Bible Treasury: Volume N8

I have no hesitation in saying that ἀδίχιμος (translated in the English Bible “a castaway”) must be interpreted in each occurrence according to the nature and requirements of its context. It means disapproved on trial, which may be absolute or relative. This I freely grant. The question is, What is the necessary sense in 1 Cor. 9:27?

It seems to me very plain that the apostle means in the strictest and fullest way a disapproval of the person, emphatically so, and not a mere condemnation of his service but in contrast with it. He supposes that there might be the preaching to others without a single flaw or drawback specified (i.e. the work all right), but the person ἀδόχιμος. What has hindered many in ancient times, and yet more since the Arminian controversy, is the fear of weakening divine grace, and of compromising the security of the believer.

But this is a groundless fear; for it is no question of a believer, but of a preacher. It is supposed that the person preaches well enough, but there is no self-judgment, no keeping of the body under, no practical holiness—consequently, no faith or conscience before God, no jealousy for Christ, no fear to grieve the Holy Spirit. It is a man unrenewed, therefore, though possibly not a bad preacher, nor lacking in zealous work.

This was the snare laid for the Corinthians. In the eyes of some, gift and work were all, the will and grace and holiness of Christ practically of no account.

Why then does the apostle speak of himself hypothetically rather than of them directly? Because he was led of the Spirit with the finest sense of delicate consideration. He preferred out of love to put it in his own case. Not, as too many imagine, that he had the least doubt or fear as to himself; not that a single text raises the smallest anxiety about any one possessing life in Christ. Whoever throws off restraints, and lives contrary to Christ, may preach as well as you like, but will certainly be lost, were it Paul himself: as he says in chapter iv. of this Epistle, he has transferred the application to himself, if not to Apollos. But it is purely hypothesis, which in fact was as far as possible from Paul, but which he thus applied to himself, if he walked recklessly, for the warning of some of the Corinthians. It is hardly so strong as Heb. 12:14, 15, from which we must not be driven either by abuse or by ignorance; nor must we force it like those who would pervert the warning given to professors of Christ into opiates for Christians.

Ever yours affectionately,

—— [March. 1870].

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 1-8, Continued

And this is what we are sanctified to, not merely to obey, but to obey as Christ obeyed. For this is the meaning of “sanctified,” where it says that we are “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the spirit unto obedience.” Yes, but it is the “obedience,” as well as the “sprinkling of the blood,” of Jesus Christ. It is not the obedience of a Jew; it is not the obedience of the law. It is the obedience of Jesus Christ. Not but what this does accomplish the righteousness of the law. For there is no man that so thoroughly loves God and loves his neighbor as the man that obeys in the same spirit as our blessed Lord. And this is what we are all called to as Christians. Those that have merely the law before them as a thing to obey, do not really meet the righteousness of the law. Those that have Christ do, as it is said— “that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.” You observe the language is exceedingly strong. He does not merely say, “fulfilled by us,” but, “fulfilled in us.” “Fulfilled in us” shows the reality of it; the intrinsic character of the fulfillment of the law in its great righteous character and requirement. And so it is alone fulfilled in Christ, or the Christian, as it was, in a measure, by those who were looking to Christ in the days before.

Well then, Bathsheba showed her own confidence in the will of God—her faith in short—by coming to Nathan. She went to the right quarter. She told him of the conspiracy of Adonijah and his party, and she goes to the presence of the king. Nathan followed. The consequence was, the king shows that, however aged, he was perfectly alive to the solemnity of the occasion. He saw and judged the crisis that was coming, and the only effect of Adonijah’s conspiracy was, not to hinder, but, to forward Solomon to the throne of Israel. Had there not been the conspiracy, Solomon would have waited, we can hardly doubt, for the death of the king, but the result was just simply to secure it and to secure it at once. So it is that if we are only calm, God always accomplishes His purpose. Who would have thought that the way for Joseph to be exalted—so that his father and mother and his brethren should bow down to a thing that at first rather irritated Jacob, much as he loved his son, and which irritated still more his brethren who would have thought that the way in which this was to be accomplished was by the wickedness of his brethren—either wanting to kill him, or even the most mild of them to sell him? But so it was. The pathway of sin, alas! which is so natural, to sinners, is the very thing that God employs for the accomplishment of His purpose. This does not make the sin less, but it certainly exalts God the more. And there is the blessedness, beloved friends, of reading, and of growing in the knowledge of God as it is shown in the precious word, because we are growing in our acquaintance and intimacy with Him with whom we shall be forever. And it is our privilege to have this acquaintance, and to cultivate it, and to enjoy it now; Hence, God has given us this word.

But now a word upon the great object of the Spirit of God in this book generally, and more particularly what has come before us. For this is particularly what I desire, not merely to draw your attention to great moral lessons, which would detain us too much with the detail of the chapters, but to give simply a wide and general sketch which you may fill up in your own reading of this book—I trust with some moral suggestions to profit and help. My purpose now is to gather the great object of the Spirit of God—that which is not so easily seen and laid hold of by souls, unless someone shows it; but that which if true you will prove to be true, and which you will enjoy so much the more, the more simply you receive it. But it is the word of God that will either confirm wherever one is true, or set aside wherever there is a mistake.

I say then that the grand point here is the establishment of the son of David, not merely man’s kingdom set up in Saul and God’s kingdom set up in king David, but now it is the son of David. And inasmuch as there were many sons this was the question. The devil was quite willing to make use of a son of David against the son of David. This was precisely the question now, and God was pleased to make use of the wickedness of those that insulted the king by practically treating him as a dead man while he was still alive. The hurry and haste of Adonijah only the more confirmed the title of Solomon. We need never trouble ourselves with our schemes for the accomplishment of God’s plans. All man’s efforts are in vain. God has His own way, and very often through man’s sin. Do you suppose that if Joseph had been out of the prison he could have come to be the chief man in Egypt so quickly as by the prison? That was not man’s way to raise him to be the prime minister of the king of Egypt. But there was no way, I will not say so sure, but there was no way so straight. It looked no doubt very far, indeed rather a turning his back upon the throne, to go into the dungeon, but in point of fact it was not only the way of God but, after all, it was the speediest way of all. The story as given in the word of God will explain without further remark from me.

Just the same now. Adonijah no doubt was interfering, but then it seemed as if he had a claim. it only affirmed the superior claim of God. And this was a grand point to establish at the beginning of the kingdom of Israel—that it was not merely, as in ordinary cases, a king in God’s providence. It was not, on the other hand, a thing that had to do with God’s people as such; but the remarkable character of the throne in Israel was that it was a king by God’s election—the only king that, in the full force of the word, was so. Nebuchadnezzar no doubt was by God’s providence, but there was more than providence in the case of the throne of Israel. And for this simple reason. The throne of Israel was in a very true and real sense the throne of Jehovah. And it is the only throne in this world that ever was the throne of Jehovah. This is the express statement of the word of God, as anyone can see, but for this reason it has a character of importance that no kingdom ever had—I do not say will have—for what was done then is only the shadow of that which is going to be done.

And this is of great moment, beloved friends, for us to be clear about, for we are apt to be taken up by our own special blessings; yet the knowledge of the church of God ought not to hinder our interest in the kingdom of God, nor should the shape that the kingdom of God takes now at all obliterate that which God has given in the kingdom of old. It is not a proof of great faith to be only occupied with what concerns ourselves, but rather of little faith. I grant you that people who do not, first of all, and as the great lesson to learn, seek to know their own place are mere theorists, but when we have found our place in Christ—when we have got our need supplied, our relationship defined, ourselves in the enjoyment of what grace has brought us into—what is the great practical object of God? Free for all He has to tell us, and free for all He bids us do, it is no longer a question of what touches ourselves. If so, then we shall enjoy each thing in the word of God because it is what interests God; it is what concerns Him; and there is no one thing which ought to be so dear to us now as that God means to have a kingdom—not merely a kingdom spiritually enjoyed as now; for “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink”; it is not eating and drinking, “but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” All that no doubt is spiritually enjoyed, and into that call we are brought now. We see that kingdom; we enter that kingdom now. We are in the kingdom of God now in that sense.

It is called also “the kingdom of heaven,” because He who is the King of it is not on the earth, but rejected and is exalted in heaven. Consequently “the kingdom of God” is also “the kingdom of heaven”; and we are now in the form of it which is called “the mystery of the kingdom of God.” But then it is not always to be a mystery. It is going to be manifested; it is going to be a place where God will tolerate no evil, where self-will will be manifestly judged, where righteousness will cover the earth, where there will be the manifest blessing of God, all produced by His own power here below, when the King Himself will be exalted over the earth, and very particularly over this portion of it—the land of the people of Israel. Any one familiar with the scripture must know that the land is a part of the deed, if I may so say—is part of that great charter which secures the kingdom; not merely the people but the land. The land and the people, I repeat, are both in the charter. Well then that will be when the Lord Jesus is no longer in heaven, but comes again and takes the kingdom.

But perhaps you say, “How does that concern us?” And I would answer that by another question. If God has revealed it, is it not for us? Never confound these two things. It is not merely that God has revealed what is about us. He has given us a great deal that is not about us, but all that God has revealed is given to us. We ought to enjoy all the word of God, and it is a failure in faith where we do not. And further, we shall find the want of it—we shall miss the blessing of it when we least expect it. The way to be truly strong in the day of difficulty is not to be collecting our arms when the enemy has come, but it is to be well armed before he appears. I grant you that it is only dependence upon God that after all can be strength, but I speak now as far as armor is concerned, and I repeat, it is too late in the day of battle to be looking after our arms. We ought to prepare beforehand.

The kingdom then is of very great moment, and particularly so. For if we do not understand the nature of the kingdom we shall be exposed to those that confound it with the church. There is no more common error at this present time than to make out that the kingdom and the church are the same. Allow me to tell you that that is one of the great roots of popery. The papists think that the kingdom and the church are the same, and their great ground of assumption is that very identification for the simple reason that the kingdom supposes power applied to compel subjection. Hence, therefore, they ground upon that their title to put down kings, because what are the kings of the earth compared to those that have got a heavenly kingdom? They use, therefore, the title of the heavenly kingdom to put down earthly kings and to make a priest a far more important person really than the earthly king. Hence, again, their vain dream is founded upon this great confusion. Well, but you will find the same thing among most Protestants. I will just give you one or two examples to show you how very prevalent this delusion is, and how very important it is that we should distinguish in this matter.

Take a very respectable set of persons in Protestantism—the Presbyterians. Well now the whole of their system is founded upon Christ being the King—not Christ being the Head of the church, but Christ being King. That was the battle cry of the old covenanters, and that was the great cry at the time that the Free Church was established. It was that Christ was the King—that the crown of England was using its title against the rights of Christ. In the case about which there was so much talk some years ago, and to which I need not refer more particularly, this was the great thought. It was Christ’s title of King in the church that was disputed. So you will find in the Westminster Confession of Faith, which is their grand standard of doctrine. In short, they always go upon the ground of Christ being King of the church.

So again with the Independents—just the same thing. When they managed to get the upper hand in England for a time they made very small scruple of sending the king to the block because they considered him to be the enemy of the King of the church—that Christ was the King, and not King Charles; that King Charles had behaved very badly and deserved to suffer, and so on; and they were the asserters of the rights of Christ the King.

Well now there was a grand fundamental error made by all of them. Thus Protestants are just as guilty in another way as the Romanists, for although they do not use the title of Christ to exalt themselves against the powers that be, habitually they do use it when the powers that he fail (as they consider) to behave themselves quite right. Then they think they are perfectly entitled to call them to account, and, if necessary, to put them down, or even send them to the block. Now all this you see is a complete inversion of the right relationship of a Christian man to the powers of the world, and all founded upon the very plausible idea that whether you call Him Head of the church or call Him King of the church, it is all one and the same thing. They say that it is only “hair-splitting brethren” that see anything different; that it is only persons who continually put themselves disagreeably forward and tell people that they do not understand the scriptures; that it is only persons that have that rather quarrelsome, disagreeable style of convicting persons of not knowing the word of God.

Now, beloved friends, I say that however disagreeable it may be to be proved guilty of not knowing the word of God, this is the very thing that we do affirm; this is the very thing that we do assert now, that this is a subject of the greatest possible moment, that is, that our true relationship to Christ is not King of the church—that He is never so treated nay, that He is not even called “King of saints” except in a passage in the Revelation which every scholar knows to be a mistaken translation, the true meaning in that case being, “King of nations,” and not “King of saints,” or King of the church at all. In short, there is no such thought, and the fact is very important. It is no mere idea, and it is no litigious objection to people’s dogmas. It is a vital point, not for salvation, but for the true place of the church—the true relationship of the church—and you must remember our duties always depend upon our relationships. If I am wrong about my relationship, I am certain to be wrong about my duty. I am certain to make a duty of what is wrong, and that is exactly what the effect was to one or other of the different classes that I have referred to. That is what they have done. I need not repeat it, but I say that the opposite of the relationship is a fatal thing. The way it works is this. If my relationship to Christ is that of a member of the body to the head, my relationship is of the most intimate kind; my relationship is of the closest nature, and the Head loves me as He loves Himself, for no man ever yet hated his own flesh. Such is the relationship of Christ to the church. It is so intimate that you can have no person between you and the Head—none whatever. You see all depends upon it. The principle of the clergy depends upon it, because if that is the relationship the clergy are at an end. There is no such thing; it is only an imaginary class of beings as far as the truth is concerned. That is, they have no real title in the word of God. There is no such being in the word of God. There is no such position at all. It is only a thing that has been conjured up by persons who do not know the relationship of the church of God to the Head. So exactly that of which I am speaking now—the relationship of the members to the Head—excludes all dealing of the church with the world. The world is nothing to the church. The church is a thing separate from the world—not controlling the world not punishing the world, not putting the world under force to compel it to render unwilling subjection. All this is a total confusion between the kingdom and the church—the kingdom as it will be by and by with this only difference, that then, as we know, the obedience will be real except only in a certain set who afterward become rebellious and are so judged and punished.

Now all this then I maintain, beloved friends, is of a very practical nature, because the reason why so many saints are troubled in their souls among Presbyterians and Dissenters generally is this very thing. If I am only in the relationship of one of a people who have a king, well there is a long distance between the king and the people. No wonder I am not very intimate with the king. No wonder I am not on very happy terms with the king. I ought not to expect to be. My business as one of the people is to remain in a lowly outside place altogether, feeling indeed how poor my subjection is; but as to pretense to draw near the king—to go continually into his presence—it would be a very unbecoming thing in a subject to dare to do such a thing. Thus you destroy the very vitals of Christianity by this doctrine. It is not only that I speak now of great public errors, but I say that you destroy practical Christianity every day and every hour, and I hold, therefore, that this very mistake now of confounding the kingdom and the church is one of the most fatal in its consequences, not for sinners as a question of looking to Christ to be saved, but for Christians as a question of enjoying their own proper relationship, and of walking accordingly. Whereas if you know your place—as brought into the church of God—the body of Christ—then there can be no intimacy more complete; there can be no oneness more absolute. You are put, therefore, as a part of Himself before God, and instead of its being too high or presumptuous, or anything of the kind, on the contrary, it is merely faith in the truth it is merely appreciation of the grace that He has shown you; for it would be perfect nonsense for the body not to share the blessing of the Head; it could not be, and therefore you must deny the fact—you must deny the relationship not to enjoy this blessedness which you have in communion with the Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of God.

But then there is another thing that goes along with it—absolute separation from the world; but I do not go farther on this subject. I just touch upon it to show that whether it is the soul’s oneness, or whether it is the separateness of the church from the world, all depends for its power upon appreciating that, besides being spiritual in the kingdom, we are really and truly and fully, every one of us, members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones, and that these relationships, instead of being the same, are wholly distinct, and that, in point of fact, although we are in a certain sense in the kingdom, we are never said to be a kingdom. We are never said, in subjects. We are subject, of course. When I use the term “kingdom,” I mean in the sense of subjects. Subject we are, and I admit that the subjection ought to be more complete and absolute than even that of mere subjects of a king; but the character of the obedience of a subject is distance. The character of the body in subjection is nearness, and this is essential to Christianity.

And now in this Book of Kings, as we shall see, you never get the church. You never have the body of Christ. You have only the relationship of the kingdom a very weighty and important thing, and, indeed, very strongly and practically important for us as showing us the distinctness of those new relationships into which we are brought. But the grand point, you observe, even in the kingdom, was this—to maintain God’s choice, God’s will, as the foundation of all action. It was this that led king David, for I do not suppose, and it is never said, that king David made such a pet of, or made so much of, Solomon as he did of Adonijah. We are not told that so it was with all his other children. Adonijah evidently was the spoiled boy, and Adonijah was the one in the family that the father never could bear to displease, and, consequently, the trouble came in by him; it could not be otherwise; it was right that it should be. It is according to God’s government that whatever man sows he must reap. So it must be if he sows to the flesh, and so he had done. Of the flesh he reaps corruption. This came to pass now, but, on the other hand, how marvelous the grace! What a recovery is that of God! Think of David now. Think of Bathsheba now. Think of Solomon now. When one remembers who and what Bathsheba had been, of whom Solomon had been born, how wondrous the grace of God, and what a comfort, beloved friends, for anyone that has to look back bitterly upon what was most humiliating most painful! How the grace of God not only triumphs, but makes us more than conquerors through Him that loves us. So we see it even in the kingdom.

Well, the thing is now established, and the very that sense, to be the sphere except in a mere effort to destroy it brings out, as I have already figurative way. We are said to be kings, not said, the speedy establishment of the will of God.

Solomon is caused to ride upon the king’s mule. The trumpet is sounded. The real men that had fought the battles of the kingdom and that had guided the counsels of the king, and the king himself above all, put their seal upon this great transaction, and Solomon is fairly seated as the king on the throne of Jehovah in Israel. Such then is the introduction of this book.

In the second chapter we have David’s death, and the charge that was given before he died to king Solomon to judge righteously, for David evidently feels that, for his own word’s sake, he had spared more than one wicked man. This lay upon his conscience. He could not but deliver it over to king Solomon. It is wrong to call this vindictiveness; there was no vindictiveness in it whatever. It was really a burden upon the king’s mind. It was not because of their personal opposition to himself, but that it was so grave a sin against Jehovah’s anointed was what filled the king’s heart. He tells it to his successor Solomon, and, accordingly, the day comes when these sins rise up and call for judgment, but all in God’s time. There was no hurry. Adonijah, however, is the first to bring on his judgment upon him. The king had treated him kindly, had pardoned his offense and rebellion; but now he asks for a request which inevitably suggests the idea of a second and subtle effort after the kingdom. He sought the one that had been the youthful companion of the aged king. He sought—and this, too, through Bathsheba— “Adonijah, the son of Haggith came to Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon. And she said, Comest thou peaceably? And he said, Peaceably. He said moreover, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And she said, Say on. And he said, Thou knowest that the kingdom was mine, and that all Israel set their faces on me, that I should reign; howbeit the kingdom is turned about, and is become my brother’s: for it was his from the Lord. And now I ask one petition of thee, deny me not. And she said unto him, Say on. And he said, Speak, I pray thee, unto Solomon the king (for he will not say thee nay) that he give me Abishag the Shunammite to wife.”

It did not look much in appearance, but Solomon was wise. Solomon detected the unjudged ambition and rebellion of Adonijah’s heart, and so, then, although it was Bathsheba his mother who was in question, he judges. She presented what she called a small petition. That is often done when there is something great behind, though not always known, for Bathsheba, on this occasion, was but the instrument of one who did not seek something small, but the greatest place in the kingdom, and Abishag, accordingly, is the request. “And king Solomon answered and said unto his mother. And why dost thou ask Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? Ask for him the kingdom also; for he is mine elder brother, even for him, and for Abiathar the priest, and for Joab the son of Zeruiah. Then king Solomon sware by Jehovah, saying, God do so to me, and more also, if Adonijah have not spoken this word against his own life. Now therefore, as Jehovah liveth, which hath established me” —you observe how simple and how real is the sense in the king’s mind that it was of Jehovah’s doing, and, so long as this was held fast, Solomon was strong as well as wise; but, says he, “as Jehovah liveth, which hath established me, and set me on the throne of David my father, and who hath made me an house, as he promised, Adonijah shall be put to death this day. And king Solomon sent by the hand of Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and he fell upon him that he died.”

(Continued from page 228)

[W. K.

(To be continued)

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 1-8

1.—Chapters 1-8.

The books of First and 2 Samuel show us the failure of the priesthood, and, in consequence, when a state of evident shame and dishonor overspread the face of Israel, the heart of the people desired a king, to the disparagement of the prophets that judged Israel whom the Lord had raised up in extraordinary grace. But, thereupon, the Spirit of God, even before all this, was manifest, declares in prophetic communication the immense change that was about to take place; for while it was man’s sin to have desired a king, like the nations, to go at the head of Israel, it had always been the purpose of God, only—God made His own counsel to coalesce with their sin—one of those mysterious but admirably divine ways of the Lord that we find continually in scripture. Thus man has ever showed how little he is to be accounted of. God has ever shown how worthy He is of all our trust. God made use of man’s infidelity to Him to bring in what was not only better then, but the type of that which will be infinitely good in its own way in the day that is coming. For all this furnished the beautiful shadow of a king after God’s heart. Nevertheless, this did not come in at once; for as the people were faithless towards the Lord, they did not ask the Lord to choose them a king—they preferred to choose one themselves. They chose one to their own still greater shame and hurt, and consequently, the first Book of Samuel is that which is naturally in regard to king Saul. The second Book is, at any rate, the type, and in a certain sense the reality, as far as a pledge was concerned, of that which was spiritual. The king after God’s heart is established on the throne of Israel in the person of David. This is the great subject of the second Book of Samuel, and I have made this prefatory observation in order that we may the better understand the connection of the two preceding books with those that come before us now.

It is clear that the Books of Kings are the natural consequence and successors, if I may so say, of the Books of Samuel; so much so that they are, in some copies of the scriptures, all classed as Books of Kings. But here we have David approaching his end; and the eldest of his sons that then survived—Adonijah—takes advantage of the king’s infirmity for his own ambitious purpose. There was no fear of God in this. For it was well known in the house of David, and in the land of Israel, that as God chose David from the midst of his brethren, so He had been pleased also to designate Solomon for the throne of Israel. Hence, therefore, it was not only human ambition, but we learn this very serious lesson for our souls—that the indulgence of what is fleshly assumes a graver character in us than in the people of God in their measure, of old; in us still more now. It was not mere ambition in Adonijah. In one totally ignorant of the word of God and the will of Jehovah for Israel, it would have been ambition. But if we have an incomparable blessing in the word of God, we have a greatly increased responsibility, and further, sin acquires a new character. The sin of Adonijah was not merely therefore ambition; not merely, even, rebellion against the king, against David; it was rebellion against Jehovah. It was a direct act of setting himself in contradiction of the declared and revealed purpose of God.

Now it is always of the greatest importance that we should bear this in mind, because we are so apt to look at things merely as they lie on the surface. When, for instance, Ananias and Sapphira were guilty of their sad sin in the church of God, how does the apostle Peter treat it? Not merely as a lie. They had lied to God. Why was this? Why was there in that lie something altogether beyond an ordinary lie, bad as a lie always is in a Christian; indeed, in any one? But why was it so especially and emphatically a lying to God? Because Peter, at any rate, believed that God was there; that it was not merely therefore the general moral feeling against a person saying what was false and deceiving another, nay, not merely that it was against God’s will and word, but it was an affront done in the very presence of God. And consequently, as the sense of the presence of God was so fresh and strong in the minds of all of them—in Peter above all—he, in the power of that Spirit who manifested God’s presence, pronounced the judgment—no doubt according to God’s guidance on the sin; and Ananias at first, his wife shortly after, breathed their last; a sin manifestly unto death. So that in the very earliest days of the church of God, we may say, the solemn truth had this voucher before them all, that God will not tolerate sin in that which bears the name of the Lord Jesus upon the earth. The very object of the church of God is to be an expression of the judgment of sin. We begin with that; we begin with Christ our Passover sacrificed for us; consequently, the lump must be a new one, as ye are unleavened—as ye are unleavened—not that ye may be unleavened, but ye are unleavened, and, therefore, the old leaven is to be purged out. Whatever might be the natural tendency, whatever might he the special wickedness (for what will not Satan attempt?) just because God has wrought in the might of His own grace, this furnishes further occasion to the devil. He takes advantage of the goodness of God to bring a fresh slight upon Him and to dishonor Him the more because of the greatness of His love. Accordingly, therefore, God showed on this very occasion, by His servant, His deep resentment of the dishonor that was done Him, and, as the consequence, the judgment of the man and his wife that had been guilty of this great offense.

So it was upon this occasion. Adonijah had presumed upon his father’s old age and infirmities, for he was stricken in years, and covered with clothes, but even thus found little comfort from it. And Adonijah accordingly at once takes his measures; but then there is more than this. There is another lesson that we have to gather from it; it is written for our instruction. His father had not displeased him at any time in saying, “Why hast thou done so?” A good man, a man after God’s own heart, a great man, too, for such, surely, was David; one of those rare men that have ever appeared in this earth, not only rare as a man, but remarkably blest of God and honored too. For who has furnished, as he has done, that which has filled the heart and expressed the feelings of saints of God from that day to this? I do not say that there was not the constant, inevitable (as far as man is concerned) blot. For indeed there was; not always of the same kind, but alas! we see in him, as we see too commonly, that where there was most conspicuous power and blessing and honor, there might be a most shameful evil against the name of the Lord. There is no preserving in any honor that God puts upon us; there is no possible way for any soul to be kept from sin against the Lord, except by his self-judgment and dependence; and therefore even, the more exalted a man is, the more liable is he to fall. There is no greater mistake, therefore, than to suppose that the signal honor of David, or the grace that had wrought in David, was any preserving power. Not so; rather the contrary. Where the eye is taken away from the Lord—and this was exactly the case with David—we are all liable to it. There is no security, I do not say as to eventual recovery and as to the preservative grace of the Lord in the end, but there is no security against dishonoring the Lord by the way, save in continually looking to Him.

Now David had failed greatly at home as well as abroad on particular occasions. Alas! at home in this very respect; he had a tender and a soft heart. He was one that greatly enjoyed the grace of God towards his own soul; he felt the need of it, but, instead of making him careful for the Lord, grace is very apt, if we are not watchful, to be severed from truth. In Christ they were perfectly combined; in the Christian they should be. It is what God looks for, expects from us. In David there was a failure, and there was a failure at home—very often a critical place for any of us. It was so, at any rate, with king David. This son of his seems to have been a special favorite—as bad a thing for the son as for the father. His father had not displeased him at any time in saying, “Why hast thou done so?” And if his father had not displeased him he must reap the bitter fruit; he must be displeased himself. The son would certainly displease the father if the father had not displeased the son. There was no greater failure in jealous care and in loving care, too; for, after all, to have been displeased for his good, for his reproof, would have been a deeper love—not so showy, not so apparently gracious. But we must distinguish between grace and graciousness. There was a deal of graciousness in David in all this. I do not think there was much grace, for it is all a mistake to suppose that grace is not watchful. It was just the want of grace. It was a father’s kindness, a father’s tenderness, but it was not grace. Had there been grace there would have been truth. Real grace always maintains the truth. The truth was not maintained in the relationship of David towards his son Adonijah. Adonijah lives therefore to be the shame and grief of his father. This was not merely to manifest his father’s fault before all Israel, to manifest his father’s failure before all the saints, all the people of God of all times, but, beloved brethren, for our profit, if we are wise.

Now it takes then a public shape. The son—the failure at least (to speak of it by the mildest name)—the failure that had long gone on at home bursts out abroad. Adonijah therefore confers with a suitable person. He confers with Joab, the man that had constantly used David for his own purpose. Joab reckoned now that David would be of very little use to him any longer. The opportunity seemed fair; he embraced it. Policy is always ruinous work in the end, at any rate among God’s people. There was no faith in Joab. He was a wise man after the flesh; he was an extremely political individual. Joab was a person who saw directly what could turn to his own profit, what offered an opportunity for his talents, for he was a man of great ability; and Joab now made up his mind. Adonijah was the man for him, so that they suited each other. Joab was remarkably adapted to Adonijah object, and at the same time Adonijah suited Joab’s policy. Had there been faith Joab had resisted Adonijah far more sternly than he once did David. This was the man that reproved David’s numbering the house of Israel, for a man that has not faith is sharp enough to see the failure even of a man of faith when he steps out of his own proper line. Joab well knew that the day was when David single-handed fought the battle of Israel. He, after the Lord’s most signal exaltation and blessing, he to be guilty of that which would have been poor work in any man of Israel, but most of all in David! he to be merely numbering the hosts of Israel as if they were the strength of the people, and not the Lord God! Therefore it was that foal) considered that the danger was too great for the result. He would not have minded the sin; he was afraid of the punishment, he was afraid of what it would involve. He had a sort of instinctive sense that the thing was wrong; that it was peculiarly wrong in David. He warned him therefore as we know. David would not be warned, and he fell into the snare completely.

But now the same man that could warn David could not warn himself. What lessons! beloved friends, at every turn. How wholesome for our souls! Of what importance it is that we should go on simply in the path of faith. Joab, then, confers with Adonijah. The priest, too, is found necessary as well as the commander-in-chief, and they follow Adonijah and help him. “But Zadok the priest, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada,” who was the true servant of the king’s purposes, not Joab—Joab had the name, the title, but Benaiah was the man that did the real work— “Benaiah the son of Jehoiada and Nathan the prophet,” the man that was the interpreter of the mind of God—these, as well as “Shimei, and Rei, and the mighty men which belonged to David, were not with Adonijah.” Adonijah might have his feast and invite all his brethren the king’s sons! For this is another thing too that we have to observe. A departure from the mind of God is always apt to be successful at first. Every step of unfaithfulness has a great result in the world where there is ability, where there is the marshalling of all that would act upon the mind, for no doubt this was well calculated. Joab would influence a certain set. Abiathar the priest would have his religious name and reputation. And above all there were the king’s sons all of them save Solomon, and “all the men of Judah,” as it is said, “the king’s servants.” It was a widespread, and it seemed, a prudently concocted rebellion. “But Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah, and the mighty men, and Solomon his brother, he called not.” And there is just where faith can rest—on God’s word. That was what gave the weight to Solomon; for there was nothing very particular known as to Solomon at this time, if indeed we leave God out. Yet that is really the root of all his blessing; for there is no vital blessing except where the call of God is. It matters not where his choice lies, the blessing of God is found, and the power of God too, with His election, and only there. And this was the very thing, that was left out. No, it was this that irritated Adonijah; for naturally he had superior claims if the flesh was the rule and not God. The flesh may govern for a while in the world, but God must rule among God’s people.

This then becomes known. The mother of Solomon goes to the aged king after conferring with the prophet; and there she showed that whatever might he her weakness her heart was right. She went to the one who, above all, could give the mind of God—to Nathan—the one that had himself reproved the king in the midst of his power, the one that had courage to speak for God whatever the consequence. She goes to Nathan. And allow me to say, beloved friends, as a matter of practical profit, we always show where our heart is by our confidence. Supposing a man is going wrong in his will. He is sure to take advice just in the very quarter where he ought not. He looks for advice where there will be weakness if he cannot count upon positive sanction—where at any rate there will be the feeblest protest, if not a measure of encouragement; for weakness is apt to lean on weakness. Whereas, where there is a single eye we are indeed conscious of our weakness, and ought to be; but if there is a single eye we want the will of God. “He that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” Whatever is not the will of God perishes, and ought to perish, for what are we sanctified for if it be not to do the will of God? It was the very character of Christ; it was what all His life consisted of. You might sum it up in this one word, He came to do God’s will. “Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.” There is no one thing that more unvaryingly describes Christ than that very thing. Not miracles; He did not always do miracles. He did miracles in a comparatively small compass of His life. He was not always working atonement. No greater mistake, and no more injury done to the atonement itself, than to confound it with what is not atoning. He was not always suffering either, still less was He suffering in the same way, even when He did suffer. But He was always doing the will of God.

[W. K.]

(To be continued)

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 12-15, Continued

2. Chapters 9-15. (continued)

Accordingly, this was the point that he assailed. “Can I not get him to eat bread and drink water?” So he pretends that he has a fresh message from God. What was the man of God about? Does God say and unsay? If it were so we should have no standard whatever, no certainty, and what would become of the poor children if there were such a thing. I know that unbelief constantly says it, and tries to make the Bible contradict itself, but then those who do so are guilty; and so the old prophet was guilty of lying— “he lied unto him.” Nevertheless, the man of God listened. He had sat under the oak and was found by the old prophet there. He listened to the old prophet, and parleyed with him. The mischief takes effect. The man of God returns, breaking the word of the Lord in his own person, but not without the hand of God stretched out against him. If the man of God was false to God, God would be true to the man of God and true in a most painful way; and mark, beloved friends, most righteously; but it is a righteousness according to God, for we in our folly would have thought, “Surely the old prophet is the man that is going to die for this.” Not so, but the man of God. For it is those who ought to know best, if they fail, that God chastises most. Do not wonder if the same things are done elsewhere and pass, apparently, without a chastening from God, or without any very direct exposure. These things cannot be done where the word of the Lord is the rule.

The man of God, accordingly, hears now the word, and this word was given him by the old prophet. “And he cried unto the man of God that came from Judah, saying, Thus saith Jehovah, Forasmuch as thou hast disobeyed the mouth of Jehovah, and hast not kept the commandment which Jehovah thy God commanded thee, but camest back, and hast eaten bread and drunk water in the place of the which Jehovah did say to thee, Eat no bread, and drink no water; thy carcass shall not come unto the sepulcher of thy fathers.” It is not that his spirit did not go to the Lord. We are sure it did, but, nevertheless, his body did not come to the sepulcher of his fathers. The Lord did deal with him, and dealt with the body that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord.

“And it came to pass, after he had eaten bread, and after he had drunk, that he saddled for him the ass, to wit, for the prophet whom he had brought back. And when he was gone, a lion met him by the way, and slew him: and his carcass was cast in the way, and the ass stood by it, the lion also stood by the carcass.”

What a testimony! It is not so that the lions usually behave. It was in itself a wonder. The body of the man of God lay there, the ass beside it, the lion on the other side, all perfectly peaceful. The work was done. God was just in it, and accomplished what He pleased, but the lion had no mission to do more, and there in the face of all men it was evident that the hand of God was there according to the word of God. “And when the prophet that brought him back from the way heard thereof, he said, It is the man of God.” He knew right well whose carcass was there. “It is the man of God who Was disobedient unto the word of Jehovah: therefore Jehovah hath delivered him unto the lion, which hath torn him, and slain him, according to the word of Jehovah, which he spake unto him.”

And so the prophet goes and finds the ass and the lion standing by the carcass. “The lion had not eaten the carcass, nor torn the ass. And the prophet took up the carcass of the man of God, and laid it upon the ass, and brought it back: and the old prophet came to the city, to mourn and to bury him. And he laid his carcass in his own grave; and they mourned over him, saying, Alas, my brother!”

What a history! How true and how full of instruction, but how solemn—solemn to think of the man of God, but, oh! what can we say of the old prophet? What can we say of those that tempt the men that are of God and that have been faithful in their mission, to depart from the word of the Lord, and draw a miserable consolation to themselves for the moment to countenance their own living in habitual disobedience, in habitual ease where the man of God was forbidden to eat of the bread or drink of the water? There is nothing that so hardens the heart, and there is nothing that so destroys the conscience, as habitual disobedience to the word of the Lord—not in gross sins, but in religious indifference. That was what marked the old prophet. He consoled himself that he had respect for the Lord—respect for the man of God. He was put to the proof. He was Satan’s instrument, and he brought out, no doubt, the weakness of the very vessel that God had made so strong against king Jeroboam. He knew he was utterly weak before the seductions of the old prophet. Oh, beware of such! Beware of those who use their age or their position, or anything else, to weaken the children of God in their obedience to the word of the Lord.

This, then, is the deeply interesting and instructive history of the true path of saints of God in the midst of that which is departed from scripture—departed from the Lord.

Another thing that we learn, too, is that after this thing Jeroboam returned not from his evil way. He could entreat the prophet, the man of God, and the man of God could entreat Jehovah, and not without an answer, but it had taken no effect upon his conscience. There is no good done unless conscience is reached in the presence of God. “He made again of the lowest of the people priests of the high places: whosoever would be consecrated.” It was not only Jeroboam’s will that was at work, but anybody’s will, everybody’s will. “Whosoever would, he consecrated him, and he became one of the priests of the high places. And this thing became sin unto the house of Jeroboam, even to cut it off, and to destroy it from off the face of the earth.”

In the next chapter (14.), accordingly, we find the hand of God stretched out against the house of Jeroboam. Ahijah the son of Jeroboam fell sick, and Jeroboam well knew that there was reality in this man of God, so he bethinks himself of another—Ahijah the prophet. He tells his wife to go to Shiloh and to see Ahijah. “And Jeroboam said to his wife, Arise, I pray thee, and disguise thyself, that thou be not known to be the wife of Jeroboam; and get thee to Shiloh: behold, there is Ahijah the prophet, which told me that I should be king over this people.” She was to bring an honorary gift in her hand to present to the prophet, and Jeroboam’s wife did so; and it is written for our instruction.

Ahijah could not see for his eyes were set; they were fixed by reason of his age, but God gave him to hear and gave him to see, too, what was unseen. “And Jehovah said unto Ahijah, Behold the wife of Jeroboam cometh.” What was the folly of men! There was a man that could trust the prophet to tell him the future, and not to see through the disguise of his wife. How great is the folly of the wise, for jeroboam was a wise man after this world. But the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God, even as God’s wisdom is foolishness in their eyes. “And it was so, when Ahijah heard the sound of her feet as she came in at the door that he said, Come in, thou wife of Jeroboam; why feignest thou thyself to be another?” What a humiliation! “For I am sent to thee with heavy tidings. Go, tell Jeroboam, Thus saith Jehovah God of Israel, Forasmuch as I exalted thee from among the people, and made thee prince over my people Israel, and rent the kingdom away from the house of David, and gave it thee: and yet thou hast not been as my servant David, who kept my commandments, and who followed me with all his heart, to do that only which was right in mine eyes; but hast done evil above all that were before thee: for thou hast gone and made thee other gods, and molten images, to provoke me to anger, and hast cast me behind thy back: therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam.”

