decomposed fruit, the ashes of death, instead of the life, of which they write so glibly and unspiritually and unholily, without a single atom of truth rightly understood or applied. Unbelief of the truth is blind and bad; but how much worse is faith in a lie of Satan that supplants God's mind for faith and hope?

This may suffice here on so unsavory a theme. Let us turn for one's refreshment, and it may be for the profit of others, to the Lord's words in Luke 12:35-39.

It is not here bridesmaids outside with their torches going forth to meet the bridegroom, but servants within the house with their lamps alight. “Let your loins be girded about, and lamps burning, and yourselves like men waiting for their own lord whenever he may leave (or return from) the wedding, that, when he cometh and knocketh, they may straightway open to him. Blessed those bondmen whom the Lord on coming shall find on the watch. Verily I say to you, that he will gird himself about, and make these recline, and coming up will serve them.” Believing merely in His second coming in no way meets what our Lord here impresses on His bondmen, but their hearts fixed on His return as the first of their duties. Watching on their part His heart craves. Servants are not unused to seek their pleasure when their lord is away forever so little, some without, others in distant parts of a great house. But He in the most earnest way lays it on them to be as men that wait for their own Master whenever He may return from the nuptial feast, that when He comes and knocks they may without delay open to Him. No delay, no hurry to reach this post, but on the look-out, by the door as it were, that, when His knock is heard, they may forthwith open to Him. “Ye,” yourselves, waiting for Him, characterizes their whole outlook.

On all sides it is eminently in keeping with the place assigned by the Spirit to Luke; who, as he conveys the grace in Christ, demands also the becoming answer of the heart in the saints. The return from the wedding-feast was the best possible figure on the Lord's part, the sympathetic occasion of festive joy, yet when the night might be more or less spent. His return from the wedding as a prophetic event suits not the marriage of the Lamb on high, still less the day when Zion shall be called Hephzibah, and the land Beulah. But as a figure, expressive of a duty suitable to His loving fellowship, filled with bright joy, and excluding all associations of judgment and sadness, what so appropriate? What could so well call out the warm affections of the bondmen to their own Lord? If words were to put the saints into the constancy of waiting for the coming of Christ, surely none could more powerfully set that hope as the proximate and immediate object before their hearts.

But there is more. What could strengthen it so much as the wondrous grace in the assurance He solemnly adds, what no other lord would think of? He shall gird Himself about—yes, in the glory of heaven, and make them recline at its feast, and come up and serve them. It was the humiliation of love we only conceive faintly, that He, who subsisting in God's form deemed it no object of seizure to be on equality with God, emptied Himself when He took a slave's form and came in likeness of men. Yet He went farther, as love's need required; and when found in fashion as man, He humbled Himself in becoming obedient as far as death (and what must it have been to Him?) yea, death of the cross. It was in that divine love which would secure God's glory and man's blessing at all cost. Now glorified in heaven He continues the work of a slave in the intercession for us, which was symbolized by the washing of the defiled feet of the disciples. But here again His love is to assume a renewed form when we are there glorified when, as His mark of honor for His bondmen that have watched for Him, He will cause them to recline at the heavenly feast, and come up to serve them.

And then let us consider the joy it is, that this the apostolic hope is ours now no less than the apostolic faith and fellowship, if one has ears to hear. “And if he shall come in the second watch, and if in the third, and find [them] so, blessed are those.” It is thus evident that expecting the Lord certainly at a distant and defined moment is not in the least what He impresses. A prophecy has its own definite character, if not at a fixed time like the Seventy Weeks, and many others of less moment, yet marked by distinct circumstances which shut it up to a well understood time or season. Here it is expressly otherwise. Of purpose it is as uncertain when, as it is certainly to be; and the object is that His bondmen should be always on the watch.

If now the teaching of the apostles is sought, none can find a more direct supply than in the two Epistles to the Thessalonians. From 1 Thess. 1 we learn that the great apostle of the Gentiles instructed those saints from their conversion to God, not only to serve Him as a living and true God, but to await His Son from the heavens whom He raised from out of the dead, Jesus our deliverer from the coming wrath. This waiting is no doubt quite general; and it was wisely so as a first outline for souls just brought out of heathenism. Enough it was for them from the start to be put into this happy condition of waiting for Him who so loved them and had wrought so efficaciously for them now and forever. Details they would have in due time; and not a little in these early letters.

Nor was it less on Paul's side (ii.), who, as he wished no selfish advantage nor present power nor worldly honor, but to be the ready servant of Christ's love and will, looked for his reward in no thing of earth's vain glory. “For what is our hope or joy, or crown of boasting? Are not ye, too, before our Lord Jesus at His coming? for ye are our glory and joy.” But he also most carefully (iii.) urged them to love toward one another and toward all, as was his own affection toward them; in order to confirm their hearts unblameable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints. The proud unbelieving fancy of any members of Christ being absent then he would thus efface from every heart.

Disallowing another old fancy, that a saint's death is Christ's coming for him, the apostle seals on the scene of bereavement the joyful certainty (iv.), that God will bring with Christ those put to sleep through Jesus. And he explains, as a new revelation, that the Lord Himself will come for His saints, the dead in Christ, and ourselves then alive and remaining, in order to be all thenceforth forever with Him.

He also points out (v.) the awful character of His day, when sudden destruction comes on the sons of night and darkness whom that day shall overtake as a thief. Every Christian ought to see the distinctness of the Lord's coming to gather His own unto Himself above, from His day of judicial dealing with His and their adversaries: the one a quite fresh revelation of sovereign grace in its triumphant close, the other a well-known theme of all prophecy.

The second Epistle follows up the same truth, but particularly to guard from the delusion, which some palmed on the saints, that the day of the Lord had actually come. Hence it is shown them that the persecution, which seems to have been thus perverted, is not at all the feature of that day. For then the Lord shall be revealed from heaven, awarding both tribulation to their troublers, and rest to His saints. It will be His vengeance in flaming fire on the evil; while He shall have come, not to receive the saints to Himself for the Father's house, but to be glorified in His saints and wondered at in all that believed, before the world. Therefore in chap. 2 he begs them, for the sake of (or by) His coming and their gathering together to Him, not to be shaken by the false cry that the day of the Lord was present. For before that day (not before His coming for us) two fearful evils must be: the apostasy, and the man of sin revealed who is to be annulled by the appearing of His coming in that day. Lastly, in chap. iii. he prays the Lord to direct their hearts into the love of God, and into the patience of Christ. He waits patiently; and so should we, instead of the idle selfish folly of some.

We may see how the blessed hope is meant to cheer, elevate, and strengthen all the practical life; as the other Epistles still more apply it! No wonder Satan labors incessantly to dim, weaken, and destroy its light and power. Take 1 Corinthians as an instance. Thus in chap. 1:7 we have in strict propriety not exactly the “coming” but the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in ver. 8 “the day “; because only then will be manifested how the saints acquitted themselves as to the use of each gift of grace entrusted to their charge. Whereas in the Lord's Supper (chap. 11:26) they were to announce His death until He come, bringing the affections into the deepest play between the termini of Christian existence and pilgrimage, Christ's death and His coming.

Nor should we omit to note the words of another apostle, bearing on our theme, especially as they are generally and utterly misunderstood. The scene on the holy mount Peter counts as confirming “the prophetic word, to which ye do well in taking heed, as to a lamp shining in a squalid place, until day dawn and [the] day-star arise in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19). “Ye” were the same Christian Jews of the dispersion whom he had addressed in his first Epistle, already familiar with the law. They did well in paying attention to the prophetic word, which he compares to a lamp shining in a squalid place (as this world truly is), over which hang the unsparing judgments of God soon to fall. Like the Hebrews to whom Paul wrote, they were slow in appropriating the fuller light and better hope of Christianity. Who can wonder that can intelligently estimate the less excusable shortcoming of Christians in this respect among (not Romanists, Greeks, Lutherans and Anglicans only, but) the boastful “Free Churches” of Protestants in Britain or the U. S. of America?

How few know of themselves, that “the worshippers once purged have no more conscience of sins”! How many premillennialists feel, as the late distinguished E B Elliott wrote to me a little before his death, that, if he believed the Lord was coming to-morrow, he himself would be much tried to-night. Where then the constant joyful hope? How fallen from grace and truth are even such leaders as that evangelical man! The apostle accordingly adds, “until day dawn and the day-star arise in your hearts “; i.e. till in your hearts shall have dawned heavenly gospel light, and Christ as morning star arisen there in hope, as now made known by the apostles.

The believing Jews were prone to rest satisfied with “the word of the beginning of Christ” —that Jesus in truth was the Messiah, God's Anointed. They believed the fact of His death, resurrection, ascension, and return; but they feebly apprehended the blessed results both for God and man, and especially for the saints. They were truly born of God and converted; but how little they entered, if at all, by the new and living way into their own nearness, far beyond that even of the Aaronic priesthood! How slow also to cry Abba, Father! With the light of day in the gospel goes also the hope of Christ as morning-star; it is not merely His rising in the day of Jehovah with healing in His wings for Israel, and with treading down as ashes for the wicked.

Here it is the hearts of the saints receiving fully heavenly light as well as the proper Christian hope. But men, and none more than Israelites, were proud of the old wine and unwilling to believe in the superior value of the new; they said, “The old is good.” Hence (as this was a serious wrong to Him who was infinitely more than Messiah, and fresh grace was henceforth brought into the view of faith after His people's rejection of Him) the painstaking by the apostles to lead them onward from the elements into the depths of God now revealed; by Paul elaborately in the Epistle to the Hebrews; by John in the mystic way of his Gospel and the Revelation; and by Peter in the fervent appeals of both his Epistles.

Many dear Christians unconsciously betray their total misapprehension of the apostle's drift by stopping short of what he says, and quoting only “until the day dawn, and the day-star arise,” as if the words “in our hearts” had never been written, or had no meaning, whereas they are essential to the true sense. For the apostle does not here speak of the day of glory come for the earth, and especially Zion's light arrived. On the contrary he desires for the believing remnant of Jews to whom he writes again, that they should not rest content with the lamp of prophecy, good as it is for the squalid place of a world under judgment with divine wrath impending, but have gospel daylight dawning, and the morning-star arising, in their hearts. For this is the special Christian privilege, as to which they might be quite unexercised, like too many saints in our day and for many centuries, who never rise in their anticipations beyond the kingdom and reigning with Christ. It is the realization in their hearts of what Christ entitles to, both as regards present standing and the hope of His coming, which he could not take for granted, but urges on them. If any were possessed of this privilege already, they would know the vantage ground it gave them; if not, he would have them seek it from Him who blesses by faith according to the word of His grace.

It was the lack of understanding the apostle, which led two men of learning in our day to subject his language to a violence repudiated by all the versions ancient and modern of any worth at all known. Both boldly strove to cut the connection of the words which have been specified as giving the true force, but each in a different way: one, by a parenthesis, so as to bring “ye take heed” into line with “in your hearts “; the other, by joining “in your hearts” with “knowing this first.” There is no need to expose particularly the absurdity of either device, which most readers of intelligence will not fail to judge as equally unfounded, as they are due to inability in their authors to enter into the mind of the Spirit in the passage. Nor was that inability confined to those who invented their respective beds of Procrustes for torturing the text into the sense of their preference. One has only to glance over the conflict of opinion among the commentators of note to convince any enquirer that the key was quickly lost; and that neither hoary tradition nor modern pretension offers any satisfactory solution. Loss of the distinctive hope of the Christian was yet wider and more rapid than of the faith; and who can wonder at this who knows the heart, so easily slipping from the marvelous light of God, so dull to suspect its loss, so slow to return with humiliation of spirit to the unfailing source?

A confirmation of no little weight appears in other references. Thus Rev. 2:28 holds out to the overcomer the precious promise of the Lord Jesus, “I will give to him the morning star.” It is presented with the most marked distinctness from the authority the Lord will also give to him over the nations, “and he shall tend them with an iron rod; as vessels of pottery are they broken in pieces, as I also received of my Father.” On the one hand there is the public display of association with Christ when the nations are shattered like potter's ware; on the other our receiving from Him the privilege of having Him before that day of glory breaks, when He is compared to the star that precedes the dawn, and none see save those that wait for Him and watch in the night before the morn.

It is of the more interest when we view the context more closely. For it occurs in what was written to the angel of the assembly in Thyatira, the first of the letters which speak of the Lord's coming again, and therefore in principle go on till then. Here it is that the change takes place when “He that hath ear,” instead of preceding the promise, follows it, and thus gives the more emphasis to the individual that overcomes. In what is written here one cannot but discern the prefiguration of the mediaeval state, not only the adulterous and haughty iniquity of Jezebel, or extreme Popery with its claim of infallibility (“who calleth herself prophetess”), but others also of wholly different mind, “My servants,” whom she misled into uncleanness and communion with idol sacrifices, as notably the worship of the host, &c. There is also the striking intimation of a distinct remnant, “to you I say, the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine, such as know not the depths of Satan as they say,” that seem to designate witnesses of the pre-Reformation era, like the Waldenses remarkable for their endurance and works of faith: a people singularly simple, devoted, and suffering.

Can we not discern the fitness of such a quasi-prophetic picture drawn by Him who knew the end from the beginning '? The great corruptress, with her children, that sat a queen and should in no wise see grief, is to be cast into a bed, and with her the paramours into great tribulation, to be killed with death. She, by the claim of His name falsely and flagitiously, usurped authority over the nations in His absence, and reigned where and when the true church was called to suffer, yea unto blood, wrestling against sin. For faith follows Christ as He walked here, content and bound to wait till He takes His world-kingdom (Rev. 11:15) and it refuses, as He did, Satan's offer of the habitable world, the reward of paying him homage, and of waiting to share all with Him at His coming. For it is not only that she will reign with Him over the earth, but that He will come to have her with Himself, before (as the sun of righteousness) He shall arise with healing in His wings for those that fear His name, when as an oven the day comes to burn the proud and the wicked as stubble, and leave them neither root nor branch. This honor in a certain sense have all His saints, the risen reigning with Him, those on earth reigned over.

But for the overcomer that keeps His works to the end there is another privilege yet more precious, if not such a display of power. “And I will give to him the morning star.” It is actual association with Himself on high before that day. What else renders definite the meaning of His giving to His own the morning star? It is quite an advance on what the apostle desired in his second epistle (i. 19) for the Christian Jews of the Dispersion. There he distinguishes the lamp of prophecy shining in the world's squalid place, over which judgments impend, from the superior day-light of the gospel, and the morning star of Christ as the heavenly hope arising within. It was well to heed that lamp; but they should not rest satisfied till they had what was far better even now in their hearts. In Rev. 2 it is not merely realizing the Christian hope as in 2 Peter 1 but the positively imparted promise, when Christ will “give” the morning star. Then shall we that watch be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is; and so also shall it be manifested in due time. But as yet the world will slumber and sleep, for it is still night; and they that sleep sleep by night, and they that drink drink by night. But we being of day, let us watch and be sober.

In the last chapter of the same book is another application of the same figure when a similar distinction reappears with great power and plainness in the closing words of our Lord. “I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify these things to you in the churches.” For it is our privilege to have the Spirit reporting to us what is coming, as well as what glorifies Christ now both here and on high, guiding us in short into all the truth. “I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright morning star.” Here we have the witness of His twofold glory. The O. T. bears clear witness as in Isa. 9; 11, &c., that He is the Root and the Offspring of David, the Mighty God, and the child born, the son given. The N. T. alone tells us of Him, whether in hope or in possession, as the Morning star. It is not the sun rising and calling the sons of men to their functions in the day when all shall be ordered aright under the great King, Israel at the head of the nations, and they in their place of subjection as Jehovah ordains for the world to come whereof we speak, no more men that know not God or His designs for peace, and righteousness, and glory here below.

(Continued.)

1 Peter 5:6-7

Humility is a precious quality in the saints; and like other virtues it is apt to be debased by the enemy, and mistaken by themselves according to their own thoughts. It is of moment that we should discover its real nature as made sure and clear by Christ. For He is the true light who makes all persons and all things manifest; without Him its Christian character is not realized. How often it is understood to consist in our being brought to see and detest our own evil! But this is far from the standard of Christianity. For we are thus occupied with ourselves, however right it be to bewail our manifold failures and grievous shortcomings. Certainly it is far better than to be deceived into the notion that we have attained a high stage of holiness, and to thank God that we are not as other men. In its grossest form the error is fed by recourse to a director of conscience, into whose ear we can pour our confessions and seek profit from his ghostly counsels, even if we go not on to the extreme of looking for authoritative relief by his absolution in the Lord's name from time to time. Again, while souls cling to the invention of the weekly class and its leader to hear and advise on the rehearsed experience of good or bad, others who belong to an opposite pole strive to gather a scanty comfort from dwelling on their felt unworthiness, and to find lowliness in all manners and measures of self-condemnation.