Abijah—he was not to recover. She was to get back to her husband and to her house. “And when thy feet enter into the city, the child shall die. And all Israel shall mourn for him, and bury him: for he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave, because in him there is found some good thing toward Jehovah God of Israel in the house of Jeroboam.” What grace of God—to produce some good thing toward Jehovah God of Israel in the house of the man that had wrought such things against Jehovah, and to show His mercy in taking him away from the evil to come! “And he shall give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, who did sin.” And that was not all. “And who made Israel to sin.” And so it was. Jeroboam died and Nadab his son reigned in his stead.

“And Rehoboam the son of Solomon reigned in Judah. Rehoboam was forty and one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which Jehovah did choose out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there. And his mother’s name was Naamah an Ammonitess. And Judah did evil in the sight of Jehovah, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins which they had committed, above all that their fathers had done. For they also built them high places, and images, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree. And there were also sodomites in the land; and they did according to all the abominations of the nations.” And, accordingly, God let loose the king of Egypt against Rehoboam. He came up “and he took away the treasures of the house of Jehovah, and the treasures of the king’s house; he even took away all; and he took away all the shields of gold that Solomon had made,” so that Rehoboam was driven at last to shields of brass.

“Now the rest of the acts of Rehoboam, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? And there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days. And Rehoboam slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David. And his mother’s name was Naamah an Ammonitess. And Abijam his son reigned in his stead.”

On what follows I make a very few remarks in concluding this lecture. We have here a signal turning point in the history of Israel. In this chapter xv. we have a long and deep course of evil and of the Lord’s righteous ways in the house of Jeroboam. But first of all as to Abijam. “He walked,” it is said, “in all the sins of his father, which he had done before him: and his heart was not perfect with Jehovah his God, as the heart of David his father. Nevertheless for David’s sake did Jehovah his God give him a lamp in Jerusalem, to set up his son after him, and to establish Jerusalem: because David did that which was right in the eyes of Jehovah.” And God forgets it, never. “And there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all the days of his life. Now the rest of the acts of Abijam, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? And there was war between Abijam and Jeroboam. And Abijam slept with his fathers.”

And Asa succeeds, who reigns a long while in Jerusalem, and he does what was right in the eyes of Jehovah as did David his father. He took away the sodomites out of the land. “Asa’s heart was perfect,” or, undivided, “with Jehovah all his days. And he brought in the things which his father had dedicated, and the things which himself had dedicated, into the house of Jehovah, silver, and gold, and vessels.” We find the war continued, and Baasha king of Israel builds Ramah that he might not suffer any one to go out or come in to Asa king of Judah. But it was in vain. Benhadad, the king of Syria, hearkens to king Asa. A sad descent in his latter days—that the king of Judah finds his refuge in the king of Israel instead of in the Lord. Nevertheless, all goes, apparently, well for the moment, for God does not judge all at once. “It came to pass when Baasha heard thereof that he left off building.” The house of Asa is concluded here. “In the time of his old age he was diseased in his feet. And Asa slept with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David his father.”

Nadab comes to his end, and Baasha conspires against him and “smote him at Gibbethon, which belonged to the Philistines: for Nadab and all Israel laid siege to Gibbethon. Even in the third year of Asa king of Judah did Baasha slay him, and reigned in his stead. And it came to pass, when he reigned, that he smote all the house of Jeroboam; he left not to Jeroboam any that breathed, until he had destroyed him, according unto the saying of Jehovah which he spake by his servant Ahijah the Shilonite: because of the sins of Jeroboam which he sinned, and which he made Israel sin, by his provocation wherewith he provoked Jehovah God of Israel to anger. Now the rest of the acts of Nadab, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel.”

So then in this very next chapter (xvi.) we find what I have already referred to the judgment following. The sovereignty passes out of the hand of Jeroboam. Zimri his captain rises up against him. Omri kills Zimri. Thus family after family takes possession of Israel, but God left Himself not without warning. It was in that very time that a great and solemn act was done according to the word of the Lord. A man dared to despise the word of Joshua, who had pronounced a curse upon him that would raise Jericho once more. It was not that Jericho was not inhabited, but to raise its walls as a city—to give it the character of a city—was despising God. The judgment was long stayed. A long time had intervened, but God had forgotten nothing. In these wicked days if he raises up one part the judgment is in the death of his eldest son, and if he raises up another part it is in the death of his youngest. His family paid the penalty of despising the word of the Lord. Oh, what a thing it is to us, beloved friends, to see how God maintained His word not only with the man of God, on the one hand, but with the open despiser and blasphemer, on the other. The Lord give us more and more to delight in the word of the Lord, and give us to cultivate a deepening acquaintance with every part of the word. Amen. [W. K.]

(To be continued)

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 12-15

2.-CHAPTERS 9-15. (continued)

But further, “Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah, and he offered upon the altar. So did he in Beth-el, sacrificing unto the calves that he had made; and he placed in Beth-el the priests of the high places which he had made. So he offered upon the altar.” For why not, Jeroboam? Solomon had done so. “So he offered upon the altar which he had made in Beth-el, the fifteenth day of the eighth month, even in the month which,” as Scripture says so graphically, “he had devised of his own heart; and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel; and he offered upon the altar, and burnt incense” (1 Kings 12:32, 33).

But God was not wanting to give a testimony even to this wicked king (13). “And, behold, there came a man of God out of Judah by the word of Jehovah unto Beth-el: and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. And he cried against the altar in the word of Jehovah, and said, O altar, altar, thus saith Jehovah; Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men’s bones shall be burnt upon thee” —the grand vindication of God against the wicked religion of Jeroboam! “And he gave a sign the same day, saying, This is the sign which Jehovah hath spoken.” That prophecy might await its accomplishment in due time, but there is a present sign given, as God constantly does—a present pledge of a future accomplishment. “Behold the altar shall be rent and the ashes that are upon it shall be poured out.” The moment jeroboam hears this he wants the man arrested. He puts forth his hand from the altar, saying, “Lay hold of him,” but the power of God was with the word of God. “And his hand, which he put forth against him, dried up, so that he could not pull it in again to him. The altar also was rent, and the ashes poured out from the altar, according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of Jehovah. And the king answered and said unto the man of God, Intreat now the face of Jehovah thy God, and pray for me, that my hand may be restored me again.”

Thus it is not only that we find the chastening of God’s people for their good, but the punishment of the wicked, at any rate, for their warning to break down their proud will; and so it was with Jeroboam. “The man of God besought Jehovah and the king’s hand was restored to him again, and became as it was before”; but it left the king as he was before. There was no bending of his heart to the Lord. Nevertheless the king could not but be civil, and so he says to the man of God, “Come home with me and refresh thyself, and I will give thee a reward.”

This brings out a principle of the deepest moment for you and for me, beloved friends. “And the man of God said unto the king, If thou wilt give me half thine house, I will not go in with thee, neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place: for so was it charged me by the word of Jehovah, saying, Eat no bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by the same way that thou earnest.” And no wonder. Here was Jehovah slighted. Where? Among the Gentiles? That were no wonder. Among His own people—direct apostasy from the Lord God of Israel. Here was a man that went forth in the strength of the word of the Lord. Absolute separation was therefore enjoined, and eating and drinking in all ages have been most justly regarded as the sign of fellowship. It may be as in the most solemn way fellowship between God’s people and the Lord Himself at His own table; but even in other lesser ways eating and drinking are not so slight as man supposes. “With such an one no not to eat.” Who? A man that is called a brother. If an unbeliever hid you, even supposing the unbeliever might be the worst man in the world, you are free to go, provided you believe that God has a mission for you—an object. Supposing it was the man’s soul—nothing more important in its way—you are free to go to the very worst on the face of the earth if you can serve God by going. You had better be sure of that first. But there is another thing, and that is, suppose a man that is called a brother is living in wickedness, “with such an one no not to eat.” This does not mean the Lord’s table; it means the common ordinary table. It means that there is not to be a sign of such fellowship as this—fellowship in ordinary life—because one of the most important means of dealing with the conscience of one that is called a brother is not merely separation from him at the table of the Lord, but it is intended to govern all one’s ordinary social life with him. Not with the world; there is no greater folly than putting the world under discipline; but there is nothing more important in the church of God than walking in holy discipline, not merely at the table of the Lord, but at all other times.

I know that the world makes light of this, and counts it extremely uncharitable; and I am aware, too, that it has been so abominably perverted by popery that one can understand why most Protestants are rather alarmed at anything that is so close and trenchant; but nevertheless it does not become those that value the word of the Lord to shrink from the danger, and I think that there cannot be a doubt that what I am saying is correct as to the 5th of the 1St Corinthians. I know that some apply it to the Lord’s table. I will just give one or two reasons that are decisive. First, there would be no sense in speaking of a man that is called a brother only; no sense in saying that he is not a man of the world because there could not be a question about eating the Lord’s Supper with him. The question might arise with a brother, no doubt. But in speaking of an erring Christian “no not to eat” means that fellowship is not to take place in so little a thing as to eat. “Not so much as to eat,” meaning that it was a very small thing, and so it is a small thing to take an ordinary meal. Who could suppose the Holy Ghost treating the Lord’s Supper as a very little thing? Why there is nothing of more importance on earth, so that I am perfectly persuaded “no not to eat” means so small a thing as to eat, which at once shows that the meaning is in no way the Lord’s Supper. The Spirit of God never could treat that as a small matter. No, it means an ordinary meal.

I am not now speaking of relatives, because that modifies the thing. Supposing, for instance, a Christian person had a heathen father or mother. Well he is bound to show them reverence, even though they were heathens; and so with other relationships in life. Take, for instance, the wife of a man who perhaps was a despiser of the name of the Lord. She must behave properly as a wife. She is not absolved from that relationship. She is in it. Nov that she is in it she is bound to glorify God in it. But where the scripture speaks so peremptorily as I have been now describing, it is where there is freedom. This is jealousy for the Lord that we should not err in an act that might seem open to us, because it was a slight one. It is jealousy that we might not forget the glory of the Lord in seeking also to arouse the conscience of him who evidently has fallen into such grievous sin.

So, then, the man of God was put upon this as the point of honor for a man of faith. He was not to eat bread or drink water, or even to go the way he came. He was evidently to pass through the land, not to be as one that was even repeating his footprints in the path which he had trodden before, but he was to go through it as one that had a mission to perform, and to have done with it. This was God’s purpose in it. It was a most marked and solemn token, too, because it was meant to be a testimony, and therefore he was not to repeat it merely to the same persons who had seen it, but it was that others should see it too. This man of God was to pass through the land that was now apostate. And this, beloved friends, is of very great moment to us to bear in mind, as we have to do now with a most guilty state of Christendom. A very large part of Christendom is in a state of idolatry. Perhaps we do not see so much of it in these lands, yet it is increasing habitually, and it takes the shape of apostasy more particularly where there are Protestants; where those that came out of idolatry are going back to it in any form. It may begin in very trifling matters; it may show itself in little ornaments about the person, but what Satan means is not ornament but idolatry, and what Satan will accomplish by it is idolatry, and it is a very small thing which scripture shows most clearly that both the Jews, who are, apparently, the greatest enemies of idolatry in the world, and Christendom, who ought to have been altogether above idolatry, will go straight back into downright idolatry. Scripture is perfectly plain as to this, so the Lord told the Jews that the unclean spirit should return. That means the spirit of idolatry; and to return not as he formerly was alone—but return with seven other spirits worse than himself. Antichristianism—the worship of a man as God—will accompany the idolatry of the last days, and this in Israel. And neither more nor less than this is what is taught in the 2nd Epistle to the Thessalonians as to Christendom. For what is the meaning of apostasy, and what is the meaning of the man of sin that is to set himself up, and that is to be worshipped? Not so is it with the revelation which strongly speaks of their worshipping gods of gold and silver and brass that could not see and hear and so on. This is not the Jews only, but Gentiles also, and Gentiles that once bore the name of Christ and are so much the worse for that.

But although these are the extremer things, there are other things now, for this is what we are called upon as Christians. The world itself will see when things come out so plainly, though there will be no power to resist, for all the motives of man and all the prosperity of men and all the countenance of the world will depend upon persons acquiescing, and men will not endure the dissent from it, and those that give a testimony will be intolerable. And, therefore, beloved friends, it is now our place to judge these things (that will be) in their principles—not merely in the open result that will be by and bye. But there is the working now of what will lead to that, and the only security is Christ, and the way in which Christ practically works is in the obedience to the word of God.

This was what the man of God, then, was called to—the most decided separation from the apostate people, and this because being the people of God they were now idolaters. But “there dwelt an old prophet in Bethel” —ah! these old prophets are dangerous people. “Now there dwelt an old prophet in Beth-el; and his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Beth-el: the words which he had spoken unto the king, them they told also to their father. And their father said unto them, What way went he? For his sons had seen what way the man of God went, which came from Judah. And he said unto his sons, Saddle me the ass. So they saddled him the ass, and he rode thereon, and went after the man of God, and found him sitting under an oak.”

He was not told to sit under an oak. There was the beginning of it. There was his first failure, and there is no failure—there is no ruin—that takes place at one step. There is always a departure from the word of the Lord which exposes us to the power of the devil, and it is not first, I repeat, Satan’s power. It is first our own failure, our own sin, our own disobedience. He was sitting, then. He had been told that he was not to return by the same way that he came. He was evidently to get away as fast as possible. A man that is forbidden to eat and drink was not intended to sit under a tree. But this old prophet found him sitting under an oak, “and he said unto him, Art thou the man of God that earnest from Judah?” Nothing could be apparently a more thorough recognition of his mission and of his work from God. He was a servant of the most high God that had, no doubt, come to show them the right way. There was great respect. “And he said, I am. Then he said unto him, Come home with me, and eat bread. And he said, I may not return with thee, nor go in with thee: neither will I eat bread nor drink water with thee in this place. For it was said to me by the word of Jehovah, Thou shalt eat no bread nor drink water there, nor turn again to go by the way that thou camest.”

He does not now come in the same power. When he came it was not merely so. It is a stronger expression. But, however, I will not dwell upon that now. “Thou shalt eat no bread,” he repeats as before, “nor drink water there, nor turn again to go by the way that thou earnest.” “He said unto him, I am a prophet also as thou art; and an angel spake unto me by the word of Jehovah saying, Bring him back with thee into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water. But he lied unto him. So he went back with him, and did eat bread in his house, and drank water.” And there his testimony was broken—his sword utterly broken in his hand—for it was not merely a word that he was called to, but to deeds, and men will care little for your word if you do not show them by deed that you feel that word which you would fain press upon them. There is nothing that men will not bear you to say if you do not act it out; for this it is that always troubles, not only the world, but still more the old prophets—for they are the people that feel. The old prophet could not bear the fact, for if this was the case with the man of God where was the old prophet? And it is not said that he was a false prophet; and the issue of the story would rather seem to show the contrary. But the old prophet was determined to try the man of God and see whether he could not make him as unfaithful as himself, for that is what would have been a miserable salve to a bad conscience. There is nothing that so troubles Christians that are not walking with God as when there are any that do; and there is nothing so important as not merely the testimony, but the living testimony, the walking in what you say.

[W. K.]

(To be continued)

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 17-22

1 Kings 17-22

The days were very dark in Israel. Not only rebellion. And rebellion, always serious, was peculiarly so in Israel, for there it was insubordination in a direct manner against not only God’s providence, but God’s government. That government, as no other, was the direct action through the family that God Himself had chosen to govern His people, and therefore the very fact of their being the people of God made their insubordination to be so much the more grievous. For there cannot be a more false maxim than to bring in the question of whether people are God’s children—to apply it to present circumstances—in order to mitigate the judgment of any evil thing that is done by them. In fact, the very thought is a pollution, and shows that souls must have departed from God, whenever the fact of the grace of God towards any person could be used in order to mitigate the gravity of their guilt against God. It is evident that if sin be always sin, the aggravation of the sin is the favor that God has shown the person that is guilty of it, and the nearer the relationship of the person that is guilty the greater the sin. Hence, even in Israel, God did not require the same sacrifice from one of the common people that He did from the ruler, nor did He look for that from a ruler which He did from the congregation as a whole; and the high priest, although he was only one man—the high priest’s guilt as being that of (in early days at any rate) the representative of Jehovah on the earth in Israel as king, became Israel’s guilt. The high priest’s sin had precisely this same effect, that is, it damaged the communion of the whole people, just as the whole people’s guilt would have interfered with, or affected, him. But now we see the very darkness and evil of the people of God—for here we have to do not with a family, not with His children in the true and Christian sense of the word; but we have to do with a people under the government of Jehovah—in having now set up, not the fullest form of apostasy from God, but that which was verging towards it—the first great departure from God, religiously as well as politically.

In the setting up of the calves of gold—founded upon antiquity, no doubt, but an ancient sin—having gone back as men will, not to ancient purity, but to ancient sin, so it was a divided allegiance, nominally to Jehovah. They had not yet cast Him off entirely, but really there was the worship of the golden calves. But dark as this day was, it only furnished the occasion for God to cause a new light to shine—the light of prophecy. It always gives a grand testimony for God, and if that light be always alight, when would it shine most? When the darkness was greatest. So then we find it coming out now in a very conspicuous manner, even in a richer and fuller form, as we know it afterward did when not merely the ten tribes of Judah were departing from God. Then we have the grand burst of prophecy in Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and all the rest, not to speak of the Minor Prophets. But here we have a peculiar form—prophecy not merely in word but in deed—the blending of miracle. For these are miraculous signs, as well as wonders. Indeed, this is a very common thing in the miracles that God causes to be done by His servants, that is, even what was done teaches. The facts speak out the mind of God, and so it was in the case of Elijah. He is introduced most abruptly. The occasion required it. It was high time for God to interfere. There is no preparation of the way. It was a question of God, and God accordingly works by His servant.

But this remarkable planting of prophecy on miracle is found, not in Judah, but in Israel. The reason is manifest. Judah maintained still, however guiltily, the word of the Lord. Israel had virtually cast it off. Accordingly, therefore, having sunk into the place of the faithless they would have signs offered to them, as the apostle Paul shows that miracles are for the unbelieving. Prophecy, in the Christian sense of the word, no doubt as such when compared and contrasted with miracles—prophecy is for the church. Thus you see we find that the double character remarkably suits the case. On the one hand it was Israel, and, consequently, there is prophecy; on the other hand it was Israel faithless or unbelieving, and consequently there were miracles, that is, there were signs to unbelievers at the same time that there was prophecy planted with them. So that the perfect wisdom and harmony of the dealings of God with the grand principles of truth that are found throughout the word of God, I think, must be apparent to any person who will consider what has been just brought before him.

Elijah, then, gives to Ahab a most solemn warning of the first great miracle which was itself a prophecy. He says, “There shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.” He does not say merely, “According to Jehovah’s word.” Had it been simply according to Jehovah’s word it would have been simply a prophecy; but “according to my word” made it miraculous as well as prophetical. He was in the secret of Jehovah; he was an announcer of Jehovah’s mind, but more than that, he was the executor of Jehovah’s purpose; that is, there was prophecy in deed as well as in word, and this we have seen to be most suitable to the circumstance of the case.

The word of Jehovah: then, bids him flee. He has been bold in telling the king—the guilty king. But now that his testimony has been rendered, and that the fearful calamity that the restraint of dew or rain for years must be particularly in the east—that this was about to fall upon the people and to be connected indeed in a measure with the prophetic, and not merely with God, would have at once exposed him to the resentment of a wicked people and their king. God therefore bids His servant—for it must not be a mere resource, still less a question of timidity, but according to the word of Jehovah—to flee and hide himself by the brook Cherith. Yet even in this hiding-place he brings out the illustrious power of God, and His care for His servant, for God had many ways of watching over him. He chose one that suited His own glory. He says, “I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there” —birds which, as we all know, are remarkable for their voracity. These were the birds that were ordered to feed the prophet. “So he went and did according unto the word of the Lord, for he went and dwelt by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening.”

Undoubtedly, it was a solemn sign to Israel when it came to be known by them—that is, that the unclean should be rather the instruments of the action of God, the medium of caring for His prophet. It was, I say, a witness to them that they were even below what God had commanded to feed His prophet. It was not to be some particular person. Yet at this very time we know that there was one that God employed. But no, God would prove before all Israel how little His sympathies were with the people—how completely He was independent of all such action. He would care for His prophet Himself, and in a way suitable to His own glory. So after a season the brook dries up, but not before God had another purpose in hand. He sends him now to a place outside the land, to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon. And how important this is, our Lord Himself teaches us, for in the 4th of Luke the Savior particularly selects this fact, as well as another that will come before us in the Second Book of Kings, as the witness of grace to the Gentile when the Jew had accounted himself unworthy of the government of Jehovah. Grace must work somewhere or other if the chosen people cast it out from them and will have none of it. God will not permit that brook to dry up, for the waters shall only flow in a fuller volume for the refreshment of weary souls elsewhere. And thus it is that God is always above the evil of man, and that the deeper the evil, God’s goodness only shines the more.

So the widow of Zarephath, or Sarepta, as it is called in the New Testament, becomes the favored one. She is met in great desolation. She is reduced to the lowest state. The prophet makes no small demands upon her pity, he puts her faith thoroughly to the test, and says what, if he had not been a prophet, and if it had not been a trial of faith, would have been a most cruel and selfish word, for with what face could a man, as a man, have asked her out of her little—her last meal—to provide first for him and then for herself and her son? But this was exactly the trial of it. God, when He gives a trial of faith, does not pare it down so as to spoil the very force of His blessing; but contrariwise. The greater the faith the more He tries, and if any one makes up his mind for slighting the practical cross in this world—the sense of what it is to have the dying of the Lord Jesus—that man will be tried in that very way. So this poor woman. She was in circumstances next door to death, and it is evident that God was far from giving her by the prophet, as He could easily have done, a barrel of meal to encourage her and the cruse to begin marvelously supplying oil. This would have spoiled the whole teaching of the Lord. Not so. Everything adds to the difficulty. This stranger-prophet that she never saw, never heard of before, is entirely unnoticed, and indeed, I think, we are warranted rather to gather that it was her first sight, and it may be, the first sound even of the prophet Elijah.

But still there is that, as in the word of God, so also in the prophet of God—in a man of God that gives confidence where there is faith. Very likely it will shock and provoke the flesh; very likely it will give ground for unbelief there, for you will find this to be most true that the very same things which are a support to faith are the stumbling-block to unbelief; but however that may be, God in no wise softened the trial, but brought it out to her in all its apparent harshness and difficulty. But He strengthens the heart to meet the trial, and we must never leave out this, which does not appear, and it is one of the beautiful features of the Old Testament.

Here we get the facts. The New Testament shows us the key that is behind. The New Testament lets us see every now and then, as, for instance, in this very case. There was the electing grace of God that wrought in this widow just as in the case of Naaman the Syrian. There were many widows in Israel; God chose this one outside Israel. There were many lepers; it was not there that the grace of God was running, but it was towards the Syrian—towards the great captain of their great enemy, for Syria was, at this time, perhaps their greatest foe. But if grace works God will prove that it is grace. He will show that there is no ground for acceptancy which indeed would deprive it of its character of grace—if there was any ground to look for it. Well then, the widow acts upon the word of the prophet, and not without a solemn word which he received. “For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth. And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days.”

But there was a greater trial still, for all this was either the sustenance of the prophet or the sustenance of those who were dying, as it were, from the famine, along with the prophet. But now comes another thing—death. And it is evident that there are no discharges for man in that war. There a man is utterly foiled. There, at least, he must feel the vanity of his pretensions. And so it came to pass that God would give a witness of that. It was manifestly above man, for soon the only son of the widow fell sick and died; and this searches the woman’s conscience, and she thinks of her sins and she spreads it out before the prophet—the lamentable, irreparable loss, as she supposed, of her son. But he asked for the dead body and he cries to Jehovah, and he stretches himself upon the child three times—a most unmeaning thing without the Lord. But the Lord would give the sign of interest, of tender interest, and the use of means even to any other, but not so with Him. We know still that He is pleased to use according to His own power, and I must make a little remark upon this.

There is a common idea that prevails, even among Christians, that miracles mean the setting aside of the natural laws of God. They mean nothing of the sort. The natural laws of God—the laws that He has been pleased to stamp upon creation—are not altered by a miracle. They go on all the same. Men are brought into the world; men die. There is not an alteration of that. That goes on. What a miracle is, is not the reversal of what are called these natural laws, but the introduction of the power of God to withdraw from the operation of them in a particular case. The laws remain precisely the same as before. The laws are not altered, but an individual is withdrawn from the operation of those laws. That is another thing altogether, and this is the true and only true application of the thought. This alone is the truth as to a miracle. So in this present case there was no question at all about setting aside the ordinary operation of death. God acted according to His own sovereign will, but the same sovereign will that orders the creation and deals with each soul in it was pleased to withdraw a particular person for His own glory. This does not interfere, I repeat, with the ordinary course of nature, except in that one particular case or those cases where God has been pleased to do it. And in this instance Jehovah heard the voice of Elijah, and the soul of the child came into him again, and be revived; and Elijah takes him and gives him to his mother, who at once owns the God of Israel.

[W. K.]

(To be continued)

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 18

1 Kings 17-22. (Continued)

In the next chapter (17), however, we have Elijah called to show himself to Ahab, and now comes the great testimony to the guilt of the people. The restraint of all that would refresh the earth from the heavens had passed over the people—a most solemn sign, for it was not merely water turned into blood, or various blows which fell upon the earth, but the very heavens were withdrawn from all the kindness of which they are the medium—from all the refreshment that God is pleased to give this earth. This was a far more solemn thing than anything that had been done in previous days, even with a stranger-people—with an enemy. But now the time was come for God to terminate this chastisement, and Elijah comes to show himself to the king.

“And there was a sore famine in Samaria, and Ahab called Obadiah which was the governor of his house” —who, singular to say, “feared Jehovah” —feared Him “greatly.” So wondrous are the ways of the Lord, and so little are we prepared; for the last place in this world where we would have looked for a servant of the Lord would have been the house of Ahab. Yet so it was. Do we not well to enlarge our thoughts? We should take in the wondrous ways of God’s wisdom, as well as of His goodness. God had a purpose there, for this comes out. “It was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of Jehovah, that Obadiah took an hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water.” And why I make the remark, beloved friends, is this, that as there was a failure of Elijah, it is apt to be our failure. We are constantly in danger of forgetting what is not before our eyes. We are in danger of failing to identify ourselves with that which God is doing outside of what, I have no doubt, is the more honorable path; for it was a poor place for a servant of Jehovah to be in the house of Ahab, though it was a great honor, for God gave him to feed these prophets by fifty in a cave even in the face of Jezebel.

But Ahab now says to Obadiah, “Go into the land, unto all fountains of water, and unto all brooks.” This gives occasion to Obadiah’s meeting Elijah. Elijah bids him go and tell the king that he was there. Obadiah declined. “What have I sinned?” said he, for indeed it troubled him to appear to disobey a prophet— “What have I sinned, that thou wouldest deliver thy servant into the hand of Ahab to slay me? As Jehovah thy God liveth, there is no nation or kingdom, whither my lord hath not sent to seek thee.” We can understand therefore why Elijah was fed by ravens. “And when they said, He is not there; he took an oath of the kingdom and nation, that they found thee not. And now thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here. And it shall come to pass, as soon as I am gone from thee, that the Spirit of Jehovah shall carry thee whither I know not; and so when I come and tell Ahab, and he cannot find thee, he shall slay me: but I, thy servant, fear Jehovah from my youth.” And so he tells of what he had done to the prophets. Elijah, however, says: “As Jehovah liveth, before whom I stand, I will surely show myself unto him to-day.”

So Obadiah, with this pledge of the prophet, goes and tells his master; and Ahab meets Elijah. He meets him as wicked men do. He throws the blame of all the trouble not upon the sinner, but upon the denouncer of the sin; not upon himself, the most guilty man in Israel, but upon the servant of Jehovah. And Elijah answers, “I have not troubled Israel” —answers the king of Israel who taxes him with it “but thou” —for this was the truth— “but thou, and thy father’s house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of Jehovah, and thou hast followed Baalim. Now therefore send, and gather to me all Israel unto mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the groves four hundred, which eat at Jezebel’s table.” It was a challenge given—a fair and open challenge by the prophet. It was to be a question between God and Baal, and this was to be decided by Elijah on the one hand and these prophets on the other. So Ahab sends to all, and all gather together. “And Elijah came unto all the people and said, “How long halt ye between two opinions? if Jehovah be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. Then said Elijah unto the people, I, even I only, remain a prophet of Jehovah; but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men. Let them therefore give us two bullocks; and let them choose one bullock for themselves, and cut it in pieces, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under; and I will dress the other bullock, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under; and call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of Jehovah: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God. And all the people answered and said, It is well spoken.”

And so it was done. Elijah tells the prophets to choose the bullock, and dress it first; and so they do. “And they called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made. And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked. And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them. And it came to pass, when midday was past, and they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice” —for Elijah would make them feel their folly and their wickedness— “that there was neither voice nor any to answer, nor any that regarded. And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me. And all the people came near unto him. And he repaired the altar of Jehovah that was broken down. And Elijah took twelve stones,” for there must be the testimony always of the full people of God. No surer mark will you find throughout the whole of the Old Testament of the line and direction which the Spirit of God gives of what is according to Himself than this, that even though it were a man isolated as no man ever more felt himself to be than Elijah, nevertheless, that man’s heart was with the whole people of God. Therefore it was not merely ten stones to represent the actual number of the tribes that he was immediately concerned with, but twelve. That is, his soul took in the people of God in their whole twelve-tribe nationality as God’s people, for faith never can do less than that. Never can it content itself with a part; it must have all God’s people for God. This is what, at any rate, his soul desired, and this is what his faith contemplated, and on this the judgment was to take its course.

“And Elijah took twelve stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob unto whom the word of Jehovah came, saying, Israel shall be thy name: and with the stones he built an altar in the name of Jehovah; and he made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed. And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid him on the wood, and said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood.” There must be the fullest proof here that, if on the one hand, in trying the poor Gentile widow there was no weakening of the trial, so still less where God’s own honor was concerned, and the disproof of Baal’s pretentions. Therefore it was not anything that would feed the fire, but rather put it out if it were fire from man. “Fill four barrels with water and pour it on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood. And he said, Do it the second time. And they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third time. And they did it the third time.” There was therefore the fullest witness on his part.

“And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water. And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near” —not merely the people to him, but the prophet to the Lord. He drew near to that which was to be the witness of His power, of His testimony, of His own name and glory— “and said, Jehovah God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word.” How blessed! It was a secret between God and His prophet, but it was a secret divulged now before there was any answer—that all the profit of the answer might belong to the people and that the word of the Lord might he enhanced and glorified in their eyes.

“Hear me, O Jehovah, hear me, that this people may know that thou art Jehovah God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again. Then the fire of Jehovah fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, Jehovah, he is the God; Jehovah, he is the God. And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.” For we must remember, and it is an important thing in looking at all these operations of the ancient testimonies of God to understand it, that a prophet had his warrant for what he did from God—that not only the word of the Lord, but the power of God that accompanied it, was his warrant. Therefore we do not find God and the prophet at all acting according.to the mere letter of the law. It was not that the law was set aside any more than, as I said before, the natural laws of creation are set aside in the case of a miracle. Prophecy did not set aside the law of the Lord, but prophecy was the special intervention of the law of the Lord and the ways of the Lord without any setting aside of the law. The law had its course where the law was owned, but these prophets who were acting thus were where the law was not owned, and, accordingly, there God acted according to His sovereignty. It was therefore no infraction of the law. The law had its own place according to its own proper sphere, but where it was disowned and where there was idolatry set up instead, there God acted according to His own sovereignty.

Accordingly, it was no question of going up to the temple at Jerusalem to offer a sacrifice. It was no question of calling in the priests or anything of that kind; it was enough that God warranted, and the power of God that accompanied was the sanction of His warrant to this prophet.

And what could have been more so than the fire of Jehovah coming down even to the altar, licking up all the water in the trench? And it is the more remarkable, too, that this very character of miracle is what Satan will imitate in the latter day. The same power that God used, either in the days of Elijah when it was a question of Jehovah, or in the days of the Lord Jesus, when it was a question of Messiah, will be imitated by the devil, and will deceive the world, for fire is to come down from heaven in the sight of men in the latter day. It is not said, really, but, “in the sight of men.” As far as men can see it will be the fire of Jehovah. It will not be really so.

But this will completely ensnare men, who will then, more than ever, be on the watch for material proofs and present instances of the power of God.

The whole story of evidences will have been exploded as a fable, and men will no longer attach any importance to the record of what they consider the myths of Scripture! Indeed, they have come to that already. These very facts that carry the stamp of divine truth upon their face are now treated as the mythology of Israel, just as the miracles of the New Testament are treated as the mythology of Christianity. And the one effort of learning on the part of men of the world, now is, in general, to account for it—to trace their connection with the fables of the heathen in one form or another. Clearly all this is dissolving, as much as possible, confidence in the word.

And then will come something positive, not merely a negative destruction of the true testimony of God, but the positive appearance before their eyes of the very same power. Thus man between these two forces will fall a victim to his own folly and to the power of Satan.

But there is more than this. Elijah now says to Ahab, “Get thee up, eat and drink, for there is a sound of abundance of rain.” Yes, but no ear of man on earth heard that sound but Elijah’s. “The secret of Jehovah is with them that fear him.” And Elijah goes up, as well as the king, and casts himself down upon the earth, puts his face between his knees and sends his servant to look. He had heard the sound, but he wanted to get the testimony of the sight from his servant. His servant goes, and looks, but sees nothing. “And he said, Go again, seven times. And it came to pass at the seventh time” —patience must have its perfect work in every case— “that he said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand.” It was enough. Elijah said, “Go up, say unto Ahab, Prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not. And it came to pass in the mean while, that the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode, and went to Jezreel. And the hand of Jehovah was on Elijah; and he girded up his loins and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel.” [W. K.]

(To be continued)

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 19

1 Kings 17-22. (continued)

Now that the judgment had taken its course, he was willing and ready to be a servant of the king. But if Elijah was willing to serve the king, and did so as no man could have served him without the power of God strengthening him—running and keeping up with his chariot at full speed—Ahab was not prepared to serve the Lord one wit the more. “And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and withal how he had slain all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to-morrow about this time. And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to Beersheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there” (chap. 19.).

What! Elijah? Elijah? What is man? What is he to be accounted of? Elijah quails not at the message of the Lord. There was no quailing there, but there is at this message of Jezebel’s! And thus it is that the greatest triumphs of faith often precede the greatest failure; for, beloved friends, it is not triumph that keeps a man, it is dependence. There is nothing that has preservative power but self-emptiness, which looks to God and His resources. And this, we see, Elijah did not now, for though he was a wondrous man he was a man, and here the point is not his wonders but that he was a man, and a man that listens to Jezebel instead of looking to God. What was she to be accounted of? What was he now to be accounted of? No, there is not one of us that is worthy of one single thing apart from the Lord Jesus, and it is only just so far as we can, because of our confidence in Jesus and in His grace, afford to be nothing, that we are rich, and then we are rich indeed. If content to be so poor as to be only dependent upon the Lord we are truly rich. Elijah trembles for himself. There was the secret of it. He could not tremble for God, and he was not thinking of God, but of Elijah. No wonder therefore he shows what Elijah was—what Elijah was without God.

He went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree, and he requested for himself that he might die. It is not but what we see the man of God, but still the man who was tired of life. That was not a feeling of faith. There is very often much more faith in being willing to live than in wishing to die. Wishing to die is not the proof of faith at all. I grant you that no man that knows what death is, that knows what judgment is, that knows what sin is, that knows what God is, could wish to die unless he knew the Savior. But having known the Savior we may wince under the trial to which we are exposed in this world. Elijah did, and he wished to die, wished to get out of the trial—certainly a most unbelieving wish. The Lord never did. And there was the perfection of it. If the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane had wished to die it would have been the same failure. It could not be, and God forbid such a thought, but on the contrary the perfection of the Lord Jesus was that He did not wish to die— “Not my will, but thine be done.” On the contrary, He felt death, and He felt the gravity. I grant you there was all the difference between the death of the Lord Jesus Christ and that of any other. In any other case death is a gain. Death to a believer is gain, but still we ought not to wish to gain till the Lord’s time comes for it. We ought to wish to do His will, the only right wish for a saint. He said, “It is enough; now, O Jehovah, take away my life.” He was impatient. “Take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers.” Yet he was running away from Jezebel. He was vexed; he was unhappy. He now fails I after his testimony. He was miserable now, but after all he wanted not to die when Jezebel wanted to take his life, and now that he is here he wants to die.

So “as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat. And he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again. And the angel of Jehovah came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee. And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights.” There are those that would try to throw a question upon this one transaction on the ground of its similarity to Moses, and even to the blessed Lord; but I meet all that in the face and say they are not similar—not one of them. They are each of them different. They are each exactly constituted to the particular case, and if we lost one we should have a positive gap in the scheme of divine truth. And what is the difference? Why in Moses’s case there was no eating at all; no eating and drinking. It was the presence of Jehovah—the enjoyed and applied presence and power of Jehovah that proved its power of sustaining, even if the people must learn that it was not with bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Surely God’s own presence had not less power to sustain the man that was in it in the way that the children of Israel were not, than the manna that came down from Him.

[W.

(To be continued)

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 3-8

Thus we see that although Solomon was not the man of blood that David was, and was not the conquering king of Israel, he was a type of the Lord Jesus when He goes forth as a man of war, which He surely will, and when He executes vengeance upon His adversaries, when He will bring them before Him and have them slain before Him, as He says in the parable. He is the type of the execution of righteous vengeance. There will be great examples made—not merely the awful carnage of the day of Edom, but there will be also the tremendous judgment that will cast even into eternal fire—that punishment which is prepared for the devil and his angels; that is, there will be what far more than fills up the picture, for, indeed, the anti-type is much greater than the type. Nor is it confined to Adonijah, when Solomon further acts by thrusting out Abiathar and accomplishes the word of the Lord that was given to Eli, for there it was that the wrong family—not Phineas, but the other line that had usurped the place of Phineas—crept into the high priesthood, now restored according to the word of the Lord. The priesthood in the house of Phineas was to be an everlasting priesthood. All was in confusion for a considerable time. Solomon now is acting righteously, and is ruling in equity according to his measure. Further, Joab at once feels the treatment. He sees that the hand of righteous power is stretched out, and his conscience smites him. He pronounces his own judgment when he turns away and flees to the tabernacle of Jehovah, and vainly lays hold on the horns of the altar. It was told king Solomon, but he simply bids Benaiah execute judgment upon him. Nor this only. The story of Shimei comes before us, and as Joab suffered the due reward of his deeds, Shimei broke a decided fresh lease, if I may so say, which the king gave him. He violated the terms of it, and came under judgment by his own manifest transgression. Thus, righteous judgment executed by the king on the throne of David is the evident intimation of this second chapter.