Now the work of Christ, on which the awakened soul is brought to rest, is not only perfect in itself, but it perfects him; as Heb. 10:14 explicitly declares with many other scriptures of differing form but similar import. By one offering Christ has perfected continuously—not merely forever, but without an interruption—those who are sanctified, or set apart from the world to God by the faith of Christ. This was hard for an Israelite to accept, accustomed as he had been to fall back on his sin or trespass offering, and the priest's action in sprinkling the blood, offering the fat, and eating his part of the victim, while burning the rest with fire unsparingly. It was so significant a type, identifying himself by his hand laid on the head of the offering, with Jehovah's authority to the priest to atone for him and assure of forgiveness, that one can understand the need of the utmost certainty in order to relinquish the shadow for the substance. But herein are the expressed will of God the Father, the accomplished work of the Son, and also the applied witness of the Holy Ghost in Jer. 31:33, 34—a predicted remission of sins now so complete, that there is no more offering for sin.

The efficacious bearing of Christ's sacrifice is as immense to faith, as the glory of His person and the depth of His suffering for sin. It is this which lays the ground for Christian humility; because it gives a purged conscience before God. Till then it was no more than an exercised conscience, and thereby a humbling process in the measure of our spiritual feeling. But in the work of Christ it is God who condemned sin in the flesh, not morally alone as in all that He was and did, but as a sacrifice for sin, that it might be utterly effaced in His sight, as indeed we become His righteousness in Christ. Hence the worshippers once purged have no more conscience of sins. They are entitled and meant to see themselves so clear in His light as to have done with themselves, and free with a pure conscience and a peaceful heart to enjoy the fullness of Christ. What a deliverance to have done with self! It was humbling to feel and have to own how vile we learned ourselves to be. Is it not a truer deeper humility to know in His light that our careless perhaps and certainly unworthy failure, cost Him to be as it were consumed to ashes in God's unsparing judgment of our iniquity laid upon Him? and that we are, that I am, not worth thinking or talking about? How easy this ought to make it for each to esteem the other as better than himself! Such is the basis of Christian lowliness of mind. It is through divinely given faith: “Humble yourselves (or be humbled) therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time, having cast all your anxiety upon him, because he careth for you” (vers. 6, 7).

It was that mighty hand of God which made the sinless Jesus sin for us, when He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities. So Israel will yet confess, the generation to come when this unbelieving and adulterous generation shall pass; and Christ's words are more widely and manifestly verified than ever. We who now believe, whether Jew or Gentile, while He is unseen, delight to see the truth as before God; and blessed, as Himself said, are they that saw not and believed. We rest on the depth of that atoning work when darkness shrouded the cross, and His voice attested that God hid His face and forsook Him, the rejected Messiah, the Son of man giving His life a ransom instead of many, yea for all, that we who believe might be healed by His stripes, and made meet to share the portion of the saints in the light.

Under that mighty hand which has thus wrought and given us everlasting redemption are we called to be humbled. We fail alas in the abiding sense of this marvelous light into which God called us. But therein it is our privilege to walk, as 1 John 1:7 tells us; and it is our fault only if we do not walk consciously there. Thereby is that humility secured to which we are here exhorted. Would there be defect if our souls were ever realizing that most solemn yet most gracious presence? Yet it is into this grace that faith in our Lord Jesus has brought us, and gives us to stand (Rom. 5:2).

Nor is less than this the proper and constant standing of the Christian. It is our shame to forget or slight such favor. And those who deny the new privilege (out of a Puritan jealousy on behalf of the O. T. saints) are indifferent servants for the honor of Christ or the Christian faith. It may sound lowly for the believer to cry, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of this body of death?” But this ignores that it was a passing state, and that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus set me free from the law of sin and death. Thus my confession now on failure becomes a deeper self-loathing. O blessed man that grace has made me, what shame to Him as well as to me that I should now defile my feet! that I, perfectly atoned for, should have sinned against grace as well as holiness, and need to be sprinkled with the water of separation to restore my communion! What agonies my sinful folly cost the Savior

In God's blessed presence let us be ever humbled, and all the more because it is always open to us through the rent veil. We contributed nothing to Christ's cross but our sins: the grace therein was God's sovereign grace. The effect of Christ's work is that divine righteousness which we became in Him; and we boast (for it is more than “rejoice”) in the glory of God. And indeed He will exalt us in due time. For it will be the day when Christ shall be manifested, and we also shall with Him be manifested, in glory. While He our life is hidden, it is inconsistent and incongruous that we should now look for any glory in this world, least of all from that world whose princes crucified the Lord of glory. As loyal to the crucified One we wait for the appearing of His glory, in order to share it with Him. For did He not tell us, that the glory which the Father had given Him He has given to His own that they may be one as the Father and the Son are one, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know (not believe, as now) that the Father sent the Son, and loved the saints even as He loved the Son? Then the world shall behold Him and them in the same heavenly glory. Never will there be our perfection in unity till then, and only of that future day does the Lord say it. Truly God will exalt us in due time. Our call is to suffer meanwhile with Christ, and also for His name, that we may be also glorified together.

But of another privilege the apostle here reminds us in connection with being humbled now and waiting for His glory in the day of Christ. He says, “having cast all your care on him, because he careth for you.” He assumes this relegation, in faith, of our every anxiety on our God and Father, who loves to bear burdens too great for His weak ones, for whom He has joys and service which demand freedom of spirit for their right aim and end. How enfeebling is the unbelief that fancies it our duty to be weighed down outwardly and inwardly Why, Christian, have you not rolled upon Him the weight that oppresses you? Is not His word to us plain and certain? Does He not care for you—He that gave His Son for your sins, He that numbers all the hairs of your head?

Letter to an Unbeliever

30th July, 1903.

DEAR MR. N.

Yours of the 28th was sent on to me here; and I leave on Saturday.

I regret that my letter only interested you. But this cannot surprise one who did not really believe till grace troubled his conscience and made him feel the vanity of his religion after the flesh and the world. Faith in church or chapel is nothing: Christ alone counts.

Bear in mind that revealed truth condemns the world, and must be so unpalatable to men, that one cannot expect their testimony save unwittingly. Yet the Roman remains (for we have no more) testify by the way to the appearance of Christ at the very time when Scripture puts Him in Palestine; and to a new faith in His followers, most offensive to those who loved, or at least sanctioned, the demoralizing idolatries of Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and the other imaginary deities, or real demons, the empire honored. I am away from my library or any books that I could cite. But if you are familiar with the scanty residue of the Latin classics so-called, you will not have forgotten the references in the brief historical works of Tacitus (bitter, haughty, and cynical as he was), or in the Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius, or in the Letters of Pliny the younger from his Bithynian government with the Emperor Trojan's replies. The later scoffing sketches in Greek of Lucian (of Samosata) also bear witness to the facts of Christ's history (“more sue,” of the Punch style, or indeed lower still), and notably of His most widely known follower the apostle Paul. It is irrational (taking the ground of nature) to doubt what even these avowed enemies of Christianity attest. The men who then defended traditional and effete Paganism, regarded it as a new and dangerous superstition. That they did write of Christ and of His religion in a hostile spirit is beyond controversy, as then uprising and progressing far and wide. Pilate's act, as crucifying Him, is disputed neither by Jew nor by Gentile. So that we assuredly have adequate proof of His birth, life, and death from His enemies, confirming the allegations of scripture. Later still, Celsus and Porphyry wrote against Christianity as philosophers. But the outward facts are not disputed; and Christ's allowed miracles are imputed by Gentiles to magic, as the Jews at the time imputed them to Beelzebub.

There were good and necessary reasons why His resurrection could not be seen or attested by outsiders. In general it called for chosen witnesses familiar with Him. Again, how could a Greek, still less a Jew, get over a resurrection? and this predicted at least a thousand years before by David (Psa. 16:9-11)? Over and over it was announced beforehand to His own disciples; but they never took in so strange an intimation till it was accomplished. To own that fact, at least to believe God in it, is to become a Christian, if one by grace get possessed of heart, conscience, or sound judgment. For Him to be raised as He said, on the third day, was to lay the foundation of the gospel. The God who alone raised Him from among the dead gave in that fact the mightiest proof possible that the world, Jew and Gentile, hated Him whom His unjust judge acquitted yet gave up to the murderous will of Israel. God then and thus vindicated the Man who will come to judge quick and dead. How could any sober man expect unbelieving Jews or Gentiles to record such a wonder to His glory, and to their own necessary condemnation? Yet thousands of unbelievers were brought to believe, and suffered for their faith unflinchingly.

As to the Bible being the word of God, it speaks to conscience as no other book does, from Genesis to the Revelation; and the variety of the inspired writers only and greatly adds to the wonder. Its existence, if isolated as historically shown from Moses to the Patmos prisoner of Domitian, would not prove its inspiration, as it now does. Miracles were passing evidence; prophecies, deeper and more permanent. But the True and Faithful Witness, Jesus Christ (who stands morally aloof from all men before or after) fills the gap between the O. T. and the New. He is the object to which the Old pointed (though only His humiliation, and His unseen glory be fulfilled, and the visible display of His goodness, power, and glory remains to be, as it surely will). He is the foundation and the substance of which the N. T. is the record; and He sent the Holy Spirit, that the humblest men He chose might convey the record adequately by His power, and that others might profit by faith everlastingly.

Its own internal evidence is at once the plainest, readiest, and most convincing to all those that love the truth. There is just published “God's Inspiration of the Scriptures” (if I may be allowed to speak about a book of mine), in which the most stringent demand of a divine authority, differing essentially from every other writing, is laid down; and this principle of divine design, shown to be palpable in all its parts, is applied to the various books of the O. & N. Testaments. May I ask you to do me the favor of reading what ought to be, unless I deceive myself, more satisfactory than many letters? It is to be had at T. Weston's, 53, Paternoster Row; or to be read at the British Museum, if it be as yet producible at the round Reading-room.

As to the grievously inconsistent state of those who pose as Christians and profess faith (if now indeed this last can be alleged) in scripture as God's word, I can only bow my head, and humbly acknowledge the shame. For what is worse or more shocking than grace abused? But even here a wonderful fact claims attention. The O. T. predicts from first to last the like distressing ruin of the Jews through disobedience and idolatry, crowned by their rejection of the true Messiah. The N. T. no less clearly predicts the shameless ruin of the Christian profession, with true men of God of old and now, walking in faith, humility, and holiness. Both Testaments predicted that the Messiah, the crucified Lord Jesus, will return in glory, and execute judgment on professing Christians and Israel; as also on the nations who still hold to, their false gods or their incredulity, apart from both.

Perhaps, dear Sir, you will allow that I have honestly replied to the substance of your letter, as I have no reason to shirk a single point raised. God too will help all who truly look to Him in their need. Since, as a young man, I was enabled to turn my back on the world and on more guilty Christendom, and by grace sought not its favors nor feared its frowns, but decided simply to believe, walk, and worship as Christ's bondman and withal

His freedman, I have known true peace and joy in believing here, and I look for what is far, far better forever with Him. Believe me, dear Mr. N.,

Sincerely your friend and servant for His sake,

W. K.

Church Obedience

To apply the ruin of the assembly to sanction disobedience is a principle wholly unallowable. I cannot appoint elders: it is not a question of obedience, but authority, and I have not the authority. The assembly had it not when Paul was alive, nor can they assume it now. They had not power to deliver to Satan then, they have not now; but they were bound to obey the command to put out then, and they are so now. Wherever two or three are really gathered together unto the Lord's name, He is in the midst; and there is the “within” and the “without.” It is a clearing of the conscience of the assembly: “ye have proved yourselves clear in this matter” (2 Cor. 7). Otherwise the assembly would be positive sanction (and by Christ's presence) of the association of Christ and sin; and it would be far better there should be no assembly at all than that. 2 Tim. 2 gives us the general principle of every one who calls himself a Christian separating from iniquity, purging himself from false teachers, and walking with those who call upon the Lord's name out of a pure heart. It is individual duty when evil has come in.

In bestowing power God is sovereign. When the word has spoken, I am bound to obey. To refuse obedience to it is to disobey—to assume on my own will authority not to act till God chooses to do that which rests on His own will. J.N.D.

GOD'S INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES, by W. K.,
cloth, 5/-

LIFE ETERNAL, 2d.

F.E.R. Heterodox on Life Eternal, other Divine Truths, and above all Christ's Person, paper, 10d., limp cloth, 1/-.

F.E.R. Heterodox on Christ's Person... ... id.

THE LORD'S PROPHECY ON OLIVET, limp, 9d.
THE COMING, AND THE DAY, OF THE LORD, limp, 1/-.
Short Introduction to Paul's Epistles, 1/- & 1/6

Published

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row

Published Monthly,

Jacob: 23. Jacob Blessing Joseph's Sons

In this chapter scenes of profound interest follow as to the dying patriarch, for his blessing on the sons of Joseph; in the next for his dying words to his own sons in general. Few words are here needed however much may be conveyed.

“And it came to pass after these things, that [one] told Joseph, Behold, thy father [is] sick. And he took with him his two sons Manasseh and Ephraim. And [one] told Jacob, and said, Behold, thy son Joseph cometh unto thee; and Israel strengthened himself and sat upon the bed. And Jacob said to Joseph, The Almighty God appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and blessed me and said to me, Behold I will make thee fruitful and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a company of peoples; and I will give this land to thy seed after thee, an everlasting possession. And now thy two sons, who were born to thee in the land of Egypt before I came to thee into Egypt, [shall be] mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine as Reuben and Simeon. And thy family which thou hast begotten (or, shalt beget) after them shall be thine: they shall be called after the name of their brethren in their inheritance, And as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan on the way, when yet a certain distance (way) to come to Ephrath; and I buried her there on the way to Ephrath, that is, Bethlehem. And Israel beheld Joseph's sons and said, Who [are] these? And Joseph said to his father, They [are] my sons whom God hath given me here. And he said, Bring them, I pray thee unto me, that I may bless them. Now the eyes of Israel were dim for age—he could not see. And he brought them nearer to him; and he kissed them and embraced them. And Israel said to Joseph, I had not thought to see thy face; and, behold, God hath also let me see thy seed. And Joseph brought them out from between his knees, and bowed down with his face to the earth. And Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand towards Israel's left hand, and Manasseh in his left hand towards Israel's right hand, and brought [them] near to him. And Israel stretched out his right hand and laid [it] on Ephraim's head—and he [was] the younger—and his left hand on Manasseh's head, guiding (others, crossing) wittingly his hands, for Manasseh [was] the first-born. And he blessed Joseph and said, The God before whom walked my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, the God that tended me all my life long till this day, the angel that redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named on them and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth (land). And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it was evil in his eyes; and he took hold of his father's hand to remove it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's head. And Joseph said to his father, Not so my father, for this [is] the first-born: put thy right hand on his head. But his father refused and said, I know, my son, I know: he also will become a people and he also will be great; but truly his younger brother will be greater than he; and his seed will become a fullness of nations. And he blessed them that day, saying, In thee will Israel bless, saying, God make thee as Ephraim and Manasseh; and he set Ephraim before Manasseh. And Israel said to Joseph, Behold I die; and God will be with you, and bring you again to the land of your fathers. And I have given to thee one slope [shoulder] above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow” (chap. 48).

It is well to note the peculiarity of the phrase in verse 19, not “a multitude of peoples” but “a fullness of nations.” The Septuagint is lax in verse 4, where it gives “congregations of nations,” (συναγωγὰς ἐθνῶν) instead of “an assembly of peoples;” but it is nearer the truth in verse 19, where it has πλῆθος ἐθνῶν, “a fullness of nations.” It is notorious, that in contrast with Judah and Benjamin, who had a distinct place, all the rest of the tribes fell under Ephraim as Israel.

Such was this affecting and instructive incident: Jacob clear, where Isaac had been dim; Jacob clearer than Joseph, hitherto given beyond other men of God to be of penetrating insight into divine things. What deep self-judgment must have passed through Israel's spirit, as he reviewed the blessing once stolen by his own guile! Could not, would not, Jehovah have, somehow to His own glory without his servant's shame, have crossed Isaac's hands to make good His word of promise to Jacob? How sad not to have trusted Him!

Jacob was deceitful no more; nay he even steadfastly opposed the will of his beloved Joseph in subjection to God who directed him. What a change through His grace!

We may not pass over the reference to this chapter in Heb. 11:21. Dying, Jacob was stronger in faith than in all the vigor of his life, tried and energetic as it had been. Then it was that he by faith blessed each of the sons of Joseph, above nature's thoughts; as Isaac, overruled of God, blessed Jacob and Esau according to His purpose. Nor is it without force that Jacob's worshipping on the top of his staff is here mentioned, in contrast with his father's fear when he discovered his folly in striving to please himself contrary to God's word. With his staff he passed the Jordan a lonely outcast; in due time he had become two bands, though in fear of Esau's resentment, whom God had recalled to natural affection. Now, so soon to depart, he is strong in faith, adoring and giving glory to God; whilst he opens his lips as God's mouthpiece over his grandsons.

Israel Holy to Jehovah: 14. Sanctification Required of Priests and People

These verses join the sons of Aaron with the children of Israel in the injunctions of Jehovah the Mediator.

“17 And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying, 18 Speak to Aaron and to his sons, and to all the children of Israel, and say to them, If there be any man of the house of Israel, or of the sojourners in Israel, that presenteth his gift (corbon) for any of his voluntary offerings which they present to Jehovah as a burnt offering, 19 it shall be accepted for you without blemish, a male of the oxen, of the sheep, and of the goats. 20 Whatsoever hath a blemish shall ye not offer, for it shall not be acceptable for you. 21 And when a man offereth a sacrifice of peace offerings to Jehovah as a vow or an offering of the herds or of the flocks, it shall be without blemish to be accepted: no defect shall be therein. 22 Blind or broken or maimed or ulcerous or scurvy or scabbed, ye shall not offer these to Jehovah; and a fire offering shall ye not make of these on the altar to Jehovah. 23 A bullock and a sheep (or goat) that hath any limb superfluous or lacking that mayest thou offer as a voluntary offering; but as a vow it shall not be accepted. 24 That which is bruised or crushed or broken or cut shall ye not present to Jehovah; neither in your land shall ye do (so). 25 And from a stranger's hand shall ye not offer the bread of your God from any of these; because their corruption [is] in them; a blemish [is] in them: they shall not be accepted for you” (vers. 17-25).

We can readily understand how prone the people were to forget His honor and all-seeing eye in presenting as an offering for His altar what was damaged or defective; and how disposed the priest would be to wink at such artifices. It was really a heinous transgression, and in effect denied His being the living God. Was the God of Israel such a one as His selfish and professed worshippers? This is indeed what sin implies; and especially in divine things.

But let us remember how much more wicked it is in a Christian whose very profession is to walk in the light as God is in the light. The true light already shines, Though not under law like Israel, we, once darkness, are made light in the Lord and are called to appear luminaries in a squalid world, holding forth the word of life. Surely we ought not to be in our relationship less careful than a Jew in his: the least that became either was to be honest before God and man. If not, the less we speak of grace, the better; nothing condemns looseness so much as the true grace of God.

Yet even the law tolerated a lower note in a voluntary peace offering, because man was there allowed an unusual place. Leavened bread, besides the unleavened cakes mingled with oil, was presented with the sacrifice of his peace offering of thanksgiving. But for a vow it was forbidden, as being strictly to Jehovah. Yet neither in wilderness nor in promised land was anything abnormal permissible for acceptance. An unblemished male was imperative, as representing the Holy one of God. And a stranger had no more license than an Israelite.

Proverbs 20:15-23

We are shown here what is of real value, far beyond gold, the object of most men, and rubies, the desired prize of rich folk. We are also taught what ensures loss and evil in Jehovah's sight.

“There is gold, and a multitude of rubies; but the lips of knowledge [are] a precious jewel.

Take his garment that is become surety [for] another, and hold him in pledge for a strange woman.

Bread of falsehood [is] sweet to man, but afterward his mouth shall be filled with gravel.

Purpose is established by counsel, and with wise guidance make war.

He that goeth about tale-bearing revealeth secrets: therefore meddle not with him that openeth (enticeth with) his lips.

Whoso curseth his father or his mother, his lamp shall be put out in the blackest darkness.

An inheritance hastily gotten at the beginning will not be blessed at the end.

Say not, I will recompense evil: wait on Jehovah, and he will save thee.

Divers weights [are] an abomination to Jehovah; and a false balance [is] not good” (vers. 15-23).

Never was there a day in the world's annals when men might more easily possess themselves of gold than when Solomon reigned, never one when precious stones so freely poured than then into Jerusalem. But knowledge duly expressed was far rarer and yet more valuable; and so it is still.

Inconsiderateness is a direct road to ruin, even if one listens to spendthrifts of one's family. But what happens when a man is so weak as to become surety for a stranger? Yet worse is it, when he listens to a strange woman. You may relieve him of his raiment at once.

Again, if one eat the bread of deceit, and instead of trembling at the sin, find it sweet, what will the end be? Surely to fill the mouth with gravel; God is not mocked.

Counsel is requisite to form and execute a purpose, and especially if one go to war. But if one needs wise guidance, what more dangerous then to listen to an active tale-bearer, unless it be to a flatterer?

To honor one's parents was the first commandment with promise: what can be the issue but deepest darkness to him that curses either?

So too the hastily gotten inheritance is apt to slip soon, having no blessing from God.

But it is a dangerous thing to keep a grudge, and hope to repay it. God is jealous, but withal gracious. On Him let one wait and prove His saving mercy, as David did.

Cheating is His abomination, and a balance of deceit is not good, but for destruction.

Gospel Words: Love Your Enemies

This word of our Lord demands our earnest heed; for it is as foreign to the feelings of men in Christendom as to Jewish disciples. But here is nothing that goes beyond the word of the beginning of Christ, nothing that supposes the work of redemption accomplished, or the Holy Spirit given to the believer. Yet the presence of the Lord brought in no little change.

“Ye heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies, and pray for those that persecute you, that ye may be sons of your Father that is in [the] heavens; for he maketh his sun to rise on evil and good, and sendeth rain on just and unjust” (vers. 43-45).

In vain some essay to impress those words of Christ on men in general, on such as are not born of God. Now the language assumes that those addressed did believe in Christ, and had a new life of the Spirit as being born anew. But this is not so in our country or any other, even if as favored in the possession of an open Bible. Yet the divine speaker takes for granted, what was true then and is still, that the mass of men, the nations (and the Jews are at least as bad), seek after what pertains to this life, eating, drinking, clothing, money, ease, honor: baptism, or the profession of Christ, in no way delivers from or lessens it. Therefore He warns that wide is the gate and broad the way that leads unto destruction, and many are they that enter through it; that narrow is the gate and straitened the way that leads unto life, and few are they that find it. It is therefore a total and dangerous misconception thus to overlook man's existing state of ruin.

But others, who seem aware of human inability to obey the law of God, and are accustomed to regard even believers still, as like Israel of old, doomed to failure under law, naturally conclude, that such requirements as the Lord urged on the mount are to man impossible and more condemnatory than the Ten Words of Sinai. They therefore settle down, like the believer in Rom. 7, overwhelmed as he sees himself struggling against the evils of his old nature, and ignorant of emancipating grace in the power of a dead and risen Christ, who can only cry, O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of this body of death? Hence the tendency to tone down our Lord's words in these three chapters, or even to deny that they have a living claim on the saint now. Others again contend that they are Jewish and had only to do with the disciples when the Lord was here in the days of His sojourn. They are really His words to men taught of God, and with a new life which desires and delights to walk according to His revealed will.

To love our enemies, to pray for those that persecute, is wholly above the law or the duty of a people in the flesh. An Edomite or an Egyptian was not to be abhorred, and their children might enter into the congregation of Jehovah in the third generation; an Ammonite or a Moabite only in the tenth generation, like a bastard. But Christ brought in grace and truth. In the light of the Son of man all were lost, even the sheep of Israel. As He was come to seek and to save that which was lost, those that were His were to love their enemies and to pray for their persecutors. It was the mind of heaven for His saints on earth, applicable to them and to none but them. They receive life, His life, in receiving Him, and are called to show it thus. It is as incumbent now as when the Lord thus spoke; and His resurrection made it clearer and stronger, as the Holy Spirit when given made it of power. Thus were the disciples to be sons of their Father in the heavens.

What renegades, if not from Christ, at least from His words and will, if any bearing His name seek to fritter away so plain a call! This they cannot avoid, if they justify the ways of Christendom, where the world rules and the language is of Ashdod, where men fail to show their Father's name, and boast of their comprehending all the mixed multitude. For it is now a question of a far higher than Israel and of a separation deeper and nearer to God. It is a true and present calling of grace, inalienable from the Christian if loyal to the Lord. For we are all God's sons by faith in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:26). If we have the relationship and title, we cannot be absolved from the responsibility. Yea, it would be violence done to our new and divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4).

Let us therefore be in earnest to keep up the family character. Does not our Father that is in the heavens make His sun to rise on evil and good? does He not send rain on just and unjust? If His sons, it is not presumption to cherish feelings above human nature; it is our new status, and should be our delight. Grace alone can make it good. But Christ has procured all that is needful and efficacious to this end; and the Holy Spirit is here to see to it and guide us to Christ's glory.

Be not deceived, brethren beloved in the Lord. The enemy is sleeplessly active, and only too successful. This is My beloved Son, says the Father: hear ye Him. What is the chaff to the wheat? It is not enough to have life in Him, and our sins forgiven through His blood. We are called to hear His voice and to follow Him, separate from the world that crucified the Lord of glory.

The Heavenly Hope: Part 3

But the passage conveys much more, and of surpassing interest. It is not only the all-important distinction of heavenly glory as well as of earthly attached to the divine Person of our Lord. The declaration from His lips that He is the bright, the “Morning Star,” elicits the prompt answer of the bride, the Lamb's wife in title; and not here only but that of the Holy Spirit who had anointed and sealed, and here fittingly guides her. “The Spirit and the bride say, Come.”

Evangelicalism, afraid of going too far and disposed to humanize the truth, and thus enfeebling its intrinsic force, would address this cry to man, that he might be brought to Christ for new birth and the remission of his sins. But this is to misapply, darken, and lose what the scripture here imports. For it is Christ announcing Himself as the Morning Star which draws out the heart's answer. His bride, the church animated and directed by the Spirit, thus responds to His love, and bids Him come according to His promise. Long had she waited for Him, and watched earnestly more than those that long for the morning. This in nature is indeed but a passing relief; whereas His coming will be the crowning joy of love and the instant change into glory forever, though not yet its appearing before the world.

At the beginning He had said, I am coming again, and will receive you unto Myself, that where I am, ye also shall be. For He departed, crucified by the world, but on the cross glorifying God as He never had been and never so needs again, glorifying God even as to sin, and thus furnishing to Him, as this only could inaugurate, a new glory. He was therefore glorified by God and in God, and this straightway, as the basis of the gospel at its fullest as well as of the church of God, Christ's body. In order to do this with other purposes pertaining to the heavenly and new state of things, He departed out of this world unto the Father. But far from abandoning the feeble objects of His grace, it is there and then strenuously declared (John 13:1) that having loved His own that were in the world, He loved them unto the end. His love was out-and-out. Besides, the Father sends, and He too sends, the Advocate meanwhile, the Holy Spirit of truth, to abide with and in them forever. But He also assures them of His own coming again to fetch them into the Father's house: there and no less; that they may be with Himself in those many mansions.

When the Lord predicates of Himself “the bright, the morning Star,” it is no mere wish or enthusiastic emotion of nature that bursts forth. The Spirit Himself takes the initiative in the heart of the church. “The Spirit and the bride say, Come.” The earthly bride does not receive the Spirit till the Lord shall have appeared in glory. There will be true conversion in a godly remnant of Jews long before, in days of sore trial and ever growing evil and danger, some slain for righteousness' sake, and truth as far as known, others preserved to be the nucleus of the generation to come. But the great privilege of the out-poured Spirit from on high is when the King is come, and the wilderness becomes a garden, and a garden is counted a forest. It is the day of Israel's full blessing and of the restitution of all things concurrently. But here every solid reason points to that heavenly bride, who alone has the privilege of the indwelling Spirit to give her present communion with Christ in all things before He comes, and here in His coming for her. The form simple as it is has striking beauty, and is as characteristically suitable as full of grace. For He speaks, and she replies intelligently in the love that at once answers to His love.

First there is the normal relation recognized, and the Spirit as competent and graciously prompting the bride. But next many a child of God is quite uninformed and unconscious of his proper association with Christ after this intimate pattern. Yet he does hear His voice, and knows not the voice of strangers. The reality of his divine birth is thus fully owned, while ignorance of the bridal relation is graciously provided against up to (we may say) the last moment that intervenes: “and let him that heareth say, Come.” What is there to fear in His coming, Who for us died and rose and comes again? What love, joy and honor are couched in His coming again to receive us unto Himself, and set us with and like Himself now in the Father's house! Therefore “let him that heareth say, Come.” Is there not everything possible to preclude fear, to fill with delight and confidence?

But to the last the outflow of divinely given compassion for the wretched and lost has its place. The gospel has its glad and urgent message for souls, after Christ and His coming as the nearest of all to the church and to the Christian. Hence the quite distinct turn in the closing half of the verse. The difference is made clear by the necessary and plain omission of “say.” It would be out of the question for any but the bride and the Christian to bid Christ come; those who know Him by faith and are assured of His love can and are called to say so. But it would be madness for any others to join in such a call. Because of their ruin and for their sins they need Him first to save their souls. Till they believe, He could only be their judge. But it is still the day of grace. The word for such accordingly is, “And let him that is athirst come “; nor this only, but “let him that will take life's water freely.”

The thirsty one is indeed invited to come. The church has the spring within, and rivers flowing without; but she calls to Christ. It is His name that avails for all the sinner's need before God. There is no obstacle on His side in the way: God gave and sent His Son for this express purpose. His death, however wicked and destructive might be man's part, only the more met his wants in God's surpassing grace. Let him in all his need “come,” not say, “Come.” Yea “he that will,” however feebly he as yet feels his evil state, shall the more truly feel it, as he by faith apprehends divine love; “let him take life's water freely.” God's grace gives it to him that is only willing, to him that comes just as he is. Is it not indeed a wondrous verse? And it emphatically applies till Christ comes.

It has already been pointed out how ill 2 Peter 1:19 has fared at the hands of the erudite, and how the only real sense is lost by those who either unconsciously or willfully sever “in your heart” from the immediate context. “The morning star” in Rev. 2:28; 22:16, has been put to like torture, through ignorance of the heavenly hope which it figures, and by none more strangely than by the author of “Thoughts on the Apocalypse” (pp. 150, 151). “The glory of the star belongs to distant and unknown worlds; but the sun is a part of our own system, and is set specially to nourish and enlighten it. Consequently when Christ first appears in the fullness of divine glory, in the glory of the Father, His own glory, and the glory of the holy angels, He is symbolized by the star. ‘I am the bright and morning star.' To him that overcometh I will give the morning star, i.e. association with Himself in this high character of glory. It is to flesh and blood terrible glory, and in it he will exercise the destructive judgment whereby the day of the Lord will be ushered in. But when He brings in that gracious and benign display of glory, whereby Israel and the earth is to be abidingly blessed, we find Him symbolized by the sun.”

Can one conceive more entire surrender to speculation without an attempt at scriptural proof? It is allowed that the morning star (not “the star” as he puts the case) differs from the sun; but where in the Bible is it ever represented as belonging “to distant and unknown worlds?” Where is Christ symbolized by the star when He “first appears in the fullness of divine glory,” and of His other glories? When Christ in Rev. 2:28 associates the overcomer with Himself in that high character of glory, what ground is there to assume that it is “to flesh and blood terrible glory?” or that “in it He will exercise the destructive judgments whereby the day of the Lord will be ushered in?” If “the star” distinctively points to “distant and unknown worlds,” is it consistent to make it the emblem of glory to flesh and blood? is it not incongruous with his own definition to say that in the star glory Christ will exercise “the destructive judgment whereby the day of the Lord will be ushered in”? And while the Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings for those that fear His name, is he entitled to omit that they shall tread down the wicked as ashes under the soles of their feet in that day, for it is to burn as a furnace;. and the proud and all that work wickedness shall be as stubble; and that day shall leave them neither root nor branch. This is hardly “gracious and benign,” though He will fully be so for His own.