In the third chapter we have another scene. Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh king of Egypt. Alas! one cannot say that the righteousness in this is maintained; but how wonderful that God should make a thing that was wrong in itself to be a type of what is perfectly good in Him, for, as we know, there is no way in which the Lord has manifested His grace so much as in His dealings with the Gentiles. However, we cannot say that this was according to the mind of God for a king of Israel. “He took Pharaoh’s daughter, and brought her into the city of David, until he had made an end of building his own house, and the house of Jehovah.” And I do not think, beloved friends, that that order is without its teaching. It was not until he had built Jehovah’s house and his own. He was thinking of his own first. No wonder, therefore, that he was not so particular about Pharaoh’s daughter. We are never right when the Lord’s house is not before our own. “Only the people sacrificed” —for this, alas! accompanied it too. “Like king like people.” “Only the people sacrificed in high places, because there was no house built unto the name of Jehovah, until those days.”

Now I do not mean to say that that had the same flagrant character that it had afterward.

We must always remember that it was where Jehovah had placed His name that they were there, and there only, to sacrifice to the Lord. But that was not yet fully, or, at any rate, publicly established; it was about to be. There was to be the house of Jehovah. This would be the public witness of that great truth before all Israel; but that house was not yet built. Therefore, although it might have been a failure, still it was a failure for which the Lord showed His tender mercy and compassion to His people until His own power had established the visible memorials of His worship; and then to depart to the high places became a matter that at once drew down the judgment of the Lord. Now here is an important thing to consider, because it looks plausible in an after day to say, “Well, here you observe people sacrificing in the high places without any condemnation; and, therefore, evidently the Lord had pity for His people at this time, and did not treat it at all in the same way as afterward.” Thus the wicked heart turns the mercy of God—His forbearance in a day of difficulty and of trial—into an excuse for sin, when there is no excuse possible. So it is that men habitually divorce the word of God from God’s object. The king, it is said, “loved Jehovah, walking in the statutes of David his father: only he sacrificed and burnt incense in high places.” His father had not done so. “And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there; for that was the great high place: a thousand burnt offerings did Solomon offer upon that altar.”

We have noticed elsewhere, I am sure, most of us, how remarkably David sheaved his sense of what was due to God, because he is found before the ark. The ark was what attracted. This was the more remarkable, because the ark is not at all the public link with God like the great altar. The great altar was in the court; the great altar was before every eye; the great altar was the place where offerings were. The ark was, comparatively, a little thing, and it was unseen. It was purposely behind the curtain veils. It was a matter, simply and purely, for faith, as far as that could be for an Israelite. It was his confidence that there was where Jehovah’s glory was most of all concerned. That was what drew king David. Not so much king Solomon—not so characteristically. We are told this particularly in contrast with his father. This you observe in the chapter where the tendencies to departure first begin to be perceived. Affinity with Pharaoh’s daughter is one; sacrifice at the high places is another.

With his father it was not so. In Gibeon, however, Jehovah appeared. And how great the grace of God—that although it is here put in contrast with his father’s deeper and higher faith in Gibeon Jehovah appears! What a God was He! He appeared to Solomon in a dream by night and asked what He was to give him—nay, told him to ask—and Solomon answers with great beauty to the call of the Lord, for he asks what would enable him to govern His people rightly. He asks neither length of days, nor wealth, nor honor; but wisdom, and wisdom that he might govern Israel; and the God that gave him this wisdom, more than to any man that ever reigned, failed not in any other thing, for, as we know, there was none outwardly so blest as the king, none outwardly so renowned as this very king Solomon. I do not say that there was not a very deep and painful departure, as indeed the spirit that overlooked the ark and that went to the high places, must have its fruit in the latter end. For, beloved friends, the failure that is found at the beginning of our Christian career—to apply it now to our circumstances—does not fail to show itself still more as time passes over, unless it be thoroughly judged and departed from. A little seed of evil bears no small crop. I speak now of the seed as buried. The seed that is sown, not merely that exists, but what is allowed and covered up will another day rise up and hear bitter fruit.

So it was with Solomon, and although this does not appear for a time, it does not fail to appear afterward. But in the same chapter we have a striking proof of his heart carrying the stamp of God’s power along with it in the case of the two women who claimed the living child. I need not dwell upon it. He perfectly understood the heart of man; David entered into the heart of God. There was the difference. Solomon understood the heart of man well—no man better; no man so well; and God has employed him as the vessel of the deepest human wisdom that even the word of God contains. I call it human, because it is about human affairs. It is about the heart; it is about the things in the earth; but still, it is divinely given wisdom on human topics. This was just as well suited for king Solomon, as the Book of Psalms that lets the heart of the saint into the understanding of the heart of God (according, of course, to a Jewish measure) was suited to David. That is the difference. The man after God’s heart was just the one to write the Book of Psalms; the man that so well knew the heart of men and women was just the person to judge in this case between the two contending mothers, as they pretend to be.

Here then Solomon was king over all Israel, and, accordingly, the honor and glory and administration of his kingdom come before us in chapter iv., as well as his great wisdom, wealth, and glory.

In the fifth chapter we see the action, not by affinity, but by alliance, with the Gentiles, and how they become the servant of his purposes; nay, we can say even God’s purposes for the earth, as far as Solomon was the servant of them. This is given in a very interesting manner in this fifth chapter.

In the sixth chapter we see the fruit. The temple of Jehovah is built the temple for His praise and glory, and this is described with great care in that chapter. I shall not dwell upon the details of it at this present time. They would rather take me away from the great purpose of giving the sketch that I propose.

In the seventh chapter we have the house. “He built also the house of the forest of Lebanon.” We have the difference between what was connected with Solomon in contrast with that which was for Jehovah; and we find one remarkable fact, too, that long as he was upon Jehovah’s house, he spent nearly twice as long time upon his own. It is quite evident, therefore, what Solomon was coming to. It might be slow, but the fruit was yet to appear—bitter fruit of self. Further, we find that Solomon assembles all the elders of Israel, and the heads of the tribes, and the temple is consecrated. And here we have what is incomparably better and deeper than all—the manifest accompanying proof of God’s presence. It was not merely that Jehovah’s throne was filled by a man—by king Solomon—His throne upon the earth, as He deigns to call it, but Jehovah took a dwelling-place. Jehovah deigned to come down in a manifest way to dwell in the house that Solomon built. There was no greater act now known in Israel, and this is brought before us in a deeply interesting manner. The priests brought in the one great object that was unchanged. In all the other vessels there was, no doubt, the old type of the tabernacle somewhat changed and enlarged for the temple. The ark was the same. How beautiful when we think of One who is emphatically the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, and there was no one thing that more represented Him than the ark. The ark was brought in and the staves were drawn out, and there was nothing in the ark, now, save the two tables of stone which Moses put there at Horeb when Jehovah made the covenant with the children of Israel. In short, what was so strikingly found in the ark before is now absent. We see nothing now of that which had been so strikingly the comfort of the people of God in the wilderness. The law, and the law alone, remained. It was not that which was meant for maintaining them in grace through the wilderness. The reason is plain. What was now manifested was the outward kingdom—what will be when Satan is bound—when the Lord reigns, when the power of evil is checked. But if there is not an emblem of grace any longer found in the ark, there is the expression of the authority of God, because the kingdom will be precisely that. The presence, therefore—the combined presence of the tables of stone in the ark—is just as striking as the absence of the emblems of grace and priesthood which are now, as you know, the great force of preserving the people and bringing them through the wilderness. Aaron’s rod that budded was just as strikingly suited for the ark in the wilderness as only the law was suited for the ark in the land and in the temple—the house of Jehovah.

But then Solomon breathed a most striking prayer to God suitable to the new circumstances of the king, and this fills the rest of the chapter.

One thing, however, I must say a word upon.

Even he puts it entirely on a conditional ground. He does not fall back upon unconditional grace. He falls back simply upon government. I do not doubt that this was all according to God. It would have been presumptuous, and, indeed, it would have been beyond his measure, to have pleaded unconditional grace. This is only done fully when Christ Himself is seen. When we know Christ and have Christ, we dare not ask any other ground than unconditional grace for our souls. For our walk we must own and how to the righteous government of the Lord; but for our souls for eternity we dare not have any other foundation than the absolute, sovereign, unconditional grace of God.

Now Solomon has no thought of this. It is governmental dealings. It is conditional upon subjection, and accordingly, this is carried out throughout the chapter. But the end of it all is this—that the king is seen. And here is another point that I may draw attention to—the king is seen in a most interesting position: he offered sacrifice before Jehovah. “And Solomon offered a sacrifice of peace offerings.” How remarkable! The king, not a priest, now. How is that? It is exactly what is predicted in the beginning of the first of Samuel—that it would not be the anointed priest now, merely, but another anointed. He should raise up a faithful priest before Jehovah’s anointed. Zadok is the type of that faithful priest, but then here is another anointed—a greater anointed. In the days before the kings, the great anointed one was the priest; but when the king was established he takes the superior place—the evident type of Christ. The priest retires into a secondary place. The king, accordingly, not only is then the highest in the throne, but he is even the highest in point of sacrifice. It is he that sacrifices before all Israel. So, it is said, “Solomon offered a sacrifice of peace offerings, which he offered unto Jehovah, two and twenty thousand oxen, and an hundred and twenty thousand sheep.”

It is connected with himself; and even more, too, we find. He drove, as we saw, an unfaithful priest out of the priest’s office. He takes the superior place over the priest. “The same day did the king hallow.” It is all connected with the king now. It is not the priest that hallows. The priest might be the instrument; I am not denying that for a moment, but it is all connected with the king. “The same day did the king hallow the middle court that was before the house of Jehovah” (as he had dedicated the house of Jehovah) “for there he offered burnt offerings, and meat offerings, and the fat of the peace offerings: because the brazen altar that was before Jehovah was too little to receive the burnt offerings, and meat offerings, and the fat of the peace offerings. And at that time Solomon held a feast, and all Israel with him, a great congregation” —the type of the great gathering of the latter day when the Lord Jesus, as the true Son of David, will more than accomplish all that is given here. He did so seven days and seven days, that in the mouth of these two witnesses every word should be accomplished—the duplicate witness of perfectness. “On the eighth day he sent the people away; and they blessed the king, and went unto their tents joyful and glad of heart for all the goodness that Jehovah had done for David his servant, and for Israel his people.”

I shall not prolong the subject now, but I hope in a future lecture to give the end, and, I must say, the sorrowful end of king Solomon, as well as the continued failure of those that succeed.

[W. K.]

(Continued from page 246)

(To be continued)

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 9-15, Continued

2.—Chapters 9-15 (continued)

I do not mean that the mischievousness of either Hadad or of Rezon was only when Solomon became an idolater, but I do draw attention to the fact that the Holy Ghost reserves the account of the vexation they caused the king till then. It is put by the Spirit Himself as a direct chastening of his idolatry. And these were not the only ones. They were external. Solomon might say, “Well, we cannot expect anything better. They have private grudges, or national grudges, against our family.” But “Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, an Ephrathite,” was no foreigner, nor was it a question of avenging the supposed wrongs that were done to his family or his race. Not so; he was “Solomon’s servant whose mother’s name was Zeruah, a widow woman, even he lifted up his hand against the king. And this was the cause that he lifted up his hand against the king; Solomon built Millo, and repaired the breaches of the city of David his father. And the man Jeroboam was a mighty man of valor: and Solomon seeing the young man that he was industrious, he made him ruler over all the charge of the house of Joseph. And it came to pass at that time when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him in the way; and he had clad himself with a new garment; and they two were alone in the field; And Ahijah caught the new garment that was on him, and rent it in twelve pieces; and he said to Jeroboam, Take thee ten pieces: for thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Behold I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee.”

What an announcement—ten out of the twelve tribes to Jeroboam, the servant. “But he shall have one tribe,” for so God calls it, “for my servant David’s sake, and for Jerusalem’s sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel; because that they have forsaken me, and have worshipped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and Milcom the god of the children of Ammon, and have not walked in my ways, to do that which is right in mine eyes, and to keep my statutes and my judgments, as did David his father. Howbeit I will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand; but I will make him prince all the days of his life for David my servant’s sake, whom I chose, because he kept my commandments and my statutes. But I will take the kingdom out of his son’s hand, and will give it unto thee, even ten tribes. And unto his son will I give one tribe, that David my servant may have a light alway before me in Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen me to put my name there.”

What mercy! “a light always.” Reduced greatly—reduced in the extent and glory of the kingdom, but with this most marked difference, compared with the ten tribes—the much larger part that passed to the other—they would shift their loads from time to time, and after having, continual changes in the family that governed they had one after another rising up. If it was a rebellious servant that it began with, it would not end with him, but many a rebellious servant would rise up against the king of Israel, and so the dynasty would be changed over and over and over again. No so with Judah. Even though reduced to what God calls but one tribe, in order to put in the strongest possible way this utter diminution of their glory, nevertheless there the light shall be always. Such was the merciful, but at the same time, most righteous dealing of the Jehovah God of Israel.

And soon, too, the word takes effect. Solomon dies. Rehoboam comes and is himself the witness of the truth of his father’s word that the father might heap up riches without end to leave to a son, and who knows but what he will be a fool? And Rehoboam was a fool in the strictest sense of the word. I do not of course mean by that mere idiocy, for such are a matter of compassion; but there are many fools that are fools in a very much more culpable sense than idiots. They are those persons who have sense enough and ought to use it aright, but persons who pervert whatever they have, not only to their own mischief, but to the trouble of those who ought most of all to be the objects of their care; for there is no king that rightly governs unless he holds his kingdom from the Lord, and more particularly a king of Israel, who had to do with Jehovah’s people.

And this was the thing that filled David’s heart spite of many a fault in him. He felt that it was God’s people that was entrusted to him, and this alone was at the bottom of his dependence upon God. For who was he? He needed God who was sufficient for such a thing. God alone could guide in the keeping of His people. But Rehoboam was the foolish son of the wise father, but of a wise father whose last days were clouded with darkness and with guilt, and who now is to reap bitter results in his family and is only spared by the grace of God from utter destruction. Rehoboam then, it is said, reigned in his father’s stead. “And Rehoboam went to Shechem: for all Israel were come to Shechem to make him king.” The very first word shows the state of the king and the state of the people. Why to Shechem? What brought them there? What business had they there? Why not come to Jerusalem? When David was coming to the throne the tribes of Israel came to Hebron because Hebron was where the king lived. It was the king’s chief city, where he had reigned before he reigned in Jerusalem, and the people came, as became them, to the king. Rehoboam heard that the foundations were being loosened and about to be destroyed for the king goes to Shechem. It was there that the people chose to go, and there the king perforce follows. He was a fool; he did not understand how to reign; he did not own his place from God.

“He went to Shechem, for all Israel were come to Shechem to make him king.” That is the reason of it. It was not that God had made Shechem the center or the right place for king or people, but evidently the people chose to go there, and Rehoboam followed them, and that was the way in which his reign began. It was an ominous beginning, but it was a beginning remarkably suited to the character of Rehoboam. Where Rehoboam ought to have been firm he was loose, and where he ought to have been yielding he was obstinate; and these two things unfit any man to govern, for the grand secret of governing well is always knowing when to be firm and when to yield, and to do so in the fear of God with a perfect certainty of what is a divine principle, and there to be as firm as a rock; and to know, on the other hand, what is merely an indifferent thing, and there to be as yielding as possible.

Now it was not so with Rehoboam. “He went to Shechem, for all Israel were come to Shechem to make him king.” There was not now an association of divine grace, or truth, or purpose, or any other thing at Shechem; it was merely that Israel went there and he followed; he went there too. “And it came to pass, when Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who was yet in Egypt, heard of it (for he was fled from the presence of king Solomon, and Jeroboam dwelt in Egypt), that they sent and called him. And Jeroboam and all the congregation of Israel came, and spake unto Rehoboam, saying, Thy father made our yoke grievous— “You see the rebellious spirit from the very beginning. It is now in their language, as it was in their act before. “Now therefore, make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee. And he said unto them, Depart yet for three days, then come again to me. And the people departed. And king Rehoboam consulted with the old men, that stood before Solomon his father while he yet lived, and said, How do ye advise that I may answer this people? And they spake unto him, saying, If thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and wilt serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be thy servants forever.”

It was not the noblest ground it is true. It was not the ground that would have left him in both liberty and responsibility. That would be the true ground I need not tell you, beloved brethren, and it ought to have been the ground if he would be a servant of Jehovah—if he would serve Jehovah in watching over the best interests of Jehovah’s people. But said they according to their measure, “If thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and wilt serve them and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be thy servants forever.” It was prudence, it was good policy. I could not say there was faith in it but there was good policy in it, as far as that went. “But he forsook the counsel of the old men, which they had given him, and consulted with the young men that were grown up with him, which stood before him. And he said unto them, What counsel give ye that we may answer this people, who have spoken to me, saying, Make the yoke which thy father did put upon us lighter? And the young men that were grown up with him spake unto him, saying, Thus shalt thou speak unto this people that spake unto thee, saying, Thy father made our yoke heavy, but make thou it lighter unto us; thus shalt thou say unto them, My little finger shall be thicker than my father’s loins. And now whereas my father did lade you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke: my father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.”

His days were numbered—the days of the kingdom of Rehoboam. “So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day.” He was in the plot, he was the one that well knew what the prophecy was, and now there was an opportunity of taking advantage of it. This is not the only connection you will find of Rehoboam with Shechem. “And the king answered the people roughly, and forsook the old men’s counsel that they gave him; And spake to them after the counsel of the young men, saying, My father made your yoke heavy, and I will add to your yoke: my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions. Wherefore the king hearkened not unto the people; for the cause was from Jehovah, that he might perform his saying, which Jehovah spake by Ahijah the Shilonite unto Jeroboam the son of Nebat.” Did that excuse Jeroboam? This is a very important principle that you will find constantly in the word of God. A prophecy is in no way a sanction of what is predicted. Prophecy takes in the most abominable acts that have ever been done by the proud, corrupt, or murderous, will of man.

Prophecy therefore is in no wise a sanction of what is predicted, but nevertheless to a crafty and ambitious man as Jeroboam was, it gave the hint, and it gave him confidence to go on according to what was in his own heart. He therefore soon gives the word. “So when all Israel saw that the king hearkened not unto them, the people answered the king, saying, What portion have we in David? neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: to your tents, O Israel: now see to thine own house, David. So Israel departed unto their tents. But as for the children of Israel which dwelt in the cities of Judah, Rehoboam reigned over them. Then king Rehoboam sent Adoram, who was over the tribute.” But this only became the overt occasion for the rebellion to display itself. “And all Israel stoned him with stones, that he died. Therefore king Rehoboam made speed to get him up to his chariot, to flee to Jerusalem. So Israel rebelled against the house of David unto this day.” And that rebellion was never healed. Alas we shall find greater abominations than this, but thus the bitter fruits of evil were beginning to show themselves; and he that had sown the wind must reap the whirlwind.

“And it came to pass, when all Israel heard that Jeroboam was come again, that they sent and called him unto the congregation, and made him king over all Israel: there was none that followed the house of David, but the tribe of Judah only.”

Rehoboam wants to fight. It was in vain. God had given away ten parts out of the kingdom and God would not sanction that the man who is himself guilty should fight even against the guilty. God had not given them a king of the house of David in order that they might fight against Israel. “Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren the children of Israel: return every man to his house; for this thing is from me. They harkened therefore to the word of Jehovah and returned to depart, according to the word of Jehovah.”

And what does Jeroboam? In the 25th verse we are told that he built Shechem. That was the place that he made to be his central spot. “Jeroboam built Shechem in mount Ephraim, and dwelt therein: and went out from thence, and built Penuel.” But Jeroboam considers.

“Jeroboam said in heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David. If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of Jehovah at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah.” He was afraid that if he allowed his subjects to go up to Jerusalem they would bethink themselves of their old king—bethink themselves of the grand purposes of God connected with Jerusalem. What does he do then? He devises a religion out of his own head. “Whereupon the king took counsel and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.”

He put it upon the ground of bringing religion to their doors, of helping his people to a religion that would not be too costly or too difficult, in fact, was only seeking to make religion subserve his policy. Accordingly, he did this knowing well that it is impossible for a kingdom—more particularly Israel—God’s people—to be strong in the earth, where there is not the owning of God—where there is not the owning of God blended with the government so that there should not be two contrary authorities—or, possibly, contrary authorities in the kingdom. For in fact the stronger of the two for the conscience is religion and not civil obedience.

In order therefore to confirm the strength of his people, he makes the religion to be the religion of the kingdom. That is, he makes both the polity and the religion to flow from the same head the same will and for the same great ends of consolidating his authority. Hence therefore he thinks of religion. And what does he go to? Not the blotting out of Jehovah: that was not the form that it took; but the incorporating of the most ancient religious associations which he could think of and which would suit his purpose. And he goes to a very great antiquity—not the antiquity, it is true, of that which God had given, but an antiquity that immediately followed; not the antiquity of the tables of stone, or the statutes and judgments of Israel either, but the antiquity of the golden calves. This is what he bethought himself of. “And he set the one in Beth-el, and the other put he in Dan. And this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan. And he made an house of high places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi.”

The reason of Dan being the one that was chiefly cultivated was this: it was at the greatest distance from Jerusalem. Bethel was rather too near. A dozen miles or so might have exposed them no doubt, as he would have thought, to the temptation of Jerusalem, so Dan was the one. Although there were the two, Dan was the one that was chiefly courted. But he was not satisfied with this. He made a house of high places in imitation of the temple, and he made priests of the lowest of the people which were not of the sons of Levi. [W. K.]

(To be continued)

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 9-15

II.—CHAPTERS 9-15.

Solomon was now at the height of his glory, a vivid type of a greater than Solomon. And it is only when we see that he really does thus prefigure the Lord Jesus as King that we can understand the importance that God attaches to the history of such as David in one light and Solomon in another. David as the warrior-king who puts down the enemies actively, Solomon as the man of peace who will reign over the subjugated nations and kingdoms, more particularly Israel; but in point of fact, at the same time, the glorious Son of man that will have all kingdoms and nations and tribes and tongues then. Now I am persuaded that every one’s faith has something lacking who does not leave room for this glorious future. I do not mean now in the smallest degree as a question of one’s soul with God, but I am speaking of the intelligence of a Christian man. And I repeat, that he who does not look for the kingdom of God to be established by and by in this world has neither a key to the Bible nor, in point of fact, can he understand why God permits the present confusion. There is nothing more likely to fill the soul with perplexity than leaving out the future. Bring it in and we can Understand why God exercises such amazing forbearance. The present is but a revolutionary time, and so it has been for ages, marked by the solemn fact that even the very people of God are the most dispersed of all nations upon the earth. I speak, of course, of Israel now, and I say that if there be a people that are no people, Israel is the one that comes up before our view. The devil may have a kind of imitation of it in some other races that are scattered over the ends of the. earth, but then the man that could confound Israelites with, for instance, the Egyptians would be evidently doing the greatest injustice to one of the most remarkable people even as a race, as a nation, that has ever lived upon the earth. The other is only a kind of Satanic imitation of it; but no man can wisely despise Israel, even as a man. Still more, when our hearts take in the real truth of God and remember that God Himself in the person of His own Son deigned to become an Israelite, was in truth the Messiah, the Anointed, was the born King of the Jews. He who takes this in can understand the great place that Israel has in the mind of God, and that it is a proof of very little faith and of great occupation about ourselves when we do not relish what God has given us about His ancient people.

I grant you that it is a poor thing for the soul to be occupied with that in the first place, and it is, therefore, of great consequence that as now it is no question of Israel, but of Christ. And if then of Christ, of Christ as a Savior, and further as the Head of the church. We are called now to know Him as a Savior, next as members of His body to know what the Head of the body is, and what is involved in these relationships both of His to us and of ours to Him. But having the truth as to these, the more intimate and of the deepest personal importance to us, the question is whether our souls are not to be exercised on that which God hail given us here, and what is God’s thought, God’s lesson, God’s intention, for our souls in it.

This I shall endeavor to gather, not by forcing it to speak Christian language, not by what I may call “gospelling” the different parts of Scripture, which is really very often a perversion; not even by taking profitable hints from it that are most just and true and concern the grand living principles of divine truth, most important as all these are. But still there is another thing that we ought all with jealousy to care for, and that is to seek the real mind of God what is intended by the scripture that comes before us. This leaves perfect freedom for every other application, but we ought to have first and foremost what God intends us to understand by His word. The time will come when we shall require to know how far any application is just. Because, needless to say, the divine purpose in the scripture necessarily has the first place for him that respects God, and who is not uneasy and anxious, and who is not coming to scripture always asking, “Is there anything about me here?” or, “Is there anything for me?” The great point is this, Is there anything about Christ there, and what is it that God is teaching us about Christ there? I am supposing now that the soul’s want has been already met.

What then is it that God is showing us here? Why, clearly He is bringing once more the man of peace, Solomon, the type of Christ Himself when reigning in peaceful glory. But, alas! it was not Christ yet; it was only a shadow and not the substance, and the consequence is that although God has written the scripture very especially to keep up the type and to exclude what would be inconsistent with it, nevertheless, we have the truth; and God intimates here the danger that was before Solomon and his family. He intimates the conditional ground which he must take until Christ brought in sovereign, unconditional grace. It is impossible not to speak in the way of condition except in view of Christ, of Christ personally. It is there alone that we get the full mind of God and heart of God, and whenever that is the case it is no question of conditions but of perfect love that works for His own name’s sake, and that can do it righteously through the Lord Jesus. But this gives me reason to speak of a very important principle that I shall have many opportunities of illustrating; what might seem a very strange thing in setting up the kingdom in Israel. Of all things in Israel there was nothing that illustrated the principle of one master so much as the king. Even the high priest did not in the same way, though he also did in another form. But the king determined the lot of the people in this way: if the king went right there was a ground for God’s blessing the people, simply and solely for that very reason. On the other hand, if the king went wrong judgment fell upon the people. Alas! as we know, a king might go right, and it did not follow that the people would; if the king went wrong, the people were sure to follow. Such is the inevitable history of man now. Well, this principle would seem very strange, and always does appear so till we see Christ. Then how blessed! God always meant to make Christ, and Christ alone, the ground of blessing. For any other—for any of the children of Adam to be the pillar, so to speak, on which the blessing should repose, would be a most precarious principle. We know well what Adam’s sons are. We ought to know by ourselves, but when we see God looking onward to the Second man—the last Adam—then we understand the principle.

Well now, it is for this reason that, whether you look at David or Solomon, they have a very peculiar place as being personal types of the Lord Jesus as King. In a way, that is not true of others. Others might be in part, but they far more fully; but the principle is most true of the kingdom in Israel. That is, that there was one person now on whom depended the blessing of the people, or, alas! who involved the people in his own ruin, and this is the great principle of the kingdom of Israel. Miserable! till we come to Christ. How blessed! when Christ comes to reign. Then all the blessing of all the world hangs upon that one Man, and that one Man will make it all good. Such is God’s intention, and He will never give it up. Now anyone who takes this in has a wholly different view from the history of the world—from the gloom that must settle upon any man’s heart that looks upon the earth apart from Christ. That God should have aught: to say to such a world, that God should take an interest in it, that God should own such a state of things—how difficult otherwise to understand! The more you know of God, and the more you know of man, the more the wonder increases. But when we see that all is merely suffered till that one Man come, God meanwhile working out other purposes, as we know now, in Christianity, that as far as regards the earth and man upon it, it is all in view of Christ’s coming again, and coming to reign; that is, coming to take the world into His own hands in the way of power—not merely to work in it by grace, but to take the reins of the world under His government, banishing him who is the fertile source of all the difficulty and contention and rebellion against God, that has filled it now, and indeed ever since sin came into it—the difficulty is solved. Well then, in this second appearing of the Lord to Solomon, we have what, to a spiritual mind, would at once show the danger, nay, the sad result, the utter failure, that was to come in. Nevertheless, there was great comfort in it in the words of the Lord—for these are most true—that His eyes and His heart shall be there perpetually; and, further, that that family, and that family alone, was to furnish an unbroken line till the fullness of the blessing of God be made good in this world. David’s family is the only one that has that honor, for God preserved, as you know, the genealogical links until Messiah came; and after the Lord Jesus was born, before that generation passed away, Israel was dispersed. Where are they now? And where are the proofs now? All hangs upon Christ. But God took care that, till Shiloh came, there should be this maintaining of a man of David’s house; and then, when the Lord Jesus was put to death, and it seemed as if all was gone, on the contrary, rising from the dead the work was complete. There was no need of any further line which was in the power of an endless life even as king, even in His kingdom. For David, according to Paul’s gospel, must be raised from the dead, and so He is, and, consequently, He is brought in as unchanging. We can understand, therefore, that by virtue of Christ, the eyes and heart of God rest there. There may be nothing to show for it now. Of all places in the earth, the land of Palestine and Jerusalem may outwardly seem to be given up to be the prey of Satan. Nowhere has he more manifestly triumphed. Nevertheless, all is made good, and God will prove it, and prove it shortly. The truth is, the foundation is laid; nay, more than that, not merely the foundation laid, but the Person is in the glorious state in which He is to reign. He is risen from the dead, He is glorified, He is only waiting for the moment—waiting, as it is said, to judge the quick and the dead, but waiting, also, to reign.

This then is what lies underneath the type of Solomon. But as to himself we see that in the very next chapter (10.), although there was still the keeping up of honor, and the testimony to his wisdom in the queen of Sheba’s coming up, and all her munificent homage to the wisest king that God had ever raised up among men—nevertheless, even then failure shows itself. The conditions of God are soon broken by man. “Solomon gathered together chariots and horsemen; and he had a thousand and four hundred chariots, an twelve thousand horsemen.” “And Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt.” “And a chariot came up and went out of Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver” (10:28, 29). Was this obedience? Was this the king after God’s own heart? Had He not expressly warned His king to beware of it? Had He not cautioned him against the accumulation of wealth, for he had had wealth of his own without seeking? God had ensured him that, but he sought it, he valued himself upon it, he laid no small burdens upon his people to accumulate wealth for the king; and at the same time he shows his dependence upon the Gentiles. He goes down to Egypt for horses, for that which would add to royal splendor, and would be an enticement to his sons, if not to himself, to seek conquest not according to the mind of God.

In short, whatever might be the object, it was a transgression of the distinct and direct word of the Lord, as we all know, given in the Book of Deuteronomy, where God had foreseen these dangers. But there was another danger too (chap. 11), and a deeper one. “But king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites.” What! The wisest king—the wisest king—so to prove his total ruin in the very thing where, least of all, it became him! So it is with the sons of Adam. You will always find that in the very point in which you most pride yourself you most fail. In that which it might seem to be least possible, the moment your eye is off the Lord, in that particular you will break down. Adam, it would not have been thought, would so soon have forgotten his place of headship—Adam, to whom the Lord spoke especially. I do not say to the exclusion of his wife. Far from it. For indeed she was united with him in it. But undoubtedly he was the one who ought to have guided the wife, and not the wife her husband, and there was the first failure at the very beginning. But had not Solomon known that? Had he not heard of it? How had he profited?—this man with his seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines! And so we find that his wives turned away his heart. “For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with Jehovah his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. And Solomon did evil in the sight of Jehovah, and went not fully after Jehovah, as did David his father. Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon. And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods. And Jehovah was angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned from Jehovah God of Israel, which had appeared unto him twice” (11:4-9).

The greater the privilege and the higher the honor, the deeper the shame. This was, I will not say the sad end of Solomon, but undoubtedly the rapid decline and fall of the man. This is the sad character that Scripture attaches to him, that in his old age he listened to the follies of these strange women, and, accordingly, God begins to chastise, not merely when Solomon was taken, but in his lifetime. And indeed there is no happier intimation of Scripture that I know of about Solomon. For while God deigns to give us his estimate of the elders that walked by faith, or that in some way signalized their faith, Solomon is not one. Nevertheless, that God did put especial honor upon that son of David, who can doubt? Who inspired him to give us some of the most weighty portions of God’s word? And by whom was he given this signal wisdom of which Scripture speaks so much, and indeed which he proved so truly? But, nevertheless, it is written for our wisdom, for our learning, for our warning, that we should beware of slipping in the very thing which God signalizes. There is no strength in wisdom or in aught else. Our strength is only in the Lord, and the only way to make it good is in dependence upon Him. It was not so with Solomon. He rested in the fruits that God had given him. He yielded to the enjoyment of what came from God, but what was turned aside from the living source. All was ruined, and so Jehovah, as we are told, stirred up Hadad the Edomite. He was one that when David was in Edom, and Joab was there, had been concealed and kept.

“Jehovah stirred up an adversary unto Solomon, Hadad the Edomite: he was of the king’s seed in Edom. For it came to pass, when David was in Edom, and Joab the captain of the host was gone up to bury the slain, after he had smitten every male in Edom (for six months did Joab remain there with all Israel, until he had cut off every male in Edom), that Hadad fled, he and certain Edomites of his father’s servants with him, to go into Egypt; Hadad being yet a little child ‘‘ (vers. 14-17). Now he comes forward. God is wise, and that young prince was kept to be a sting to king Solomon. But this is a little comfort to us, and indeed, I may say, almost the only comfort that we have in the history that is given us of king Solomon—that God chastised him. He chastised him, not merely allowed the fruit of his evil, the results of his folly, to appear in his family, but chastised himself in his own lifetime. This is His way with His own people, and indeed in some cases it is almost the only hope that you have that a person is a child of God, namely, that God does not allow the evil to pass, but deals with it now in this world. Those that God passes over in spite of evil are persons who are evidently waiting to be condemned with the world, but those who, being guilty, are dealt with now are objects of God’s fatherly care. He is dealing with them, rebuking them, judging them, but after all, they are chastened that they should not be condemned with the world. Solomon, at any rate, most clearly comes under the chastening of the Lord. As the Lord had said to his father and implied to Solomon himself, He would not take His mercy from him, but He should chastise him with stripes, and this He does. But it is Solomon. It is not merely the house generally, the family generally, or their offspring, but Solomon himself.

Hadad then is one means of putting the wise king to great uneasiness. God made him a source of trouble to Solomon, for when Hadad heard in Egypt that David slept with his fathers he comes forward. But now it is particularly mentioned. God does not say a word about that until Solomon’s failure. Then Hadad comes forward in a most decided and distinct way to be a scourge for the guilty king. But he was not the only one. “God stirred him up another adversary, Rezon the son of Eliadah, which fled from his lord Hadadezer king of Zobah: and he gathered men unto him, and became captain over a band, when David slew them of Zobah: and they went to Damascus, and dwelt therein, and reigned in Damascus. And he was an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon, beside the mischief that Hadad did: and he abhorred Israel, and reigned over Syria.”

[W. K.]

Actualities of the Rapture

Are not the ideas of many much mistaken on this subject, and do not those wrong views hinder the soul from its bright anticipation of, and desire for, the event? There is many a Christian whose wish is for a peaceful, painless, quiet death, without agony or long illness—a death like that of an old saint only the other day (eighty-nine years of age), who was ill but a few hours, and who, after expressing between pauses his readiness to go, and later ejaculating Hallelujah! and again Hallelujah! turned his head on one side and the happy spirit departed. Christian, in its essential elements, the Rapture will be very much like that. If such is the death you desire, then the Rapture is just what you do desire. It will be more instantaneous. Our withdrawal from this scene will be in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye (1 Cor. 15:52).

A Christian says, “The Lord’s coming would be too glorious; the spectacle too overwhelming; my wish is to pass away quietly.” But, for anything that the flesh can see, or feel, or hear, it will be quiet. The Lord will not be seen by mortal eyes, neither sight nor sound will reach the world—there will be no appearance to the senses (Col. 3:4), and as for you, fellow-believer, you will be changed before you know it. What can be swifter than the twinkling of an eye? We shall not be called upon to gaze at the glories until we are in a condition to bear the sight; but we shall be changed in a moment, and not until then shall we hear the heavenly sounds or see Christ Jesus our Lord. His shout will already have raised the sleeping saints unknown to us (John 5:28, 29 Thess. 4:16, 17). Then takes place our instantaneous transformation. We shall be wrought into His own likeness (1 John 3:2; Rom. 8:29), beauteously fitted for the courts above; and in that changed condition any emotion of fear will be impossible. The whole being will be in harmony with the scene around us. Every feeling of our then nature will there be perfectly at home.

Is there not something tender, and full of thoughtfulness for us, in the manner of the Rapture? Its privacy is a most precious thought. There will be no outward show to the world; that will come after. In the meanwhile, the resurrection of the sleeping saints will have taken place invisibly to this vain world, and the rapture of the living will be a private transaction between Christ and the church. As momentary and as peaceful as the painless death which you desire, even so will be your withdrawal from this life at His coming. You may be walking the road, or sitting in the house, in the railway train, or in the mart or shop; in the twinkling of an eye you will be changed, and, joining the host of the sleeping saints already in their glorified bodies, then by the omnipotent power of God the same by which He raised Christ from the dead (Eph. 1:19) you will be caught up to your Savor awaiting you in the clouds.

There is a beautiful incident in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus which somewhat illustrates this. It is recorded that Peter saw the linen clothes lying, and that the napkin or handkerchief was not lying with the rest of the clothes, but was folded together in a place by itself. This incident has been but poorly appreciated. The ordinary significance attached to this is that it indicates the calmness and orderliness of the resurrection. But surely there must be some other explanation than this. It scarcely seems a worthy supposition that the Lord or some attendant angel carefully folded the napkin and laid it apart. The thought when weighed savors of irreverence, however little intended; indeed it borders on the grotesque! But the real point of the incident is its unusualness. Ordinarily, when a person disrobes he puts his clothes together. Here it is the contrary. They are left in situ as they were. Naturally, the napkin would have been unwound and placed with the other garments, but here it is found as it had been, wrapped together, doubtless in the place where His sacred head had been; and the other linen clothes “lying,” not folded for neatness as the other interpretation would require. The received explanation deprives the account of the element of wonderment and holy mystery which obviously attaches to it. Why does the Holy Spirit make so much of these otherwise trivial facts?