Nor is it a casual slip, but deliberate and systematic error. For in pp. 322, 323, the author returns to the same mischievous absurdity on Rev. 22:16. “He has other essential glories of His own. ‘Before Abraham was, I AM.' He is the root and offspring of David, AND the bright and morning star. I have already spoken of the star, as the symbol of distant and unearthly glories derived from high and unknown spheres, into which the eye of man, as man, can never penetrate. It is in such glory, strictly and divine, that Jesus will come. It will be the true light of God's own glory and holiness arising suddenly on the deep darkness of the world's night. It will not be at first the sun arising with healing on His wings (for the day-star precedes the sun), but it will be the sudden visitation of strange and distant glory, suddenly breaking upon the abyss of darkness beneath. He will come as the Son of God in His own glory and in His Father's glory, and in the glory of the holy angels, and it is into such glory that they who are His at His coming are to be taken; for His promise is, To him that overcometh will I give the morning star.'“

Now the simple fact is that the sole use scripture makes of the morning or day star is as the figure of Christ Himself coming for us to make good the heavenly blessedness with Himself promised to the overcomer (as in Rev. 2:28); and the heart getting hold of this hope (as in 2 Peter 1:19). There is not the faintest token of “distant and unknown worlds,” any more than of “destructive judgment” associated with it. The truth of God is as plain as the fiction of Mr. N.'s prophetic system; and even he was compelled, and not here only, to allow that “the day-star precedes the sun,” as of course it does, and that it means taking those that are His at His coming into a glory divine and heavenly far above the earth.

But it may surprise some enamored with this incoherent scheme, that its author has elsewhere to allow that somehow the risen saints “are evidently recognized in the commencement of this chapter [Rev. 19] as being with the Lord in glory.” This witness is true, but incompatible with his most cherished views. He seems to connect it with Rev. 16:15; yet this has no relation with the saints' translation to heaven, but with the Lord's coming judicially. His idea is that there are two distinct acts of Christ's coming for judgment! the unearthly star-like one, in which He deals with the tares and gathers up to heaven the wheat; and the earthly one, when the saints follow Him out of heaven, and He destroys the Beast, the False Prophet, and the apostate hosts.

The whole idea is utterly false. For 2 Thess. 2:8 is sure and plain that when the Lord appears with His saints, His first act is to destroy the lawless one and of course his followers; which Rev. 19:19-21 confirms as well as Rev. 17:14.

Oh! the darkness which fails to see that the bright morning star is His coming in fullness of grace to associate the heavenly saints with Himself, without the smallest sign of judgment if we accept the word of God! How sweet a hope now to arise in our hearts! How glorious and what joy of love when He thus comes to receive us unto Himself for the Father's house! Yes, He announces Himself as the bright, the morning star; and the Spirit and the bride say, Come. Destructive judgments! unknown worlds! Nay, but the consummation of His love and ours as one with Him; and this realized in the Father's house: were it not so, He had never raised our hope so high. Did He not say that the Father Himself dearly loves us, because we have dearly loved the Son and have believed that He came from God, yea the Father?

He will do more than display us before every eye in the same glory with our Lord, that the world may know that He loved us as He loved Him; He will gratify His own desire that we shall be with Him, and above the world where no earthly eye can penetrate, that we may behold Christ's glory, for the Father loved Him before the world's foundation. Is not this so light a thing to many saints that they never hear or speak of it? Yet is its spiritual joy far beyond any manifestation before the world however glorious. Weigh it, brethren, that you may learn how much your earthly preoccupation robs you of what should be your proper portion in fellowship with Him above.

Nothing has been said here as yet of what is a great bugbear to certain minds. They regard the “secret rapture” as enough without further proof to condemn the notion when stated. Those who have learned its truth and its importance are content to speak of the rapture of the saints without further adjunct. Yet the morning star, unseen save by those who spiritually watch, lends itself in the readiest way to what other scriptures point. Let us consider these a little more.

In John 14:1-3 it is implied in our Lord's coming again and receiving us unto Himself. Neither time nor season, neither contingent change nor prophetic date, neither general state of the earth nor specific sign of any sort, finds the least place. Infinite love of the Son in communion with the Father elevates us above all such thoughts into an incomparable blessedness above with Christ. Is it conceivable that any Christian mind could doubt that the very manner of it is what the apostle Paul was given to announce in 1 Thess. 4:16, 17, and 2 Thess. 2:1, and 1 Cor. 15:51, 52, with details as to the dead saints and the living ones? Phil. 3:20, 21, and Jude 24 sustain the same heavenly truth. In all it is the same translation of the saints to be with the Lord.

Not one word in these different scriptures teaches visibility to the world. It is the full making good of that sovereign grace which without a displayed signal to the saints, still less to those who are not concerned, has given us the promise of heavenly association with Christ. Here we shall have the hope blessedly accomplished. In all these intimations there is the most marked absence of others then beholding what the Lord is effecting. It flows from that special love of His for His own, which excludes strangers from intermeddling with His joy. But the day of the Lord duly follows when the world shall see both Him and them appearing in glory (John 17:24).

What has misled people is the confounding of the revelation with the rapture. That as distinctly calls for “every eye” to see it, as this excludes it. The Lord will come for His own, will raise those that were put to sleep through Him, will change us the living that remain until then, both in an eye's twinkling at the last trumpet, and thus gather us together to Him, not only into the air to meet Him, but so received to set us in the Father's house before the presence of His glory with exultation. All this is quite above and apart from the ken of man. But the public vindication of Christ and His own before the universe is when He will come forth after the bridals of the Lamb on high, as well as the final judgment on earth of Babylon the great harlot to which God under the seventh vial gave the cup of the wine of the fury of His wrath (Rev. 17, 19.).

Then and not till then is the visible display of the Lord and of the glorified saints that follow Him out of the opened heavens, when He smites the nations, shepherds them with iron rod, and treads the winepress of His wrath. It is fittingly and with precision called, not His presence merely, but “the appearing of His presence” (compare 2 Thess. 2:1 with 8), by which the Lord Jesus shall annul the lawless one then revealed as well as the apostate imperial chief, who shall both be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone. Thus does God render tribulation to the troublers of the saints and repose to the troubled, not at the rapture of the saints, but at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with angels of His power, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those that know not God, and on those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus. This would have been quite incongruous with all that is said of His coming to change His saints and translate them to heaven. But it is in entire keeping with His appearing, His glorified being with Him, for the double purpose of their enemies paying penalty of everlasting destruction from the Lord's face and from the glory of His might, and of His coming (not to receive but) to be glorified in His saints and marveled at in all that believed in that day. For it will be the day of the Lord then truly present, the saints having been gathered to Him previously.

With this perfectly agrees such a scripture as Rev. 17:14. It is ignored by those who oppose what they call the “secret rapture” and no wonder, for it is utterly incompatible with their hypothesis. Those with the Lamb, when the Beast and the vassal kings make war with Him, are called and chosen and faithful, the first and last of which terms can describe only His accompanying saints, not angels. This is confirmed irrefragably by the later description in Rev. 19:14, where the symbolic clothing points to the saints, not to angels (compare ver. 8 before); and yet more by the previous marriage of the Lamb above. All concur in proving that the rapture of the saints, unseen by the world, whatever the astonishment produced by the disappearance of the living saints, must have preceded that revelation of the Lord and His saints glorified which is associated with the manifest and awful judgments He will execute on their enemies.

It has already been shown that Col. 3:4 beyond doubt connects the manifestation, not the rapture, of the saints, with the Lord's manifestation in glory, not with His coming or presence simply. They are then, and not before, manifested in glory. Christ is therefore not seen in glory before they are caught up. They shall be manifested together. The scriptures on which men have thought differently refer to the Jews, not to Christians. But these godly Jews will be gathered in the land to Him as their glorious King, instead of being first caught up, and then at a later epoch appearing with Him in the same glory. Compare Matt. 24:31-41, Mark 13:27-31, Luke 21:27-36; also Isa. 24:21-23; 25; 26; 27

It may be, as it has been, alleged that though none of the scriptures which certainly apply to this subject speak of visibility to men, we do hear of the Lord's “shout,” of the archangel's voice, of the trump. But why should any attach loudness of sound to these expressions, solemn and impressive as they undoubtedly are? Why foist in that which appeals to the senses of outside mankind or of the world, when the language employed avoids it? It fully bespeaks the personal and gracious intervention of the Lord Jesus for His own, the faithful summons of God, the acclaim of the archangel, and in Cor. xv. the immediate and final notice to depart; but none of these goes necessarily beyond the persons interested. They directly concern the household of faith, and only the glorified.

Men have compared the Lord's descent for us with Ex. 19, but with singular infelicity. For thunder and lightnings were then, and the voice of a trumpet “exceeding loud,” so that all the people trembled. And Mount Sinai was altogether on smoke, and Jehovah descended upon it in fire, and the smoke from it ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole region quaked greatly. And the voice of the trumpet waxed louder and louder. All thus was of set purpose minatory, alarming, and awful, as became the ministry of death and condemnation.

Even when the Lord comes in restoring mercy for Israel by-and-by, we read in the prophet that in that day a “great” trumpet shall be blown, and in the evangelist His angels will be sent with a great trumpet, or a great sound of trumpet. This does express what is wholly absent, where scripture tells of His coming in love and majesty to make good His love to the heavenly saints. For His appearing to Israel is bound up with the infliction of judgments on the apostates, Jewish and Gentile, and the punishment of the enemies of His people and of the wicked in general. As with His own ascension, our rapture will be the triumph of grace which leaves the world unmolested for the moment, though the providential inflictions of God soon begin to follow in measured order and increasing degree, till all culminates in the day of the Lord at their close, as detailed in the Book of Revelation.

We have seen that one of the most able and accepted and determined to refuse to discriminate between the Lord's coming for us and our coming with Him, between His presence and the appearing of His presence, was compelled to own that the glorified saints must be caught up to heaven for some time before they with Him emerge from it. For they follow the King of kings who descends to smite the nations with a sharp sword and to shepherd them with iron rod, as well as to tread the winepress of God's exceeding wrath. By B.W.N. they are allowed to have been there from the destruction of Babylon under the seventh vial. This however clashes with his fundamental principle, that God acts for Christ till He appears in person. Now, as all God's vials precede Christ's appearing, He cannot appear before they are poured out. If therefore Christ destroys Babylon and takes up the saints then or before its destruction, so that God is praised above for His judgment of the great Harlot, He must have come for them before the day of His revelation from heaven in chap. 19. for His still more awful judgment of the Beast, &c. This clearly overthrows the system du fond en comble; not only the arguments of others, but his own long considered statement and published defense.

The main question for those who value the truth is, Where or when according to scripture are the saints translated to heaven? Now it is beyond just question that, the book of Revelation opens with the Lord seen in the prophet's vision judging the seven churches in Asia (proconsular). This (1) was what John saw; then (2) “the things which are,” a very notable description of the seven churches as judged by the Lord in His letters to each respectively; and lastly, (3) “the things about to be after these,” or the visions of the future to follow up even into eternity itself.

The third division is the strict prophecy, consisting of two portions (4-11., and 11-22:5), for each opened with a prefatory introduction, and goes on to the end.

Here then may be found, adequate evidence before each series of prophetic visions, when the rapture of the saints takes place. The church-state is adumbrated in the seven churches, “the things that are “: not the actual Asiatic assemblies only, but what they prefigured successively as things would to the hearing ear by what the Spirit says. In Rev. 4, 5 are indicated the glorified saints already symbolized as in heaven, twenty-four elders, chief-priests of the fully numbered courses, crowned and enthroned around God's central throne. This is definite; and they are no longer souls disembodied but changed. Any saints, Jewish or Gentile, called afterward as very many are, add nothing to them: they are complete. During the period that follows no church-state is seen.

In chap. 7 is a numbered complement out of the twelve tribes of Israel, and after that a countless crowd of Gentiles, objects of divine choice and blessing; but they are separate. There is no fusion into one, as the nature of the church requires. God keeps each distinct throughout from first to last. So far it resembles His work in the O.T. Only grace largely works outside Israel and so far like the N.T. But church-state is closed. It is a new condition with abundant mercy; and in the face of idolatry, apostasy, persecution, tribulation, and divine judgments, a people is prepared for the earth under the reign of the Lord personally present and His glorified saints: a reign of righteousness and peace, Satan wholly excluded, and the Holy Spirit poured on all flesh for 1000 years.

That the existing church-state closes on earth at the end of Rev. 3 on the protracted view is as demonstrable, as that the overcomers out of it, with all that were Christ's before them, are thenceforth seen as glorified in heaven from Rev. 4, 5. Nothing but the coming of Christ to gather those that believed to Himself can account for the new company above, the disappearance of recognized churches here below, and the formation of separate companies out of Israel, and the Gentiles thenceforward for the earthly purposes of God during the crisis of evil and His judgments, till the Lord comes from heaven to put down Satan and his agents, and to establish His world-kingdom. It is therefore between Rev. 3 and iv. that the true epoch for the saints' translation best suits; and a transition period ensues, when the church disappears, and grace works, in presence of solemn chastenings of men, to get ready a nucleus for the Lord's appearing and for the millennial earth, as well as for martyrdom meanwhile.

This conveys the general prefiguration of the steps God takes in judgment, though with dealings of concurrent mercy, to chastise the world, and especially its more favored parts, and to pave the way for investing the Lamb at the fitting time with its direct and supreme government. This ends with Rev. 11:18 for the earthly and the eternal kingdom.

In the fresh section it is not a central throne with enthroned heirs of God and Christ's joint-heirs around, but the temple of God in heaven is opened, and the ark of His covenant seen, not on earth but still above, and yet with added signs of present displeasure. The first great sign seen there is of God's sure promise for Israel's glory. It is not the bride, but the travailing mother of Him who is to tend all the nations with iron rod, arrayed with the sun, the moon under feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. Supreme authority is to be here, the sun that rules the day; the changing and reflected light of the old covenant, no longer guiding but under her feet; but also the fullness of human subordinate authority. Meanwhile the child that was born, the Son of might, was caught up to God and to His throne. For the great dragon, another sign, was seen there, having seven heads and ten horns, emblematic of the Roman empire, in deadly opposition to both. War in heaven ensues. The dragon, the devil, is cast out with his angels; woe to the earth and to the sea, if the heavens and those that dwell there (for so it will then be) rejoice greatly! The devil has great rage, knowing he has a short time; and he vents it against the woman and the rest of her seed, the godly remnant.

But these conflicts are regarded in a far deeper way than in the earlier visions. For there are brought to view the counsels of God centering in His Son, and the hostility of Satan in his last efforts during the half-week which has still to run out, before the Lord in person crushes him and his lawless instruments as in Rev. 19-20. It is the import of the woman's seed caught up on high that is insinuated. For in the manner of the prophetic word the apostle intimates in mystic style the translation to heaven of the saints before the dates begin.

We are thus viewed as in Christ who was caught up there, while the woman and the remnant of her seed are objects, not only of Satan's hate, but of God's providential care on the earth. As we shall share Christ's authority when He takes His great power and reigns (Rev. 2:26, 27), so we are symbolically wrapped up in Him in His being caught up out of Satan's way. We are one with Him in this foreseen rapture, as the apostle Paul in Rom. 8:33, 34, applies to the Christian what Isa. 1:8, 9, says of Christ. Thus we again, and in a very different form suited to this part of the prophecy, come round to the still higher promise in Rev. 2:28. We are associated with Christ as the morning Star before the Sun of righteousness introduces the day for all the world, and we too share the glorious reign with Him. If, instead of groundless fancy, we listen to scripture, the bright, the morning star shines not for the slumbering world, but for those who watch during the dark night. It is essentially spiritual, visible to saints only, not to the world which will have to do rather with the Sun of righteousness.

No sober person of intelligence doubts that the Holy Spirit had first to be poured out, and the gospel to be preached to all the creation. But the N. T. attests that this was done during that first generation, and that the saints were then taught by the apostles to wait for Christ habitually and constantly with no revealed event between to precede or intercept. This is what some daring men venture to ridicule as “any-momentism.”

The misapprehension of ἡ κυριακὴ ἡμέρα in Rev. 1:10 is nothing but a senseless incubus, with the still worse absurdity that the seven churches of Rev. “the things that are,” are seven future groups of a Jewish character. They are alike a fanatical folly without a shred of truth. But no trick of controversy can to any effect legitimately attach such nonsense to the heavenly hope of the N. T., or get rid of the undeniable facts, that churches thenceforward disappear from the book of Revelation for the earth; that a new sight of glorified saints was given in heaven; and that the fresh action of God follows, concurrently here below, of a secured complement of Israel, and a blessed and far larger crowd out of all the nations; and this keeping them apart, instead of being baptized in the power of the Spirit into one body as we are, and as the nature of God's church characteristically demands.

Rev. 22:16 is no exception: only an ignoramus could argue so. For from ver. 6 to the end we have simply appeals to John and the churches that then existed, however permanent the profit might be, as the suited conclusion to the visions previously revealed, as well as its introduction. The Lord would have all that preceded testified in the churches, which was soon utterly forgotten and is generally to our day. But this affords no ground for imagining “churches” in the N. T. sense during the entire period of the crisis, or any part of it, from Rev. 6 to 19, or indeed any longer as on the earth.

I presume that in the strange error of the Rev. James Kelly and of Dr. Bullinger, which they got from the Tractarian Drs. Maitland and J. H. Todd, (as they perhaps from the blunder of the famous critic, J. C. Wetstein, in his N. T. Gr. ii. 750), they wanted Jewish churches for the days of the great tribulation, as their opponents, like Dr. West and a crowd of others, interpolate churches during that period by a still more groundless error, if this be possible. At any rate, if we bow to “the words of the book of this prophecy,” there is no basis of revelation for either. Those who contend on scripture alone for the heavenly hope have ever rejected such notions; nor have these errors any real connection with that truth.

But the closing words of the last chapter of the book are to the last degree impressive, as they corroborate the essential difference between the Christian hope, and the wondrous communication that comprises the unfolded visions of what is to befall the earth in judgment as well as mercy from Rev. 6 to 19 inclusively. This latter is in the richest way the prophetic word, as became in God's wisdom and goodness the winding up of the N. T. But, as elsewhere, so the Lord here carefully guards His own from the mistake of confounding it with what is so distinct.

There are to be two successive series of judgment, of a general and of a special character, as in the seven seals, and the seven trumpets. A general securing to Himself out of Israel, and from among all the nations, accompanies the one; and if the Jews in unbelief seek to establish their polity and religion in unbelief, God begins within the other to recognize a godly remnant during those days of sin and sorrow, with an adequate testimony like that of Moses and Elijah, which none can hinder till their work is done. And the Beast is first seen in his deadly antagonism. Martyrdom ensues; and the merry triumph of the enemy is answered, not only by His power in raising the slain and taking them up to heaven in view of their foes, but by a defined overthrow of man's pride on earth. Then follows the end of man left to himself, and the world-kingdom of our Lord and His Christ is come.

Next, we go back, to let in details of the deepest moment, of which enough has been said. And the kingdom of glory follows, the great white throne, and the eternal scene.

Now none can be so prejudiced as to think that all this can unroll into facts before the Lord comes, though the unbelief of man approaches such an extreme. Yet many saints contend, as we know, for a certain part to intervene before He comes for us. This, however, is what none can show on any legitimate grounds of scriptural evidence. Proof on the contrary has already been given, that the only consistent point for the removal of the saints to heaven is when the churches are no longer seen or heard of on earth, and a new symbolic presence is presented in heaven. After this the steps are revealed by which God chastises the guilty world. In the midst of the great tribulation He calls and forms, not in one body as now but separately, a twofold nucleus of blessed men, Jewish and Gentile, for the earth under the Lord's future reign; as He had already taken to Himself on high those destined to reign with Him when that glorious time arrives, as we see in Rev. 20-22:5.

The fulfillment of the prophecy awaits its sure and varied application when the time arrives for the earthly question to be answered. Now the Lord is occupied with a heavenly work, wherein is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is the all; and in all, quite independently of earthly change, because the end of that work is to be with Him where He is. And thus He concludes, “He that testifies these things saith, Yea, I come quickly. Amen, come, Lord Jesus,” is the divinely supplied reply. The constant waiting, apart from times and seasons, is kept up to the last for him that has an ear to hear.

It is striking to see how careful the Lord is to exclude prophetic events from mingling with our proper portion in His coming for us; and all the more, because the Revelation is in the main the great Christian book of prophecy. Hence, while giving solemn warnings in these concluding appeals, He fixes our hearts on His coming in sovereign grace without a revealed earthly event to intercept it. He precludes any delay on the score of governmental dealings with men on the earth. He allows no room for confusion with intervening changes in the world. “He that testifieth these things saith, Yea, I come quickly,” to which our graciously provided answer is, “Amen, come, Lord Jesus.” Can any words be simpler, or more effective, for the heart?

No intelligent believer denies that the hopes prevalent in Christendom are baseless, vain, and presumptuous. The gospel was sent to save sinners, and to associate them when saved with Christ, the glorified Head, and thus to constitute them a heavenly body, His body. Its aim is not to gather into one the world, but the children of God that were scattered abroad. The gospel was to be preached everywhere as a testimony, but with no such thought as winning all Israel or the nations while He is on high. It is reserved for the Lord, not for the church, in judicial authority, to take His great power and reign, when His world-kingdom is come: a future and total change from His present seat on His Father's throne. That, not this, coalesces with His appearing and His kingdom (2 Tim. 4:1). It is “the blessed hope” of what God will do for man and the world; and we rejoice anticipatively. There will be no general amelioration for the race till then; and we await it with assurance, love it as redounding not to the blessing of man only but to the glory of our Savior God, and in our measure and place testify to its truth and solemnity. In the Pastoral Epistles, His appearing alone is pressed, because responsibility all round is the point, rather than distinctive privilege; and then, not before, “in that day,” will the issues appear of fidelity or of failure. This in its own time the blessed and only Potentate shall show, the King of those that reign, and Lord of those that exercise lordship.

Before that day of manifestation must be the awful apostasy, and the audacious uprising against God of the man of sin, whom the Lord Jesus will appear to destroy, as in 2 Thess. 2. Before that day, as is made evident in Rev. 19, must be fulfilled the predicted blows of divine chastisement, as revealed from the seals of Rev. 6 to the last vials of God's wrath in Rev. 16, of which the judgment of Babylon in the descriptive appendix of 17, 18 are a concluding part and explanation. Then follows the day of the Lord in Rev. 19, when the glorified follow Him out of heaven to the destruction of His enemies, the binding of Satan, and the thousand years' reign of Christ and the risen saints over the earth, as in Rev. 20. All this is as clear as God's word makes it, whatever be the doubts and difficulties of the learned, or the unbelief of worldly-minded men.

But the still more intimate and proper hope of the Christian is His coming for those that love Him and watch during the night for Him with eyes undimmed by hope deferred, the Morning Star, before the day. And as the apostle corrected the errors of the Thessalonian saints, yet confirmed the constant waiting for Him, carefully joining himself with them and all saints in the same attitude, so here does the Lord guard us all from confounding His coming with that day, and God's necessary antecedent dealings of infliction or of mercy on Israel or the nations.

Meanwhile may “the grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.”

(Concluded.)

Published

LONDON:

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly.

1 Peter 5:8-11

Here again the apostle exhorts to be vigilant and to watch. In his former injunction (iv. 7) it was in view of the end of all as being drawn nigh; here it is because of danger from their great adversary.

“Be vigilant, watch: your adversary [the] devil as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour; whom resist, steadfast in faith, knowing that the same sufferings are accomplished in your brotherhood that [is] in the world.”

It is of interest to note how distinctly the enemy is presented as the power of evil with which we have to cope, no less than our God and the Lord Jesus to care for us. Here, as the apostle regards us not as the Epistle to the Hebrews in view of the sanctuary, but as at the same time exposed to the peculiar stress of the desert, he appropriately sets forth our adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion walking about, and seeking whom he may devour.

To the Roman saints, exhorted to be wise for that which is good, and simple as to evil, the word is that the God of peace shall bruise Satan under their feet shortly, and the grace of Christ meanwhile with them. What a blessing had they so continued, instead of human wisdom and ambition, leaving room in time for the most loathsome system of impurity, imposture, pride, and bloodshed!

To the Corinthian assembly, not adequately weaned from philosophic wisdom and the persuasive words of excellent speech, the warning is, as the serpent beguiled Eve by his craft, lest their thoughts should be corrupted from simplicity as to Christ. False apostles can thus pass as ministers of righteousness, as Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.

The Ephesian saints, carried on to the highest plane, are characteristically reminded of the victory over the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience, now led captive but having wiles, with towering pretensions in the heavenlies, against which we need the panoply of God. The Colossian saints have a somewhat similar reference, though much shorter.

Nor need we here dwell on the hindrance of Satan to the apostle, or on his temptation of the saints in Thessalonica, as spoken of in the First Epistle; nor on the awful prediction of his future power at the end of the age as in the Second.

We can passingly notice what more affects leaders, the fault and the snare of the devil endangering an overseer, as in 1 Tim. 3:6, 7; and the possible recovery from his snare, as in the Second Epistle (2:22, 26), for adversaries that repent.

In Heb. 2:14, 15, he is the one that has the might of death annulled through the Savior's death; and in the Revelation he is shown fully both as to the church and in the world to his utter ruin.

We are entitled to resist him as the Epistle of James (4) also urges, however loudly he may roar, and menace with destruction. He is a conquered foe, as faith knows; and the name of Him we confess is ample to terrify him. But confidence in our wisdom, or righteousness, exposes to inevitable defeat. Our strength is in Christ, whose grace suffices, and power is perfected in weakness. Therefore we are bid to resist, steadfast in faith. Some understand “in the faith;” but I question the strength in such an encounter of faith thus objectively viewed. It appears rather to be encouragement given to our subjective faith in the Lord. Our apostle is eminently practical, however important it is that we be sound in the faith. It is no strange thing to be thus assailed. So he reminds us that we know that the selfsame sufferings are accomplished in the brotherhood that is in the world. They have like relationships to God which expose them to persecution through the spite of Satan against Christ, even more than against themselves.

If the apostle does not hide from the pilgrim the power and malice of the enemy in this desert world, what fervor characterizes him when he sets God before us in that love which is above every danger and difficulty, turning all for good to those that love Him!

“But the God of all grace that called you unto his everlasting glory in Christ Jesus, after having suffered a little while, shall himself perfect, stablish, strengthen, ground: to him [be or, is] the glory and the might for the ages of the ages. Amen” (vers. 10, 11).

It is more than a closing prayer, a most confident assurance based on a full knowledge of God as revealed in Christ, and on the already accomplished work of redemption displayed in the power of His resurrection. As Peter began the epistle, so he concluded it. He, like Paul as to his beloved Philippian brethren, had confidence in this very thing, that He who began in them a good work would complete it until Jesus Christ's day. Satan might roar and devour. But, as Paul wrote to the Roman saints, if God be for us, who against us? He that spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him grant us all things? Who shall lay acccusation against God's elect? God is He that justifies: who is he that condemns? Christ is He that died, yea rather that was raised, who is also at God's right hand, who also intercedes for us: who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? According as it is written, For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we were accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay in all these things we more than conquered through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The apostle of the circumcision followed the apostle of the uncircumcision in tracing all blessing to the God and Father of our Lord. Jesus Christ, not rising to the height before us in Ephesians but alike pointing to the same source in his opening words. As the resurrection was the mighty key-note to the one, the ascension gave the heavenly mark to the other. Both were led of the Spirit to present the divine source flowing in the richest streams of goodness suited to the varying circumstances of the saints addressed. None is so characterized as Paul by revealing the eternal and immense counsels of God for the universe with the glorified Christ at the head of all things, heavenly and earthly, and the church, His body, above any question of Jew or Greek, the sharer as His bride of all given to Him.

Yet Peter was inspired here to speak of “the God of all grace,” a title of peculiar significance and for all saints wherever and whatever they might be; but how divinely wise and suited to the Christian elect of the Jewish dispersion Many of them had, no doubt, heard Paul and his companions who long labored in their part of the East, as Peter had not. Paul indeed was called to write elaborately and powerfully to the believing Hebrews, and bring them definitely out of the old legal elements which had so straitened and hampered them, before judgment was actually accomplished on the earthly city and sanctuary. So on Peter devolved the task of feeding and tending by his epistles those sheep who needed comfort and confirmation, now that their great teacher was no more to see their face.

Thus, while there are the clearest tokens of identity between what Peter writes and his preachings in the Acts of the Apostles, he too teaches here, as we have already seen, much beyond what was then required or seasonable. This wondrously beautiful summary before us reflects that advance with all due meatless and forcible compression

Not the God of our fathers which glorified His servant Jesus, but “the God of all grace that called you unto his everlasting glory in Christ Jesus.” It is not merely the God of the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but the God of all overcoming love as manifested in Christ Jesus, superior to, not weakness and failure alone, but the hatred of the enemy seemingly successful to the uttermost in the cross, which His grace turned to be the ground of deep and righteous judgment of sin, yea, making them, the believers, now as spotless in His eyes as the Lamb, through His precious blood. Nor this only; for He called us, not to salvation of souls alone, great as this grace is, but to His everlasting glory in Christ. For it is a glory which far exceeds the earthly kingdom, for its thousand years of righteousness reigning, and Satan shut up, and creation rejoicing after its long thraldom of vanity and groan. The God of all grace, who called saints to His everlasting glory in Christ Jesus, is the best security against all that creature can or cannot do meanwhile; and the more, because as Father He carries on a constant, watchful, and righteous government of His children all through the wilderness (chap. 1:13-17).

But there is another needed and weighty consideration. As Jews they might associate with the Christ immunity from suffering and promotion to high honor; but as Christians, their portion is to share His sufferings for righteousness and love and truth. No mistake more common in Christendom than looking for present reward and distinction and ease through the gospel and the church. But it is a hateful lie of Satan. The Corinthian saints slipped easily into this snare, to the apostle Paul's pain and horror (1 Cor. 4:8-14); it was still more natural for such as had been Jews. So the apostle Peter seeks throughout to impress suffering as the necessary path of the Christian, and “after having suffered a little while,” as his beloved brother to the Hebrews (x. 32-39), fortified by not a few even of old (xi. 3538) but above all by His case who sums up all as our perfect exemplar (xii. 2, 3). It is through suffering in faith and patience that we are disciplined and bear fruit to Him who deigns thus to prune the branches of the vine.

And what more emphatic than the cheering declaration to which he that wrote put his soul, as one who had proved it so truly in his own experience that the God of all grace “Himself shall perfect, stablish, strengthen, ground.” Could those addressed, could we, lose one of these mighty encouragements? Could we allow them to lack the most definite meaning, or to be heaped together as a fagot deriving its virtue from the binding together of the weak? Are they not each strong and expressive, to give without bands the utmost possible confidence in His all-sufficient love to us? It is much that He will “perfect” those who in themselves lack all, in the sense of a complete furnishing and adjustment. It is more that He will “stablish” those who need to be turned inside out, as Peter once in his self-confidence, to lean on Himself and His word by faith. It is precious that He will “strengthen” those that know themselves as weak as water spilled on the ground, and changeable as the wind. It is if possible more, that He will “ground” on the Rock that never moves, those who learn deeply their nothingness, and worse still.

Be it ours to join with his immediate object, in the apostle's ascription of praise and thanksgiving, “to Him be (or is) the might unto the ages of the ages. Amen.” Assuredly “the glory” is His also, but the connection here seems to strengthen the testimony of the few witnesses (A. B 23, ancient Latin copies, &c.) which express only His “might” in the face of the adversary. The great majority however read “the glory and the might,” which was a frequent phrase, as in 1 Peter 4:11, Jude 25 enlarged, and Rev. 1:5. But “dominion “answers to κυριότης, rather than to κράτος as to which translators vacillate.

The Law and Christianity

No Christian doubts that the contents of the law are good, the commandment holy, just and good. Further, when God acted, He more or less displayed His character, what He is; and, as a general principle, there must be goodness and loving-kindness, because these above all characterize Him. Even judgment will put an end to evil and be deliverance from evil, though in itself purely righteousness. The Cross gives the whole truth fully.

All this however is not the question; but what as such is law? It is requirement from man, not the revelation of God. In its dispensation, a God who had delivered may have uttered it; but it is requirement from man of what he ought to do, or prohibition of what he ought not to do. In the Decalogue (save one commandment, or at most two, 4 and 5) it is the latter; that is, it supposes and, in eight or nine tenths of it, speaks of sin.

Obligation does not rest on law, but on relationships: law maintains these; and so does Christ, but on a different principle God has formed men in certain relations to Himself and to one another. A good nature (and man was so formed) would naturally walk in them, because it was a conscious relationship by creation itself, and the communications connected with it. I add this because it is always true with God, another being was needed and existed.