John “stooping down, saw the linen clothes lying... Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and... seeth the linen clothes lying, and the napkin that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place [“a distinct place,” J.N.D. ] by itself” (John 20:5-7). That indeed was a wonder. There were the linen clothes lying in position, but Jesus was gone! The napkin was not unfolded, yet the head that it had enclosed was not there. Even so; just as Jesus in His spiritual body entered the room where the disciples were gathered, though the doors were fast shut, so at His resurrection He needed not to remove the clothes, to unfold the head-band or disturb the shroud—He calmly rose, leaving them as they were. There were the linen clothes lying! This was what awed and startled John, but did not impede Peter. And so, fellow-believer, will it be with thee, if thou art alive at the Lord’s coming.

Sweetly and beautifully thy body in a moment will be changed, and taken to the clouds, while possibly the suits which clothed the once mortal man will be left as an enigma to the world.

The desirability of the Rapture to the individual personally is a thing very important for the soul to grasp. There will be no terror in the Lord’s coming for the church. It will be the visit of the Bridegroom to claim His loved object. Can you be afraid of one whose love for you passeth knowledge (Eph. iii. 19)? There will be terror in His appearing to the world, but none to the saint at His coming.

At the present moment, many things conspire to show that just now the long-looked-for coming may be at the very door. The extensive way in which the truth of the Lord’s second coming has spread, and is now held by Evangelical Christians of all parties, is a significant action of the Holy Spirit. Sixty years ago the very idea was unknown, and scriptures which speak of it were universally interpreted as meaning death. But God raised up men to demonstrate the truth, and now there is a large number of believers who are really and practically awaiting the Lord’s return.

The soul, however, who gathers light from God’s word sees other indications. Scripture informs us that “the day” of the Lord will not be until “the apostasy” has first come (2 Thess. 2:3). Some will say, Does not that refer to Romanism? Certainly not. Romanism seems clearly referred to in the fourth chapter of the Second Epistle to Timothy—but that is only a limited apostasy “some shall apostatize from the faith” (1 Tim. 4:1). That is different from what is mentioned in 2 Thess. The Authorized Version has “a falling away,” but the true translation is “the apostasy.” This is an absolute expression, without limit or qualification, and implies the total abandonment of Christianity, which cannot be while the church is here below, nor indeed can it be fully consummated until the destruction of Babylon the harlot, by “the ten horns... and the beast” (Rev. 17:16). We have not yet the apostasy. It will take place after the church is gone. But what the anointed eye cannot fail to discern evidences of every day is the preparation of the public mind of Christendom for what is coming—the entire giving up of Christianity. It is being given up in reality now.

The inspiration and authority of Scripture, the revelation of God in the Old Testament, the incarnation, the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ, the lost condition of man, the revealed judgment of the wicked, the existence of Satan, the nature of sin all these tenets, constituting the body of Christianity, are denied and preached against daily, not merely by adversaries in the profane world, but within the enclosure of that which professes to be the church. And this is virtual apostasy, but it is not apostasy in form while the name and profession of Christianity are still retained. The apostasy which is. coming will be open, shameless, and avowed abandonment, of the very form and name of Christianity. Men are not yet quite prepared for this, for the church acts as a restraint upon the world. But, in the meanwhile, Satanic agency is busy building up men’s minds in what will blossom into formal and patent apostasy after the church shall have been removed. When therefore we see a movement well in hand and far advanced which is to mature after the church has been caught away, does not this seem like an indication that that catching away may verily he near?

A third indication which should receive attention is the recent effort amongst the Jews towards a national organization. This is not so much developed as the movement in the direction of the apostasy. But it has the same character of analogy, inasmuch as it is the commencement of something which is to attain maturity after the church is gone. A recent series of articles in this paper have shown that the Jews are at “the time of the end” to attain a national position and autonomy. Now under our eyes action for this purpose has been initiated with considerable energy and enthusiasm.

The Christian should not need signs to lead him to adopt an attitude of waiting for Him whose last words to the church are, “Surely I come quickly” (Rev. 22:20). But if his normal duty be to wait for the Lord without any sign at all, is not that emphasized when we see such remarkable indications as those just referred to? At all events the hour seems to be one for drawing afresh the believer’s heart and hopes to that blessed event which Jesus Himself waits for, as well as His saints below.

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The So-Called Apostles' Creed

This widespread, universal religious sense (we can hardly term it the sense of God) which, even among the darkest heathen, crops up amidst the corrupt and desolate debris of their systems, is certainly to be regarded as something in the nature of a testimony to Him, who, while “in times past suffering all nations to walk in their own ways, nevertheless left not himself without witness” in their hearts.

We must guard, however, against certain ideas on this subject now beginning to be spread abroad. It will be no digression, either, to examine them here, as they really underlie much of the reasoning of this part of the lectures under review. These ideas are not at all of the frankly materialist school already alluded to, however akin in some respects. They emanate rather from a conception of religion as that primeval instinct in man which materialists deny; but an idea, at the same time, which distorts that fact, as well as many others, to suit a classification of religions imagined to be scientific.

What is termed the science of Comparative Religion is one of those ideas of recent growth, which seem to believers of plain scriptural training to be quite as erroneous as their appearance is momentous. No doubt it is something imported from that quarter, which underlies the term “sense of God” in regular use in many quarters as a designation for the religious consciousness in heathendom. On that ground must be explained our quarrel with the phrase, which otherwise appears harmless enough. If what was meant by the “sense of God” were merely the dim consciousness of the existence of such an One in pagan hearts, all were well; but this is not at all SO. A great change has come over the minds of many in regard to the relation of Christianity to other religions of the world. Whereas formerly the faiths of the world were divided simply into true and false—Judaism, where partially, and Christianity, where fully, God had revealed the truth, and Paganism, wherein (certain admirable ideas and features notwithstanding,) men groveled in error and darkness—now, a more detailed or complicated classification is attempted. A full survey of the various systems of religions, ancient and modern alike, throughout the world is being conducted on strictly modern philosophic principles, with due attention also to what psychology can teach as to their origin and phenomena.

The comparison of Christianity with previously existing systems, at least with those in proximity to which Christianity first appeared, so as to suggest comparison, is no new thing. Its relation to Judaism was a question early raised, and clearly settled also, while the apostles themselves were yet on the scene. No small part of Paul’s particular mission was the setting free the new religion from the bonds of Jewish legalism; while a whole epistle, Hebrews, is given up to the elaboration of the comparison between the two systems. To another category altogether, however, belong the other religions and philosophies with which primitive Christianity came in contact, whether in Greece or Rome. Inspired Christian writings are comparatively reticent as to these, although some there are no doubt who read into New Testament scriptures the reiteration of their technical terms at least. For instance, that the language of the opening verses of John’s Gospel, with its use of the “Logos,” is reminiscent of the Greco-Oriental speculations of the Alexandrian Philo, or that moral terms in regular use among the Stoics make frequent appearance in Paul’s epistles, or again that the noteworthy resemblance between Paul and Seneca, which forms the matter of one of Lightfoot’s treatises, proves parallelism in their teachings.

Answer to all this was not at all difficult. For, if, as we believe, Christianity is the sole and sufficient answer to the deepest need of the human heart, that need which even pagan idolaters could not but feel, and which their philosophers could not meet but only falteringly express; if, as one has said, “Paganism brought nothing to Christianity but aspirations frustrated, and yearnings unsatisfied,” is it at all to be wondered at if God, in revealing that which alone could satisfy these yearnings, condescended to use, as far as He could, the terms in which these aspirations were expressed? As the late Editor of “Bible Treasury” has said, “The truth is that God in His grace, who knew the bewilderment of man’s mind, not dissipated but deepened by philosophy, etc., either anticipated or answered these unbelieving reveries by the revelation of the truth.... Christ, true God and perfect man, is the revelation of God, which sets aside the corrupt Gnostic, the self-complacent Stoic, and the dreaming Platonist. If inspiration employed their language, it was in pitiful condescension to impart the truth of God in Christ, which brings to naught their vain, self-righteous and false ideas.”

At Athens, it will be remembered, “the city wholly given to idolatry,” Paul saw an altar with the inscription, “To the unknown God,” and forthwith made opportune use of the incident. “Whom ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” In a way these Athenians are a representative class. “In all things too superstitious,” “excessively reverent of divinities,” yet so little satisfied with those they had, that “to tell or hear of something newer” was their characteristic occupation, learned and philosophic as they were, they may be taken as eminently representative of what religious aspirations directed by human philosophy amounted to, or could achieve, in Paganism at its best. In what measure then was the true God conceived of, or any genuine knowledge of Him reflected, in anything within the compass of their elaborate system. The only element wherein the faintest reference to Him appears was that melancholy inscription seized on by the apostle— “To the unknown God.” God the Unknown, felt after, indeed, even by Athenian devotees of divinities many; God the Unknown, a sense of whose existence no worship of false deities could obliterate, no specious philosophy explain away; yea, even while under the charm of Greek eloquence at its best, “at the sound of cornet, flute and psaltery, and all kinds of music,” they bowed themselves at shrine erected, or image set up, in this city surrendered to idol-worship, God the Unknown at the long last they still find it necessary to admit at least into their Pantheon. Consciousness of Him cannot be quite shut out, nor drowned in clamor of idolatrous liturgy, whether Stoic pipe or Epicurean sackbut. But how humiliating the confession. “To the unknown God.” This then the final exemplification, the summing up of all that was best, most worthy, in heathen philosophers, Alexandrian, Epicurean, Stoic, Skeptic, or any other; for that was all, that vague ascription of the fag-end of their homage, “To the unknown God,” which out of the ruins of their idol worship even they could construct!

Take then that strangely significant altar inscription as the symbol of anything in the way of truth or knowledge of God classical paganism ever showed. Is there much to constitute it a formidable rival of, anything to entitle its being regarded as a valuable contributor to, Christian thought and doctrine? Why, rather, what have they in common? May we not see also in Paul’s use of the occasion, his reference to their abject confession, and to the obscure statement of one of “their own” poets, an apt illustration of what the Spirit of truth may have done in adopting, or adapting, the diction of their philosophy to serve His own ends in setting forth that which met their every question, and made foolish their every dream? As has been said, this answer to the suggestion of Christianity’s relation to the religions of the past prompts itself readily, and proves sufficient. And, really, the assertion sometimes made to-day that “Christianity was at first a mere development of Judaism, and that it was by combining with elements borrowed from the religions and the philosophies of the ancient pagan world that it assumed its final form” is best answered, as it has been answered, by the statement that, “Were we to see in Christianity only a synthesis of all the anterior religions, we should have in Christ only a composite idol enshrined in the last of the pagodas.”

But now we have a newer study of religions, from an entirely fresh and original standpoint. Conclusions similar to those appearing in the last quotation we no doubt find accepted in many cases under this novel method as well; but they are reached from a different direction, as the subject is approached in a rather different way. That is, the principle of differentiation between Christianity and other religions is sought in another and wider sphere. The comparison of Christian doctrine with the teachings of the older religions of which we have spoken would be regarded as only a partial application of the comparative method by adherents of the new school, and would have reserved for it the particular designation, “Comparative Theology,” the remaining portions of the field of survey being the “Psychology of Religion” and the “History of Religions.” Together forming a comprehensive scheme to be known as the “Science of Religions.” Now under this pretentious title they profess to “seek to study religion not merely in particular aspects and ways, but in its unity and entirety, with a view to its comprehension in its essence and all essential relations.” Two things we must expect, then, from such as affect to take such philosophic views of that which is a serious enough matter for men at large—their religion. These are, that any special claim as to Christianity must not be preferred at this early stage, it must go into the crucible with the rest, take its chance of emerging approved worthy of place, or of supreme place, in the illustrious society of the faiths of the world, when they are “unified and co-ordinated in a truly organic manner.” And at the same time we must expect, from those who propose to probe so deep into the origin of this peculiar compound feeling called religion, this “process of mind,” this inexhaustible field for psychological study, we must expect, let us remember, to hear much of man, his progress in ethical thought, and perception of the infinite, and very little of “the notion of a special revelation from God.”

The meaning and significance of this recent development may best be understood by reference to an instance of its exposition. Thus, at the great Anglican Church Congress of 1908, the report of the section which was devoted to this subject gives clear expression to the great divergence from the older ideas, the more modern conception being widely entertained. In fact, if the several contributors to the discussion were in any sense representative, it may almost be said that the Anglican Church’s imprimatur is assured to the new theory, so feeble was any protest, so meager was the statement of what Scripture gives as the truth about idolatry. In the opening deliberation of “Section B” the issue was well defined. “The Congress had to consider whether they preferred to remain on the old lines, holding that one religion was true, and all the rest false, or whether they sympathized with the efforts made in most of the Congress papers to relate other religions to that which Christians held to be specially revealed.” The general attitude of this important Congress was sufficiently manifested by such things as the continual, and in general depreciatory, reference to “the old ruthless doctrine which sharply separates Christianity from other religions”; as also it was by the constant claim “that now it is generally realized that much in Christianity belongs to the common stock of religion,” and that “we perceive the Spirit’s work in the higher aspirations of all races.”

Whereunto this will grow, or what sort of influence such conceptions of other religions are likely to exert on Christian missionary efforts and methods, may be matter of conjecture. One thing certain about them is their novelty. But the change of attitude was in fact categorically asserted on the same occasion. From an accredited account of the proceedings of the Congress which then appeared, take this— “As to the attitude which the church should adopt towards the non-Christian creeds and systems with which she finds herself in contact, the time has gone by when undiscriminating repudiation is indulged in.... and, while the last traces of this habit of mind have not yet entirely vanished, the change during recent years has been great and salutary.” Then, finally, “This attitude, conciliatory and adaptative, and not the implacable hostility of the Crusader or the Cromwellian trooper, was with satisfaction recognized as the predominant note in the discussion.” Such was the finding of the experts of the Pan-Anglican Congress!

Now what does Scripture teach as to the religions of the world? Perhaps the consideration of how, according to Scripture, they one and all originated and developed might prove enlightening to many, if no further, certainly at least as to the radical divergence between its account and these modern ideas on the subject. The chapter in Romans already alluded to will furnish an example of what is the invariable testimony of the word as to the origin of what it at least does not scruple to call idolatry. Rom. 1, after adducing creation’s testimony as “that which may be known of God,” proceeds in verses 21-25 to consider man’s treatment of such positive knowledge of God as he at one time undeniably possessed. “Because that when they knew God they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves; who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen.”

“Because that, knowing,” or, “having known,” “God.” This is a distinct advance upon nature’s witness, being that knowledge of God on man’s part, which may be termed traditional. He was thus positively known by men at as late a date as the day of Noah—if, indeed, it be not precisely to that memorable post-diluvian morning that reference is here made, when we find Noah and his family—all that was left of the human race upon the earth—surrounding their altar as worshippers of the one true God. Thus far at least have we to go back the stream of history ere we come upon the happy time when it could be said that men, as a class, “knew God.” In the absence of any later occasion when it was true, this may be the occasion referred to, if, as seems likely, a definite point in history is in the apostle’s mind.

(Continued from Vol. 7. P. 380)

(To be continued) LJ. T.]

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

(Continued from page 16)

On the threshold of a new world, then, only one God was known, owned, or worshipped; only one form of religious belief existed. Whence have come the others? From development of that? or through degeneration from it? Is it progress or lapse that time has brought? Many, reasoning from the undoubted progress of the race in material things, and in the, intellectual sphere also, imagine a similar progress to have taken place spiritually. The illustration of man groping his way from primitive ignorance through hideous nature-worship, and polytheism, to true knowledge of God, is a common, if erroneous one. The truth is, according to this chapter, that the progress is in exactly the reverse direction. “Knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful.” That is to say, primarily He was known, conceived of objectively, present to the mind of man as existing and almighty. And such knowledge, remark, man is credited with, not as a deduction logically and laboriously arrived at, but as an assurance he is originally furnished with. The glorifying of Him, as such, however, men soon ceased to render, the experience of His continued goodness awakening no grateful response. Practical recognition of God was thus abandoned, and that right early. The process of His dethronement from their hearts was begun, little as they knew of how soon the vacancy thus created would be re-inhabited. A scheme for man’s deception the enemy had prepared of which this was, in reality, the initial step. Thereafter the knowledge and remembrance of God gradually faded. Especially so when, “becoming vain in their reasonings, their undiscerning heart became darkened.”

Under professions of wisdom they made rapid progress in their path of folly, until ultimately, become fools, “they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man,” and, on the downgrade ever, “to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.” Without going further on in the chapter, the latter verses of which corroborate and strengthen this witness of man’s exchange of the truth of God for falsehood, and of the veneration and service of the creature rather than of “the Creator who is blessed forever” —such is the account the word of God gives of the origin of idolatry. How incompatible with it is what is here taught under the term “sense of God.” Endowed with the significance the science of comparative religion attaches to it, it is misleading and erroneous, giving entirely false value to that consciousness of God which, confessedly, is rooted in every human heart. As a witness to Him, the presence of that intuitive sense is worthless if we so corrupt it. Correctly understood, in its own way it does bear testimony concerning the fact that God is, and however feebly it may supplement other and more important forms of evidence, its quota is neither to be neglected nor perverted.

The evidence to the existence of God having been pursued along these two lines, and the belief in Him affirmed in the words of the Creed shown to be quite a rational conclusion, the signatories of that document may now regard themselves as relieved from any aspersions of blind, unreasoning credulity in signing it. This is so great a matter to-day. Rational we must show ourselves to be, whatever else we are! Compromise we may to any extent in matters of faith and religion, if we can only keep the peace with science, and remain on good terms with carnal reasoning! In other words, that is to say that to-day all we learn, hold, or assert as spiritual truth we are ever to be prepared to submit to the searching, sifting analysis which prevailing materialistic rationalism to-day insists on its right to apply. No doubt much will have to give way, but a sufficiently flexible faith will find no difficulty in surrendering whatever is called in question, and no alarm need be felt, for a considerable residuum of unchallenged verities will always be found to emerge either untouched, or indeed enhanced in appearance from the process! Does it give no pause, no suspicion to such as reason thus that this residuum is ever a steadily decreasing one? That those who surrender whatever is cried down as irrational or unscientific constantly find science and rationalism encroaching further on their territory? So much so that treatises written “in relief of doubt” (should they not rather, in keeping with their real purpose, be entitled “in relief of faith”?) very soon are out of date from not conceding enough! There is a sad absence of backbone in our beliefs, a lack of sound hard kernel in our convictions to-day, else were we less susceptible to such influences. Is there not room for suspicion really that at bottom there is something essentially at fault in our whole modern attitude towards revealed truth? Not only in the case of theologians themselves, but in the far graver instance of Christians generally as affected by them, would there not seem to be some element lacking, the want of which is leaving its mark over the whole field of common Christian belief and confession? Without yielding to unduly pessimistic impressions, there can be no doubt that to-day, alike in doctrinal expression and inward conviction, there is lack of that full assurance which accompanies true faith in God. In essaying either to state or to learn the truth we fear really to claim or expect certainty; we shrink from advancing much further than probability. When asked for “a reason for the hope that is within us,” there is abundance of “meekness and fear” of a kind; but little preparation for giving a satisfactory “answer, always and to every one” who calls for our apologia.

As to what can be the cause of this cold hesitancy, does it require a very skilful diagnosis of present symptoms to discern what it is? Our times, we must remember, have witnessed the spread of education, and the advance of knowledge to an extent unprecedented before. Along with these blessings, however, it is to be feared we stand in danger now of the uprising of what can only be described as a flood of intellectual anarchy. When we recollect man’s natural propensity to intellectual pride, how little it takes to puff up the carnal mind, it is not to be wondered at that the really marvelous progress presently being made in knowledge and science tends to overwhelm him with a sense of his own ability in that direction. Wherein the peril lies, however, is that in presence of this high regard for, almost worship of, intellectualism, the hold upon men of everything formerly held sacred, or valued as spiritual truth, appears to be endangered. Where everything is liable to be called in question there can be no real, no permanent certitude. And it is just this certitude in the realm of spiritual things, this sureness that cannot be gainsaid, indispensable for faith, that the spirit of the age is threatening to swamp. This again in large measure owes its origin to want of confidence on the part of Christians themselves—to sheer unbelief in the written word as God’s medium of Communicating the truth to us. Doubtless the influence of speculative philosophy must not be forgotten—its influence on the popular conception of what the truth in itself really is, and whether from its essential nature it admits of being at any time finally standardized—this must certainly be allowed for as contributing to form the general lax attitude. But next to that, or in combination with it, the equally modern, and equally infidel science of Higher Criticism must be held accountable for the fall of temperature. For (to make but the briefest reference to this latter) there is ground for more than suspicion that the principal evil result of the methods of scripture study introduced by Higher Criticism may be anticipated not from attack in detail—the destructive criticism of the various portions of the Bible, or their piecemeal surrender resulting—the evil rather is apparent in this general attitude towards Scripture induced by it. A general abatement of respect for Biblical authority (an even more serious thing than doubts as to any particular portion of it) has resulted, insomuch that what is now quite common is either uneasy distrust, or actual discredit of the Scriptures as God’s full and final revelation. Truth, the truth, all profess to seek; but a common conception of the truth seems to be, not that it is identical with, or synchronizes with, an unchangeable “faith once for all delivered,” a divinely appointed standard, guaranteed by God Himself as its fixed and final expression; but that it is more or less a thing of flux and change, a thing still in process of development or discovery. Nay, is there not a tendency to relegate to the background altogether the very thought of a revelation from God? In any case this fact of revelation occupies now but a minor place in the scheme.

In this very respect the lecture under consideration is remarkable, and in nothing more characteristic of modern thought than in its omission of all mention of God’s revelation as a source of evidence to Him. In Scripture, if anywhere, should it not be recognized, we have unique testimony to God, the great standing witness to His existence, to say nothing more? All that nature and human God-consciousness, “the antecedents of revelation” someone has termed them, all that these can communicate concerning God, all that reason and conscience can make known of Him, is not to be mentioned beside that knowledge of God which His word conveys to the believer. The fact of His existence, after all, is but a small thing to have demonstrated. Scripture does so unmistakably, but how much more! God is there made known, His nature, His character as far as Infinite can reveal itself to finite, shown forth in grace. All that concerns Him in relation to us, and all that has to do with man’s responsibility to Him is made the subject of its testimony, not to mention greater and larger spheres. “He that cometh to God must believe that He is.” So much, perhaps, might be gleaned from what “nature itself teaches”; but the further necessary conviction, “and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him,” with what it implies, Scripture only could produce. We cannot go so far as to say that nature’s witness to Him is but incidental and undesigned, or that it is absolutely incommunicative as to what His character is; but there is in no sense to be observed there the same full purpose of communication and revelation that is evident in Scripture. For the truth from God we will look in vain anywhere else. Taken in conjunction with that objective adumbration presented in Jesus Christ His only-begotten Son, whose declaration, “I am the truth” (John 14:6) can only be understood in the sense of objective display, and not to be severed either from the further fact that “the Spirit is the truth” (1 John 5:6), as signifying subjective power of apprehension, the Scriptures fill a unique, and indisputably important place in the divine scheme of revelation, being the descriptive record of that which God makes known. “Thy word is truth” (John 17:17). How gross a blunder then to omit this weighty consideration from the sum of Christian Evidences as epitomized in the Creed! Why should the Scripture be eliminated? Is it that the force and value of its testimony has deteriorated, is now discounted with men, in face of the questions regarding it recently raised? Is it fear of the charge of obscuration, of Bibliolatry, that has led to its omission? Whatever the cause, it surely is something of a novelty to have the evidences to the primary fact of God’s existence enumerated, and His own revelation left out. [J. T.] (To be continued)

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

Judging from the tone some apologists adopt, one cannot but conclude that their conception of Christian doctrine is that it is something in the nature of a derelict from ancient seas, drifted from its mediaeval anchorage and stranded now upon an inhospitable shore. Thankful we are to be if from the wreck we can obtain some fragments of its old-fashioned freight, and to be too aggressive even in that is matter for ridicule. It may be an unfounded suspicion, but something like that spirit seems to underlie this choice, presently tinder consideration, of the Apostles’ Creed as a statement of Christian faith. A poor salvage it must be that effects the rescue of only that. As it is natural, however, to value considerably above its inherent worth anything obtained under such circumstances, the ancient relic appears particularly valuable to some to-day. It is doubtless this that accounts for their reading into the various clauses of the Creed much that never could be read out of it.

Thus as to its opening announcement, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” we would perhaps scarcely be prepared to credit it with the amplitude some put upon it. It affirms, we are told, belief not only in God, but in “the Father,” and to this is given what is thought the value of the full Christian revelation of God in relation to His people. This greater and higher conception of God as the Father, brought to man, as it is so far rightly said, by Jesus Christ and the revelation He brought, is taken as declared accepted by the signatories to the creed. This may be so in the case of those who take it as now expounded; but in its original dress it scarcely seems to wear that complexion. As commonly understood, the words “the Father Almighty” are taken simply as distinctive of the first Person in the Godhead, the Son, and the Holy Spirit following in due order. No doubt much is implicit in all of these— “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost” —as also in the simple baptismal formula of Matt. 28:19, from which formula, by the way, many conceive the Apostles’ Creed to have originated. As stated, the term “Father” is a relative one, involving the idea of sonship. But it is surely to over-amplify the ancient confession to read into it here all that the name “Father” involves when used as designative of His relation to us, “sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” Sermonizing upon the term, it may certainly be legitimate to draw attention to it as expressive of His relation to men; but reading it in its place and context in the creed, it would seem rather to define the manner in which the First Person of the Godhead stands related to the Second— “Jesus Christ His only Son.”

Moreover there is a lack of precision in what is advanced as the particular truth expressed under this name of “Father” in its larger signification even. There seems to be confusion, or at all events lack of clear distinction between, two things quite separate and distinct, the natural man’s relation to God, and the Christian’s. The term implying paternal relationship appears in scripture certainly applicable to both classes. “Adam which was [the son] of God” (Luke 3:38), instances the nature of the link in the one case; and of the God “in whom we live and move and have our being” we are no doubt “the offspring,” as elsewhere expressed; but the Christian’s relationship by faith in Christ Jesus, making it possible for him, having the Spirit of adoption, to cry “Abba Father,” is a quite different and far transcending truth. This distinction may seem so evident as to make it unnecessary to be emphasized, yet here we are in presence of a marked failure to draw it, at any rate with anything like clearness. The universal fatherhood of God, as modernly conceived, was emphatically not the substance of Christ’s revelation, and however true it may be that Philip’s “show us the Father and it sufficeth us” voices the universally felt need of the human heart, and that Christ’s answer, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” is the Christian revelation of God epitomized, and direct answer to that need, it is on another plane than that of nature, where this revelation is received, and this relationship enjoyed. “I have manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world.” “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Nothing is more common than this confusion of the divine fatherhood in relation to man generally with that to believers in particular, or rather the absorption of the one into the other.

Here again is an instance of failing to give its distinctive place to what the New Testament teaches. For, leaving aside the Old Testament, what can be clearer in the New than that, consequent on the accomplished redemption it proclaims, part of the blessing it announces as the distinctive portion of believers, is their participation, theirs peculiarly, in the place and position of children and sons of God. Not only in the nature of the link itself do the two relationships differ, the one true of all who to Him as their Creator owe their being; the other a spiritual birth-tie existing in virtue of a divine operation of grace in the soul of one who is born again, born of God; but all round, as to their essential nature, the plane upon which they are realized, and the position of privilege and responsibility into which they severally introduce, the two things are wide as the poles asunder.

And even when a measure of distinction is seen to be called for by what the New Testament adds, more particularly by what the Lord Jesus Himself proclaims, it is largely misconceived. As parallel in its reasoning with the lecture at this point, and slightly more explicit, take a recent attempt, in a handbook on the “Life and Teaching of Christ,” to define what He teaches on the subject. Under the heading, “Subject matter of the teaching,” “God the Father” is taken as title of the first item. “Every new religion,” it is said, “begins in a new revelation of God, or in a new emphasis upon some hitherto half-understood aspect of the divine nature. Just as the starting-point of the religion of Israel was the new name of Yahveh given to God, so it is often claimed that the central point in the doctrine of Jesus is His conception of the fatherhood of God. There is, of course, nothing new in the idea. Jesus accepts a name for God which was already familiar; but fills it with a content and meaning of His own.” What then is this new content and meaning given to the idea not in itself original? “He speaks to the disciples of ‘My Father and yours,’ and teaches them to pray, ‘Our Father which art in heaven.’ This means a considerable advance upon the old conception of a Fatherhood derived from the fact of creation or generation.” Doubtless! In what then does it consist? “With Jesus the term ‘Fatherhood ‘ describes even something more than a relationship,” etc. The idea seems to be that Christ’s teaching carries the thought of God being Father beyond anything like the genetic sense it already had, and gives it rather an ethical significance. The Fatherliness of God rather than His Fathership is what is insisted on.

This elaboration of the idea of God’s Fatherhood, remark, leaves it still on the old ground, on the same plane as formerly. It is in no sense a new relationship opened up. With Jesus the term fatherhood “in the first place gives the essence or spirit which determines God’s action and lies behind it all,” either in redemption, as seen in the parable of the prodigal son, or in providence, as shown in the teaching of the Sermon on the mount. “The originality of His conception of the divine Fatherhood comes out in the stress which He lays upon the love of God. God is the Father of all men because He loves them.” In the second place, “He presents us with a new conception of the natural attitude of the soul to God under the figure of the filial relationship, in which there is a fine blending of childlike trust and godly fear, especially illustrated in His teaching in regard to prayer.” Finally, “It was not the least among the aims of the teaching of Jesus to bring home to men first the fact of this divine relationship, and then to show them the way to its fuller realization.” And is this all that is original in the “teaching of Jesus” on the topic of relationship with God? All that is to be learned from Him who, at the close of His ministry on earth, claimed as His peculiar prerogative, and accomplished mission, to have manifested the Father’s name? Who spoke of an hour coming when anything enigmatic about His disclosures to His disciples should be a thing of the past, and He would show them plainly of the Father? And who could give, as sufficient answer to the request, “Show us the Father,” the declaration, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father”?

How short, how very far short of an adequate presentation of the full Christian revelation this mere bringing into prominence of an unoriginal idea comes! How little apprehension of a new relationship with God through being born again spiritually, a relationship founded on the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, entered upon in association with the Son of God in resurrection, its basis essentially the possession of eternal life in Him, and God’s sending forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying, “Abba Father.” This, and no mere fuller realization of filial relationship on the plane of nature, gives “the full range and meaning and significance of sonship.” The confusion no doubt arises from the fact that in the revelation Christ brought there was undoubtedly that which had to say to men at large, as well as to those chosen out of the world as the special objects and recipients of His testimony. It is truly said, “While nature’s testimony and conscience’s witness evidence respectively God’s eternal power and divinity, and His righteous and holy character, neither of them gave the revelation of the Father. It was reserved for the Lord Jesus Christ to make Him known to sinners as a God of love.” Blessedly true it is that through Christ was shown the sovereign matchless love of God to a sinful world, the true unfolding of the Father’s heart towards His prodigals in the far country, if so it may be taken; but even this in no wise exhausts the fullness of that revelation of the Father concerning which it is said “the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”

If it is a truly great and effective contrast that John draws in the statement, “The law was given by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ,” a contrast not less striking we may see between what we learn of that tie of relationship between God and the members of the human family, owned still in spite of their fallen state, and what “eternal ages shall declare” of “those who, with Thy Son, shall share A son’s eternal place.” It was of this wonderful place and portion, to be enjoyed consequent on redemption and the coming of the Spirit, that our blessed Lord spoke continually. The fourth Gospel, in particular, gives full testimony to it. In how rich measure, in chapters 14 to 17 especially, containing His last words to His own, have we that manifesting of the Father’s name to the men given Him by the Father out of the world that He speaks of in His prayer (17:6). “I have made known to them thy name,” He said in closing, “and will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” The “declaring thy name unto my brethren,” as He did most unequivocally in resurrection— “I ascend unto my Father and your Father, unto my God and your God” —was surely the primary instance at least of His going on to make the Father known.

All this is involved in “that new conception of God, which burst forth into one word, religion’s ultimate, ‘Abba, Father.’” It may very well be questioned, then, if the statement of the creed has accommodation for all that is wrapt up in that wondrous name of relationship, “the Father.” More probably it was compiled, as it is by many recited, in much ignorance of this.

(Continued from page 32)

(To be continued)

[J. T.]

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

Passing on to further clauses of the Creed, it would be tedious and serve no purpose, to comment on every item. It is sufficient to point out wherein to a simple mind modern theology appears to impose a novel reading of its teaching, or to call attention to what, in the light of scripture, seems a defective or erroneous apprehension of the truth it summarizes.

In passing from the first to the second clause “and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord” unfortunately, one is not likely by any means to be free from difficulty in regard to what is taught yet. Rather, in fact, do we here, in this second declaration of belief, enter upon more controversial ground than ever. Proverbially it is so, as ancient ecclesiastical history, for instance, attests. Here have the fiercest and most oft-recurring combats of the past been waged. Throughout whole centuries this has been the field of conflict, where error after error has assailed the faith of God’s elect, and in some measure of faithfulness has been met and repulsed. To-day it presents somewhat the appearance of a historic battlefield, scarred with the marks of ancient combat, and strewn with the relics of a conflict long since stilled. Here and there, it may be, one of the old-time weapons may be disinterred, or some rusted fragment of broken armor, perhaps, of no more than antiquarian interest now, however much practical importance, for attack or defense, each may have had to those engaged in battle then. By even more graphic testimony, perchance, the thickly strewn relics of the slain, or other personal traces of the combatants, the field is seen to have been not always one of peaceful pasturage; but, in days long since gone, of turbulent tumult and fierce fighting. In literal fact this is ground, this that is entered upon by the, statements concerning the person of Christ, where the prolonged strife of controversies not a few has not failed to leave unmistakeable traces, and marks that can never he erased.

If, in fact, there is one instance where anything at all may appear to be in the claim of theology to have fulfilled its province of construing to expert intelligence, or enforcing on popular attention, a revealed truth of Christianity, it is here. How far in such a case it may be allowed that there has been, in the controversy as to this fundamental doctrine of the Person of the Son of God, a practical bringing of it into prominence, an emphasizing and elaboration of it which would not otherwise have been forthcoming, may be a question. Provided the thought generally associated with such ideas—that the scriptures, if at all, supply only the undeveloped formula of such doctrines provided that unbelieving thought be emphatically ruled out, there may be something to be said for it in the sense of seeing here supplied, in rebuke if also in the interest of decayed spirituality and faith grown feeble, in the providence of God a means of “supplementing” revelation by practical and historical emphasis. However that may be, it is certainly undisputed fact that in the church’s past it is on this truth perhaps beyond all others that steady unremitting attention has been bestowed, successive creeds amplifying definitions of it, doubtless with a view as much to express more adequately fuller conceptions, as to guard more effectively against fresh errors. So that in the whole volume of church history there is probably no point of doctrine so frequently referred to, nor so voluminously treated, as the truth concerning the second Person of the Godhead defined in the clause “and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.”

Nor are we to suppose that this is a field from which conflict has vanished forever, or that very different, or less contentious, conditions prevail there now. Nay, is it not rather the case that so very much in debate just at present is the question of Christ’s Person that we may fairly claim to be in presence of a fresh and most remarkable renewal of the warfare? The “Christ Question,” as it has been entitled, is very much alive to-day. Just how many things have combined to give it such a resuscitation it may be hard to say; but there is certainly no theological question on which discussion is so common or so keen as concerning the mystery of His Person. It appears to many also that in this very reanimation of the question may lie the danger of a recrudescence of ancient maladies. The trend of thought at all events in many cases is not free from parallelism with old-time heresies. The very fact in itself of the subject engrossing so largely popular attention is significant, ominous we may say. And that this is the case is being recognized even by many presumably.. not directly affected. “Christology” says one, in an article to a leading secular review on “Evolution and the Church” — “Christology has become the problem of the church to-day, as, viewed from other standpoints, it was of the church from the fourth to the sixth century.” This is certainly so, and many will be inclined to add there is more than a suspicion of the re-appearance of questions as ancient as the first century in much that is being advanced. Nor need it really occasion surprise to see threatening, as we do to-day, a renewal of polemical warfare around this particular doctrine. For when has theology as such, apart from simple quotation of scripture itself, been able to give a completely satisfactory and final pronouncement on it? In spite of what is claimed for creeds and confessions, what can it offer to-day even?

It may not be out of place to quote here a warning the above witness sounds from his presumably impartial standpoint. Remarking how quickly theories succeed each other in popular favor, and successively pass away, “systems of thought are short-lived,” he says, “the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door and shall carry thee out.” Really, if such evanescent theories so little comply with the requirements of truth as the quotation suggests, the fate of Ananias and Sapphira is not the worst that could overtake them. Nor is this marked failure to reach satisfactory conclusions so very difficult to explain. For one thing the matter is, one may say, inherently mysterious. It is remarkable that full in the past as has been the scrutiny it has undergone, and elaborate as to-day the treatment of it theologically has become, all attempted definitions, ancient and modern alike, of doctrine as to Christ’s person, when they go beyond the exact language, of scripture itself, very quickly throw off any restrictions it would impose, and pass into the region of mere speculation and conjecture. So much so in fact that even from theologians themselves we may occasionally have what looks like an extorted confession of how elusive and mysterious they find the matter to be. “Definite theological statements,” continues the same writer, quoting Jowett, “respecting the relation of Christ to God or man are only figures of speech. They do not really pierce the clouds. No greater calamity has ever befallen the Christian church than the determination of some uncertain things which are beyond the sphere of Christian knowledge.” What is this but a proof of the truth of Christ’s own warning word, “No man knoweth the Son but the Father.” If it is complained, as it has been, that by applying this wholesale to such knowledge of His person as all Christology is concerned in defining, we are condemned to a hopeless agnosticism on a subject of utmost importance, it can only be replied that in such a matter it may very well be that we may meet with the unknowable as well as the unknown. Where we are incompetent to diagnose, and revelation does not cast its light, it may be questioned if “hopeless agnosticism” is the proper term; but even so, faith can not only resign to the inevitable mystery, but discern, a fitness and moral congruity also in the arrangement which retains in seclusion from man’s vulgar scrutiny the holy mystery of His wonderful person. Better so than indulging in metaphysical flights on such a theme.