Law takes up these relationships, with some other things consequent as facts on the Fall. Hence the Decalogue is not arbitrary, but God's maintenance of the relationships in which He had placed man, in the circumstances in which he now found himself. It is a perfect rule for the child of Adam as he is, as a summary of moral duty including all, we must add, which the Lord cites.

But two things make the difference. First it is law, not grace. Secondly, grace (though sanctioning all that) changed the relationship. We are God's children in grace, not Adam's. Though in the relationship, the obligation remains. Hence duty and measure of duty flowing from, and existing in, the relationship, that rule and measure are different. Grace says not, “Man must love God” (right, perfectly right as this is as a matter of duty, though hopeless for man in form), but “God loves” and “we love” (not “must” love) “Him because He first loved us.” It is a new nature, and a new relationship. J.N.D.

Not Feelings, but Faith

It is not what you think of Christ's work, but what God thinks of it, that saves. Your knowledge of what God says of it, by faith, gives peace. God says to Israel in Egypt, not when you see the blood, I will pass over, but “when I see the blood.” He it is that has been offended, He it is that judges, and He it is that has accepted the ransom in justice, as He gave it in love, He is faithful and just to forgive us.

As we may confound sometimes the acuteness of our feelings with the spiritual judgment of our sins, we almost always at the outset confound the work of the Spirit and the work of Christ. Each has its place in the saved; but they must not be confounded. The Spirit of God may humble and convict us, reprove within and thus distress us, or give us joy; and often we set about to judge of all this in order to know our acceptance with God. But these things, though they have their place in the mind of the redeemed, are not the ground of his peace. Christ has “made peace by the blood of His cross.” Christ has done all, and has left us nothing but thanksgiving and praise. If some one has paid my debts, my sorrow at the folly that contracted them, or my joy at their being discharged, adds nothing whatever to the payment of the debt, though both be natural and just. It is sometimes hard to esteem our feelings as nothing; but it is only a remains of self. Only think what it cost the Son of God in undergoing the wrath of God, and we shall feel on one hand the perfect security of our justification, and the nothingness of all our feelings compared with what our sin really was in the sight of God, who remembers it no more, as He has said. If Christ had not completely discharged and effaced it, He could not be in heaven; for He could not sit at the right hand of God charged with our sins, though He was charged with them on the cross.

If your heart demands, But how do I know that I have part in all this? I answer, with the word of the Lord which abides forever that [it is to him] whoso believeth in Him. That all might be grace, God has willed that it should be by faith; yet though faith produces immense effects, it adds nothing to the thing it believes. Christ and the efficacy of His work must be, and be before God, all that I am called to believe them to be, before I believe it. J.N.D.

GOD'S INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES, by W. K.,
cloth, 5/-
THE LORD'S PROPHECY ON OLIVET, limp, 9d.

THE COMING, AND THE DAY, OF THE LARD, limp, 1/,
Short Introduction to Paul's Epistles, 1/- & 1/6

F.E.R. Heterodox on Life Eternal, other Divine Truths, and above all Christ's Person, paper, lOd., limp cloth, 1/-.

Jacob: 24. Jacob's Last Words to His Sons, His Death and Burial

On no dying bed of the patriarchs shone light more brightly than on Jacob's. They all were prophets, and Abraham, even when faulty, was so designated to the Philistine king, who could not but see his faults; but none was given so much as Jacob to scan Israel's future.

“And Jacob called his sons and said, Gather yourselves together, and I will tell you what will befall you at the end of days. Assemble yourselves together and hear, ye sons of Jacob, and listen to Israel your father.

Reuben, thou [art] my first-born, my might, and the first-fruits of my vigor, excellency of dignity and excellency of strength. Bubbling up as the waters, thou shalt have no pre-eminence; because thou wentest up to thy father's couch: then defiledst thou [it]; he went up to my bed.

Simeon and Levi [are] brethren, weapons of violence their swords. My soul, come not into their council; mine honor, be not united to their assembly; for in their anger they slew men, and in their self-will houghed oxen. Cursed [be] their anger, for [it was] fierce, and their rage, for [it was] cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.

Judah, thee will thy brethren praise: thy hand [will be] on the neck of thine enemies; thy father's children will bow down to thee. Judah [is] a lion's whelp. From the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stoopeth, he coucheth as a lion, and as a lioness: who will rouse him up? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come, and to him will be the obedience (or gathering) of peoples. He bindeth his foal to the vine, and his ass's colt to the choice vine; he washeth his garments in wine, and his vesture in the blood of grapes; his eyes [are] red with wine, and his teeth white with milk.

Zebulun shall dwell at the breach of the seas, and he [shall be] for a haven of ships; and his border [shall be] upon Zidon.

Issachar [is] a bony (or strong) ass, couching between two hurdles; and he saw rest that [it was] good, and the land that [it was] pleasant; and he bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a tributary servant.

Dan shall judge his people, as another of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a horned serpent in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider falleth backward. I wait for thy salvation, O Jehovah.

Gad-troops shall press upon him; but he shall press upon their heel.

Out of Asher his bread [shall be] fat, and he shall yield royal dainties.

Naphthali [is] a hind let loose; he giveth goodly words.

Joseph [is] a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a fountain; daughters (i.e. branches) shoot over the wall. The archers have provoked, and shot at and hated him; but his bow abideth firm, and the arms of his hands are supple by the hands of the mighty One of Jacob. From thence [is] the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel; from the God of thy father, He will help thee, and from the Almighty, He will bless thee, with blessings of heaven above, with blessings of the deep that coucheth beneath, with blessings of the breast and of the womb. The blessings of thy father surpass the blessings of my progenitors unto the bounds of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separated from his brethren.

Benjamin [is] a wolf that raveneth; in the morning he shall devour the prey, and in the evening he shall divide the spoil.

All these [are] the twelve tribes of Israel, and this [is] what their father spake to them; and he blessed them; every one according to his blessing he blessed them. And he charged them and said to them, I am gathered to my people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that [is] in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that [is] in the field of Machpelah which [is] opposite to Mamre in the land of Canaan; which Abraham bought of Ephron the Hittite with the field for a possession of a burying-place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebecca his wife; and there I buried Leah. The purchase of the field, and of the cave that [is] in it, [was] from the children of Heth. And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered his feet into the bed, and expired, and was gathered to his people.”

It is sadly instructive to observe how post-apostolic tradition lost the heavenly testimony by effacing Israel's hope, and appropriating its earthly place. We need not expend words in repeating these ecclesiastical vanities of Christendom; he that would know how far they reached can find them in Bp. Chr. Wordsworth's Commentary.

The true bearing is on Israel's future. For Scripture is prophetic generally and here avowedly so, as Jacob said. It begins with Israel in the flesh, anything but the Israel of God. Reuben, Simeon, and Levi indicate ruin through corruption, and violence: the two characters of human evil from the beginning to the end of man's sad story, saddest in God's people according to privilege and responsibility. Then in Judah, only the blind can fail to see God's purpose in Christ born of the tribe but as King (not as the glorified Head in heaven), to whom shall be the gathering of peoples; but withal the failure for the time, because Shiloh was not received of the Jews. Yet the purpose stands firm in Him who came. Next, we see Zebulun going out in commerce of sea and ships among the Gentiles; in Issachar depressions and compromises for selfish quiet as the world's slave; and in Daniel though claiming to judge, falling under Satan's power worse than idolatry; yet at this crisis a remnant looking for Jehovah's salvation. Thereon the oppressed rises to press an oppressor, as shown by Gad; while Asher points out Israel's enjoyment of their proper blessings; and Naphthali, freedom in a gracious witness for God. The whole rises to the fitting climax in Joseph, after being separated from his brethren and exalted to a wider and loftier sphere, bringing in abundant and unfailing blessing clearly identified with the true Shepherd, the Stone of Israel, once sorely wounded but flowing forth over all enclosures: blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep beneath, blessings of the race and the creature, blessings beyond bound and comparison, centering in Him Who is worthy. And with Joseph goes Benjamin, the son of his father's right hand, when power in Israel will put down every rival and share the spoil. Thus is Israel to be blessed and exalted, because in faith under Messiah and the new covenant at the end of days.

As chap. 49 ends with Jacob's death, the closing chapter (1.) tells us of his sons carrying him to the field of Machpelah in Canaan, where his fathers were buried: a grievous mourning in the eyes of the people of the land. What a difference for those conversant with Christ glorified in heaven when they “not of the world” depart to be with Him

Israel Holy to Jehovah: 15. Israel's Sanctification

These are communications of Jehovah with a supplement of a general kind, and therefore spoken to Moses simply, not to the sons of Aaron as well as Aaron as in 1-16, and to Aaron and his sons, as well as to the sons of Israel as in 17-25. High priest and priests must beware of uncleanness on them in approaching to the holy things, on pain of being cut off from before Jehovah, for He it is that hallows them. But the offerers of any offering, vow or voluntary, must beware of defect in what they present. It is wholly unacceptable. To these rules is now added a final word.

“26 And Jehovah spake to Moses, saying, 27 An ox, or a sheep, or a goat, when it is brought forth, shall be seven days under its dam; and from the eighth day and thenceforth it shall be accepted as a fire offering to Jehovah. 28 A cow or sheep—it and its young—shall ye not slaughter in one day. 29 And when ye sacrifice a sacrifice of thanksgiving to Jehovah, ye shall sacrifice for your acceptance. 30 On that day shall it be eaten; ye shall leave none of it until morning: I [am] Jehovah.

31 And ye shall observe my commandments and do them: I [am] Jehovah. 32 And ye shall not profane my holy name; but I will be hallowed among the children of Israel: I [am] Jehovah that hallow you, 33 that brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God: I [am] Jehovah” (vers. 26-33).

“To everything is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heavens.” Man, Israelite, Christian, is apt to mistake. Besides, his true place is subjection and obedience. God Himself has an aim before Him which He puts before us. He would glorify the Second man whom the first is so prone to forget, even when he intends to honor God, who alone can judge infallibly of what pleases Him, and graciously lets us know it for our acquiescence.

Here the animal, when brought forth, must be seven days under its dam. It was otherwise in nature. The Jews say a sabbath must pass over it. Jehovah says from the eighth day and thenceforth it shall be accepted. It is not the test of creation or of the law which is the grand point, important as both are, but the witness of the all-important resurrection day, when He rose who is the Beginning, not the first but the Last Adam, Firstborn from among the dead, that He might have in all things the foremost place. Is it not His due?

Another injunction follows: “a cow or a sheep—it, and its young—shall ye not slaughter in one day.” Jehovah cultivates seemliness in His people. If He commanded sacrifice strictly and reverently, it was both to make guilt and self-will felt and confessed, and yet more the One Savior and only sacrifice of efficacy for sin before Him. But He also would have delicacy of feeling, even when a dumb or dead beast was concerned, as when He forbade seething a kid in the milk of its dam. All scripture is against coarse brutality.

Further, a sacrifice of thanksgiving, as involving right feelings and human sympathy, must be eaten on the same day; it must not be longer severed from the altar, and offering up, and Jehovah Himself: “I am Jehovah.” It is the salt that keeps pure. There must be faith, yet more than feeling.

How solemn, too, the repeated seal impressed on observing and doing His commands, “I am Jehovah.” Obedience is thus demanded, as profaning His holy name is quite forbidden, that He might be hallowed in His people. For indeed it was Jehovah hallowing them, He that brought them out of the land of Egypt to be their God: I am Jehovah. Such was their place as His people here below on the earth, a witness to the nations.

But our place is deliverance out of this present evil age for association with Christ, not merely to reign with Him, but to be with Him where He is in the Father's house. It is heavenly.

Gospel Words: Perfect, as Your Heavenly Father Is Perfect

It is God, not man, whom the Lord makes the criterion; the heavenly Father, not the dread moral governor as made known to Israel, but our Father. What are His affections, what His will about us? Nothing is more foreign here than the delusion of our being freed now from the indwelling evil of our nature.

“For if ye love those that love you, what reward have ye? do not even the tax-gatherers the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye much more? do not even the Gentiles the same? Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Herein was manifested the love of God in our case, because God hath sent His only-begotten Son, that we might live through Him. For we were dead Godward, and in Him only was the life that could serve God, which we wholly lacked. The love of God has met this, otherwise insuperable lack, and this by sending His only-begotten Son who is that life to impart it to those that believe. They have life eternal for their souls now, as they await it for their bodies when He comes again for us. But even this possession of life in Him suffices not to satisfy His love, any more than it fits us to enjoy, serve, and worship Him. There is a burden which nothing on our part could remove. Therefore it follows, Herein is love, not because we loved God, but because He loved us, and sent His Son as propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:9, 10). But there is also, flowing hence, the Spirit, His Spirit, dwelling in us, as of love no less than of power and sobriety, so that we love one another after a divine sort.

This, no doubt, is Christianity in its full privileges, going far beyond the state of the disciples before redemption and the gift of the Spirit. But the divine nature was already there, which would be active when all obstacles were gone through the work of Christ. Hence, even in the time that preceded the cross, the Lord insisted on a love wholly above mere human nature with its likes and its dislikes. The detested tax-gatherers had natural affection, and loved those that loved them. The Gentiles saluted tenderly those bound up with themselves in mere ties of flesh and blood. The disciples were enjoined to love far beyond Jew or Greek. The family were to love as their heavenly Father did. Though this could not be in degree, it was the kind of love, which must be in God's children by divine grace, rising above all question of desert or ulterior aim.

“Ye therefore shall be perfect,” says the Lord, “as your heavenly Father is perfect.” His is love, because He is love; it is the energy of His nature going out in goodness where there is need, and above all reference to merit, or congruity with what He loves and is. And this in all its perfection He was then showing in the Lord Jesus, image of the invisible God. What did He ever seek for Himself, as He went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people; lunatics, demon-possessed, paralytics, dead men or women? It was love irrespective of self, in compassion to the most wretched of men; it was love rising above all the unworthiness, ingratitude, or hostility on the part of its objects. He was doing not His own will in any case, but the will of God, and for His Father's glory. What is the altruism of men's talk, or of any man's performance, in comparison?

This love we too share as His children. So the Lord taught then; so the Holy Spirit confirmed afterward. Be ye therefore imitators of God, as children beloved; and walk in love, even as Christ also loved us and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor. The blessings of Christianity and of the church of God ought only to accentuate the duty and increase its spring and power.

As the heavenly Father's love is shown in absolute superiority to good or evil, right or wrong, whom He blesses from grace in Himself, so is the Christian now called to walk as made partaker of a divine nature (not merely of Adam's), and in the place of sons. If noblesse oblige, as men say, how much more divine grace and such a relationship?

But, my fellow-sinner, what ignorance, and madness for you, ungodly, enemy, and spiritually powerless as you are, to imagine you can so walk, or so win your way to God! Not so: as lost ones cast yourselves in repentance and faith on the Savior and His redemption. If you look away to Him from your guilty selves, He will give you life everlasting in Him, and the remission of sins through His blood. Then, and thus only, can you follow Him in the path, His path, which He points out to His own.

1 Peter 5:12-14

The Epistle thus concludes.

“By Silvanus, the faithful brother, as I account, I write to you in (by) few [words], exhorting and testifying that this is God's true grace in which stand (or, ye stand). She that is in Babylon elect with [you] saluteth you, and Mark my son. Salute one another with a kiss of love. Peace to you all that are in Christ” (vers. 12-14).

It is of interest to learn that Silas, or Silvanus, the fellow-laborer of Paul in Achaia and Macedonia was the messenger through whom Peter sent his first Epistle to the saints of the Dispersion. Once Peter had himself been far from faithful to the Christian truth of liberty for Gentile as for Jew that believed the glad tidings; and Paul withstood him to the face. For it was not to walk straightforwardly according to the gospel, but to compromise it to the Lord's dishonor. Now Peter writes fearlessly to confirm with his apostolic testimony the yet bolder and deeper witness which the apostle of the uncircumcision had borne in Asia Minor, through one who was in his estimate as in Paul's a faithful brother, a suited link between them. It was to hold fast the Head from whom all the body, ministered to and united together by the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God.

His words were few but weighty from one who was justly looked up to by Christian Jews who had already profited in those Gentile lands by him whose province lay there especially. But God took care that so conspicuous a pillar of the circumcision as Kephas should write without doubt and fervently in the same strain of grace to the sheep whom the Lord confided to his love and care. Who can fail to recognize an unjealous largeness which was quickly forgotten, or rather never known, in haughty Christendom with its little yet ever-growing fences, bound up by official pride, miscalled rights, far from the Lord's mind as possible.

Nor can any description of the Epistle be more exact than “exhorting and testifying that this is God's true grace in which” he calls them to “stand.” It is what every intelligent saint cannot fail to discern as distinguishing Peter's letter beyond James, Jude, John, or even Paul, though each wrote from the heart, with solemn sense of divine authority, and in abundant love to the saints, each with his own distinctive excellency as a good steward of God's various grace, and as of strength which God supplied. How earnestly Peter exhorted! How freely and pertinently he testified as from his Master, full of grace and truth, to the glad tidings of God's true grace! Yes, in his glowing words is no exaggeration. He adhered to what he bore witness at a great earlier crisis (Acts 15). He believed, and would have them to believe, “through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved as they,” not merely they even as we: then a noble testimony in Jerusalem above all.

He believed in the same grace still. It is not man conceding or yielding, it is not fearing nor yet pleasing man. It is God's true grace, in which, he says, “Stand,” as he did not doubt they were standing. Nor was it needless so to exhort as a last call. What one of our own poets says of his imagined angel, a saint should here and now surely be,

“Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified;

His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal.

Nor number, nor example, with him wrought

To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind.”

We owe it to God, and to our Lord Jesus; but His grace can alone make us thus stand.

The subjoined salutation is strikingly instructive. Not from the Apocalyptic Babylon did Peter write, but from the great ruined city in the East, to which Jews strangely clung, when the natives migrated elsewhere. Many Jews still lived there as they did for hundreds of years after as before, and there had a famous school of Rabbinical lore, which issued in their most copious Talmud completed about 500, A.D. There, it appears, Kephas led about a sister wife, like the other apostles and the brethren of our Lord (1 Cor. 9:5, 6); as scripture fails not to inform us, and thus gives the lie to the false and demoralizing tradition which Romanism prefers to the plain and holy word of God. For this seems the real bearing of “the co-elect sister in Babylon” who salutes those addressed, no less than Mark his son.

The apostle, we see, was careful not to speak of “the church” as such in either of his Epistles: they are essentially individual in their character. It was an oversight, therefore, to interpolate “the church,” even in italics. We have no ground to think there was an assembly there, and can readily conceive that the apostle (with his wife, and Mark caring in love for them both in advanced age) should yearn to impart the gospel to the benighted Jews, so, dear to him in that distant quarter, far away from the fabulous Episcopate of which tradition dreamed in the West. How forced and unnatural to borrow from the future symbol of John in Rev. 17 for an epistle so simple, fervent, and matter of fact, as this of Peter unquestionably is!

Assuredly, too, one likes to think of Mark in happy and devoted service, as none other than he whose early failure is recorded when he ventured in zeal beyond his then faith to accompany Barnabas and Saul on their first circuit among the Gentiles. If he then so soon grew weary or discouraged, he at a later day, when it was peculiarly sweet to the apostle of nations, became serviceable to him for ministry (2 Tim. 4:11), and even before this had won back his confidence (Col. 4:10). As his mother's house had been a house of prayer, when his spiritual father's life was in extreme danger, he is now the attendant on those so long dear to him, and shares their visit of love for the gospel's sake as well as the saints, where of old their forefathers had been sent in captivity. Any other Mark, like any other Silas, we might expect to be distinguished from each of those familiar to us in scripture; whereas those we have already known appear in this new phase with emphatic propriety.

It was meet in this world of selfishness and sin for the apostle Paul to invite the saints in Rome, Corinth, and Thessalonica to salute one another with a holy kiss; and not less so that Peter should bid the Christian Jews, scattered in lands devoted to dark paganism, salute one another with a kiss of love. The affections are apt to grow cold, as the world's spirit prevails; and Jews needed the intimation as well as Greeks and Romans.

And how precious is “peace” as the suited portion to us all that are in Christ! How unseemly among such is difference and dispute, self-seeking, and strife! Were Christ the object as He is entitled to be, these things could not be. Peter had not forgotten His words, so welcome to their hearts on the resurrection day, “Peace to you; and having said this He showed them His hands and His side. The disciples rejoiced therefore, having seen the Lord. He said therefore again to them, Peace to you: as the Father sent me forth, I also send you.”

The So-Called Apostolic Fathers on the Lord's Second Coming

A brief appendix will suffice to test the worth of these scanty remains of Christian antiquity for the truth in question. The marvel is that any man of spiritual judgment who has read them with care should count them of the least weight, especially on such a matter. They have indeed a sorrowful interest, as they attest the rapid departure and profound downfall from apostolic teaching. Can anything be conceived more evident or striking than the immeasurable distance which severs these earliest writings from the scriptures? The Apocrypha, merely human as it is, does not so startlingly differ from the O.T. as do Barnabas, Clemens Rom., and Hermas from the apostles Paul, Peter, and John. Yet these productions were read like the scriptures to Christian congregations in early days; and Clemens Alex. quotes the most heterodox and nonsensical of the three, as scripture! Even the Sinaitic Uncial has appended to the N. T. Barnabas and Hermas, as the Alexandrian has Clemens Rom. What a contrast these and all the rest from the dignity, holiness, love, and authority of the inspired Epistles! These early relics are merely the word of man, betraying not only weakness but trumpery. If able and learned men have lauded them to the skies, it only proves that tradition has blinding power, and that all have not faith.

Yet a pious man of our day ventures to say that “in God's gracious providence we possess such early writings.” To what can one attribute infatuation like this in an evangelical clergyman but to his passionate zeal for the Jewish hope against the Christian one? Judaizing in any form tends always to strife and bitterness. How strange to be directed first to the “Didache” or “Teaching of the twelve Apostles”! Here then are the editio princeps of Bryennius (Constantinople, 1883), that of Hitchcock and Brown (New York 1884), moreover that of H. de Roumestin (Parker and Co., Oxford and London, 1884), and Dr. C. Bigg's little volume with at least equal discernment critically as any.

The fuller title is daring enough, “The Lord's Teaching through the twelve Apostles to the nations.”

But it is a meager compilation, beginning with the Two Ways of life and of death, which occupy six chapters, or nearly half of the little treatise, without one word to show how life is given or guilt removed.

Then follows an inept chapter on baptism, prescribing a fast to precede; and another chapter on fasting in general. The great difference from “the hypocrites” seems to be that they fast on the second and the fifth days of the week, whereas the right fast is on the fourth and sixth (or preparation)! They are also not to pray as “the hypocrites,” but as the Lord commanded thrice a day! In chapter ix. about the Eucharist, take the following flight: “As this broken [bread] was scattered over the hills and gathered together became one, so let thy church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom.” Can any thought be poorer?

The notable fact is that the Twelve apostles are made to forget the all-importance of Christ's death in both baptism and the Lord's Supper. Again, the name of David figures strangely in 9 and 10 where we have “the four winds.” After eccentric talk in 11-13 we have in 14. Mal. 1:10, 14 utterly perverted, as do the Papists notoriously to the mass. It is the old unbelief of substituting the Church for Israel. Does our brother fancy that from east to west the name of Jehovah is yet great among the nations, or ever will be till the Lord returns in glory? Is he not as assured as those to whom he foolishly ascribes “the modern theory,” that only then, never before, “in every place incense shall be offered to My name, and a pure oblation; for My name shall be great among the nations, saith Jehovah of hosts.”

Hence no apostle ever applied this prediction to Christianity in the N.T. It is the misinterpretation of the spurious Didache; for the true Twelve never really sanctioned it. But it suited the pride and the ignorance of the Catholic church even before Popery. Matthew Henry perhaps well skipped the verse, for the nonconformists give scant heed to prophecy; but W. Lowth, T. Scott, and perhaps all other commentators boldly follow the antiquated delusion in full chorus. The late Dr. Pusey of course labored to prove it, looking only at the Jews of the past and present. But his argument defeats itself; for the prophet speaks of no “new revelation of Himself,” but rather of the old promise made good in grace and power, not for Jews only but among the nations, when Jehovah shall be king over all the earth, one Jehovah and His Name one in that day. There is no excuse for misreading this bright prospect, still future, into the truly new and deeper revelation of His name as Father, which the Lord Jesus made known (John 4:21-23) for the hour that “now is,” when the true worshippers worship the Father in spirit and truth.

But let us turn to the last chapter of the Didache, “still more apposite” it is said. No one can doubt that Matt. 24 is therein mixed up with other scriptures which speak of the Lord's coming, whether to mankind invisible or visible. “And then shall appear the signs of the truth (!): first a sign of an opening in heaven; then a sign of trumpet's vole (or, sound); and the third, resurrection of the dead. Yet not of all, but as it was said, The Lord come, and all the saints with him.”

Now Matt. 24:30 speaks, not of the sign of “an opening in heaven appearing, but of the Son of man in the heaven as a sign of His coming to the earth, which causes all the tribes of the earth (or, land) to lament. But even the Didache cites Zech. 14:5 for all the saints coming with Him at this very epoch. Now this is our thesis, and it necessarily implies their previous change in order to come suitably to His appearing in glory. The mission of His angels (in ver. 31) with a great sound of trumpet cannot be for the gathering together unto Him of the glorified who all come with Him, but for the subsequent act of gathering together, after He appears, the elect of Israel from the four winds, scattered till then all over the earth. There is not a trace here of “the last trumpet” when the dead saints shall rise and we are changed, in order to come with Him in due time to gather the elect of Israel to the great King in Zion. For we must have been caught up before, that when He shall be manifested in glory, we too may then be manifested together with Him in it. There is no catching up in Matt. 24. Nor does it speak of the third sign of the resurrection of the saintly dead. Indeed no scripture treats it as “a sign.” They were raised to appear with Him when He appears and “the world sees the Lord coming on the clouds of heaven.”

If it be argued that Rev. 20:4 speaks of the First Resurrection (after His appearing and the judgment of the Beast and the False Prophet with the kings of the earth and their armies, as well as the binding of Satan), not only is this admitted but its importance is insisted on. For it proves that there are stages in that resurrection as well as in Christ's presence. We learn from that verse that the general company of the glorified (all the saints of O. T. and New, till Christ come for them) compose those who emerge from heaven as the Lamb's followers. They were seen now seated on thrones, and judgment given to them; thereon two special classes of saints succeed, martyred in the earlier and later periods of the Apocalyptic crisis, who, as yet disembodied, were made to live, in order to reign with Christ for the thousand years, no less than the general company already enthroned. These all make up the First Resurrection. It is false and directly contradictory to this scripture that those Apocalyptic sufferers rose at the same time with the first company.

Is it too much to say that of the truth here revealed the Didache and Christians at large are still wholly ignorant? Why should that be incredible which the Revelation makes known in the clearest terms? These early writings are most defective and, through ignorance of the scriptures, often opposed to the truth; and so are moderns. Scripture alone is the standard; and the Christian is not left without a divine Guide dwelling in him to lead into all the truth. Let us believe God's word as a whole, and not accept one part while we omit another.

But what we thus learn scatters into thin air the assumption that there were not to be distinct and different objects, both for blessing and for judgment, which unpracticed eyes merge in one. Matt. 24 of course practically coalesces with 1 Thess. 5 and 2 Thess. 1 and many other intimations of the day of the Lord i.e. His coming judicially. But no one is entitled therefore to take for granted that the promised comfort and heavenly joy of the saints in John 14 and in 1 Thess. 4:15-17 will be at that same time, any more than that the Lord's “Parousia” in 2 Thess. 1 synchronizes with “the appearing of His Parousia” in ver. 8. If these be equally seen by man, where would be the propriety of the change of phrase? The connection too is so different that the Parousia in ver. 1 is with sovereign grace, the epiphany of His Parousia is with signal vengeance. It is equally His presence in either case, but absurd to assume that they must happen together.

As the Lord's character of Son of man in that day will be judicial (John 5:22), the Parousia of the Son of man goes with His appearing. Thus He comes for Israel and the nations (Matt. 24:30; 25:31), but not so receives us to Himself for the Father's house. It is not that we deny in a general way what these brethren advance about “that day.” In 2 Thess. 1 we have, as simultaneous effects of the Lord's revelation from heaven, the relief and vindication of the troubled saints, and the trouble and punishment of the wicked. But these are alike the exercise of righteous judgment, and not of sovereign grace; and hence neither can be till He appears in glory. Why should any be so absorbed in the earthly side of the Lord's Parousia as to be bitter against such as see and firmly hold the heavenly side also? We believe the heavenly hope to be an immense gain to the Christian, having already known what it is to be ignorant of it, as almost all thus begin. But growth in the truth, or elevation above the visible sphere, if sound and spiritual, is a boon beyond price; yet God's word and Spirit alone can safely lead on.

The Didache then may have interest as being rather ancient, though of no doctrinal importance. It departs from the truth, even as to themselves choosing bishops (chap. 15.); whereas scripture speaks only of apostles, or their delegate, choosing elders for them (Acts 14:23, Titus 1:5). This was a radical change. Yet we need not suppose that it purposely left out elders, but (like Clem. Romans) identified them with bishops, as scripture does: compare Acts 20:17 with 28; Phil. 1:1; and Titus 1:5, 7.

But with the earliest age how strange to hear of the “Apostolic Constitutions,” betraying as it does internal evidence of being centuries later? What evidence can it afford of “the first century belief”? The Didache just lets us see the growing decay a little earlier; the Apostolic Constitutions came after that. Both misapplied Matt. 24 to Christendom.

The Epistle of Barnabas was long before those spurious “Apostolic Constitutions.” Who this Barnabas was we know not. It dishonors the apostle's early friend and fellow-laborer, “a good man and full of the Holy Spirit and faith,” to attribute to him a document so childish in its mystical reveries. Yet it stands favorably contrasted with the probably interpolated Epistles of Ignatius, which too evidently evince the desire to cry up the clerical order. The Barnabas before us appears to have had at heart to counteract the judaizing of that early day. But a mighty chasm separates his work from the Epistle to the Hebrews, which with divine energy really translates the Levitical types as the figures of heavenly things. Tertullian, &c. show lack of discernment by assigning the inspired Epistle to the companion of the apostle (himself too without doubt the man whom the Holy Spirit calls an apostle). Yet this author sets up no such pretension, but had a due sense of his humble position. The true hope of the Christian is nowhere seen. All is vague and earthly, as with others far abler down to our own day. Spiritual intelligence in this respect is of the rarest.

Again, it is surprising that anyone who has the least regard for orthodoxy or even decency should cite from “The Shepherd” of Hermas. Besides, the Muratorian Canon has convinced all scholars, that this Hermas lived at about the middle of the second century, a brother of Pope Pius the first, and not therefore “the brother” mentioned by the apostle. Far be it from my wish to expose the mere trash of a weak and fanciful mind in its Visions, Commands, and Similitudes. But it is a far graver case, when Hermas talks of God's holy angel filling a man with the blessed Spirit of men's having all their offenses blotted out because they suffered death for the name of the Son of God! and, worse still if possible, of the Holy Spirit being created first of all! Think of citing such a one on the question of our having to pass through the great tribulation! and of the comment on all this worse than nonsense, “Such was the belief of the Apostolic Christian.” But let us draw a veil over the addendum on the false prophets who branded Jeremiah, and on Ahab, Zedekiah, and Shemaiah. Such vituperation must injure those that indulge in so acrimonious a spirit on a question that needs the quiet and holy guidance of the Spirit of God.

It is singular that the Epistle from the Church in Rome to that in Corinth (assigned to Clement, perhaps the earliest of these extra-scriptural remains) is passed by; for it is comparatively sober and grave, earnest and affectionate. Yet it seems inconceivable that the Clement (a name then of frequent occurrence), to whom the apostle alludes as “my fellow-laborer,” could have written, as this Epistle does, of Danaides and Dirces (chap. 6), or of the fabulous phoenix. This last first appears in the Fragments of Hesiod (Loesner, p. 450), and swells into the legend that Herodotus relates in his garrulous way (2:73). See also Tacitus (Ann. vi. 28), and the elder Pliny (Hist. Nat. x. 2). Is it not humbling that what the old pagan historian found incredible was accepted by Clement of Rome, with a whole cluster of later Fathers assenting, such as the Latins, Tertullian and Ambrose, and the Greeks, Origen, Epiphanius, Cyril flier., Greg. Naz., &c.? Archbp. Wake and Mr. Chevallier were influenced by P. Young (Junius) to omit the heathen reference in chap. vi. as an interpolation; but the discovery since of added M S. evidence corroborates the insertion, however discreditable it must be to those who drew up the letter to Corinth. For Clement does not claim the Epistle as his own. It was probably a composite communication, like the letter from the apostles and elder brethren to the brethren of the Gentiles in Antioch and elsewhere,(Acts 15), Clement taking the part in Rome that James had done before in Jerusalem. But what a wide difference between the brief and authoritative wisdom divine in the one, and the prolix elaboration, with faulty and compromising details, in the other!