“No man knoweth the Son but the Father.” We do well to start here. There is a warning note in our Lord’s utterance it becomes us to hearken to. To pass beyond what is revealed is to enter a labyrinth where no wisdom of man can extricate us. We can understand how hopelessly men wander when they set out to explore this forbidden land, for that obscurity involves the whole matter we are informed here on the best of authority. Consequently they labor at their own charge who set out on such an expedition. Twentieth century thought no more than that of earlier days can solve the insoluble or be able to define the undefinable. So that in the strife now imminent, if not in progress, between the theorisings on this point of a New Theology, originating in nothing more stable than ever-changing conjecture, and the pronouncements of the older theology, basing themselves on creeds established and accepted for long, simple believers shall do well to repose the lightest of confidence in human thought as expressed in either; but arm themselves with, and withdraw themselves under that which can neither be superseded nor supplemented, the word of God.

Happily, in that which we are studying here, a great deal of historical theology is avoided by little or no reference to the doctrine of the Trinity. This is unusual in any exposition of the creed, for there is generally much stress laid upon this, and here, if anywhere, some elaboration of the truth would naturally be looked for. On this occasion, however, it is at once to the Son of God incarnate, the historic Jesus, to use the modern phrase, that we are directed. A great deal of what is said regarding the doctrine of the incarnation may be left aside, especially so from the fact that the attempt to show that it is not an unfamiliar idea to man, and to justify it as a credible doctrine leads to the use of the more or less technical language of philosophy. We cannot be expected to follow there; but it may be permitted to remark on the use of that rather novel principle which New Theology has given such prominence to— “the immanence of God.” Trust it not; especially when applied to the incarnation. “A mere philosopheme, absolutely fatal to a gospel” is not an unfair description of it. To many under the spell of philosophic reasoning on this doctrine of divine immanence, instead of the great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh, “Christ Himself is,” as a Roman Catholic has recently said, “resolved into a mere lay figure draped in a few attributes which have no other origin than the minds of those actuated by its baneful influence.”

There are those also who claim “with the help of the modern categories of immanence, evolution and personality, to construe more adequately than ancient theology, and still more adequately than New Theology,” Christological doctrine. But in what does it result? Nothing but philosophical speculation, unsupported by scripture, where it is not indeed contradicted by it. This last, of course, may be of little consequence to those who hold that “the New Testament has left to dogmatic theology the task of thinking out, and construing to intelligence, such facts in regard to Christ as the apostles simply put side by side.” But to those who accept the scriptures as something less nebulous, as God’s revelation, in fact, of all we can know regarding the subject, all this shows with how great distrust the reasonings of philosophy on it must be regarded.

It is somewhat difficult, and becoming increasingly so, for plain Christian people to-day to apprehend, or even to come on to common ground of thought at all with, many teachers who make this branch of theology their province. Not only because of the above mentioned tendency to run into mere philosophic speculation, but because the subject is approached in so radically different a fashion from what they are accustomed to. This is not confined to the truth of incarnation alone, but a specially prominent instance of it is seen there. In what is under review here, after sheaving in the first place, and apparently as the prime consideration in regard to it, that the incarnation is a rational and credible doctrine, the next step to be considered is put in the form of a question— “Admitting the above, what proof have we that Jesus Christ was such incarnation of God?” “To some,” we are told, “the fact that the scriptures so teach is sufficient.” Amply so, a simple believer would rejoin; his only cause for dissatisfaction being that this consideration was so long in being advanced, that it was not first and foremost, given precedence over any such special plea as the reasonableness of the doctrine on philosophic grounds. To show that a doctrine was scriptural, was in line with, based upon the testimony of, the scriptures, used to be the first task of any Christian apologist. It is made now to wait till the development of proof from other lines of evidence has been completed. And not only so, whether the line taken be the parallelism of other religions in sheaving that the thought of a god becoming incarnate was not an unfamiliar idea, or the exposition of it in terms reminiscent rather of philosophy than of theology; but as a witness to the great truth the scripture is also subordinated in value by the assumption underlying all this, almost in fact in so many words stated, that it is not enough to be convinced that it can be established on scriptural grounds that Jesus Christ was really “God manifest in the flesh.” Considerations that shall appeal to those to whom the scripture is of little account, or who reject its witness, are thought worthy of first place.

No doubt there may be something in the plea, that it is at this point in the Creed where we part company with such as Jews and Mohammedans, who could very well adopt the first clause, concerning God the Father Almighty. But, since they do not accept the New Testament revelation, are we therefore to rule it out, or assign it second place in what constitutes the ground of our own faith and conviction? For surely in the recitation of a creed the object ostensibly aimed at is not primarily the gaining credence for its truths by unbelievers, but the statement or confession of one’s own personal faith. In terms sufficiently distinctive, and otherwise suited to the apprehension of such, it may be sought to be given, the simplest and most decisive language being that which is adopted. But for that very reason would not what one would look for in the exposition of that creed precisely he the bringing out, in something like the order of their relative importance, the grounds of the faith we therein confess, on what, as their primary foundation, these our convictions are founded? Is it then the case that the intellectual rationality of the doctrine of the incarnation is our first reply when asked to show cause why we believe in it? We credit the fact because it is quite feasible, and not at all a preposterous idea intellectually!

(Continued from page 48)

J. T.

(To be continued)

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

How cold and barren it all is, this being persuaded, granted even that it be fully persuaded, of the credibility, or philosophic certitude, of a truth such as this. That such a stupendous fact as God come down in love, the Word become flesh and dwelling among us, the eternal Son of God found in fashion as a man, in grace so profound, for purposes so great, and in a moral glory so beautiful, should, in a spirit that speaks of but little exercise of heart over it, he coolly observed, reasoned of, and assimilated into a system, somewhat after the manner of a scientific discovery, what does this argue in those who so discuss it? Is there not felt on the part of all who by His grace have been given to have a living interest in it, that in all this philosophizing there is an entire overlooking (what seems to us a most strange overlooking) of the spiritual import and significance of the wonderful fact so discussed? And, to any who have the least consciousness of its vital concern for themselves, how momentous seems the omission! Pathetic, too, to assured believers it cannot but appear. These laboring philosophers, as, with never a lift of their beaded brow to what is sun-clear to untutored minds, they bend over their task, how blindly they miss what we simple ones seize with alacrity! How callously they let slip, or leave out of consideration, that which alone we prize! How fatally they lose the force and value spiritually of the great and grand truth, when they attempt to equate it as a doctrine in philosophic terms! Oh, that its power, its grandeur, its sublimity would more fully penetrate our hearts!

“The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.” Is this merely the advent of a unique phenomenon upon the stage of life? a phenomenon so strange even that our whole system of philosophy must be ransacked for principles to explain it? Or is it altogether an intervention to descend to their terminology, of what, in this sense can only he called the non-phenomenal into the phenomenal world? “Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and, being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Is this something esoteric to philosophers, or calling for such preliminaries as have been indulged in ere it become intelligible to us? Do we need to rove so far afield for its significance, wondrous fact as it is? Is there not a shorter and surer way to its spiritual meaning somewhere in the line of its appeal to our hearts? Ah! were we more under the power of that appeal, the whole spirit in which it is approached, should it not be vastly different? Philosophic reasoning might bulk less largely in our thought of it, occupation with it be less critical than contemplative. But would we be losers thereby? In presence of the greatness of that conception, the infinite grandeur of it morally, it needs not surely to be pressed which is the attitude of mind best becoming us. But for real knowledge of it even, this truth of the incarnation of the Son of God, what its meaning, what its implications, what its adjustment to the scheme of things—the region in which it must be studied most decidedly is the moral and spiritual and not the philosophic. As always in the discerning of the truth of God, whatever the subject, mere acuteness of natural intelligence avails nothing. Spiritual truth is communicated spiritually, and it is he that is spiritual that discerneth all things. And as to this great fact, “the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh,” are we likely to find less true the operation of that principle?

Here, if anywhere, philosophy is at a discount, and spiritual vision is that which alone will reach tangible results. Received in faith, and contemplated spiritually, the bearings of it philosophically count for little, and are left behind as mere husk and shell. Oh! that the real kernel of it may be ours, that the great truth in all its range and beauty, as revealed in the word, may flood our souls with adoration of Him, who claims in this respect perhaps less our knowledge than our worship, who is “God over all, blessed forever.”

We are taken a little further on somewhat similar lines, though here there is a real substratum of truth underlying, when we are asked to remember that the very thought of a personally existent God involves the thought that He must express Himself. Further that, in the words of another, “in the being of God we see there is a Trinity which lays the foundation for the possibility of the incarnation of the Son.” Again, that in none other but the Son of God come in flesh can this be, for revelation is only possible where spiritual kinship exists. All, in their place, considerations not to be slighted. And only now, after such preamble, are we led up to Scripture to consider its testimony. Witness there is there, clear, full, and, above all, plain. Testimony to the Lord Jesus Christ is its express purpose, and the mystery of His person, His divinity and humanity alike, are abundantly evidenced. The order in which the Creed takes it up, first the divinity then the humanity, is that which is observed in this exposition also. “And I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.” With this statement it leads off. The true and essential divinity, perhaps we had better say deity, of the Lord Jesus Christ is what is here first affirmed. And scripture Makes it very apparent that nothing less is what it claims for Him.

This again, as it is very cogently remarked, not as a matter of a few proof texts here and there, which ingenuity of exegesis might essay to explain away, but woven into the very texture of the word.

There is, of course, no lack of categorical statements of His deity; but the truth rests broad-based on even wider foundation than these supply. As has often been remarked, there are attributes ascribed, actions and utterances recorded, and incidental allusions made throughout the entire New Testament that are almost more positive affirmations of His Godhead than the most direct statements can be. It is to this testimony en masse, rather than to particular references, that attention is drawn, so that perforce we must follow on that line. It is something to be thankful for that insistence is so firm on the fact that the New Testament does present Christ’s deity as an acknowledged truth. It is becoming so common now (we are warned) to speak of the orthodox confession of Christ’s essential divinity as a doctrine developed to its present proportions at a period in church history more or less advanced, and not explicitly New Testament doctrine. We are frequently told that, if at all, it was only in a very rudimentary form that an intelligible Christology was held in primitive times! The claims of the writers, more particularly the earliest writers, of the New Testament, for Christ, were not of the same exorbitant nature as those orthodoxy makes now! Divinity, in esse, was an attribute assigned by later ages to Christ, it is said!

With the New Testament before us this should not be difficult to settle. But again fault must be found with the method by which it is done. As is so common, here again there is compromise. Instead of a clear firm stand being taken on what is the uniform, unvarying testimony of scripture, there is, as we shall see, an adoption in measure, a taking over in principle of the heterodox idea, and then the foisting upon scripture of this sense and meaning. This leads to the argument taking, at this juncture, a most surprising turn. We all know how development as a theory seems to have a peculiar charm for theologians to-day, amounting in fact almost to an obsession. In any sphere whatever it needs but to be suggested for them to see something in it. Who would suppose now that, after controverting the idea of the true faith of Christ (that estimate which postulates of His true divine nature—deity) being inconsistent with New Testament Christology, and a matter of development in times posterior to it, that then, in a modified form, the self-same idea of development should be taken over, and read into, New Testament Christology itself? As the note sounded throughout now is far from clear, it seems due at this stage to call attention to this its uncertain sound.

As a start, however, it is rightly emphasized that the great thing to get hold of is what conception of Himself, and of His relation to God, was left by Christ on the minds of His followers, His disciples, the apostles. Did He appear to them, to use two separate confessions of the same individual, “Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God,” merely such? or, “the Christ, the Son of the living God”? Following in the wake of a recent writer on the subject, a sketch of New Testament Christology is here given. The theme is pursued along three lines of evidence—the Epistles of Paul, the Synoptical Gospels, and the Gospel of John—the question being what impression the writers of each had retained of the nature and personality of Christ Jesus. In what respect do they severally manifest His admitted uniqueness to consist? On this head what is advanced is all very well, and, if left at that, might be a fair, though certainly far from a full, presentation of New Testament teaching, showing at least that the “historical valuation of Jesus” assigned in the Creed was not out of keeping with that entertained by His disciples.

But, from this point, both the writer quoted from, and our lecturer proceed now on that line of reasoning from which we have expressed dissent. Says the former, “In this harmonious account there are still not wanting clear marks of development. The Synoptists give the rudimentary form, in Paul’s Epistles it is more fully developed, and in the Fourth Gospel it is complete. Then even within Paul’s Epistles, and again within John’s Gospel, signs of development are to be seen.” “Jesus was Jesus at first. Jesus becomes more and more ‘the Christ ‘ as we proceed. As a New Testament doctrine it is distinctly progressive.” This is thought to involve no contradiction or disparagement. The explanation of this development certainly differs considerably. By the lecturer it is thought “to have something to do with the fact that the truth of Christ’s divinity had to be forced upon the mind and attention of His Jewish disciples with their carnal conceptions of a Messiah,” and this being only gradually accomplished, the developing Christology of the New Testament may be indicative of its progress. But by the writer referred to it is traced to “the influence of Gentile modes of thought and expression,” and that idea, far from being found in any way objectionable, is held in reserve as a further consideration to explain the supposed progression in New Testament thought from the historic Jesus to the divine Christ. However explained, by both this development is affirmed, and regarded as indicating that as a primitive doctrine in the early church the truth of Christ’s divinity was only progressively held, realized, and taught; that consequently, the earliest impression, or original valuation of Him was comparatively low.

Now as conducive to anything like clear thinking, a distinction is at this stage called for which seems here to be omitted. Two things which we must clearly distinguish between are—the disciples of Christ simply as His earthly followers, and the same individuals, or such of them as were so used, in the capacity of New Testament writers. In regard to such a truth as His being God manifest in flesh, there is surely all the difference between the early glimmerings of faith in simple Galilan fishermen, and the truth as penned by apostles and teachers under the inspiration of the Spirit of God Himself. This last consideration by itself makes all the difference. If divinely inspired we believe these writings to be, they are—whatever the human element—at once for us removed above the possibility of containing a developing Christology. What of Peter, Matthew, or John as to their several measures of conceiving how Jesus could be divine? It may be that in the time of their companying with Him prior to the cross, and (we must add) to Pentecost, such varying measures were true. And that many a shadow of unbelief momentarily dimmed the full assurance of their faith in Him we can well believe, and in fact are told of. But in what they wrote of Him subsequently, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, however true it be that the characteristics of each remain in what they relate of Him, we can never imagine variety in either the nature or the quality of their testimony to what He was—to His Godhead. If it were merely a question of the development, during their earthly association with Him, of His disciples’ conviction of His divinity, it would be another matter. Keeping in mind the distinction between faith and knowledge one would surely allow that there was progression there. But this is an assuming that such development of conviction appears, or is reproduced, in the portion of the word of God they were used by Him to pen, and on every ground this is erroneous and false.

[J. T.]

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

Now before proceeding to consider further this modified adoption of the theory of a developing Christology, let us notice briefly whereto this notion may lead, and to what lengths it is being pushed, by theologians less moderate in its application. We are all familiar with the cry so often heard today, “Back to Christ.” What does it mean on the lips of theologians? A return to the simplicity and power of the truth as it is in Jesus? Alas! far from it. Here is an article by an accredited New Theology teacher on “The Christ Question,” which illustrates clearly what is being echoed so widely. “Back to Christ” is his cry too, and the way in which he interprets that ambiguous motto is instructive, to say the least. The article is throughout a plea for distinguishing between what he calls the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. This in the interest of a theory he has that the latter is something in the nature of an ideal, “an ever-growing, ever-advancing, ever-expanding ideal,” quite separate and separable from the real historic Jesus of Nazareth. In claiming that it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the “Return to Jesus which is manifest in modern thought,” he declares—

“Jesus is understood to-day better than in any previous age. Like a fossil that has long lain embedded in the Silurian rocks, so the actual historic Jesus has been buried under mountains of Christological dogma. And perhaps the greatest service that has been rendered to religious thought within recent years has been the excavation of the real Jesus of history. To change the figure, as an artist removes the grime, the dust, the whitewash from some long lost but newly discovered portrait, until the perfect likeness looks out again: and rewards his loving patience, so the labors of the truth-loving critic have at last re-discovered the lost likeness of the Prophet of Nazareth.”

Now, in itself this may look like nothing but elegant rodomontade, but our theologians will discover, if they follow on, that here is one who simply carries on their identical idea of development to its legitimate issue, only, he is much more consistent and thorough-going in his application of it. They admit the principle of development and imagine that by confining it to the New Testament they save the situation. That is to say, they allow the whitewash, but deny the grime and the dust. They do not deny the fossilizing (the figure is unhappily only a too fitting one for what has transformed living truth into cold dogma, from which all life has departed); but affirm the process of stratification only during the apostolic age. Possibly the later mountains of dogma do not appear to them to bury the truth, but to uplift and manifest it. But here is one who quite boldly takes their theory of the development of Christology in the New Testament, uses it to prove that ascriptions of deity to Christ are simply accretions on the original history, and roundly charges apostles with these practices of embellishing the simple truth, and overlaying it with dogma. After all, there is nothing like candor.

Notice how, in dealing with the New Testament evidence, the very same course is pursued as in the sketch indicated above—Paul’s Epistles, the Synoptical Gospels, and the Gospel of John.

“Paul,” he says, “delivered Christianity from Jewish limitations, but at the same time he started the movement which took it away from its Galilean simplicity. The speculations of the Apostle concerning Christ became the starting point of theology... All the same it was a departure from the life and teaching of Jesus. What triumphed was not the religion of Jesus, but certain speculations about the Christ that resembled very little the Galilean Gospel.”

Then as to the Synoptics. “They are not histories so much as ideals of Him which grew up in the hearts of His friends after a lifetime of loving reverence... They are all molded and shaped by one great idea. Jesus was the Jewish Messiah... bearing evidence throughout of the influence of this atmosphere in the mythological accretions they add to the simple life of Jesus.”

Finally, as to John’s Gospel. “It is impossible for us to conceive of any single individual speaking as Jesus is represented as speaking in the Fourth Gospel—’I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.’ ‘If ye knew me ye would know my Father also. I and my Father are one.’ But that is just the way the Gospel writer would naturally speak of the ideal and divine Christ, who was living in his mind and heart, the eternal word who had come down from heaven, the ideal man, the indwelling image of perfect manhood.”

This is what it comes to at last— “the ideal man,” “perfect manhood.” With similar arguments our teachers expect to reinforce the doctrine of His “perfect Godhead.” But it may be more than doubted if there is any such strengthening of the evidence as they look for in such a way of reasoning. There is grave risk in adopting such premises at all. Indeed this modern distinguishing of “Christ” from “Jesus” in this way, and tracing the development of what the Christ-like idea is thought to imply, is just one of those novel ideas on the subject which we have spoken of as fraught with peril. We may recognize quite clearly where we are in the New Theology quoted from above. “Every spirit that confesseth not Jesus Christ come in the flesh is not of God.” Thus the teaching under notice here more particularly seems to be deficient in its lack of giving that full value to apostolic testimony which is also impressed upon us. “We are of God,” says the Apostle; “he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth us not. Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” We are warned in this Scripture against giving ready credence to any and everything advanced as spiritual truth. There is the activity of the spirit of error, as well as that of the Spirit of truth, to be taken account of in the sphere of religious thought, and as a means of distinguishing the one from the other we are supplied with two tests. The true confession of “Jesus Christ come in the flesh” is the one. The reception of the apostles’ doctrine as of God, with all that that it implies, is the other. It certainly implies, this latter claim does, that what the apostles wrote they assuredly did under the full and unerring direction of the Spirit of God, else could not their teaching be so unequivocally associated with His name. “Hereby know we the Spirit of truth.” How this can be reconciled with the thought of a slowly dawning consciousness thus late in their minds of Jesus their Master’s divinity may be left to these apologists to explain. Certainly to a plain person it seems contradictory, and the teaching that affirms it derogatory in a measure both to that particular truth, and to the apostolic testimony regarding it.

Besides, let any ordinarily attentive reader of the New Testament say if this so-called development is really so self-evident as is affirmed. Taking as bare facts for the moment the two things—the gradual compiling of the New Testament, book by book, and its references to Christ’s Godhead or deity—it cannot be denied that these latter are both more numerous and fuller as time goes on; that, as; general rule, the later the book chronologically, the more ample the elaboration of Christ’s relation to God. But does this of necessity imply that correspondingly primitive or developed phases of Christology were contemporaneous with these as the faith of the church? Does it not occur to any that the fuller treatment of a point may keep pace with the growing measure in which it is being denied or perverted? That is to say, that the chronological order of the books of the New Testament, as far as can be ascertained, and the fuller emphasizing of the truth as to Christ’s person, synchronize, go hand in hand, more by reason of the growing prevalence of anti-Christian doctrine than of anything else. There is a principle evident ‘in the New Testament, which we are apt to give less weight to than we ought, and that is, that God in His wise providence allowed error of every shade and form to appear in the apostles’ own days, while still the truth was being communicated through them. Like offenses, it must needs be that heresies should come. We owe it to His wise ordering that the advent of the various germinant forms of error occurred in time for exposure and refutation from inspiration’s pen, ere the canon closed. On this ground, then, we conclude that, if more frequent allusion to, or more forcible reiteration of Christ’s Godhead is found in the later written portions of the New Testament, it is indicative really of another and more common form of development—that of error. Then, whatsoever the more frequent insistence on it latterly may be, the true deity of Christ is just as plain in the first as in the last of the New Testament writings, not to speak of the Old Testament, where this theory of development cannot apply. Christ, in fact, is the one great theme of scripture, and its testimony is unanimous and consistent throughout that He was nothing less than “God over all, blessed forever.”

The whole idea of Christ’s true and essential divinity being a conception of Him reached by His disciples only after long reflection, and entertained or expressed with any measure of clearness only as the New Testament closed, appears puerile to the last degree once we bring in faith as the medium of their apprehension of Him. The truth as to His person, we may see from many instances, was impressed upon them from the very first moment of their spiritual contact with Him, and the nature of that impression points to faith as the means of their spiritual illumination. Faith is so different from the mere intellectual “conceptions” we hear so much of; and nowhere is this more apparent than here in this matter of what the disciples may have thought as to Christ’s person. When we think of it all, the close and intimate intercourse between them and Himself; their daily observation of Him, His words and His ways; above all, their acquaintance with all the claims He made for Himself, and the calm conviction they had of these claims being valid, should we not speak less of their “conceptions” and more of their “conclusions”? Truly a blessed thing is faith! So sure of its ground, so clear of uncertainty! This by reason of being grounded on divine testimony. “To them it was given to believe on Him.” When Peter confessed Him “Son of the living God,” did not our Lord declare “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjonas.” Had it been flesh and blood which revealed it unto him, we should indeed look for some such development as is spoken of; but faith, resulting from what “my Father in heaven has revealed,” does not conform to such rules, or take so long to reach a conclusion. Does not our Lord Jesus Himself in His intercessory prayer (John 17) over and over again make clear that His own gathered round Him then had, whatever their failure, even ere this entertained true thought of His person and mission. “They have known,” He says, “that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.” “They have known surely (of a truth),” He says again, “that I am come out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.” The cardinal distinction between the world and His own is, He declares that (while “the world hath not known thee”), “these have known that thou hast sent me.” Was this knowledge rudimentary? a faint idea of some indefinable greatness in their illustrious Rabbi? Was such as this all the knowledge He predicted of them? “This is life eternal,” He said, and that specifically was His gift to those whom the Father had given Him, “this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” Mark the association of personages, if the term may be allowed. There is co-ordination of Jesus Christ and the only true God implied here, it is sometimes said. There is, and it is expressed in such a way as betokens it the characteristic Christian revelation. A late and proportionately high revelation of Jesus, forsooth! Was this, or was it not, from the first the clear testimony concerning the Lord Jesus? Was this, or was it not, the confession of those with whom he companied when on earth? On one occasion, when He inquired of them, “Will ye also go away?” “Lord, to whom shall we go?” was their reply, “thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art the Holy One of God.”

Where our divines err in this matter, it is to be feared, is in that common respect of reading into others’ experience the circumstances of our own. The truth of God is to them largely a question of theology, Christology a branch of it, the true divinity of the Lord Jesus a doctrine to be gradually conceived, slowly reasoned out, and scientifically established. Consequently they imagine a like process in the early disciples and the writers of the New Testament. When shall they learn that there is such a thing in the spiritual realm as faith? such a thing as the certitude that comes from receiving divine testimony? such a thing that conviction is borne in upon the heart when God is realized as present and addressing men? Rudimentary Christology or not, was there nothing of this in those who followed the Lord when here on earth? or under the inspiration of God penned His truth for our guidance and instruction? Really now, could “God manifest in the flesh” be the true character of Christ’s incarnation, and men in spiritual contact with Him escape conviction of it—immediate conviction of it? Nay, verily. For Jesus of Nazareth to be to them, while they had His presence, no more than Jesus of Nazareth, and the idea of His being the Christ a subsequent idealistic investiture of that historical figure with the draperies that Christological dogma spun round it, is a thing quite incredible in itself; and how much out of keeping with Scripture one need not say. Rather there do we see that Christ Jesus, the eternal Son of God, the Word made flesh, approved Himself such to the earliest glimmering of faith in His own. and won from them then, as He does from all true believers still, the voluntary confession, “My Lord and my God.”

In fine, from all that the New Testament teaches about Him, whether it be the testimony of the Synoptists (thought to be the most rudimentary Christologists, but in reality quite sufficiently establishing who and what Christ really was): or that of Paul in his epistles (reckoned to give the doctrine in a more advanced stage of its evolution—really only presenting the same truth as to basis, but distinctly characterized, as might be expected by the witness of one to whom from heaven the Lord Jesus revealed Himself, and whose testimony consequently was of a heavenly and glorified Christ): or that of John in his Gospel (not the final form after the influence of Gentile modes of thought and expression had molded it into symmetry, but the grand, full, four-square witness of the one whose province it particularly was—in pursuance of that divine design impressed upon all the scriptures to manifest Jesus as the only begotten Son of God)—whichever of the writers be selected, from each will be found a testimony unvarying, and from all a witness uniform and complete; a record given which presents a life and teaching and character, a position and glory, and a personality and power absolutely incomprehensible on any other ground than that the One described is expressly what the creeds claims Him to be, “Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.”

[J- T.]

(Continued from page 80)

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

From what the Creed claims for Christ as a divine person we pass on to consider what it states concerning His humanity. “Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.” So is expressed in the Creed the origin, nature, and circumstances of our Lord’s humanity. Now again as to the exposition. It is said that when we come now to speak of our Lord’s humanity we are on ground more familiar, we are in a region where the human mind is less likely to be so entirely incapable of reasoning as concerning His divinity. The subject matter is more within our scope. There is at the same time a complaint made that hitherto Christian thinkers have been too reticent on this matter of Christ’s humanity, and that the difficulty of the subject is largely imaginary. As an encouragement to proceed, one thing we are told in this connection that while hitherto in the creed we have moved in the region of truth open only to spiritual intelligence, now we are on altogether different and lower ground. We arrive at that which makes no call upon anything higher than ordinary historical credence, and that therefore discussion here is both legitimate and expedient. The clause just recited differs from preceding ones in this respect—that whereas they appeal to faith, this is a simple historical statement.

Now it is admitted that this portion of the creed, as it is said, is history, the particular clause of it where it trenches on historical ground. “Suffered under Pontius Pilate” is the distinctive mark of this special character of the clause. As has often been noted, this is the only time mark in the creed. Concerning it Pearson wrote— “As the Son of God by His deliberate counsel was sent into the world to die in the fullness of time, so it concerns the church to know the time in which He died. Accordingly that we might be properly assured of the actions of our Savior which He did and of His sufferings... in accordance with ancient methods of computation we learn that ‘He suffered under Pontius Pilate.’” Now, that Jesus Christ passed across the stage of human history may be an event to be recorded in its annals as of supreme importance, and without a doubt it concerns the church, in proclaiming these facts to the world, great, marvelous, and momentous as they are, regarding Him whom it confesses as Savior and Lord, to comply with all due requirements of evidence giving, and to set forth, in right order and sequence, supplying at the same time the date of, such great events. Yet it must surely be felt that, historical though this portion of the creed may be, it is scarcely as history that it counts. We can scarcely he said to have much evidence in Scripture that the Holy Spirit greatly concerns Himself with man’s history as such—mere cosmical as distinguished from moral history, that is—and as far as Christ’s place in that is concerned much more is made of it in many quarters than seems called for. The great fact historically in regard to Christ, it must be remembered, is that man, when He came to His own, received Him not. The great outstanding fact in the world’s history is that it rejected Him. This discounts considerably any historical valuation of Him they may frame now. The Holy Spirit has come “to convict the world,” not of His place in its history, but, “of sin, righteousness, and judgment. Of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.”

Then again, to return to the Creed, historical whether this portion of it be or not, it is certainly more than history it recounts, its several items more than mere events for which it demands intellectual credence. It is surely more than the admission of these occurrences—the birth, suffering, death, etc., of Jesus Christ—as historic facts that is asked from those who subscribe to the Creed. Why let the opportunity pass of pressing upon hearers their own intimate concern in these facts, that here is no mere otiose confession of their historicity; but acceptance of them as truths from God charged with all the importance and potency that all such truths possess. Why, even in a historical work recently, which we might well expect to give no more than a secular view, on “The conflict of religions in the early Roman Empire,” the writer, who is, too, more or less Unitarian, after taking the matter up on this very ground, and speaking of “what exactly it was which happened in Palestine under the Emperor Tiberius,” is constrained to admit that “men are scanning that to-day with the sense that it concerns them personally to know, that the answer has an immediate bearing upon their interests and practice. Jesus of Nazareth,” he says, “does stand in the center of human history, but also HE brings God and man into a new relation and He is the personal concern of every one of us.” Ah! there are many who can assign to Christ a correct and unique historical niche who have little place for Him in their hearts. These professions of belief in His sufferings and death are surely more than academic acceptance of bare historic facts. They must be if to prove of any value spiritually. We cannot take Jesus Christ historically; the thing is impossible. Nor can this clause of the creed be so absolutely differentiated from others which make their appeal to faith. The spiritual exercise involved in the reflective study of such facts, and in the true entertainment of such beliefs, is not less intense nor real than in the case of the others professed. How then can the ground taken be in any way lower or more accessible to the natural man’s apprehension?

The assumption of our comparatively greater ability to understand Christ’s humanity is reiterated now as a thing that is enhanced by modern equipment theologically for the task. It is affirmed, at the same time, that many still too little realize the truth and force of the “gospel of Christ’s manhood.” The lingering reluctance of many to admit the subject as fit matter for discussion at all is scoffed at as unreasonable timidity in presence of what we know now, and we are informed indeed that the predominant note in Christology has long been the human element in Christ’s person. The real problem for many today, it is said, does not lie so much there, where modern religious thought can claim some acquaintance. That which constitutes their difficulty is to understand His essential divinity. That He who lived a veritable human life was at the same time very God. The opposite was the case, it is said, in early Christian times. It was the humanity, not the divinity, upon which emphasis came to be needed at a very early period. Their impression of His divinity became in turn so strong that they found it hard to realize His real humanity. An instance of this is found in Gnosticism, which, with its conception of the inherent evil of matter, found it necessary to maintain that Christ, whom they more or less clearly conceived of as in a sense divine, did not take unto Himself real human nature and form. So much was this the case that the menacing challenge of 1 John 4:2, 3, was, in regard to them, amply justified. “Every spirit that confesseth Jesus Christ come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that confesseth not Jesus Christ come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world.”

Whether this Docetic teaching alluded to owed its origin to an overpowering conviction of Christ’s divinity naturally dominating the thoughts concerning Him of those who were in so close proximation to Him who spake as never man spake, and did among men the works which none other man did—whether this be so or not, the fact remains that such false ideas were early afloat, and that it was in face of them, in an incipient form at least, that the apostle uttered the above warning note. “Jesus Christ come in flesh” is the true confession of Him, deity and humanity both real and true; and anything else John unhesitatingly regards as of Satanic origin and character. The time of fullness of manifestation and operation for that spirit of antichrist was not yet, but still future. A premonitory instance of its activity the apostle discerned this to be. How ominous is the reflection that it was precisely concerning this matter of the humanity of Christ that these went astray. Is there not then cause for apprehension lest, on these same sunken rocks where shipwreck of the faith on such a large scale in the past has occurred, we also should strike? It is no healthy feature of our time that this over-insistence on the humanity of Christ is the predominant note. The tendency to resolve everything into it is remarked by not a few. Thus Professor Orr, for instance, in his recent Sidelights on Christian Doctrine” — “Many tendencies are at present in operation to weaken the doctrine of the incarnation—speculative and evolutionary theories, doctrines of divine immanence, a pantheistic identification of God and man, above all, the powerful bent in the spirit of the age towards a non-supernatural interpretation of the facts and truths of religion. In all directions the attempt is being made to lower the doctrine of Christ to a more or less humanitarian level.”

What if this materialistically inclined “spirit of the age” should be identified with this same “spirit of antichrist” of which our passage speaks. Does it not appear like it? In view of all the subtle questions abroad on the subject also may we not in this declaration concerning the simple confession of “Jesus Christ come in the flesh” read a warning of the innate tendency of human speculation to err on the subject, particularly when the mystery of the person of Christ, of how His humanity and divinity are related, is sought to be analyzed metaphysically? One thing the passage makes plain at all events, the vital importance of true doctrine as to the person of Christ, and the decidedly antichristian nature of error on that score. Compared with present-day lukewarmness there is a seeming intolerance and illiberality about such a statement as that of John just quoted, when truth as to the person of Christ is in question, which some are not slow to condemn as one of “those sudden ebullitions of the fierce invective of bigotry characteristic of the beloved disciple. The difficulty would be to imagine the apostle adopting any less uncompromising attitude towards what assailed the true faith as to the One of whose divinity he was in a sense the special witness. To prove himself a “Boanerges” there was in no wise out of season. But in fact it is no mere question of John or Paul; scripture testimony is harmonious throughout, and we shall do well both to observe its unanimity and imitate its reserve. Why after all should any presume to go beyond it? Why should we consider human thought to-day better fitted to investigate, or more competent to declare exactly what occurred when the second Person of the Godhead entered the ranks of humanity, when “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”?

In pursuance of the claim of increasing competency to dissect the human nature of Christ, this section of the Creed is gone on with. Taking the verbs of the five clauses— “conceived, born, suffered, died, and was buried” —the lecturer speaks of them as “expressing the humanity of Jesus in terms in the compass of which every normal human life was contained.” Combining the two first, “conceived” and “born,” and significantly omitting all but the mere verbs, “the reality of the humanity He assumed is shown by the fact that he entered life by the ordinary channel. It was a real and not a phantom body He took when born, real human life He lived, and a real human death He died.” This is not at all satisfactory even in what it states; but in what it omits it is far from dealing fairly with the truth. If even the scriptures bearing upon it merely had been quoted, there would have been so far an exposition of this part of the Creed. So much at least we might surely expect, not to say that from a Presbyterian one might even look for some such attempt to define as his “shorter catechism” gives— “Christ the Son of God became man by taking to Himself a true body, and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin.” Instead of which we are led to understand that Biblical criticism and other lines of study have raised difficulties which make it desirable to look for the elucidation of the truth regarding, and confirmation of the uniqueness of, Christ’s humanity in other directions than what is called “the doctrine of the virgin birth.” That is to say, what is related concerning His miraculous birth in Matthew and Luke’s Gospels being under suspicion, grave and of substantial basis, either as to its being credible or authentic history, or as to genuineness of text, that particular line of evidence must be dropped.

Now what are the facts of the case here? The truth enunciated in that clause of the Creed, “Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,” had been objected to, and ridiculed, by opponents of Christianity for long. In the welter of unbelieving skepticism prevailing over Christendom at present, however, many professing Christian teachers, having fallen under the spell of infidel reasoning all round, naturally shrink now from exposing themselves to the ridicule of those whose good opinion they have come to respect, by firmly maintaining this apparently particularly vulnerable doctrine. The objections, remark, have not themselves greatly changed, nor gained in force from any new facts elicited, from Scripture or otherwise. What has changed is only the sphere where they can be entertained, and that again is solely due to the inoculation of modern Christian doctrine with infidel ideas. Does this seem too strong? What else can be said of those who find now of so much weight arguments that in days of more robust faith never would have counted?

Proceeding then to consider this very damaging modern attack on the “doctrine of the virgin birth,” let us take an example from a work entitled, significantly enough, “Jesus, Seven Questions.” There is no thought of attempting to meet the questions raised, or the objections urged. Let them be seventy times seven, and they still could be added to, and remain questions. One peculiarity about them all is that while to a mind that can entertain them at all they must be insuperable, to a plain believer there is absolutely nothing in them. The only reason for quoting them at all here is to show the stuff the bug-bears of theologians are made of, and perhaps at the same time serve to supply an instance of what Prof. Orr has spoken of as to characteristic tendencies of modern thought on the subject. This attack on the doctrine of the virgin birth is opened by an attempt to account for its origin as a doctrine. The unique and transcendent place Jesus Christ occupies in history is first emphasized as “accounting primarily for the feeling that the character of both His person and His entry into the world must have been unique.” Then a familiar argument that “humanity could not in the ordinary course have produced Jesus Christ, and that therefore a miraculous birth was necessary ere Jesus could have been in possession of the attributes He continually manifested” is met—how? by arguing that “there is no accounting for the phenomenon of genius,” and that “evolution does not exclude the occasional and unrepeated irruption of genius.” Next, the silence of Paul, as well as of the Epistles in general, and of Mark’s and John’s Gospels regarding the virgin birth is mentioned as a discounting feature. Then, coming to the two passages which alone clearly teach it (Matt. 1:18-25, and Luke 1:34, 35), the author raises the question as to whether at all they are historical and not rather poetical and legendary. The bulk of what both these Gospels record in connection with the nativity of Jesus is then gone over, and so valuated. [ J. T.]

(Continued from page 96)

(To be continued)

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

“Have this mind in you,” said the writer, “which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being (subsisting) in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” As subsisting in very form of God, eternally so we may say, we first see Him as we proceed to trace the course detailed here of Him. Equality with God then was for Him no prize to be grasped at, or possession to be tenaciously clutched, whichever of the two we understand to be here so emphatically negatived. Certain it is at all events He sought not to retain this place and estate of Godhead glory; but exchanged in wonderful grace the form of God for the form of a servant, coming in the likeness of men. And this surely in itself for Him is descent of no mean degree. When one considers all that it involves, without at all following out the metaphysics, but on quite another plane, a veritable kenosis it indeed is, a very real emptying of Himself. To be found in fashion as a man, beset with all that of sorrow and suffering accrues to the estate fallen man is in, sin itself excepted, He who in heavenly glory subsisted in the very form of God, does this imply no emptying of Himself? Lord of all, and equality with God no object of aspiration to Him, His assuming in love to us the bond-servant’s form, though He was Son learning obedience by the things He suffered, yea, humbling Himself and becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, is all this not “kenosis” enough? Does it need that we amplify consideration of exactly in what respect limitations or altered conditions mentally and intellectually attached to the humanity He assumed? Is not all that, even if answerable at all, of but secondary importance, and foreign really as a matter of precise exegesis to the passage in its original setting? Pity it would indeed be if the wonderful power and pathos of its beautiful appeal were found to evaporate, the remarkable force and poignancy of its moving example to lose its potency, or the morally glorious exhibition of the grace and love of our blessed Savior’s course it contains, to melt away by such “botanizing on a mother’s grave.”

But what is it then that we are told is involved in this kenosis, this self-emptying of the Son of God? For with them it is not simply the giving up of position, privileges, and honor that constitutes this. Such renunciation of these as is involved in His becoming man, great as was the surrender by Him who, rich in glory, for our sakes became poor, the simple relinquishing of these does not appear to exhaust the meaning of His kenosis. It is carried back beyond all this, and made to apply to a sphere of things, to the ordinary Christian, savoring more or less of the abstruse or occult. Much intricacy of thought, and ingenuity of conjecture, which could obtrude upon or emanate from no mind but that of a metaphysician, has been expended upon the subject. In the effort to construe more intelligibly to such the truth as to His person incarnate, the expression “He emptied Himself” has been much dwelt upon. In this is to be found, it is imagined, much more than any mere general statement of His descending from glory on high to the condition of humiliation implied in His being found in fashion as a man. This kenotic process, it is affirmed, extended much further than either position or physical conditions. It took in, it is said, the much deeper sacrifice of powers and faculties. A field this is, this to which we are invited, where conjecture can find much room for play. The point of emphasis is that it was not merely in external or extraneous features that Christ’s self-emptying took place, but in what may be called intrinsic ones. That is to say that in the act of becoming incarnate the Son of God so shut off or reduced in potency all that pertained to His divine nature, that in the realm of mind and intellect no less than in physical qualities, all was of the human order. Superlative in degree perhaps; but indistinguishable in kind from that of ordinary men. Thus it is sometimes said, “Of what was it that Christ divested Himself in becoming man? Of everything pertaining to His deity, essential attributes alone excepted.”

God He was they confess. God He remained, but with everything proper to Godhead in abeyance, all divine prerogatives absolutely renounced, and all the conditions and limitations of real humanity assumed. A sort of temporary depotentiation of His divine nature in, by, or for its contact with the humanity He took to Himself. “Deity can,” they say, “without real self-impairment lay aside what belongs to it except essential attributes, and omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, are not these, but only expressions of free relation to the world he has made.” Still another way to put it is to say that “He retained the ethical attributes of God while abandoning the physical.” Accordingly, within a carefully defined list of prerogatives capable of being surrendered there has been an absolute kenosis, and among the abdicated attributes are to be found such as the above-mentioned-omnipotence and omniscience, but a short step being needed also, which many, alas, do not hesitate to take, to include the holiness, or inherent sinlessness proper to God. And in such limitations, physical, mental, or moral as the case may be, it is thought there may be found not only relief from the distracting problem of the relation of the divine to the human in His person incarnate; but fresh evidence also of the genuineness of His sympathy and the reality of His humanity.

Altogether does it not seem like what may be called intellectual tight-rope walking with metaphysics for a balancing-pole. On the Godhead, the manhood, and the unity of the Person alike, or in turn, one is in danger of losing balance. Even a modernist of the Roman communion can warn that “The whole doctrine of Christ’s χένωσις or self-emptying can be explained in a minimizing way almost fatal to doctrine, and calculated to rob the incarnation of all its helpfulness by leaving the ordinary mind with something perilously near the phantasmal Christ of the Docetans.” If an unbeliever sneers at their “limited God slowly emerging from imperfection and limitation,” they have nothing but their theory to blame; although pity it is that they should give occasion for his scoff at the incarnation as “an absurd localization of the Infinite, a differentiated moment in eternity, a limitation within the conditions of a fleeting human organism, of the omnipotent, omniscient, and perfect God.” This from the very class the theory is best calculated to conciliate. Kenoticists speak of saving the divine in Jesus by not shattering His humanity through ascribing extravagances of powers and faculties to Him. It rather appears to be sacrificing the divine to accommodate those who make all of the human. And when they do venture forth on their narrow fine-spun theory, such as the above quoted, they show no hesitation in using these their concessions to push them ruthlessly from their slippery foothold. If the precipice will be encountered, the overbalancing need not surprise. Precarious at the best any theory that can be framed to explain the adjustment of the two natures in one person must be. This metaphysically-inclined conception of Christ Jesus as a sort of amalgam of a self-emptied, depotentiated divinity, and humanity raised to its highest power, inspires no more confidence than others.

Of Kenoticism as a theory to account for the relation between the two natures in the one person of Christ it may quite safely be predicted that it shall only have its day. The face of things is in fact undergoing a change even now, and this fashionable theory is now beginning to be tainted and tinctured with new and ever newer ideas. This is not the first attempt by any means to construe into intelligibility the question of how Christ could be God and man in one person, and to set out in rational fashion how the two natures were related. To take what are generally regarded as the most conspicuous points in the history of Christology, there was in Appollinarianism a sort of pruning away of the humanity of Christ, excluding a rational human soul, principally with the idea of maintaining intact the singleness of His personality. Nestorianism, again, brought the two natures into no more than sympathetic harmony with one another, and by holding them too far apart the person was no longer an irrefragible unity. Eutychianism, in the very opposite direction, merged the two natures into one compound, a confusion not at all counterbalanced by the singleness of personality still retained. The statement of the Council of Chalcedon propounds no theory; but merely asserts the unity of personality and duality of natures. Not so the next landmark, Lutheran doctrine, which by almost a deification of His humanity approximates to Eutychianism. After all these comes Kenoticism, with its attempt to adjust the relation between the two natures, as we have seen, by the idea of a kenosis or self-emptying on Christ’s part. in the sphere of His divinity, not in the relative way legitimately following from the scripture supplying the term, but in an absolute and universal fashion unsupported by it, and inconsistent with all that otherwise scripture reveals of Him.

This inconsistency is abundantly evident from comparison with the Gospels, to even the most superficial study of them. Take as an instance that element of the teaching which has to say to Christ’s knowledge. The theory as it applies to this is that, in becoming man, “He laid aside the loud attributes of omnipotence and omniscience, and shared in these matters the limitations of our nature. Omniscience as to His mind was no more an attribute of the Man Christ Jesus than omnipresence as to His body.” “We are in the habit,” it is said, “of attributing, unconsciously perhaps, the divine mind to Christ, whereas, if any one thing is clear from the Gospels, it is that His knowledge and intelligence were of the ordinary human order.” Here at last we come to a question of plain facts, capable of being verified by reference to Scripture. Having now something definite to go upon, let us examine it. And first as to what is said of what Christ has laid aside. Is it the case that omniscience, or the knowledge of things divinely, was never manifested by the Man Christ Jesus? Does the Gospel record bear this out? Was it not on the contrary over and over again made apparent that such an attribute was really His, and was really there to flash out as occasion time and again called it into exercise? It was indeed precisely one of the ways in which at times He indicated that He was God. How frequently now during His ministry do we find simple souls, discovering themselves so fully read through by one penetrating glance of Him who discerned their inmost thoughts, impressed, in a way they could not have been by anything else, with the sense of who He really was.

One striking example of this comes to mind. In John 16 we learn that a certain statement of the Master’s had occasioned no small cogitation and perplexity to His disciples. Among themselves, strictly so, they had discussed it, not as yet making Him aware of their trouble (vers. 17, 18). Yet into the privacy of their secret thoughts Christ had penetrated, manifesting thus the power of reading men’s hearts, which is so clearly a divine prerogative. Knowing, in a most literal sense of the word divining, their still unexpressed difficulty, and that they were desirous to ask Him, He said unto them, “Do ye now inquire among yourselves of that I said?” Explaining and amplifying His previous utterance, He so fully and correctly dealt with their unconfessed perplexity that at the close they were forced to exclaim, “Now we are sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee; by this we believe that thou camest forth from God.”

Nor was this a solitary instance of His ability to discern things as well as truths beyond the range of merely human vision. How often it is apparent that His knowledge of men, their deeds, their thoughts, their hearts, was such as we can attribute only to the divine mind. He seemed to hear men thinking, as it is sometimes said. “Come see a man which told me all things that ever I did,” said the woman of Samaria. “Is not this the Christ?” On how many occasions was such conviction of His deity wrought in men who came in contact with Him. Take but two, one from the beginning, the other from the close of John’s Gospel. Nathaniel under the fig tree was known by Him, both as to his character and circumstances, and on hearing both described so accurately by One to whom such information could not possibly have been conveyed by the ordinary channels, he was constrained to ejaculate, “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel.” Thomas again, absent on the first occasion when, in spite of closed doors, the risen Lord appeared among His disciples, on the second occasion heard from the Savior’s lips the very words his unbelief had framed, and how was he forced to exclaim in ever-memorable words, “My Lord and my God!”

Ask such as these what opinion they would have of Christ’s having laid aside His omniscience. Why, it was the discovery of this very fact, “Thou knowest all things,” that so forcibly brought home to them conviction of who He really was. This it really was that, among the many ways in which His deity was often manifested, formed one of the most striking. The kind, no less than the scope, of the knowledge usually shown to be His, far from being an evidence of the extensive degree in which He had surrendered divine prerogatives, most clearly manifests His continued possession of such prerogatives in that very sphere. Knowledge such as He habitually displayed, consciousness of things others needed to have revealed, discernment of things no others could see, seem to argue in an inevitable way not the giving up, but the retention, back of all if in no other way, of full divine omniscience. [ J. T.]

(Continued from page [28)

(To be continued)

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

But, as F. W. Grant has so well said, “We cannot fathom the Christ of God. We can realize how perfectly, divinely, on both sides He suits us, though we may be quite unable to put the two sides together. Dual personality would not suit us; but we want one who is both perfectly human and truly divine—One who can sleep in the storm and rise and still the storm. Such a Savior we have got, how good to know it—if we can see nothing besides His heart of love that unites the two together.” “His heart of love uniting the two together” —a most blessed “conjunction medium” that, assuredly. If in no other way, certainly thus do we perceive them to be most truly united, as who cannot most surely testify who knows the blessed Savior and has experience of His love. That love, which, sweetly as it suits our case, would have been in vain had—He in whom it was manifested been anything less than God, no less truly depended upon Him being really and truly man that to us it might be made known. The power of the one, and the reality of the other were alike necessary, and in that love wherewith He loved us how truly both are present. By all the sweet familiarity of manhood has His approach been characterized, is it in anything less than the power of Godhead that He has drawn nigh?

Can we imagine Him undertaking in love to come upon the scene of man’s sin and degradation, with the purpose of effecting our ransom and redemption from these, and as He stoops to the task, laying aside those very attributes by whose agency alone that could be accomplished? All those immeasurable resources of divine power and wisdom which were eternally His, was it not just then that they were most of all indispensable if He were to be, as He is, “mighty to save”? How could it be in anything like this sense that He who was rich has impoverished Himself that we might be made rich? Would not that be, humanly speaking, to defeat His own object? Beggared Himself of all divine prerogatives to take up a task that nothing but divine power could accomplish; in a path and by a way that nothing but divine wisdom could select and devise! Nay, love is wiser than that.

We may be sure His voluntary impoverishment, great as it was, did not extend to matters such as these. The grace of our Lord Jesus, the riches of His glory, and the poverty to which He descended, were in themselves infinite enough, without imagining the first to imply such a kenoticism between the second and the third as really leaves the Blessed One who came in love to redeem us, shorn of that which alone could effect the purpose of His coming.

Of one thing all whom His love has reached and won may be assured no dispossession or curtailment of the divine in His Person could the Blessed Lord have adopted which curtailed His power to deal effectively with our case; no limitation of humanity would He have entered which limited his ability to employ the fullest resources available on our behalf. And if in no other way can we explain how divine power and wisdom could be His, while still in all respects a true and real man, we can only say we can understand Him possessing and using divine attributes because He was also divine, and because of the divine love in His heart which was no less wonderful. They may tell us that such attributes as omnipotence and omniscience, being quite incompatible with any assumption of real human nature, must have been laid aside. But “must” is a strong word, and “must have been” has often to give way before “may have been,” and there are cases where our rules do not apply. For are we now to say that only what of God was compatible with human nature retained its place, and was manifest in Christ? What then of this His love which Christ came to declare? Was divine love any less incompatible than divine power or divine wisdom? Was it laid aside, or in any way depotentiated or conditioned by, or for, contact with humanity?

It may be the New Testament nowhere says that “God is omnipotence,” or, “God is omniscience”; but assuredly it does say that “God is love.” And if divine love was not laid aside, but revealed in its fullness and strength in the Man Christ Jesus, where can the difficulty be in believing in the presence and activity in the Blessed Savior Himself of its attendant power and perception, the omnipotence and omniscience of Deity? Oh, how poor, how incredibly poor our perception is of the glory of His person! Was He not God, eternally the Son of God, and now upon earth

“God manifest, God seen and heard,

The heaven’s beloved One.”

The image of the invisible God, the effulgence of His glory, the impress of His substance, the everlasting Word that in the beginning was, was with God, and was God, and now for us become the Word made flesh; all this and more He was, and is, and ever shall have the glory of being. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of an only begotten with the Father, full of grace and truth.”

And now, in closing our study of this part of the Creed, were it not infinitely better to have observed that reticence on questions as to the Person of Christ which a spirit of true reverence would inculcate, which the example of the Scriptures would itself enjoin, and which all who are spiritually-minded feel when they approach the subject, not to mention that distinct pronouncement of His own concerning

“The higher mysteries of Thy fame

The creature’s grasp transcend,

The Father only Thy blest name

Of Son can comprehend”

— “No man knoweth the Son but the Father.”

From the Person of Christ the Creed passes to a not less important topic—His work. His work of atonement, that is to say, or what was effected by His death on the cross. Most singularly brief, however, is the consideration given to the subject in the exposition we are following. His passion and death, referred to in the clauses, “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried,” are rightly spoken of as facts that are central and vital to all that claims the name of Christianity. How truly this is so is abundantly evidenced from the large place given to it in primitive Christian teaching. In apostolic doctrine, as we have it in the epistles of the New Testament, to go no further, the cross is by far the most prominent feature. It is a fact not unworthy of mention, and certainly not unnoticed by hostile critics either, how completely, after His death, the attention, the emphasis, of scripture came to be placed upon that death as precisely the point of moment. Whether, having regard to the measure of attention it claimed even from the very first, we can speak of anything like a transference of emphasis or not from His life and ministry, certainly the cross, the death of Christ, holds and fills a place in early Christian doctrine almost supreme. It quite surpasses at any rate anything like the proportionate mention we should look for, if it were but an incident, granted even a striking incident, of His historical career. No, it was more than an incident. The unique and transcending place assigned to it in the apostolic scheme points to its having for them, as for soundness in the Christian faith it has still, crucial and unrivaled importance. Rapidly and early, and, we may say, undeviatingly and continuously since, Christian thought under divine guidance has come to be concentrated upon it as the foundation of its system, the fundamental item of its faith, has come to regard and esteem as the distinguishing or distinctive fact in regard to its Founder, not His life, not His miracles, not His teaching, but His death—has come to glory in His cross as the feature which outstands in, the truth which characterizes Christianity.

And there can really be no shifting of the focus of Christianity from this point without surrendering all that upon which it rests, and all that constitutes its power, its dynamic, its meaning as a gospel for sinful men. That such things as the suffering and death of Christ are of vital importance to Christianity as a religion there are few, perhaps even among merely nominal Christians even, but are prepared to admit. For it is universally realized that the cross is an integral part of its system of doctrine. And although varied may be the measures in which the truth of it is realized, as in some sense or other the procuring cause of our redemption, the death of Him who for us men and for our salvation underwent that dread ordeal, that is accepted by all who of His saving grace have had experience. It is felt and confessed by all as that upon which absolutely everything depends. Admit the divine purpose of redemption, or even the need of it for men, for us, and it is at once seen to stand or fall with the truth of a saving work effected by the suffering and death of the Redeemer.

As has been said, the consideration of the death of Christ, as to what it imports, is passed over lightly. Almost summarily dismissed in fact, rival theories of the atonement are mentioned as contending for place, and a safe line is sought to be taken by leaving all such aside, and accepting simply as a large general truth that Christ Jesus died for us. The fact is the great thing, it is said. The implications, the significance, of but lesser account. That is all very well; but it may be questioned if it will be found quite satisfactory, or possible even to draw the line at that. Real sin-burdened souls will look for some more definite evidence of the great sin question, of so much significance to them, having been dealt with therein. It is no academic question with them, and that Christ not only died for us, but that “He died for our sins according to the scriptures” will seem to betoken a relation between His death and the question of their sins that merits some more definite term than an implication. If in earnest indeed, the pardoned sinner cannot but be drawn on to consider how, by what means, in what manner, He has been cleared of His sins, and granted deliverance through the death of “the Lamb of God which beareth away the sin of the world.” When we find also, on the back of what is said as to the acceptance of the fact of Christ’s death, without attachment to any theory of atonement, a quite wanton scoff at the old Calvinistic ideas on the subject, dissatisfaction deepens.

[J. T.]

(Continued from page 160)

(To be continued)

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

Precisely here again we enter the interesting territory where new and old in Presbyterian theology contrast so deeply. It is just at such points, where the strong tide of high Calvinism meets the freshening flood of New Theology ideas, that one cannot but be arrested. The surge and swell of contending thought are there so marked. One whom we have before quoted from, Prof. Orr, has some discernment of the true bearing of much that is now put forth; and on such reasoning regarding the atonement as has been instanced he has remarked, “Distinction is often made between fact and theory in the doctrine of atonement; but it is evident that an element of what is called theory, i.e. of doctrinal significance, attaches to even the simplest statements of scripture on this subject. It is not every conception of the cross that suits the full and varied representations given of it in scripture. The New Testament will not allow us to believe that everything remains vague and undetermined in the meaning we are to attach to Christ’s doing and dying for our salvation.” And another, not a Presbyterian, has spoken out thus: “It is sometimes said, There are several theories of the atonement, but we have to do with the fact, and not with our understanding of it! This frame of mind is the root of all that is most feeble and ominous in the teaching in our churches to-day.” Then against the derision of such discarded ideas as the Calvinistic one of “Christ having rendered by His blood satisfaction to divine justice in the sense of quantative payment of a ransom,” compare a remark of the same, “We cannot in any theology which is duly ethicized dispense with the word satisfaction. It was no satisfaction of a ‘jus talionis ‘ yet the sinner could only be saved by something that thus damned the sin.” And still another, “There is room to-day for a truly forensic doctrine of the atonement. Christ has redeemed us not by a facile amnesty; but by making our sin His own in vicarious love, and bearing it in the face of the universe.”

A “facile amnesty” it is to be feared is the too common conception of what has resulted from the death of Christ for us, with but little concern for the solemn fact that ere sins could at all be forgiven there were questions, long-outstanding questions, between God and our souls to be settled, as regards the heinousness of them in His sight, and the guilt of them lying upon us, and that for the necessary removal of both, a real true work of atonement, propitiatory and expiatory, had to be accomplished by the vicarious suffering and death of the “Lamb of God.” A most remarkable confession was made by a young minister recently. “I have been urged,” he wrote, “to make the cross of Christ the heart of my teaching, but I have the vaguest possible conception of what is meant by this and similar phrases. I can understand the cross as the transcendent symbol of the Christian life; as symbolizing the death of the Christian to sin, but I fail to see the relation between the actual crucifixion on Calvary and the forgiveness of sins.” Consider how momentous that confession is from an accredited preacher of the gospel. And is there not serious reflection awakened as to the theological system of which such as this is the product. Here is one who has just undergone a modern theological training, and is regarded as qualified to preach and teach the truth of God. And what is the attitude assumed towards this great, vital, central doctrine of atonement. The cross, unless symbolizing the death of the Christian to sin (which is not atonement, but at best a sequel to it), has no such supreme importance attaching to it as to make it in any sense central to his teaching. No relation perceived between the death of Christ and the forgiveness of sin! A most strange confession! On what then is such forgiveness to be based? Or is it that there is no need for such a basis? Are we to imagine forgiveness of sins by God to be so light a matter as to need no such ground for its exercise as Scripture shows the death and blood of Christ to have provided. Really, if the state of mind disclosed does not indicate just such a conception as has been spoken of, of salvation as a sort of “facile amnesty” from sin, to be prevalent theology to-day, what else does it?

The real fact is, as Prof. Orr has pointed out, there is an ingrained aversion to the whole doctrine of an expiatory atonement in modern ideas. The principal cause, according to him, is that such presuppositions of the need and purpose of the atonement as, on the one hand, a sense of the character and holiness of God, and on the other of the gravity and guilt of sin, are totally lacking in present-day thought. A wrested mutilated doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, and the influence of a perverted evolutionary theory of man’s origin, are respectively to be held accountable for much of this departure from Biblical teaching on what God is, how holy, how righteous, how abhorrent of sin; on the fact also that sin is sin—no element of the world process, or necessity of human development, but a thing in itself horrible, displeasing to God, laying the transgressor under God’s just condemnation.

The inability to perceive any relation between the fact of Christ’s death on the cross, and the forgiveness of sins instanced above, is, alas, if all were as frank in confessing it, only too prevalent to-day. That, ere forgiveness of sins could be, the holy sinless Son of God had to become our Sin-Bearer, and under the whole burden of the cross endure the wrath and judgment of God “who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree”; that by His blood and death the requirements of God’s holiness should be met, and the whole question of sin as it affects Him be so perfectly settled that it can be said, “Once in the end of the age hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself,” and “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world”; that henceforth in the gospel there is the divine tender of a relief from the penal consequences of sin absolute, universal, and final, as also “justification by His blood,” and by God’s grace “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness not only for the passing over of the sins that are past, through his forbearance, but also that now at this time he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” —all this is fast becoming quite meaningless to, or entirely misapprehended by, those who have drifted away from the truth as to the expiatory and propitiatory atonement of our Redeemer.

The expression given to it in the Westminster Confession, or the Shorter Catechism, may, as theological expressions, neither of them quite reach to adequacy— “The Lord Jesus, by His perfect obedience, and sacrifice of Himself, which He through the Eternal Spirit once offered up unto God hath fully satisfied the justice of His Father, and purchased reconciliation, etc.,” or, “Christ executeth the office of a Priest in His once offering up of Himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God” —but they are surely preferable by far to the hazy, colorless, presentation of it given by the expositor of the Creed. This negation of all theories of the atonement, with professed adherence to the large and general truth of Christ’s death as the means, in an unspecified way, of our salvation is not reassuring in itself. When, joined to it there is ridicule, as well as repudiation, of the very expression used in the Presbyterian Confession! what can one say? No wonder it is so far back, or as far down as to the Apostles’ Creed such desire to go as the norm of faith necessary to Christianity. “Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried,” is quite comprehensive enough for them.

It may certainly be the case, that all attempts in the past to interpret the doctrine, or to construe it theologically, have failed in adequacy, or erred essentially, and being found incapable of responding to broadening and deepening thought on the subject, have had to be left behind. Otherwise put, theological definitions have consistently failed to fill out the complete doctrine as Scripture gives it, however true it be that a certain side of truth was emphasized in each case. There were, for instance, the so-called Ransom Theory, which has long since been superseded, at least, in the form in which it was originally held; the Socinian view of atonement in keeping with their system, which to believers now is just as erroneous as it ever was; the Governmental Theory prevalent in pre-Reformation times, with no more permanency. And again from the Reformation onwards what is called the Substitutionary Theory has held the field, until recently, when, as we are having instanced now, it also is being repudiated.

A word on the nature of that repudiation and what is to replace the rejected scheme. It is only quite recently that this latter was called in question, but it is in quite a wholesale fashion that it is being surrendered now. Readers of the theological works of last century must be familiar with the great and long-drawn-out controversy on “the extent of the atonement” waged so earnestly by adherents of Calvinistic theology, Presbyterians (as Candlish and Cunningham) among the number. The whole basis of reasoning on both sides was, and could not be other than, this same Substitutionary theory of atonement. Whether the results of the atonement were universal, or limited to the elect, could not, it is evident, be a question, apart from the idea of Christ having assumed in that work the place of a Substitute to render satisfaction to divine justice for sinners. It is most remarkable, yet no more than a fact, that it is almost impossible to imagine that controversy in the same quarter to-day. The Substitutionary theory, as a theory, is being dropped as completely as the others. And what is now emerging as a successor to it? Something more satisfactory, more scriptural, something giving fuller value to those aspects of the sacrifice of which admittedly the theory was deficient? The tendency now rather is away from any thought of a sacrificial and expiatory interpretation of the death of Christ at all. Complaint is made of atonement being turned into a non-moral and superstitious transaction by the theory of Christ as our Substitute taking the place and judgment due to sinners, and the trend of theology now is to develop the doctrine on what is called its ethical side. That is to say, it is not the sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus that are regarded as in themselves, or intrinsically efficacious for the covering of sin; but rather the moral qualities displayed by Christ Jesus in the descent to death, the obedience to the will of God He rendered even unto death. “The sacrifice required by God,” it is said, “was not that of so much pain, or even death itself, but a moral reparation in the offering of a great and perfect obedience.”

The “transactional” theory of atonement, as it is called, with its insistence upon “satisfaction” in the old penal sense, is considered obsolete now. It is caricatured as some monstrous growth of fanatical puritan times, with a hard legal conception of God with His outraged righteousness, like some glorified Shylock, insisting upon and obtaining its pound of flesh. That from the suffering Savior on the cross is wrung out a full measure of torment precisely equivalent to the desert of our sins, and that thus offended justice can now retire satiated and appeased by the blood of the victim! All this is derided as superstitious, and partaking too much of the nature of a material and non-moral transaction, to commend itself to Christian thought. It is a reversion, we are told, to the crude, semi-pagan ideas embodied in the Jewish ritual, and expressed in the sacrificial language of the Old Testament. Whereas, underlying the New Testament doctrine of atonement there is an altogether different conception of sacrifice. The express point of distinction, it is maintained, between the latter and the Old Testament ritual of sacrifice lies in this entire absence of a moral element in the sacrifices offered under the law. In regard to the sacrifice of Christ on the other hand, all the stress is laid upon the moral quality inherent in it. The thought of a purely objective expiation and external transaction is transcended, and the value and efficacy of His offering seen to lie in the holy obedience and submission to the will of God of which this was the crown and culmination. This, it is repeated, is the great truth which emerges in the New Testament as to atonement. Deeper than any mere expiation resulting or expiatory merit attaching, that in which the essence of Christ’s sacrifice consists is “not in His suffering, not even His death in itself, but obedience completed in the surrender of His life to the will of God.” It is explained that now, in the New Testament, if we revert to Old Testament terms at all, we must think of the sprinkling of the blood on the altar, signifying the presentation of the life to God, as the important matter, not the shedding of blood, signifying the death of the victim! It is not vicarious suffering, but representative submission ‘ that is the essential element in sacrifice!

For scripture evidence we are referred to the tenth of Hebrews. “It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore, when he cometh into the world he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me. In burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first that he may establish the second.”

Here, it is said, in this passage, we have the whole matter epitomized. This verse sets the atonement of Christ in opposition to the sacrifices of the law, and treats it as superseding them. There is the distinct repudiation of the entire conception of sacrifice as expressed in Jewish ritual. The notion therein associated with the blood shedding of the victim as something in itself of atoning virtue is absent from the New Testament conception, and the principle of vicariousness attaching to a sacrificial death emphatically ruled out. The performing of the will of God on Christ’s part and His submission to it His obedience is shown to be that in which true atonement lies.

The way in which the death of Christ under this theory (to complete our survey of it) becomes efficacious for us is not in the sense that it avails for us atoningly before God, as having borne our sins or as made propitiation for them. That is unnecessary, it is implied, for as Christ has revealed God’s attitude, there is neither hint of, nor room for, the thought of Him needing to be propitiated, or His wrath appeased. It is on our side mainly, not on His, that the influence of Christ’s death requires to be exerted. And on us accordingly all the moral influence of His perfect obedience and sinless penitence is brought to bear. By the sight of the loving Savior in the tenderness of His compassion taking on Himself the burden of His children’s [?] misdoing, and bearing on the cross the shame and misery of it in the face of the universe, we are broken down and drawn back from the far country of our sins to our un-estranged Father’s [?] ready welcome! Then as to the only aspect Godward they can understand it to possess, there is in that same perfect obedience and submission to death on the part of such a one as Christ Jesus, such a potency as to constitute it a complete and adequate moral reparation to God for all the sins humanity has been guilty, or is capable, of! “The impulse of divine holy love found its own level, its counterpart, its other self, in the perfect, sinless sacrifice of Jesus. That moral perfection, that moral equivalent to His perfect righteousness, which God craved and required in the creature, was realized in the Man Christ Jesus. In Jesus humanity was raised to the moral level of God. The total moral demand of God upon man was satisfied in man.” From all this it may be seen what the “ethical” theory of the atonement amounts to.

[J. T.]

(Continued from page 175)

(To be continued)

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

It may be recognized also that it is a theory to the production of which Scripture is called on to contribute but little. Its main concern for us being that contribution, we must again follow—remarking surely, however, how true Prof. Orr’s statement would seem to be concerning the aversion of these modern theories to everything of the sacrificial and expiatory in Christ’s death. It is abundantly evidenced from what we have quoted. It remains, however, that we consider briefly what is supposed to be Scripture evidence for it, and what measure of truth, if any, it makes a perverted use of. The Ransom and Substitutionary theories had both of them large elements of truth. “The Son of man came” not only to minister but “to give his life a ransom for many.” And “Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” Nor indeed, whatever may be thought of the old Governmental Theory associated with the name of Anselm, can there be found absolutely no element of truth in this emphasizing of the ethical or moral side of that atoning work of Christ, this “finding of the essence of Christ’s sacrifice to consist in the yielding up of His holy will to the Father.” “Sin,” it is said, “has its essence in self-will, in the setting up of the human will against God, and Christ has retracted this root-sin of humanity by offering up to God, under experience of suffering and death, the well-pleasing sacrifice of a will wholly obedient and self-surrendered.” Whatever we may think of the expression, or whether this idea of the retraction of the root-sin of humanity is at all a scriptural thought, we certainly learn from Rom. 5:19 that “as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.”

Not, of course, that Christ’s work of atonement is at all the subject of Rom. 5:19, at least directly. Rather is it the larger, more general, question of the contrast of Adam and Christ in their respective headships, with the results accruing respectively to those ranged under such headships from the characteristic act with which the “one man” in each case is credited. That with which Adam is to be associated is the act of disobedience which proved so disastrous to the race. That which those who are Christ’s ever look back to as the ground of their being constituted righteous is His perfect obedience. Not at all in the sense of His keeping the law for us throughout His life, needless to say—for when in scripture is legal righteousness ever treated as vicarious?—but in that obedience “unto death, even the death of the cross,” which so amply fulfilled the will of God. It is, as one has said, the burnt-offering aspect of Christ’s work, the full sweet savor of that in which God was glorified. There was undoubtedly that in the sacrifice of Christ which had to say to the will of God flagrantly disobeyed, as well as to His character and honor vilely traduced by man’s sin. And, as constituting part of the God-glorifying character of what was accomplished when Christ laid down His life, His obedience unto death, even the death of the cross, is not to be forgotten.

And thus also as to Heb. 10. That scripture is fastened on, and rightly so, as the great exposition of what is called the New Testament conception of sacrifice. Now does this differ, radically so, from what one would gather from the Old Testament on the subject? There need be no doubt as to what that latter is. Crude, semi-pagan, material, or whatever else it may be reviled as, there is undeniably a definite and consistent doctrine of sacrifice apparent throughout the Old Testament. And even the advocates of the new theory are forced to admit that the primary thought underlying the sacrificial language of ritual is just this of vicarious suffering and expiatory death. From Abel’s more excellent sacrifice onward, the attention is directed always and unvaryingly to these as the essential element in the matter of atonement for sin. That is clear. What then of the claim that in the New Testament we come to something entirely different? On any right understanding of what it means for the Bible to be God’s Word, inspired of Him, this of course would be an impossible idea, this divergence of teaching on the important question of sacrifice for sin. But apart from that, does what the New Testament scriptures teach contradict the older revelation?

Take this tenth of Hebrews as a case in point. That the atonement of Christ is set in contradistinction to, and is presented as superseding the sacrifices of the law is plain; but in what sense? Is it in that these gave, and could give no other than, a wholly erroneous and false idea of how God could be approached, or could remit sins, whereas Christian teaching expresses the truth entirely unknown to and never hinted at by them? Or is it not rather the case that just what gave them value, and to the writer of Hebrews justified this extended reference, was that, appointed by Jehovah as they were, these sacrifices and offerings prefigured, and should have been seen to point out, that which has been fulfilled, and reduced to reality by what Christ has done. What says the opening verse of the chapter. The law had “a shadow of good things to come,” if not “the very image.” That would seem to imply surely that between the two systems there is that which calls for comparison as well as that which provokes contrast. To stand in the relation of substance and shadow there must be a resemblance, at least in outline, which would be quite incompatible with divergent ideas of such a primary matter as atonement.

Then examine the phraseology of the passage throughout. If the intention was to reject in totality the Old Testament doctrine of sacrifice, and to put aside the whole theory of vicarious suffering as worthless, we should imagine language entirely different from what the Jewish ritual had made familiar to be applied to what the death of Christ had effected. Yet what do we find? Deliberate intention to rule out the possibility of entertaining such a thought seems to be stamped on the chapter. Where could a more explicit reiteration of the very phrases familiar to one brought up under the Old Testament ritual be found? As one has said, “Instead of carefully avoiding sacrificial terms, because sacrifice is the thing repudiated, it emphatically reproduces them. ‘Offering thou wouldest not’—yes, but this is spoken with another sacrifice, another offering, ‘the offering of the body of Christ ‘ full in view.” Of which sacrifice it is distinctly testified also that it avails in that very expiatory sense adumbrated by the sacrifices under the law. “But this man... offered one sacrifice for sins.” “By one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once.”

Plainly that last, that “offering of the body of Christ once” is the point of the whole passage. “A body hast thou prepared me” certainly is brought in along with the thought of the sacrifices offered by the law being rejected; but it is not on the “body prepared” but on the “body offered” that the stress is laid and the vicariousness of atonement made to depend. While it is exactly what the trend of modern speculation threatens to obscure, this agrees perfectly with the uniform account of His death in scripture as an objective act of propitiation, in itself an efficacious ransom for sinners.

It is in light of all this also that we must hear His word, “Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.” The question with the new theory as to the interpretation of this verse has been narrowed down as follows by one writer— “Was this, as many now teach, a performing in a life of perfect general obedience, into which obedience we enter by the submission of our wills to God, was this the substitute for the sacrifices of the law? or was it the doing of the will of God in one specific and sacrificial act—was it His body offered as upon an altar? a body broken?] and blood poured out like wine?” Beyond a doubt our blessed Lord’s obedience, His doing the will of God, comes into view in this passage, and that not merely incidentally, but of distinct purpose and as quite in the line of its reasoning. We may say that in its scheme of doctrine there are two things of central importance presented—the will of God, and the work of Christ. And it is quite clear that as surely as He to perfection performed the latter, so did He in fullness the former.

But, if we are to distinguish, on which let it be asked, are the requisite taking away of sins, the purging of the worshippers, or the perfecting of the sanctified made precisely to depend as foundation or basis?

The sacrificial work of Christ most undoubtedly. “He was once offered to hear the sins of many,” and “He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” No doubt all is to be traced to the will of God as its origin. The source of all is there. Nor are we to reason that Christ’s doing the will of God was simply His carrying that will into effect as regards our salvation. There is something far deeper than that in His, “Lo, I come to do thy will,” even His personal and positive obedience thereto, wonderful beyond all as that is in itself when we remember who He was that rendered it. And again, who shall deny that this self-devotedness of the Son of God to His will formed the great element of value, the moral quality if you will, in the acceptable sacrifice He offered?

Nor is this aspect neglected in the eminently typical ritual of the Old Testament. What else is it that is presented in the burning of the fat upon the altar so continually prescribed but the energy of a will devoted unto God, specially emphasized on one occasion at least as “the food of the offering made by fire unto Jehovah.” And again, as has been said, what is it that is expressed in the burnt-offering if it be not this unreserved devotedness, and to death, His holy will entirely self-surrendered, and nothing but the will and glory of God in view as motive and end. This was par excellence “the offering of sweet savor,” as it is in such devotedness of obedience unto death that God can have delight and find pleasure as that in which He has been glorified. “Christ hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor.” And, as in Heb. 10 it is a question of an offering in which He can truly find pleasure and satisfaction, that aspect of the sacrifice is emphasized in which this is prominent. With what unmingled and infinite delight, may we not say, can God contemplate that offering of the body of Christ, when we remember that there and then, in presence of the declared failure of all that was offered under the law to give Him satisfaction, His own blessed Son, in the humanity He had assumed for that express purpose, accomplished all His will, and, in self-sacrificing devotedness in the place of death itself, not only satisfied, but glorified, Him perfectly even as to sin itself.

(Continued front page 192)

[ J. T.]

(To be continued)

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

If, as we cannot but believe, man’s sin and rebellion, the self-will that constitutes its essence. must be not only painful and highly obnoxious to Him in itself, but in its most revolting feature, to speak as a man, a reflection, a shame, a dishonor on His own great Name in the face of His own great universe, how correspondingly great must be the pleasure He derives from the perfect sinless sacrifice of His own beloved Son come, in the humanity prepared for Him, to do His will, even unto death! And, if we cannot speak of the root-sin of humanity being herein retracted, can we not say at least that the position has been retrieved, gloriously retrieved, as regards the apparent traducing of God’s character through man’s becoming partaker in that great and terrible revolt of evil so maliciously planned by the enemy? For if the enemy have plans, is God without plans also? Eternal counsels are His, and quite in the track of their working, we are assured, is all that has been accomplished here. The fall of man, the rebellion of the creature, the setting up of the human will against God, how terrible a spectacle! But the perfection and obedience of Jesus Christ, tested and manifested to the extreme limit of death itself, in its expression of devotedness and self-surrender to His will affords, according to these same divine counsels, a manifestation, a display bringing glory to God in surpassing measure. “Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.”