How again could Christian saints of intelligence cite Isa. 64:4, and 1 Cor. 2:9, and stop short, as ignorant souls do to-day, of the apostolic addition, “But unto us God revealed [them] through the Spirit"? (See chap. 34). For this is just the wondrous favor we enjoy above the O. T. saints by Christ's redemption, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. It means unwittingly, that we ignore the vantage ground of Christianity in the presence of the Spirit, and are no better off as to this than Israel of old.

This Epistle is also exceedingly reticent as to the Lord's return, and hence precarious in its quotation of prophecy. Take that from Isa. 60:17 in chap. 42. This is the application. “Preaching therefore through countries and cities, they [the apostles] used to appoint their first-fruits [a hazardous statement] to be bishops and deacons over those who should believe, after having proved them by the Spirit. Nor this in any new way; for in truth it had in long past times been written concerning bishops and deacons! For the scripture somewhere saith, I will appoint their bishops in righteousness and their deacons in faith.” Now a Christian has only to read the prophet in order to be convinced of the outrageous mistake. The chapter as a whole supposes the day of glory come for earthly Jerusalem, the city of Jehovah, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel; when the afflicted but spared people shall become a strong nation, and, what is better still, shall all be righteous. It is a picture quite different from the glorified church, the holy Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven from God. The force of ver. 17 is that in that day of restored Israel Jehovah will make their rulers peace, and their officers righteousness. Neither war nor exaction shall be any more.

There is here absolutely no room for an allusion to bishops and deacons in the churches; it is pure hallucination. But it is worse by far. It indicates, like the Epistle of Barnabas, that which soon overran Christendom like a flood, the sprouting of the Gentile conceit, of which the apostle warned the saints in Rome. The promises abide for Israel, who are yet to be blessed as a people under Messiah and the new covenant. Branches of the olive-tree by their unbelief were broken off, and Gentiles meanwhile grafted in; but the Gentile tenure is by faith, and contingent on their continuance in goodness: otherwise they also shall be cut off. Nothing is more certain than that the professing Gentiles have utterly failed, are unbelieving to excess, and must end in the apostasy as the apostle predicted.

Equally certain is it (even from this chapter and all the prophets) that Israel will not continue in their present unbelief, but shall be grafted in again. Their hardening is only till the fullness of the Gentiles be come in; “and so all Israel shall be saved.” They are enemies in these gospel days which will soon end. God has not forgotten His promises, or His election of the fathers; He only awaits the right moment, when the Gentile complement is made up, to prove His faithful love to Israel. For His gifts and calling do not admit of change of mind. Christendom from early days assumed on the contrary that He had cast off Israel, and given the church an indefeasible title: a false, proud and ruinous delusion. Here in these apostolic fathers the germ grows and spreads apace as it were flag-weed, till judgment destroys it forever.

Are these the men or the writings to produce as of value to interpret the scriptures which reveal a truth incompatible with this vain conceit? For their denial of Israel's hopes led to the transfer of earthly glory to the church now, and the consequent refusal of present suffering, forgetful of future glory on high: the abandonment of the true portion of God's church. These early fathers had lost the truth of our calling upwards, and took more and more the glowing visions announced to Israel as meant for us, and not for them. To maintain the heavenly privilege in its power and purity we must own that to Israel God destined the earth, with the Gentiles rejoicing in willing subjection. But we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies even now in Christ, and to be with Him there in the day of glory. To seek earthly power and glory now is for the church high treason to Christ.

But the principle of looking to “the early belief” is a false one, the ignis fatuus of the Tractarian movement, and the fully developed lie of Popery; which, if there is to be an interpreter, demands and professes to have an infallible one in itself, the Holy Catholic church, and now indeed the Pope. This of course when plainly stated the Protestant abjures. The Christian, the church, believing in the ever abiding presence and operation of the Holy Spirit sent forth on and since Pentecost, has what the latter confessedly lacks, what the former vainly and madly professes. The Spirit dwells here below to guide into all the truth, and makes this good in the measure of our faith and spiritual state. For He is here to glorify Christ, not the saint or the church; who are only right in awaiting Christ's coming for our glory with Him. Now is the time for lowly service, unworldly devotedness, and self-renunciation, yea for sharing His rejection and suffering. It is no time for reigning without the apostles, and without Christ; it is the time for entire dependence on Him in separation from the world, content ourselves to be meanwhile reviled, persecuted, and defamed like our betters for Christ's sake. The scripture is the standard; in no way what the Christians may have believed, thought, said or done, even in apostolic days.

Hence the saints in Rome are warned not to be high-minded but fear; and we have already seen why. It was the very snare which misled them and all Christendom to deny God's faithfulness to Israel, and to claim the succession to Jewish power and honor now on earth, which could not be without forfeiting present rejection and future glory on high with Christ.

Still more manifest and manifold is the care to correct the church in Corinth (with all that in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, theirs and ours) from their aberrations. There were internal divisions and carnal strifes; clashing schools of thought with chiefs (however themselves unwilling) dragged in to accentuate the rival parties. What more opposed to the one Head and the one body? They were puffed up, instead of mourning at the horrible leaven unjudged in their midst. They were not ashamed that anyone of them should prosecute his suit before the world, and not before the saints as the Lord had laid down. They were loose as to personal purity, the known prevalent immorality of the place. They needed to have the marriage relation &c. cleared and defined. They were admonished against their levity as to heathen temples and sacrifices. They were reminded authoritatively that those who labor in the gospel are entitled to live of the gospel, whilst it was the apostle's own joy to make it without charge, in the Spirit of Christ not using his right. They were warned that preaching to others without personal self-abnegation is an awful peril. Nor is it only preachers that need to take heed; but any Christian if unwary will fall, as is seen in the wilderness history of Israel, types of us. Open disorders too are reproved, only in women forgetting their place of subjection, but in scandalous dishonor to the Lord, even at His supper, it would seem through mixing the love-feast with it, but really through their bad state of soul. Further, the principle and practice flowing from the Spirit's action individually and congregationally were fully stated to guide them and us, in chaps. xii.-xiv. with the deeply needed intervening chapter calling for love to enforce and characterize both. Most pointed too in the bearing on our subject is chapter xv., which proves how little “early Christian belief” can he trusted; for some among them questioned a resurrection, though it does not seem that they doubted the immortality of the soul.

It is the scripture that we accept, not only as the source of divinely given truth but as its criterion. The Holy Spirit is the sole unfailing interpreter, just so far as we look to Christ's glory. If we seek our own things, calling them perhaps the church's glory or right, we have no promise from God and no security for ourselves; but on the contrary we shall have to learn our folly. One might similarly apply several more of the Epistles, besides the greatest for general Christian doctrine, and the no less great for ecclesiastical truth and order.

Notably again the Epistle to the Galatians calls for a few words in proof that what the early Christians held is not the smallest guarantee for the truth. For the apostle writes to the assemblies of that considerable region in Asia Minor, where he had himself planted the gospel, to reproach them sadly and solemnly with having so quickly changed from him that called them in Christ's grace to a different gospel which is not another. It was truly a perversion of the gospel of Christ. If saints, after the best of all preaching in that early day, could so soon follow judaizers, and fall from grace into legalism as the apostle affirms, can any thoughtful mind be surprised that they might soon slip into defective views and even error about the Second Advent?

But we need not assume this. The Epistles to the Thessalonians prove doubly the fact, and not the danger only. For the apostle, in instructing them more on that glorious truth, had in the First to correct, at least as soon, their mistake about their deceased brethren, and in the Second to expose a still wider and worse error about the day of the Lord for living saints. How plainly the mystery of lawlessness was already at work!

It is not for any one to minimize the incalculable moment of the proper hope of the Christian. But nothing is easier to understand than the difficulty it presented to the Jews that became Christians, accustomed only to the Lord's coming as predicted in the O. T. to deliver the godly remnant of Jews at the last gasp, as it were, from the apostate mass of their fellow-Jews with the Antichrist at their head and the Roman Beast his patron and ally, and from the vast assemblage of the Eastern nations, their embattled or besieging enemies under the King of the North, and the Russian Gog behind the latter. The remnant justly look for Christ's advent in displayed power and glory to overwhelm both their internal and external foes, and thus deliver themselves on the earth. Also Gentile believers, again, were slow to enter into the blessed wonder of Christ's coming to translate on high all real Christians, in its grandeur far beyond what Enoch or Elijah experienced of old: so completely was it beyond even saintly men's expectation or conception. Only Christ's promise and God's new revelation could account to our souls for such surpassing glory. But to the inspired word of the N.T. we confidently appeal, as it only is here entitled to convince any.

But we specially invite the attention of our opposing brethren to a consideration which escaped all the Patristic remains, and every theologian till our day. For we love them, and mind not overmuch froth and fury signifying nothing, due also to their zeal for the little which fills their vision, having most of us passed through similar objections and prejudices. Scripture we found far larger and higher than a scheme based on the O. T. hope, confirmed as it is by N. T. revelation. For we frankly acknowledge its truth and its importance, if rightly applied. Yet the N. T. also reveals what was of old hidden but. now manifested, that Christ, on His total rejection by Jew and Gentile, was to sit raised from the dead at God's righthand; and this, not merely to be Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, as He intercedes too for His friends, and by-and-by to strike through kings in the day of His wrath when His enemies are made His footstool. He was to be there now for a new order of things, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. For God put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as Head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all. This is the great secret now revealed.

It is not my aim to trace the means which the apostle unfolds, in pursuance of the exalted Head, that we may know God's operation in associating us who now believe with Christ in the heavenlies, as we read in Eph. 2, but to direct renewed and closer attention to the counsels of God who made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him (or, Himself) for administration of the fullness of the seasons. These seasons will only be full when Christ comes again, to carry out to God's glory as the Second man all the trusts in which the first man has so conspicuously failed. In Christ will be then displayed the obedient Man, the Governor, the Depositary of the promises, the One to make the law great and glorious, the Priest, the Prophet, the King of Israel and Son of Man, Ruler of all peoples, nations, and languages, the Head over all things to the church. For Satan is still the prince of the world, and the god of this age. And the Lord, though crowned with the chaplet of victory and King of kings in title, is not yet seated on His own throne but His Father's, till He appears with His many diadems and establishes His world-kingdom. Then only will all things be summed up in Christ as the center of the universe in the day of manifested glory, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth, in Him in whom we also were given (or, obtained) inheritance, being predestined according to His purpose that works all things according to the counsel of His own will.

The heading up of the universe in Christ as in Eph. 1:10 must be carefully distinguished from the gathering together into one of the scattered children of God, of which John 11:52 speaks. For Christ died that there might be now the holy gathering into one of God's children, for which He also made request in chap. xvii. 20, 21. But that heading up is of all things in God's creation, “the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth,” now so long severed, and the earthly at least made subject to vanity through man's fall. But all things groaning below shall be freed from the bondage of corruption when the coming glory is revealed, with Christ the Heir of all things at its head. At present it is an operation of divine grace to call out and together from Jews and Gentiles God's children (and if children, heirs also: heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ), if indeed we suffer with [Him], that we may also be glorified with [Him]. This is the day of grace, and an indisputably elective process; that, a gathering of the whole creation both heavenly and earthly; which is so far from meaning the church either now or then, that we His members are expressly here distinguished from “all things.” The inheritance we, God's heirs, are to share with Christ in that day. For this we have the Holy Spirit as earnest, who has also sealed us already for redemption's day.

This then is the revealed purpose of God for the glory of Christ and the church, His body and bride. Tradition furnishes not an echo of it. Universal consent, if we can speak of such a thing in presence of the Babel of Christendom, rises not above the earth. First, such writers as Justin Martyr and Irenmus looked for a glorious metamorphosis of nature, for a grander Jerusalem on earth, and vines bearing prodigiously, not for Israel, but for the glorified saints (c. Haer. v. 333, ed. Massuet)! Then later Eusebius (V. C. iii. 15, 33, iv. 40, he.), in a re-action from such grotesque stuff, treated the prophetic visions as fulfilled in Constantine's victory over Paganism, with worldly ease and honor for the Christian profession! Along with this came in souls blessed after death as an alternative interpretation; so that the resurrection as well as Christ's coming well-nigh vanished, save for judgment; and the sheep and the goats were confounded with the great white-throne-judgment of the dead.

Yet the Lord had intimated even to Nicodemus that God's kingdom has “heavenly things” as well as “earthly.” Again He pointed out to the disciples the distinction of the Father's kingdom on high for the glorified saints, from the Son of man's kingdom below out of which are to be cleared those that practice lawlessness. These truths paved the way for the Spirit to reveal that purpose of God for the heavens, and all the things in them, and for the earth and all the timings on it, to be set under Christ as the Head over all things to the church. Had this truth been received, it would have guarded saints from setting the one against the other, the common source of manifold error and evil. Here our brethren, like ourselves, have to take heed and learn.

Christ's Coming, and Appearing, by J. F. S. Cox. 3 a penny.

Published

LONDON

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.

Published Monthly

Bible Treasury: Volume N4

Table of Contents

Jacob: 1. At Bethel

Priesthood: 27. Leper on the Eighth Day

Day of Atonement: 12. Azazel

Proverbs 14:13-27

Alms

Gospel Words: the Beatitudes

1 Peter 2:18-20

Life Eternal Denied: 1

Scripture Queries and Answers: Number of Lot's Daughters; Pharoah Perished in the Red Sea?

Advertisement

Publisher

Jacob: 2. Meets Rachel

Priesthood: 28. Poor Leper

Day of Atonement: 13. Azazel

Proverbs 14:28-35

Gospel Words: the Prayer of the Disciples

1 Peter 2:21-23

Life Eternal Denied: 2

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: 1 Timothy

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: 2 Timothy

Scripture Query and Answer: Genesis 19:8, 12, 14

Advertisement

Published

Jacob: 3. The Marriages of Jacob

Priesthood: 29. Leprosy in the House and Its Cleansing

Day of Atonement: 14. Concluding Remarks

Proverbs 15:1-7

Gospel Words: Grace in Practice

1 Peter 2:24

Life Eternal Denied: 3

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Titus

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Philemon

Scripture Query and Answer: Genesis 12:1

Jacob: 4. Leah and Her Four Sons

Priesthood: 30. Leprosy Summed Up

The Day of Atonement: 15. Concluding Remarks

Gospel Words: Treasures on Earth or in Heaven?

The Responsibility of Disciples

1 Peter 2:25

Life Eternal Denied: 4

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: Hebrews

Scripture Queries and Answers: The Five Wise Virgins

Scripture Queries and Answers: The Flesh in Us

Scripture Queries and Answers: Acts 26:22-23

Scripture Queries and Answers: The Temple Described in Ezekiel

Scripture Queries and Answers: Gathered to the Lord's Name

Advertising

Publisher

Jacob: 5. The Wives and Their Maids

Priesthood: 31. Flux in Men and Its Defilement

The Day of Atonement: 16. Concluding Remarks

Proverbs 15:18-25

Gospel Words: Christ Came to Fulfill

1 Peter 3:1-6

Life Eternal Denied: 5

F.E.R. Heterodox on the Person of the Christ

Scripture Queries and Answers: Sheol

Scripture Queries and Answers: Reconciled to God

Scripture Queries and Answers: Greek Words for Eternal

Advertising

Publishing

Jacob: 6. Leah and Rachel Again

Priesthood: 32. The Atonement for Flux

The Day of Atonement: 17. Concluding Remarks

Proverbs 15:26-33

Garments White and Head Anointed

Grace in the Wilderness

Gospel Words: Thy Father in Secret

1 Peter 3:5-6

The Inspiration of the Scriptures: James

Scripture Queries and Answers: Matthew 18:20 Translation of Greek

Scripture Queries and Answers: The Crucifixion in Mark and John

Fragment on Romans 5:21

Is the Flesh Really Gone?

Jacob: 7. Jacob and Laban

Priesthood: 33. Other Impurities

The Day of Atonement: 18. Concluding Remarks

Proverbs 16:1-8