It is right that we should remember what the old “transactional theory” may have in some measure obscured—that the suffering and sacrifice of Christ was no mere piece of bargaining! something in the nature of a quantative repayment! so much suffering for so much sin nor only, as it truly was the case, that in being once offered He hare the sins of many; but that there and then was accomplished a work in and by which not only was the Son of man Himself glorified; but God also glorified in Him, and that through His perfect obedience—who even of the laying down of His life did say, “This commandment have I received of my Father.” And this emphatically enters into what constitutes that propitiatory character of the work which theories of the atonement so consistently ignore. But there must be no divorcing of the idea of the true expiatory nature of the Savior’s sufferings from this perfection of devotedness to God’s will to make everything of intrinsic value to consist in the self-abnegation and obedience so strikingly culminated there.

Theories of the atonement come and go. Logical and exhaustive no doubt they have each appeared to their originators. But one and all they have foundered in the past, and none have succeeded in filling out the complete scripture doctrine on the subject. Where all have failed, that remains for us clear and consistent, higher and fuller than theory or creed can reach or express. Explained to us also there, solely yet sufficiently, as never in theological statement or creed, by the revealed character of God Himself, who in His great love would have us, delivered and cleansed from sin, brought to Himself in righteousness, to be holy and without blame before Him in love.

“Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.” Facts sure enough they are, and “necessary to everlasting salvation to believe “; but how bald, how bare the statement of them! How open to any possible construction, and therefore worthless as definition, of what the import and significance may be of that greatest, most vital of all truths—the atoning work of our Redeemer! It was characteristic of the creeds to be vague and indefinite here, and indeed they are uniformly so. Sound enough in statement, as far as the statement goes as to Christ’s death; but fatally omitting all mention of what that death signified and accomplished. Is it not also a little remarkable that as we advance, beginning with the Apostles’ Creed, the statement becomes in the Nicene and Athanasian more and yet more meager. “Suffered for our salvation” eventually suffices to define all that advancing formalism and ritualism cared to retain. As forgiveness of sins became clouded over with uncertainty, and justification by faith so completely dropped out, what else could the doctrine of full and perfect atonement by Christ’s death be but ignored and recede into the background? Strange that modern infidelity should give indications of pursuing the same path. Christ’s death, His sufferings, in some way or other availing for our salvation is as far as they can pledge themselves to go. How different from such a clear and definite statement of faith as the following: “From Scripture I learn that this Blessed One, the Lord Jesus Christ, died for all, having given Himself a ransom for all, that He has made propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world; that God being a righteous and holy God, the Son of man had to be lifted up upon the cross; that there He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, and was made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him;... that He has obeyed even unto death, and wrought a perfect work upon the cross for us;... that as by one man’s disobedience many were constituted sinners, so by the obedience of one many shall he constituted righteous; that we are sanctified or set apart to God by God the Father through the offering of Jesus Christ once for all.”

In this study of the creed, were one to mark all that disapproves itself to the faith of plain people, reared on scripture teaching, and unlearned in, or unsophisticated by the lore of the schools, there should be no end. It is after all no wonder that, as one goes on, this exposition of Christian doctrine from the Presbyterian standpoint is found to fairly bristle with points of possible contention, or of unavoidable dispute. The influx of new thought, of the critical, dissolving, disintegrating spirit characteristic of our time is revolutionizing, as intelligent observers have all along predicted it would, the whole theological system of this interesting section of Christendom. As the evidence and product of this, in their modern preaching and lecturing, how much there is that is new and of foreign sound about it all! And in the instance before us, are we not being constantly arrested by the novel and strange in the interpretation given to an enunciation of doctrines on which Presbyterians in their measure used to be sound enough. We have seen it on the very elementary truth concerning the being of God, as to the question of the evidences to His existence. How the witness of nature to Him has been adulterated by the accommodation sought to be given to the hypothesis of evolution! How on the other hand the fact that among men such a thing as a universal religious sense, or God-consciousness exists has been so perverted in the interests of the so-called science of Comparative Religion as to give entirely false value to its witness! And with all this Revelation itself, as a testimony not only that God must he, but that He is, and may be known, left out of the sum of Christian evidences. While on the question of His Fatherhood, raised as a final item in connection with the first clause of the Creed, there is entire misapprehension both of the nature of the relationship, and of the plane upon which it is realized. Then, when we come to the second clause, speculation, modern philosophy, and theories of New Theology complexion have so leavened Christology that on both the deity and humanity of Christ very little that is really satisfactory can be gleaned. While again, on the contrary, it is just there, on the Person of Christ, that the malign influence of modern theology is most apparent. Nor is the great fundamental doctrine of Christ’s atonement immune from the contagion of novel interpretation, the surrender of valuable elements of the truth being here very marked.

And, were one to go on, the exposition would reveal in almost each several clause as it is taken up, most remarkable departure not only from scripture truth, but from the standards of doctrine professed in Presbyterianism as well. The first is no doubt the most sorrowful feature; but the latter also to thoughtful observers is indicative of much that calls for serious reflection. “Amidst the breaking up of conventional modes of thought and the felt insufficiency of the common standards of orthodoxy, if superstition does not take the place of truth... there is especial danger of the mind becoming weary and indifferent in the march after what is vital, and so taking refuge in the question, What is truth? as if it allowed of no definite or sufficient answer. This state of mind, in degree, may infest the church, as well as become the prevalent folly of the world.” But know this, O doubter, that truth will never be truth to thee nor to thy soul, until it is translated into action. Truth appeals to thy conscience, to thine affections, to thy duty, with all the authority of the God of truth. At first it deals with thee about ruin or redemption. It next claims to be formative of thy motives, to be the guide of thine actions, the director of thy thoughts, the animator of thine hopes, the overseer of thy whole inner as well as thine outer life. Truth exists not for thee, if thou refuse to it thine obedience and thine heart.” J. T.

(Concluded from page 208)

Atonement

In Rom. 5:11 and Heb. 2:17, the two words “atonement” and “reconciliation” should change places. We (believers) receive the reconciliation which is of “persons” as here (2 Cor. 5:20; Col. 1:21), or of “things” by and by (Col. 1:20).

Atonement or propitiation is for sin and sins, and made to God.

The Bible

I have a profound, unfeigned (I believe divinely-given) faith in the Bible. I have, through grace, been by it converted, enlightened, quickened, saved. I have received the knowledge of GOD by it, to adore His perfections—of JESUS, the Savior, joy, strength, comfort of my soul. Many have been indebted to others as the means of their being brought to God—to ministers of that gospel which the Bible contains, or to friends who delight in it. This was not my case. That work, which is ever GOD’S, was wrought in me by means of the written word. He who knows what the value of Jesus is, will know what the Bible will be to such a one. If I have, alas! failed in thirty years’ arduous and varied life and labor, I have never found it fail me. If it has not failed for the poor and needy circumstances of time, through which we feebly pass, I am assured it never will for eternity. “The word of the Lord abideth forever.” If it reaches down even to my low estate, it reaches up to God’s height, because it is from thence: as the love that can reach even to me, and apply to every detail of my feebleness and failure, proves itself divine in doing so—none but God could do this, and hence it leads me up to Him. As Jesus came from God and went to God—so does the Book that divinely reveals Him come from and elevate to Him. If received, it has brought the soul to God, for He has revealed Himself in it. Its positive proofs are all in itself. The sun needs no light to see it by.

I avow, in the fullest, clearest, and distinctest manner here, my deep, divinely-taught conviction of the inspiration of the Scriptures. While of course allowing, if need be, for defect in the translation and the like, when I read the Bible, I read it as of absolute authority for my soul as GOD’S word. There is no higher privilege than to have communications direct from God Himself.

My joy, my comfort, my food, my strength, for nearly thirty years—have been the Scriptures received implicitly as the WORD OF God. In the beginning of that period, I was put through the deepest exercise of soul on that point. Did heaven and earth, the visible church, and man himself crumble into nonentity, I should, through grace, since that epoch, hold to the word as an unbreakable link between my soul and God. I am satisfied that God has given it me as such. I do not doubt that the grace of the Holy Spirit is needed to make it profitable, and to give it real authority to our souls, because of what we are; but that does not change what it is in itself. To be true when it is received, it must have been true before.

And here I will add, that although it requires the grace of God and the work of the Holy Ghost to give it quickening power; yet divine truth, God’s word, has a hold on the natural conscience from which it cannot escape. The light detects the wrong-doer, though he may hate it. And so the word of God is adapted to man, though he be hostile to it—adapted in grace (blessed be God!) as well as in truth. This is exactly what shows the wickedness of man’s will in rejecting it. And it has power thus in the conscience, even if the will be unchanged. This may increase the dislike of it; but it is disliked because conscience feels it cannot deny the truth. Men resist it because it is true. Did it not reach their conscience, they would not need to take so much pains to get rid of and disprove it. Men do not arm themselves against straws, but against a sword whose keen edge is felt and feared.

Reader, it speaks of grace as well as truth. It speaks of God’s grace and love, who gave His only-begotten Son that sinners like you and me might be with Him, know Him, deeply, intimately, truly know Him—and enjoy Him forever, and enjoy Him now; that the conscience, perfectly purged, might be in joy in His presence, without a cloud, without a reproach, without fear. And to be there in such a way, in His love, is perfect joy. The word will tell you the truth concerning yourself; but it will tell you the truth of a God of love, while unfolding the wisdom of His counsels.

Let me add to my reader, that by far the best means of assuring himself of the truth and authority of the word is to read the word itself.

J. N. D.

Biblical Deluge and Modern Science

We constantly hear the narrative of Noah’s flood attacked, and denounced as untrue. We are told that it is contradictory to modern science, that it never could have occurred, and that it is a mere myth. And yet, there were never more erroneous statements than these ever uttered, for a long array of scientific and historical facts can be marshalled in order, which prove to demonstration that the Biblical Deluge is not only a great truth, but is in perfect harmony with the teachings of modern science.

Let us see the evidence for Noah’s flood which can now be brought forward.

First of all there is the tradition of a great flood, which in ancient times was firmly held by the great nations of classical antiquity, and is believed to-day by many savage and heathen races, while it was also held by the ancestors of these savages long before they were influenced by Christianity.

How did this tradition arise? There must have been a cause. It cannot have been an invention, because it is found everywhere and amongst all races. It cannot have been a rain myth, because it is held by barbarous races in lands where the rainfall is slight. Besides this, the tradition as it is held by savage races, and by ancient cultured nations generally, says that the flood was a punishment for man’s sin; hence the story could not have originated from the mere fall of rain. The only way to account for the flood story is to believe that some great diluvial catastrophe occurred, the remembrance of which has been preserved by many races of mankind.

When we are told that geology proves that the Mosaic deluge never took place, it is enough to reply that those who make this objection are strangely at fault in their geology. In the past and in the present, most eminent geologists have believed and do believe in the reality of Noah’s flood. In England we may cite the honored names of Dr. Buckland, Sir Henry Howorth, and Sir Joseph Prestwich, as those of leading geologists who have maintained that the Biblical Deluge was a great fact. The eminent Scotch geologist, Hugh Miller, held the same views, and the late Duke of Argyll, a first rate geologist, maintained similar opinions. In France the diluvial catastrophe finds many able supporters. In Canada the late Sir William Dawson, the first of Canadian geologists, constantly maintained in many of his books that geology proved that the Biblical deluge had actually taken place. In America, Professors Hitchcock and Claypole have held the same view. Lastly, Professor G. F. Wright, one of the most talented of American geologists, has, in a most able work, proved conclusively that modern geology not only testifies to the perfect truth of Noah’s flood, but also demonstrates the manner in which it happened.

From all this it is plain that if talented geologists in the past and in the present, have maintained and do maintain that the account of the Biblical deluge is in harmony with geology, it follows, that those who say that Noah’s flood is contrary to modern science are not only wrong, but are completely ignoring some of the facts of geology.

The facts of geology which prove the truth of Noah’s flood are found in the clays, sands and gravels of the Quaternary formation, and in the character of the remains of the animals which these beds enclose. The earlier deposits of the Quaternary Era are not referred to, as those were formed by ice and water during the Glacial Period, and it is only the later beds of the Quaternary Epoch that concern our argument.

Now, at the close of the Quaternary Period, the whole of the north of Europe, Asia, and America, was inhabited by lions, tigers, hyaenas, leopards, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, and elephants. These great beasts everywhere suddenly disappeared at the end of the Quaternary Period, and not a single trace of any appears in the northern hemisphere at the beginning of the next epoch. How did they disappear? The question must have an answer. The disappearance is sudden, universal, and complete. They were not exterminated by man—for he could not have destroyed them all suddenly—and there is no sign of gradual dying out. Pestilence could not have destroyed a whole fauna suddenly, and there are no signs of a change of climate, except in northern Asia. Moreover, the bones of these great beasts are accumulated in enormous masses, and are often piled upon each other in vast numbers, small and great, herbivorous and carnivorous, being mingled together in great heaps and in inextricable confusion. They herded together in enormous numbers to avoid some terrible catastrophe, and what could that have been but an overwhelming flood of resistless waters? Man was present at the time, as the presence of his bones and weapons proves, and was overwhelmed by the same cataclysm.

Next, we have the undoubted fact that since man appeared upon the earth, a vast accumulation of sands, clays, and gravels, have been formed, which, geologically speaking, belong to the latter part of the Quaternary Period. The beds of the former portion of the Quaternary Epoch—belong to the Glacial Period and are not now under consideration. The deposits we have alluded to are chiefly found in the northern hemisphere, and are full of bones of lions, hyaenas, tigers, elephants, and rhinoceroses; they are, in fact, the same great animals to whose sudden disappearance we have just alluded. Many of these beds are found spread out in great sheets on the summits of hills, and on the tops of extensive table-lands. These beds were formed by water, but not by rivers, for rivers run in valleys and do not flow along the tops of the hills. The beds of clay, sand, and gravel, cover hills and valleys in one vast winding-sheet. Some tremendous cause, therefore, must have formed them, which acted for a short time and then altogether ceased. Also, these beds often contain great rocks and boulders which are frequently a ton in weight, which proves that the water which deposited them rushed along with terrific speed. In many places in these beds, far away from any rivers, the deposits contain great masses of animals’ bones. These are often piled up in heaps, and the remains of all kinds of animals, herbivorous and carnivorous, great and small, are mingled together in the greatest confusion. In some places even, the bones of fishes and other sea animals are confusedly mingled with the remains of land animals. Man was present at the time of this catastrophe, for his bones and flint weapons are found in the sands and gravels, side by side with the remains of the great animals referred to. In England and in various places in Europe, these beds are known as “The Rubble Drift,” and in Siberia the bones, teeth, and tusks of elephants and rhinoceroses are found piled together in great masses in the frozen plains, and especially in the Liakoff and New Siberian islands in the Arctic Ocean.

Another proof that a great flood has occurred since man appeared upon the earth is found in the ossiferous fissures. In. many places in England and in Europe, the limestone rocks have been rent and torn into great cracks. These fissures are filled with earth, rubble, and broken stones, and the earthy deposits in the fissures are crammed full with the bones of lions, hyaenas, deer, elephants, horses, wolves, and rhinoceroses.

These bones are confusedly mingled in masses, the remains of herbivorous and carnivorous animals being crowded together in astonishing numbers. At Windy Knoll in Derbyshire, in an area of 25 feet by 18, no fewer than 6,800 bones were sorted, besides those cast aside. Man was then living on the earth, and was involved in the same catastrophe, his bones and weapons being found in a fissure at Plymouth, side by side with the remains of the animals referred to. As some of these ossiferous fissures are found on the tops of hills, it is plain that the animals must have ascended the hills in great herds, carnivorous and herbivorous animals crowding together in terror; and what could have caused them to seek shelter on the tops of the mountains except a tremendous flood, which rose above the summits of the hills and drowned the animals which had sought safety on these eminences?

Now, the catastrophe which destroyed these great animals, and heaped their bones together in masses, occurred since the creation of man. Not merely were vast multitudes of animals destroyed, but a whole fauna suddenly perished. Nothing like this has ever been seen on the earth. Very often pestilences sweep away great numbers of animals, but these murrains never destroy all the animals of one race entirely, over a widespread region. But at the time we speak of, the lion, tiger, hyaena, elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, suddenly and entirely disappeared from these northern lands, and were never seen there again. The way also that these great animals all crowded together in multitudes shows that some overwhelming catastrophe overtook them. In one spot in Oxfordshire the remains of no fewer than fifty elephants were found crowded together in one gravel pit! Similar instances have been found in other countries. There is no way of explaining such extraordinary facts except by admitting a sudden and overwhelming, flood of water. More than this, the race of men living at that time (i.e., palmolithic men) utterly perished along with the great animals, and no trace of them can be afterward discovered. How are we to account for all this wonderful array of scientific facts? It is plain that geological science proves that, since the advent of man upon the earth, a tremendous flood period or era of diluvial waters has prevailed over a large portion of the world. The Biblical account of Noah’s flood is, therefore, proved to be scientifically true, and once more it has been demonstrated that science, rightly interpreted, is in perfect harmony with the revelation of God.

D. GATH WHITLEY.

[Reproduced from “Friends’ Witness,” by kind permission of the Editor, as also of the Author.]

Brotherly Love and Love

Scripture says, “Let brotherly love continue”; and indeed it is so sweet, that the wonder is that we should ever let it drop. But we are such an unwise people, and the hardening influence of the world so much affects us, that even where there has been happy fellowship, coldness often creeps in. Sometimes brotherly affection will wither, just for want of a little expression, and our watchful enemy is only too glad to see it die down. Then, Christian, if you have love in your heart to your brother, do not hide it as a secret that must not be known. Refrain not from those small expressions of love, which will not only refresh thy brother’s heart, but keep love from dying in thine own. One can imagine how Satan may chuckle when he manages to estrange Christians from one another. Where you see this estrangement, you see the work of Satan; but where Christians are loving one another, you see the work of God’s Spirit, for “love is of God” (1 John 4:7). Do you see a Christian walking in the power of love? Then you see one who is under divine teaching, for Paul says of the Thessalonians that they were “taught of God to love one another” (1 Thess. 4:9). God is glorified and Satan defeated when love triumphs amongst Christians.

Scripture distinguishes between “love” and “brotherly love.” They are expressed by distinct words in the original. Love is “agape,” and brotherly love is one word, “philadelphia.” “Philadelphia” is rather friendly love; and the Authorized Version has tried to convey this by the expression, “brotherly kindness” (2 Peter 1:7). But it is more than that. It includes kindness, but it is love; only, love in the form which it takes in the intercourse of brethren. Perhaps the best rendering is Mr. Kelly’s, which is “brotherly affection.”

Peter tells us to add to godliness, brotherly affection, and to brotherly affection, love (2 Peter 1:7). That is to say, dry godliness—if one may speak so—won’t do; we must have with godliness, the warmth of Christian friendship, brotherly affection. How stiffly, hardly, with what grinding and creaking, the machine sometimes moves; perhaps won’t move at all, when a few drops of oil make it all right and smooth: so is love amongst brethren. Love surmounts the difficulties of the day, conquers coldness and apathy, and goes forth winning the hearts of the saints in order to serve them. Surely it is not without significance, in a book so full of symbols as the Revelation, that “Philadelphia” is the name of perhaps the most admirable of the seven churches. But then brotherly affection will not suffice alone, or it may degenerate into mere human sentiment, so there must be godliness; and with godliness, brotherly affection: then again, with brotherly affection, love: that is, love in its highest, broadest, noblest sense; love to God, love in the truth, love to the brethren shown in walking according to His commandments (2 John 1-6), love to poor fallen man. How perfect is Scripture!

Now love to the brethren is an evidence of divine life. First to ourselves, “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14); secondly to the world, “by this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35). Thus, then, love amongst Christians is a positive testimony for God in the world. Do you desire to bear testimony for Christ, to preach the gospel? Good! it is a good aspiration. But all are not gifted for this. Yet there is a testimony which everyone can display—even the humblest: he is greatest who shows it most, and the most splendid gift is naught without it. It is love! Love “in truth,” manifested amongst believers, preaches Christ to the world.

Building a House for Jehovah

Now it came to pass, as David sat in his house, that David said to Nathan the prophet, Lo, I dwell in a house of cedars, but the ark of the covenant of Jehovah remaineth under curtains. Then Nathan said unto David, Do all that is in thine heart; for God is with thee” (1 Chron. 17:1-2).

It is natural that the soul that has been the subject of a great and wonderful deliverance, or that has emerged from a protracted trial into light and liberty, should wish to do, or bring, something to God in return. But its expression, if always imperfect, may even be offensive to Him whose glory is ostensibly the object of desire, as, for instance, in the case of Jephthah (Judg. 11:30-31), where the importance and advancement of self seem rather the motive spring of his vow.

Nevertheless, the gratitude of a thankful heart is always acceptable to God, and on this occasion of our chapter the desire of David was in part the result of that which the Spirit of God had produced within him, for his unaffected piety and devotion was intensified by the thought of what God had wrought for him; and this is divine order. To be worshipped, God must be known according to the revelation He has vouchsafed. The Israelite was entitled dispensationally to approach God as a worshipper, for in Judah was God known, and His name was great in Israel; but since the nation’s rejection of Christ, “Praise waiteth (or is silent) for thee, O God, in Zion, and unto thee shall the vow be performed. O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come” (Psa. 65:1, 2). For the present, iniquities prevail against them, but when they shall be purged away, it will not be Israel alone, but “unto thee shall all flesh come.” Now, however, it is “worship in spirit and in truth,” which God now demands since the revelation of Himself, through the Lord Jesus, as our God and Father, to whom also, through Him, we have access by one Spirit (John 4:21-24; Eph. 2:18).

The purposes of God for the blessing of Israel and the exaltation of David were as yet unfulfilled. David himself might be satisfied, but God was not. It was not David alone, but all Israel, who had occasion to rejoice, in the establishment of the kingdom and the installation of the ark in Zion; for the nation had deeply compromised itself with Jehovah by turning the ark of His strength out of its resting place at Shiloh to which it never returned (1 Sam. 4). The tabernacle itself without the ark was valueless, and they who, for private ends, thus lightly profaned His sanctuary were themselves rejected, and had to endure the awful experience of being without any visible link with Jehovah for a period of nearly 100 years.

From Psa. 78, which gives the divine history of this dreary period, we may quote verses 56 to 64— “Yet they tempted and provoked the most high God; and kept not his testimonies: but turned back, and dealt unfaithfully like their fathers; they were turned aside like a deceitful bow. For they provoked him to anger with their high places, and moved him to jealousy with their graven images. When God heard this he was wroth, and greatly abhorred Israel: so that he forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which he placed among men; and delivered his strength into captivity, and his glory into the enemy’s hand. He gave his people over also unto the sword; and was wroth with his inheritance. The fire consumed their young men; and their maidens were not given to marriage. Their priests fell by the sword; and their widows made no lamentation.”

How literally were the solemn words of judgment upon Eli’s house fulfilled (1 Sam. 2:31-33; 22:17-19; 1 Kings 2:27). Yet Jehovah Himself would bring about their deliverance in the accomplishment of His purposes of royalty in David, and of worship in the temple built by David’s son. “Then the Lord waked as one out of sleep, like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine. And he smote his enemies in the hinder parts; he put them to a perpetual reproach. Moreover he refused the tabernacle of Joseph, and chose not the tribe of Ephraim, but chose the tribe of Judah, the mount Zion which he loved. And he built his sanctuary like high palaces, like the earth which he hath established forever” (Psa. 78:65-69). Now David had been made to pass through similar experience to that of the nation, as many Psalms plainly testify. So too was it with Him of whom David was, in a remarkable way, a type. For the rendering of acceptable worship to God, blessing must be realized, and the Blesser known. God has been pleased to reveal Himself as a Savior God, and in this way must He be known if the spirit of worship is to be evoked. “If thou knewest the gift of God” —nothing else appeals to the convicted sinner, and nothing so well suits the justified believer.

When the soul is established in this foundation truth of Christianity, the desire to do something for God may be rightly carried out, in accordance with the revelation of His will as revealed in the scriptures of truth. When Israel, as a nation, first experienced the power of God put forth on their behalf for deliverance and blessing, an exactly similar result was produced as will again be the case at the close of all God’s dealings with them. “Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto Jehovah, and spake, saying, I will sing unto Jehovah, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. Jehovah is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my fathers’ God, and I will exalt him” (Ex. 15:1-2). “I saw as it were a sea of glass, mingled with fire, and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass having harps of God. And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty, just and true are thy ways, thou king of the nations. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy: for all the nations shall come and worship before thee, for thy judgments are made manifest. And after that I looked, and behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony of heaven was opened” (Rev. 15:1-5). This latter scripture presents not Israel as a whole saved and blessed and established on earth, but the martyred remnant, victorious over the beast, received up into heaven, into the most intimate association with the temple of God there.

The bringing up of the ark to the city of David had stimulated the religious fervor, of which it was the expression, but only, in part, did it realize a long cherished desire. “O Jehovah, remember David, and all his afflictions. How he sware unto Jehovah, and vowed unto the mighty God of Jacob; surely I will not come unto the tabernacle of my house, nor go up into my bed; I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids, until I find out a place for Jehovah, an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob” (Psa. 132:1-5). Jacob at Bethel had likewise a similar experience. “And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely Jehovah is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. And he called the name of that place Bethel; but the name of that city was called Luz at the first. And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace; then shall Jehovah be my God; 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” (Gen. 28:16-22). The spirit of worship, however, in Jacob was restrained, and qualified by the worldliness which he allowed in his heart, proposing terms and conditions for God and himself to observe, occasioning long and severe discipline. But God preserved him even through this, and then called upon him to fulfill his forgotten vow. “And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there; and make there an altar unto God that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.... So 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 appeared unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother” (Gen. 35:1, 6, 7).

The ark of God dwelling under curtains was to David’s soul even as the altar of Bethel to Jacob. Has not the Spirit of God established such a connection in recalling “the mighty God of Jacob”? So, too, in Stephen’s defense, “David who found favor before God, and desired to find a tabernacle for the God of Jacob” (Acts 7:46). All this points to the purpose of God for man’s blessing to be consummated by the man of God’s own right hand. That purpose of blessing had advanced considerably in David’s time, but it was still in the future. In promise, David himself, blessed saint and servant of God as he was, could be only a type of the coming One, and could best serve his own generation by the will of God, by directing the hearts of the people to Christ the Messiah—the true and proper hope of Israel. How sweetly and graciously did God dissuade David from his purpose by setting His own thoughts and purpose before him. If it is a question of building God a house, God must be the builder (Eph. 2:20-22; Heb. 3:3-6); otherwise what ruin as the result of man’s building!

We see in the history of David how disappointing is man in his best estate; but we see also how in times of man’s deepest failure God delights in His purpose of bringing in the Second man, the man Christ Jesus. And faith delights in this revealed purpose and way of God by which is secured the glory of God and true and lasting blessing for the creature, “So I answered and spoke to the angel that talked with me, saying, What are these; my lord? Then the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me, Knowest thou not what these be? And I said, No, my lord. Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of Jehovah unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, said Jehovah of hosts. Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain; and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it. Moreover the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundations of this house; his hands also shall finish it; and thou shalt know that Jehovah of hosts hath sent me unto you. For who hath despised the day of small things?.. for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of Jehovah which run to and fro through the whole earth” (Zech. 4:4-10).

“And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain. Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow” (2 Sam. 23:4-5). The heart of David was thus instructed, and made to rest in the presence of God. Then went king David in, and sat before Jehovah—the only safe place from which to regard the ruin and judgment of all that is founded upon the first man, and the stability, permanence, and brightness of all that Christ the King will establish in millennial days. We see, then, that if God has to disappoint the soul of a long-cherished project, or to take away something upon which one has counted, He more than compensates for it by that which He reveals. Disappointments and trials suffered in faith and patience are but divine preparations for the most exalted order of blessing. The known character and piety of David might have been deemed a guarantee of stability in the days of the kingdom as then established, yet almost his last public act was the bringing of the judgment of God upon them (1 Chronicles 21). Here again God in mercy interposed, taking occasion of man’s sin and its consequent judgment, to give a still further revelation of His purposes for the future government and blessing of His people. “Then David said, This is the house of Jehovah God, and this is the altar of the burnt offering for Israel.”

G. S. B.

Christ: Not Judaism, Nor Christendom

A Reply to the Author of a Recent Letter to the Bishop of Manchester. (Wertheimer, Lea, and Co.)

Sir,

Though I have not read the Bishop’s sermon to the Jews, I have a few words to say in acknowledgment of your letter, sent me by yourself or some other unknown donor.

You appear throughout to forget two things, which the scriptures you own do not fail to urge: the predicted and now fulfilled rain of the Jews as a people, and the sovereign grace of God equally assured to the Genesis tiles.

The law, the Psalms, and the prophets, are unmistakable that Israel were to break down as God’s witness so completely that He would disown them for a season. (See Deut. 31:29; 32:5, 6, 15-20; Psa. 42:53; 68:18; Psa. 68; Psa. 106; Isa. 1:9; 6:9-12; 8:14; x. 20; 65:2; Hos. 1:6-9; 3:4.) So, Ezekiel shows us at the beginning the cherubim of glory gradually departing when the first Gentile power executed judgment on Israel, and at the end the return of the glory when the last Gentile empire is judged and Israel are once more and forever blessed.

The same lively oracles are no less explicit that divine mercy should visit and bless the Gentiles during His disowning of Israel. (See Deut. 32:20; Psa. 18:43, 49; Isa. 8:16, 17; 9:1, 2; 49:6; 65:1; Hos. 1:10.)

These truths shine with light brighter than the sun in God’s oracles; and the plainest facts answer to them. For on the one hand, you, the chosen people, are expelled by God (none else could have done it) from your land, capital, and sanctuary, the only spot where you can sacrifice acceptably; and without sacrifice you surely know that your worship is at an end, as is your polity also while your land is ruled by the stranger. On the other hand, those who were the vilest slaves of idolatry and moral corruption, who knew not the true God and only dreaded demons, now rejoice in your scriptures as their own, and, while you groan, they worship and praise God as their own God and Father, having renounced the abominations of the heathen.

How comes this marvelous change? When your nation fell into revolting and persistent idolatry, not only in the people and in the priests but in the king of David’s line, God justly indignant as He was swept you away into idol-loving Babylon for no more than seventy years. What sin is so much worse as to account for your last dispersion during the last 1800 years? Do you not even, suspect? What but rejection of your own Messiah, Emmanuel? The greatest of your prophets lays precisely these two counts of indictment against you: first, idolatry (Isa. 40-48); secondly, rejection of the Messiah. (Chaps. 49-57.) All is not exhausted yet; but it is blindness itself to evade such a conviction of your sins. Yea, blinded by proud unbelief, you smote the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek-Him that was to be born in Bethlehem, yet to be ruler in Israel; and no wonder, for His goings forth were from of old, from everlasting (Mic. 5:1-8); and therefore has He given you up till the birth of God’s final purpose of mercy and blessing for Israel. For the day comes when they will repent and bow before the true Joseph who will then make Himself known to His brethren-that same Joseph, who even now sustains His guilty brethren, the sons of Israel, ignorant of Him, yet famishing without Him, who is exalted among the Gentiles and there has a bride, His church. I am as sure as you that this Man, whom Jehovah owns as His Fellow (Zech. 13:7) and whom you are yet to own as the Jehovah that you pierced (Zech. 12:10), will be the peace, and will fight against your foes as in the day of battle, King over all the earth. In that day shall Israel be blessed and exalted, and the Gentiles bow, and their kings minister to Zion, and your sun no more go down nor your moon withdraw itself.

You cannot suppose then that I envy, deny, or enfeeble Israel’s future glory on the earth under Messiah and the new covenant. How could I who look, as every Christian ought, to be glorified in heaven with Christ? I have no sympathy with the conceit of Christendom which arrogates your blessings, as if you had lost your place and the Gentiles had gained it forever. The Bishop of Manchester might be as slow to believe that Christendom is speedily to be judged for its apostasy, as you are that Israel suffer for theirs. The mass in Christendom now are no better than the mass of the Jews when Nebuchadnezzar or even Titus destroyed Jerusalem. But I see, in the scriptures we both acknowledge as divine, that your most fiery trial immediately precedes the deliverance of such Jews as are written in the book. (Dan. 12:1.) You are destined to receive as “the king” in Palestine the basest of impostors Dan. 11:36-39); and the last empire of the Gentiles, the fourth Roman beast of Daniel 7, will play its most guilty part in it, when it revives (as it will soon) for God’s final judgment. You both refused the true Christ; you are both to receive the Antichrist; when the Lord of glory will appear to the perdition of the beast and the false prophet and all their adherents, but to the deliverance of such Jews and Gentiles as will have been kept from this audacious blasphemy and wickedness.

It is a ruinous oversight of your own scriptures and of your actual history that God’s anger “is appeased.” Heavier punishment is yet in store for the Jew for his tin, belief. And what evidence can be imagined lower than yours for pretending to God’s favor as a people? “The gift of genius,” talents, learning, distinction, and, “last not least! the abundance of their wealth and prosperity 111” And the Jew flatters himself that “these are stubborn facts that outweigh a thousand quotations!” So naturally does slight of their own scriptures follow slight of their own Messiah and the loss of their place and nation, and also of eternal blessedness: for if He sits at Jehovah’s right hand, the true Melchizedek, what will it be for His enemies when He strikes in the day of His wrath? (Compare Psa. 45:3-6.) His glory measures His judgments, and they are guiltiest who having the word of God fail to read and understand it aright.

It is vain for you or any other to retreat from the testimony of God’s word (and I have cited only what you must and do own) into questions of translation or interpretation-the constant resource of unbelief of Rabbis on the one hand, and of priests as well as rationalists on the other. Any respectable version of your own is quite enough to convict you of defying God’s warnings, as you now despise the lesson of your own disconsolate condition-not only without a king and a prince, but without a sacrifice, without an image or statue, and without an ephod and teraphim. The prophet supposes, that you are no longer worshipping a false God; but he unquestionably predicts Israel’s abiding many days in this strangely abnormal state without the true God or His ordinances. Has it no adequate moral cause? Did God so cast off and punish His people (now Lo-ammi) without some sin far more flagrant than their far less punished idolatry of old? What was the sin? What does Daniel intimate in chapter 9: 26, 27? You may speak of “ solace and rules of conduct for this life as well as assurance and hope for the life hereafter.” But if you have not hearkened to the Prophet from among the Jews, like unto Moses, who was to speak all that Jehovah should command Him, Jehovah declares that He will require it of you. Your own Pentateuch then demands that you should hearken under the penalty of divine judgment; and now that the judgment is on you, we entreat you to pause and consider. Even before God gave you up, when you were in the land under your own anointed kings, you were ever disposed to be refractory, disobedient, and idolatrous. What have you done worse? Will boasting of your “ancient and glorious religion” mend matters So did they who perished under the avenging Roman.

Pardon me if I think that you talk with levity of the Messiah even in your sense, when you argue that whether He has come or is yet to come, “it does not, in the slightest degree, affect the eternal truths of our religion.” I grieve for you. This did not Abraham. Before the writings of Moses or the law, he waited for Messiah. So did Abel, and Enoch, and Noah. All their hopes turned on the Seed of the woman who should bruise the serpent’s head, though the serpent should bruise His heel. The common object of faith for all the godly before the law was not Judaism, but the coming Messiah. He was the center of the promises and, I admit, of blessings for the elect people, Abram’s seed, and in their land; but deeper than all and above all is the Seed in whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. Did you ever notice Jehovah swearing thus, after Abraham’s only son had been under the sentence of death as a burnt-offering till the third day when he was raised up as it were from the dew) by God’s intervention? After the figure of death and resurrection the blessing to all the nations was then solemnly proclaimed. (Gen. 22)

I bless God for every word of His that is revealed, from Genesis to Malachi, to speak now of nothing more; but I affirm that not one distinctive good in Christianity is derived from or is to be found in Judaism. Does not Judaism deny a suffering Savior, God and man in one person?. Does it-not deny that the infinite sacrifice of the true atonement day is already offered and accepted of God and efficacious forever for those who believe on Him and rest on it? We, have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God: is this no good, or is it found in Judaism? We have an altar, which is so far from being derived from Judaism that contrariwise they have no right to eat of it ‘who serve the tabernacle. So too by the Holy Spirit we were sealed after we believed the gospel, and in no way found it in Judaism. Our relationship, with God as our Father, with Christ as our Head, what have they to do with Judaism? They are founded entirely on the Messiah whom Judaism rejected and crucified, whom God raised and glorified in heaven, which is our characteristic place of blessing as truly as Canaan was for Israel.

If indeed you were sinless, one could understand the vaunt “Judaism is all-sufficient for us.” But a Jew ahem; less conscience than the heathen if he conceives that he can have remission of sins without blond of a sacrifice acceptable to God. You know that you have no such sacrifice; you ought to know then that, dying in your sins without blood upon the altar, you are lost. Your own Pentateuch declares that it is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul. (Lev. 17:11.) Is not this a truth of your religion? Is it eternal or temporary? If eternal, where and how do you stand before God and His word which you own to your own condemnation? If you disown this cardinal truth of the law, what can save you? Without atoning blood, you are more miserable and more guilty than the most benighted of the heathen. Alas I rationalism possesses the Jews even more than Christendom.

It is a mistake however that the failure of Christendom arises from forsaking Judaism for distinctive principles of its own. As the apostasy of the Jews was by their abandoning Jehovah and His law for Gentilism and its idols, so of Christendom by judaizing. Christianity stands by faith of Christ dead, risen, and glorified in heaven, and the possession of the Holy Ghost now on earth thereby. But Christians soon grew weary of the cross here and glory in heaven with Christ. They preferred that place of earthly glory and power with the law as their rule which God had given to Israel; and so seeking they were ruined. It was salt that had lost its savor. I go farther than you, believing that when the Lord my God comes and all the saints with him (Zech. 14), He will judge guilty Christendom no less than Judaism. This is more serious than perishing by its own dissensions or any other human cause.

Judaism then is insufficient to supply even the first need of a soul awakened to feel the burden of its sins. The Jew must either stifle his conscience by denying that he has sins, or abandon the law of Jehovah by pretending to an atonement for his soul without blood. Thus, the modern Jew really gives up the hopes and promises of his forefathers. He looks for no daysman, he trusts in no kinsman-redeemer, he requires no intercession, but, like any other unbeliever, he pretends to have direct access to God Himself. And no wonder; for they have refused in unbelief their own Messiah, olio, though God over all blessed forever, came in flesh to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

You do not well to be angry if those who enjoy eternal life and peace in believing desire others to enjoy the same who are either insensible to their misery, or intensely sad, as I trust some of Israel are in their present desolation under the evident judgment of God. I admit that Jews might try to spread their Judaism or Gentiles their heathenism; and that Christians ought to compassionate efforts so futile for those who have faith. It is however no question of any right of ours, but of His authority who commanded His servants to preach the good news to every creature. It is one of the points of contrast between the law and the gospel.

Nor are you justified in drawing from God’s unchanging character that the Jew must remain what he was. Notwithstanding I myself believe that there never was a moment since God’s call of Abram that He had not in that line one or more faithful to His name. When the Messiah came and went out of the Jewish fold, the Jewish sheep followed; and so there has been an elect remnant of Jews outside Judaism ever since, without speaking of the Gentiles. I believe too that the day is coming fast when all of that people who refuse the true Christ will fall under Antichrist or otherwise perish for rebellion of Jehovah, and that then the nation all righteous, owning the despised Nazarene as their Messiah, yea their Lord and their God, shall be a blessing to all the families in the earth. But that day is not yet come; and whoever lives and dies hearing of the Lord Jesus Christ now but rejecting Him perishes forever. What would the most decided Jew think of the Christian’s charity who yet forbears-to speak of the only One who, as he believes, can save Jew or Gentile? It would be far more reasonable to doubt the charity and indeed the faith of him who could be silent when man’s salvation and God’s glory are at stake. It is all well to instruct and exhort and correct fellow-Christians, but this does not absolve from the duty of proclaiming the Lord and Savior. Neither the law nor the constancy of the Jew can save his soul, nor that “boundless charity” which he proposes to the Christian’s emulation; but what is the Christian to do who is sure that the Jew is perishing forever for the want of that Savior whom God has given in their rejected Messiah? It is evidently a question of faith and love; and he who has them not can be necessarily no judge of the matter.

Yours, W. K.

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

Christ the Truth

I have already endeavored to show the meaning of the Way; that Christ, and Christ only is the Way. But there is another thing, Christ is not only the Way to the Father, but He is also the Truth. Where is truth to be found? In Him alone. He Himself is the Truth. Thus the man who has taken the way, possesses the truth. He who has bowed to Christ does not want some new resource. Truly God is wise, and as good as He is wise.

Let me now try to unfold what truth is. Man in his natural state may ask, but eludes the answer. How is this? Because he is gone away from God, serves Satan in whom is no truth, and likes Christ less, the more he knows about Him. When He came into the world, people seemed to value Him at first; for they did not then know that He was the Truth, and were not yet proved by Him.

They were all looking for, and expecting the promised Messiah. The time spoken of by Daniel was fulfilled, and men were in a state of expectation. The famous prophecy of the weeks pointed to those days, and the Jews all knew, or might have known, that the time was quite near when the Messiah, the Prince, was to appear, though none understood that He was to be cut off. The very heathen were moved by the rumors of a coming Deliverer; they heard that the time was at hand that a mighty king should reign, and most remarkable changes happen for the world. Wise men came from the East to see the born King of the Jews. More than one hundred and fifty years before Christ, the Old Testament had been translated into the Greek tongue, which was at that time the usual means of communication, as French has been in modern times. This translation of the Bible was a sort of preparatory testimony. Thus the Jews were not the only people who were looking for the Messiah.

But He is much more. He is the Word, He is God, He is the light, which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. And men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. Hence the early attraction soon faded, and gave way to fear and hatred; and as they desired not to know God or themselves, they sought to get rid of what convicted them by killing Him. They might kill, but they could not get rid of the Son of God; and as we have seen Him the Way, so He is the Truth. What is meant by it? Let us compare the law with Him.

The law is holy, just, and good; but still it is nowhere called the truth. The law is the standard of divine requirement from man; it declares what God demands from him who takes the ground of his own obedience as his standing before Him. The truth is the revelation of God, the manifestation of everything else, in Christ. It is therefore not requirement, but revelation. In fact, God Himself contrasts them; as it is written, “The law was given by Moses; but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” Was it not God’s law? Yes; but it was given by Moses, who was the channel of communication. But Christ was and is the Way; and this not only for God to come down to man, but for man to go to God—nay, to the Father. Besides, He is the Truth. He makes every one and everything known as they really are; and when we weigh what the truth is, we can see that Christ only could be the full presentation of it. God is thus revealed; and Christ, being the revealer of God, is Himself said to be the Truth. As Son, He brings out what the Father is. But He, the Holy One of God, shows me what sin is, what I am. In short, He manifests every one and everything exactly as each is.

God is never said to be the Truth, but Christ, being the image of the invisible God. Man is not capable of fathoming God; no man hath seen God at any time. Who is competent to know God? No man, nor even angel. The creature does not know God; but God can make Himself known to the creature. How? In Christ by the Holy Ghost. This is the reason why the Holy Spirit is also called the Truth in 1 John 5 Christ, the Truth, is the object presented in whom I can learn everything as it is; the Spirit of God is the inward power that makes the truth enter into my soul that I may have and enjoy it. Hence the necessity for the Holy Ghost to be the Truth as well as Christ. The spirit of man in itself is no more capable of knowing God than a beast of understanding the mind of man. The beast has its own creature instincts; but no beast, no creature of that order, can pass its own limits. No lower creature is capable of understanding man, and no man, as such, can rise to what is above his nature.

Yet, without the truth, how wretched one must ever be! I have sinned. How do I stand, and in what relation, to God? Are we doomed to be in utter uncertainty of the only thing that is of supreme importance? There are things that a man can come to, left to himself—dread and horror, hardness or indifference. But these fears are only the premonition of what, far more terrible and unending, will befall him if he lives and dies as he is. What is to become of his soul? My answer is: Christ is the truth; and Christ was here expressly on an errand of love, to glorify God, to save sinners by faith, to meet this dark and awful void, and give life and peace, with certainty, to the believer.

Do not take the ground of an unbeliever, and say that it is impossible to have certainty in this life. Perhaps it might be impossible for a Jew, no doubt it was for the heathen; but if God tells me anything, and I believe, is it certain or not? If God tells me His mind, does this give no certainty? Christ is God’s revelation of Himself to me. Do you say, I am a sinner? It is true, as far as it goes; but even so you do not know what a sinner you are, else you could not take it so quietly. You go to God about your sins then. Will He leave you in a state of uncertainty? No; Christ has come, the sent One of God, to do His will in the offering of His body; and by Him came grace and truth, not merely truth. And what grace it was! The Son of God, the only-begotten of the Father, becoming a man; and not only so, but born of a woman! Adam even was not, never having been born, but made. He was not a son of man therefore, though son of God in a certain sense (Luke 3). He came into the world mature and formed to be its head; he had attained his full proportion when he came from God’s hand. Jesus was not merely a man, but the Seed of the woman, as no one ever was save He. He became a servant all that man is—except sin. It is not only that He did not sin, but He never in His life knew what sin was; He could always say that His meat was to do God’s will. “Lo, I come to do thy will.” But He was made sin on the cross; He suffered the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.

Do I learn what sin is by prayer, or by looking into my own heart? No; but I see it in His cross. What did my sin cost Him? It brought upon Him, the Holy One, the horrors of divine judgment; and now He is become captain of salvation, having obtained eternal redemption. The same Jesus who gives me the truth of a sinner in myself gives me the truth of a Savior in Him. Where shall I find what a holy man is? Can it be Adam? The man who could not keep his hands off the fruit of the tree that God had told him not to eat—he a holy man! Why did he not listen to God? He disobeyed, and became unholy. Not that he was made so; for God made him innocent, and innocence supposes absence of evil, with liability to fall into it. But when Jesus was made flesh He was not only sinless, but holy, holy not in ways only, but in nature. “That holy thing which shall he born of thee shall he called the Son of God.” There also do we read, “A body hast thou prepared me”; and this is never said of anyone else. Why was this body so specially prepared? Because there could not be the least relic that defiles in the Holy One. The smallest taint of evil would spoil the sacrifice; the lamb for the burnt-offering was to be without blemish and without spot. When Jesus was born, although He was the Seed of the woman, there was no taint of sin in His nature; He is called that holy thing, for He was born by the power of the Holy Ghost. Thus He could take upon Him not merely all our sins, but sin itself. This is the truth?

If I want to see sin, I can see it by contrast with the Lord Jesus. He came and showed out all its darkness. “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin.” Christ is the Truth; so all is brought out in its own character.

But there is just the same result about God; Christ as the Truth clearly shows what God is. It is never said that Christ is the likeness of God, though with the greatest emphasis said to be His image. It would not be true to say of any man that he is like a man, although you might say so of an angel. Just in the same way Jesus is not said to be like God, because He is God. Here was One who was perfectly able to show what God is. It is the Absolute deigning to become relative. As long as God is only God, He is unapproachable by man; man cannot understand Him. But I must know God, or I cannot have eternal life; and this cannot be apart from Him whom He has sent, even Jesus Christ the Lord. Jesus is God manifest in the flesh, and He has brought me exactly what I want. God is the One who loves me, who comes down in the person of Jesus, Son of God and Son of man, to meet the need of a poor sinner. If, again, I want to know what the devil is, it is the same Jesus that brings it out. He, a murderer from the beginning, and a liar, is the one being who stands always opposed to the Lord Jesus. Jesus therefore brought out what the devil was as it had never been manifested before; but the Son of God came that He might destroy the works of the devil.

Now, have you got the Truth? You have heard the truth in Him; what is the effect on your soul? “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures.” The law makes me feel my shortcomings, but the truth makes them even better known. But if I am willing to know how bad I am, I want to be delivered. Will the law do this? When the law was given, it put man at a distance. Moses was to set hounds to the mountain; and if a beast so much as touched it, it was to be slain. This, no doubt, was a wholesome righteous warning; but the truth is, that the Lord Jesus came down from heaven to seek and to save the lost. And how are you to be saved? By submitting to the Truth; by coming as a sinner to the Savior of sinners. I cannot be saved except by the Truth. It is the Lord Jesus Himself who brings it all out to the soul, and in confessing Him Lord, I believe God, and set to my seal that He is true. By the grace of God my soul bows to the truth, and I can say in my heart, this is just the truth for me. I abjure my unbelief; I bow to what God says of His Son. It is God proclaiming what is true; and I believe He is as good as He says. I believe that He is forgiving my sins and making me His child on the spot. I have no desert; but Christ is my plea. I am willing to be nothing, that Christ and His cross may be everything for and to me.

But we must remember that the Holy Spirit is the Truth just as truly as Christ is. May He bring the truth home to your souls! Were you to live ever so long, and learn ever so much, it is only knowing better the Truth you receive at the start. Confess Jesus Lord, the only Savior, the Son of God. Confess all that grace has given you to know, and look well to it that your ways be a living confession of that Blessed One who is the Truth.

W.K.

Christ the Way

This was a momentous word for man—for every man, woman, and child. No words more encouraging were ever uttered, even by the Lord Jesus Himself, for such as felt the need of divine direction.

I have no doubt that there was more in them than the mere answer to the question. They meet the need not of one man only, but of all. Yet our Lord was not addressing a multitude of hearers, but the perplexed disciples; and this gives a definiteness of application. He is addressing a believer under Jewish prejudice, not an unconverted man. Not that I am going to confine myself to its strict bearing on the inquiring disciples, for there is in it the fullest answer to the darkest heart. There is divine help for those who know really but very partially. Their knowledge was scanty; they were not the wise and prudent of the earth; and Scripture takes pains to show this. They were not chosen for anything in themselves. It was manifest that they could add no luster to the gospel. “Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called; but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world, to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world, to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are; that no flesh should glory in his presence” (1 Cor. 1:26-29).

Thus does God confound the pride of flesh, and show the utter folly of any pretension on man’s part to worth in the things of God, seeing that he is really nothing but a lost sinner. When Thomas asked the question about the way, the thoughts of the disciples were still hampered by the earthly expectation of Israel. But how different was their condition in little more than a month afterward! We do not hear again of Thomas. May it not have been because he was going on well? In that case there is not much to talk about. It is people’s intrigues and ambitious designs, their quarrels and fights, that make up the most of history, man’s attempts to circumvent or repel evil, sometimes successful, more often failing. It is the constant conflict of evil with good; and evil but too often prosperous. The time will come when good will always triumph; but it is not come vet. A poor thing truly is man the world. No wonder that God’s thoughts find their center in one person; and He is the object of God here and everywhere.

One person was always before the mind of God, and this was expressed thousands of years before He became a man. He was not only perfection, but He was the perfect Man, as well as God come down to deliver those who were most opposite to Him in every way. Here we see divine good in a man, and nowhere else. No man can be a Christian who refuses Him, or takes any other way. On the one hand, were He not God it would take away from God’s glory as well as destroy man’s hopes. He could not else have been the perfect Savior and Deliverer. On the other hand, it would have taken away all the means of our blessedness if He had not deigned to become man. But He who was God became man, is so now, and ever will so abide, though infinitely more than man. It is just as true that He is always God, even on the cross; and this is the pledge of sure and stable blessing for every soul who would hide himself by faith in Him, spite of all his sins.

Have you fled for refuge? Have you thus come to Him? Or are you thinking to try and make yourself a little better first? But remember, salvation is for sinners. He does not want people who are good (not that He could find them if He did); He is come to seek and to save the lost. It is they who need Him. Are you willing to take this place? It is a solemn thing to tell out all our sins to God; it is as much as to confess that one deserves hell-fire. Do not draw back when I press this. Does it make any difference to God’s thought of you? He knows it all before; but for you it is all-important to take the place of good-for-nothingness in His presence. Thomas was slow to believe; and so are very many. No man likes to tell out what he really is, but when he does he finds out what God is, and He is love. Indeed grace, and grace alone and exactly, meets the need of him who finds out that he is nothing but a sinner. It will not do to say in a general way, “Ah, yes, we are all sinners.” I must have to do with God about my own sins, and that in a particular way. It is neither faith nor conscience to deal with them all in a lump as it were. Do not tell me that you have done so; that you have been to God about your sins and come away empty. You deceive yourself as to this.

You have not been simple or truthful in telling out what you are, else you would have found all you want to meet your need in the Lord Jesus. His fullness meets all our wants. Could I say less when it is about Jesus? He did not come to limit Himself to any one people, or country, or age. His grace flows out freely to all. It is no longer only Israel, but any sinner at any time. When John said, “Behold the Lamb of God,” what was the effect? He tells us: “which taketh away the sin of the world.” Accordingly this is what the work of the Lord Jesus will accomplish; no particle of sin or of its effects will be left in the world. But that day is not come yet. Before it can come the wicked must be banished, that they may go to their own place. No man will be condemned merely because he is bad, but because he refuses the grace of God as shown in Christ. Wrath then comes on him for all his sins. The promise of salvation is to him who hears the word of God the gospel; and man is condemned because he refuses God’s remedy in it. Do not you then lose your time, and it may be your soul, in troubling yourself about God’s dealings with the heathen. The Lord will judge them; and He will do His work perfectly. What you want yourself is mercy, forgiveness, salvation. Therefore, I pray you, banish all thoughts of your own on such a subject; you do not and cannot yet understand God’s ways. Venture not to sit in judgment on Him.

There is nothing so presumptuous and inconsistent as unbelief, nothing so humble as faith. So those who would not scruple to discuss and condemn God’s dealings with the heathen, count it the height of presumption on a believer’s part to say, “I know I am forgiven, washed perfectly white, and free from all stain.” Yet this confidence is from nothing in themselves; it is founded simply on faith in the efficacy of Christ’s blood. It is due to what Christ has done, not to what we are. A man who knows he is a sinner gladly owns the Savior. His first desire is that he may be brought to God. How is he to get to Him? Here is our Lord’s answer, “I am the way.” Let us consider then a little what “the way” means in Scripture.

When man was first made, he was not as he is now. God made man upright. He was the most wonderful being that God had made. An infidel may talk (and there is plenty of such talk in these days) of man having grown gradually to the state he is now in, that he came into existence of himself, nobody knows how, out of nobody knows what. And this is science! Nothing is so utterly foolish as unbelief. But supposing the protoplasm was seaweed, we have still the difficulty, How did the seaweed come? and how did it so change? The very least object could not have come into being without the will and power of God.

But wonderful as the power of God in His works may be, and the more as we think truly of all He has made, much the most wonderful is man even now, though fallen; for he is still responsible as the image of God, if not His likeness. And this is why murder can only he wiped out by death; for man has destroyed the image of God in another. Yet there has never been a good man born into this world.

Man was originally made in the likeness of God, but Adam was fallen before his firstborn child appeared. Thus sin had come in, and so even Seth was born in Adam’s “likeness,” though in God’s “image” still. A brute has not a reasonable soul. Man is the only one of all God’s creatures here who is thus endowed. We therefore see that God did not make the world or man as we see them now; for, when they came from His hand there was not a single thing that He did not pronounce good, or very good. Then there was no need of a way, for whether man turned to the right or to the left, all was good; and there could be no need yet to say, “This is the way; walk ye in it.”

The use and importance of a way would be when that which may have been good everywhere. is so no longer. Evil has come in, and the world has become a wilderness. Such being the case, there is no way; and we need one. The world is nothing but a waste and howling wilderness, through which we cannot pass without a way. There is no rest here, nothing to satisfy the heart of man. He may seek to take his fill of the pleasures of the world; it is but a dram to render him insensible to the fact that he is miserable at the thought of facing God. Having a bad conscience through his sins, there is no one he would so like to get away from as God. He has perhaps some fear of Satan, but he is not so afraid of him as he is of God. What does this tell? That he is a sinner away from God. It is the sense of sin that makes him afraid. The same terrible being (Satan) first entraps a man into sin, and then whispers that he is done for; first entices, and then gives a sense of God’s judgment against him. Man then tries to drown his fears in pleasure. He will go anywhere, do anything, to get rid of the pressure of sin; he will occupy himself with, it may be, his family, his business, even his duties, as he calls them—anything that will keep him away from God. Then, it may be, he is laid on a sick bed, and he feels, “I must meet God in my sins”; and some especially come up to mind that had been long forgotten, but ah! none forgiven. For you cannot be forgiven a little here and a little there. Sin is not to be got rid of in this fashion, one at a time, perhaps when you feel sorry about it. Whatever they may say who sell masses, it is not so with God. But when and how does He meet this ruined condition? Man is lost, and the world is as much of a wilderness as the sands of Arabia to a traveler who has missed his way. Man has absolutely no resources as regards his sins. What then is to meet him in his need? Trying to make amends will not avail. Your sins are upon you, and what can you do when they confront you in the light of God’s throne?

But how does God meet your need? Jesus says, “I am the way.” Jesus is the Way, the only way to God the Father. Jesus is the Way in this world of utter alienation and departure from God. Man is the head of all the ruin as he is the head of the creation. Adam was the head of all before Eve was given to him; he had called all the creatures by their names. Eve’s place was in association with him. So the church has no claim but by association with Christ. He is the way; and can this way fail? Christ fail! What folly! He is the Way. I have nothing to do but to take the way. Crowds of different cases come, and no wonder; for no one that came ever went away as he came. Nor did Christ ever send a soul away unblessed—none that came as sinners and lost.

This is what man really is, a sinner ruined and lost. He has no resources towards God; he cannot diminish one of his sins. What is to become of him? Jesus says, “I am the way,” and it is sure, unfailing. The Son of God became a man in order that He might be the Way. He came to be a Savior, but a Savior only to those who believe. He will be Judge of those who reject Him. He has other offices too, but they are mostly connected with salvation. A man who will be saved is not brought into judgment. Men who have life and are saved have no sins upon them. How then and for what are they to be judged? “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24). The word really is judgment, not “condemnation,” as it is translated in the A.V.

I do not wish to find fault with our translation, but let me prove that the word ought to be “judgment.” “It is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgment.” Here the very same word that is translated “condemnation” is used. “‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” Here it is another word; and there is just as much difference in the words used in the Greek as in the English. What God declares is, that he that hears His word has everlasting life. It is a present thing. The believer again is passed from death unto life. What would be the sense of judging life, of judging what God has wrought?

But all men will give account of their deeds. “We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ.” This is a very different thing from being brought into judgment by God. To be judged, a man must be a criminal. It is not always the case when there is an earthly judge, for if the grand jury bring in a true bill, the man, even if innocent, must be brought before the judge, and might even he condemned; but this would be caused by man’s infirmity. There could be no such thought in connection with divine judgment. No believer ever comes into judgment, speaking now of the judgment of the great white throne; and this because he has eternal life, and his sins are forgiven now. Are you rejecting this salvation?

God is now in Christ beseeching, entreating you to be reconciled on the ground of His acceptance of Him who was made sin. Your rejecting Him proves that you are not willing to be saved. He is ready to save you, to pardon here and now. But you have some secret reserve, something you are keeping back from Him. You either wish to serve sin a little longer, or you do not believe that God is as good as He is. You prove that you judge yourself unworthy of eternal life.

No man is saved because he deserves it. I implore you, put it not off, wait not for anything. Christ will not be more of a Savior to-morrow; and are you sure that you will hear His voice to-morrow? Is it not to be feared that you will be less and less inclined to receive Him? He is the Way and the only way. When we get to heaven we shall not need a way, any more than it was necessary in Eden. All is right there, and no way will be required above. When in heaven there will no longer be responsibility. Here it brings danger, failure, ruin; for now, on the ground of responsibility, as a man, you are lost altogether.

Henceforth it is really a question of faith. Do I rest on Christ, believing in Him? I learn that He has undertaken for me, that God has given me a Savior, and that He commands me to repent and take the place of one that is lost.

When a man tries to become religious, he is denying that he is lost; he sets himself to read and pray, to work out righteousness for himself. He says, David prayed three times a day, and I will pray four times; but will it help him? Do I think lightly of prayer? By no means, but when a man acts like this, he shows that he does not know his sinfulness and lost estate.

Suppose the case of one guilty of high treason and condemned to die. The king might say, “I know the man is guilty, but in my sovereign mercy I grant him a free pardon if he will only come and avail himself of it.” But the man obstinately refuses to come out; he will not credit such goodness, and the king orders the sentence to be carried out. So it is with man. He refuses to believe that God is willing to save, and why? Because he judges of God by himself.

Faith is sure of God as He reveals Himself; and He is not only willing, but He can afford righteously, to save. God saves on the ground of Christ’s redemption. It is not mere mercy. Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life, for Christ was judged for our sins by God Himself on the cross. Hence He is righteous to forgive; for Christ has paid the penalty. God is not merely justified in forgiving, but glorified also. It brought far more glory to God than if He merely punished all as sinners; for every attribute of His is satisfied—His majesty, His love, His truth, His holiness. All the grace of His character shines out for every soul that comes, bringing out more of the infinite worthiness of His Son.

Be afraid then to stay away from the Savior of sinners, lest to-morrow find you in a more hardened state than to-day. All delays are dangerous; but what is so dangerous as to put off bowing to the Son and accepting God’s free salvation?

W. K.

Continuance in Divine Things: Part 1

“But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a babe thou hast known the sacred writings, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

“Every scripture is inspired of God, and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction, that is in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, throughly furnished unto every good work.”

There is no question that the words we have just read have a direct application to us at this present time, and that we may take them as a direct exhortation of the Spirit to our souls, as well as a needed instruction with regard to the blessed character of the word of God. We know that these words were addressed especially to Timothy; and Timothy was a man who, unlike Paul or Peter or John or James had, so far as we know, no direct revelation himself from the Lord. The apostles were men who received at firsthand from the Lord, as did the prophets also, and both, in the power of the Spirit, communicated what they received to the church of God. But here was a person who did not himself receive from the Lord; he received what he knew from the apostles, and, therefore, in this respect he corresponds exactly with ourselves, because what we have received of spiritual knowledge we have received from the writings of the apostle and prophets. I am speaking particularly with regard to New Testament truths of course, and therefore the exhortation here applied to him, the obligation that is laid upon him, may very well be taken home to ourselves.

EARLY DECLENSION AND PRESENT DANGER

It is for us to continue, to abide in the things that we have heard. Now we know that this Second Epistle to Timothy contemplates what was a very terrible state of things a state of things which was discerned by the apostle in his day, because the testimony by the early church to the heavenly Christ had been corrupted. The truth was there, but through the inattention of the saints, through their failure in responsibility, error came in and was mixed with the truth. This mixed state of things was foreshadowed; indeed it had already begun when the apostle wrote his First Epistle, and in the Second things had developed from bad to worse. The particular evil is not before me to point out now, nor the particular aspects of that declension and apostasy. But the peculiar difficulty then, as it seems to me, was the difficulty which we all have, a difficulty arising from the fact that wherever we go, wherever we contemplate seriously the things associated with the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we invariably find this one thing—that mixed up with the truth, intimately associated with the truth of God, there is that which is not the truth; and we, if we realize our responsibilities to the Lord, if we realize the danger to our own souls of such a medley, must feel what a grave difficulty this is.

There is no sane person who wishes to poison himself; there is no person who wants deliberately to run into danger; there is no person who desires to corrupt his soul with that which is not of God. But, beloved friends, the danger that we all must feel, either more or less, is this: that we may find ourselves in association with, or imbibing that which we in our simplicity suppose to be of God, and all the while there is that connected with it which is of the enemy, and which tends to ruin the peace and joy of our hearts, and to destroy our personal communion with the Lord Jesus Christ. I suppose we have all to some degree found this.

DELUSION AS TO THE PRESENT DANGER

It is a sad thing that there are persons who are living in what we may call a fool’s paradise, and who go on supposing that everything around us is all well. No, beloved friends, it is not well. A man directly in the world and not professing any allegiance to Christ may cry out, “What is wrong with the world we live in?” He believes it is the very best state of things possible, and everything is proceeding to a perfect felicity. A man of the world may talk like this, but we ought not to deceive ourselves; we ought to face the fact that we are in circumstances of considerable danger. We are usually thoughtful enough about our bodies; we would not risk injury to life or limb. As far as the body is concerned we are very careful, and take all precautions that such a thing as physical vicissitude shall not be. But is it not a fact that the soul is greater than the body? Is it not a fact that the new nature which I have by the Spirit of God, that new thing which is born of God, that this is more precious than my body? Is it not that which God has begotten in me by His word and Spirit, and which enables me to hold communion with the Highest and with Him who is on the right hand of the Highest? And if some error creeps into my heart and robs me of that enjoyment, is it not a danger? It is a danger, for while I have lost present communion, I am in a condition to lose still more; and I am sure you are all with me in feeling that this is a danger to which we are daily and hourly exposed.

SPIRITUAL DESPAIR

There are some persons who are imbued with such a sense of the extraordinary nature of the times in which we find ourselves that they think things are so hopelessly bad that it is not easy to take any precaution whatever. They say, “Let things take their course; let us go forward, and trust to God that all things will come out right in the end.” Now, in preaching the gospel we lay down the truth very emphatically to unbelievers who talk like this. It is the unbeliever who says, “Never mind about the future; let us go on; let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die.” But there are believers who, if they do not say the same thing, act in that manner. They say, “All the testimony is gone; the truth is overthrown; it is trodden under foot in our streets; and, therefore, all our responsibility is over, we can do as we please, we shall all get to heaven, and then things will be right.”

Now, beloved friends, such a spirit as this is wrong, absolutely wrong; it is a spirit of downright cowardice, to call it by no worse name. No, the truth is unalterable, and our responsibility with regard to it is unchanged. We are here in the world, and, as we surely know, in this holy book we have a sacred deposit. Did not God’s ancient people esteem the living oracles a great deposit? Was it not to them a matter of national pride that to no other people did God speak with His own voice, and communicate His words? And, beloved friends, as representing the church of God, we have that word just as it was given at the beginning, and ought not we to love it? ought not we to reverence it, and ought not we to seek to be bound and guided by it?

THE CHARGE TO TIMOTHY

Well, now, in the words that are addressed to his son in the faith by the apostle, we have what applied directly to Timothy (vers. 14, 15), and in the second place what was of more general concern (vers. 16, 17). In the first two of the verses Timothy is particularly addressed, but, as we have seen, the words apply to ourselves. The apostle says to him particularly, “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them, and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” Timothy learned from the apostles, and he had learned particularly the doctrine about the church of God, because it was in the apostles’ day that these truths were made known, and the apostle Paul was the specially honored instrument of God to make the revelation known that there was “one new man,” no longer Jew and Gentile, but the church of God united by the Spirit of God to Christ, the living Head in heaven. This and other things the apostle had communicated to Timothy, and Timothy was exhorted to abide in the sense of their origin and nature.

DANGER OF DRIFTING

In other cases we have an exhortation for him and others to hold fast what they had. Well, to do this we require a fund of energy. There is another exhortation to hold forth the word of life. This again requires energy. Here we are told to abide in the things that we have heard; this requires energy too, but energy of a different kind. It is more of the character of what we might call passive resistance, resisting the power of evil which tends to cause us to drift away from the truth. The truth never alters, beloved friends. The truth will never drift away from us, but we may drift away from the truth, and this is our danger. What we knew last year, what we knew yesterday we may even now be departing from: Insensibly we move, at first; the first step is easy and so near the right path that we scarcely hesitate to take it. But having taken it we have not continued in the truth. There was the truth, we had it in our hearts, we enjoyed it, but now we have left it. You all know to what I allude. I am not referring to any particular thing, any one special doctrine of the New Testament more than another, but I am certain of this, that everyone here must have realized in his heart that many things taught in the Scriptures are unquestionably from God. You have had them from the Scriptures, and they have come home with power to your souls. Suppose it to be, for the sake of an example, the truth of the Lord’s coming again. When it first dawned upon our souls that there was a promise here in the Scriptures of the return of the Lord Jesus Christ to this earth, and that His personal advent was imminent, and that we were called to wait for the Son of God from heaven, did not this truth come with a power that laid hold of our hearts and affections and moved our whole beings? We knew that it was of God; we knew that it was not a cunningly-devised fable. How are we to-day? Is it that we have stepped aside from the power of this truth, or are we abiding in the things that we have heard? We are called to abide in Christ; we are called to abide in the doctrine of Christ; indeed, we must abide, beloved friends, in the place and in the associations and in the enjoyment of the truths that God has made known to us.

LEARNING AND ASSURANCE

There is a distinction here which I think we should do well to consider. The apostle says, “Continue thou in the things which thou hast learned, and hast been assured of.” Now this phrase does not at all imply that we study the Scriptures and that we thus come to a mental conclusion that they are true. We must study the Bible in quite a different manner from that in which a man studies science. A man studies science to find out the truth, and anyone that is at all acquainted with the history of science knows that its pathway as we look back is strewn with the wrecks of exploded theories which men have had to abandon. For the moment they fought for their hypotheses with their lives, but time has gone on, other investigators have arisen, and what was believed to be the truth has subsequently been proved to be a false hypothesis.

But, beloved friends, in the word of God we have nothing of this kind. We do not come to the word of God as we come to the tentative theories of a scientific text-book. We come to the word of God as to a Book which is an infallible and unquestionable authority for our souls. We come to it as the word of God; we come to it as a book which has a paramount demand upon our whole persons, and coming to it in this way we receive it by faith; and such a spirit, I take it, is what the assurance means. It is one thing to learn the doctrine of Scripture. There are persons who learn the truth of God almost of necessity. It has been their fortunate circumstance to be in the immediate sphere where the proclamation of God’s special truth as revealed in the New Testament is continually ministered, and so the thing insensibly finds it way into their hearts. Did I say hearts? Let us hope so—into their minds at any rate, and they in this manner become acquainted with New Testament facts and New Testament doctrine. They may have learned the truth in such a way, but I take it the apostle meant much more than this by “assurance.”

You Must indeed first receive the truth in this way. God will not communicate anything to you or to me directly. We cannot expect a vision or a revelation. We have everything complete in the written word—everything that is good for us to know; and we are left in the world to learn these things. But, beloved friends, the question for each of us is just this: in learning scripture have we been fully assured of it, have we laid hold of it with our whole being, has the sum of our affections been concentrated upon the Living Person who is the center and subject of the revelation of God’s holy word?

CHRIST IN THE SCRIPTURES

It is, in point of fact, only the personal Christ that can lay hold of our affections. We do not reverence and worship the Book as a book. We worship the Book because therein is the medium through which we know our Savior and Lord, and coming to him as our Lord we have in the Scriptures His guide-book for us. We have the Book of His commandments, not grievous to us, but still they are His commandments; and He therein conveys His word of authority to us in that sweet and winning tone of love which finds its way into our hearts, beloved friends, and causes us to feel thoroughly assured that we are hearing the voice of the Son of God.

It is thus we are “assured” of the truth of God, and in no other way. And, my beloved friends, it is of no value whatever simply to become acquainted with a set of doctrines, however judiciously they may have been selected for us. We must come to the Scriptures, to the fountainhead of all wisdom, and learn our lessons at the feet of Him who can teach us as no other can. He taught Timothy, but He taught him Christianity through His apostle. The written word was not then, it was then the spoken word, but still it was the word of the Lord. “I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you,” as Paul said. The Corinthians, like all the early saints, had the will of the blessed Lord through the lips of the apostles, but the apostles took care that their personality did not stand between themselves and their Master, and thus those to whom their communications were made were under no delusion at all. They looked through the apostles to the living God, who was giving all things through His servants.

Well, we see that there is the need of this personal assurance in the heart, and, my beloved friends, if you will allow me to say so, I think that the spot where declension invariably begins, where the sense of tiredness with the things of God commences, is invariably in the heart. We then lose our appetite for divine things, and it becomes the more difficult to abide in the things which we have learned.

THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE THINGS

The apostle here, in exhorting Timothy to abide, gives two reasons for his continuance. “Knowing of whom thou hast learned them,” is the first. What was the origin of this truth which he had known and was assured of? He had received it by apostolical authority; he received it on the word of the apostle, who had transmitted to him the word and the will of the Lord, and therefore Timothy had a divine warrant for what he believed to be the truth, and this was the reason why he should not depart from it. He was not told to cleave to a system on the ground that it was hoary with antiquity, that it had a splendid retrospect, and could call up miraculous deeds in the past. There was no argument of this kind, no sensual appeal in any way, but the ground was simply this—the authority of the word of the Lord. And, beloved friends, I do not think we need anything further than this to-day. We are in a day of extremest difficulty, and the question, “What is truth?” is the question that is being generally canvassed, both in the world and in Christendom. But we need not to argue about the matter. We have simply to open our ears and learn, by coming to the Scriptures. Here we have the truth from the Lord Himself. Now, having received that word, having had it directly from the Lord Himself through His word, how can we do other than abide in it?

Beloved friends, what shall we say in that day when we must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ. The Lord has His claim upon us; we are in the world for Him. He has opened our eyes to see a little here and a little there of His revealed truth. But however little it may be it is precious, too precious to surrender; and in view of the fact that we received it from Him what shall we say to Him in the day of account if we have allowed ourselves to slip away from it? It is not that we run away from our duties; it is not that we make a violent effort and simply bolt from our responsibilities. No, beloved friends, but we slide, we move just gradually along in the contrary direction; the soporific influences of the moment creep upon our hearts and cause us to leave the positions assigned us as soldiers of Jesus Christ in the great campaign; and so we become the victims of the great enemy of our souls.

No, it remains that we have to abide in the things which we have heard and been assured of, knowing from whom we have learned them. The theories and views of men can never stand the light of the judgment-seat, but what we have from the Lord we know that He will stand to in that day. If He has told us this or that, we know that He will never charge us with holding it for Him. He has given it to us; it is for us to produce it unsullied in the day that is to come.

[W. J. H.]

(To be continued)

Continuance in Divine Things: Part 2

(Continued from page 141)

The Authority of the Old Testament

But it was only a part of the whole body of truth that Timothy had received from the apostle. There was more. There was also that which he knew from the Lord from a babe. Timothy had the very excellent advantage of being brought up by pious instructresses. His mother and his grandmother instructed him from the nursery in the truths of the Old Testament, and so we have the authority of the Old Testament fully maintained here by the apostle. The apostle Paul, although himself the medium of a very great revelation, was not jealous of Old Testament claims. He placed it side by side with the New. They are the holy writings, and they were those which Timothy had known.

“Oh, but,” you say, “was not the New Testament quite different from the Old? Had they not to abandon Judaism, and turn away from Mosaic institutions and ceremonies?” Most assuredly they had. They had that which was better, but that which was better was exactly in accordance with that which was of old. There was no contradiction. The Old Testament contained the essence of the New. There was one thing wanting to bring to light the hidden secrets of the Old Testament. What was it? The Lord Jesus Christ Himself. As He said to the Pharisees, “Ye search the Scriptures” (the Old Testament Scriptures), “for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me” (John 5:30). On that memorable walk to Emmaus, when the Lord revealed Himself to the hearts of the two coming away from Jerusalem with all their hopes and cherished ideas dashed to pieces, then He opened their eyes, opened their understandings, and unveiled to them those Old Testament scriptures which testified of Him (Luke 24). As soon as they learned that the law, the prophets, and the psalms witnessed of the sufferings and glories of the Messiah their difficulties all vanished. For He is the key to all such closed doors.

And so Timothy, having the Old Testament scriptures and being then brought by faith to the knowledge of Christ, had nothing to surrender, nothing to unlearn. He had rather a new field of truth for his soul to revel in where he now saw that the Lord Jesus Christ was revealed in a variety of ways, His beauties being brought out by the law, by the types, as well as by promises and prophecies, in those varied characters which we also have found in the Old Testament.

Therefore it was that he had these precious things from a child, and if he did not abide in the things which he had learned he would be giving up that too. You cannot abandon one part of Scripture without the other, because the Scripture is an undivided whole; it is a complete unity. As has been said, the New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old Testament lies open in the New. Put them together, and you have a perfect revelation from God. Separate them and you are in a fog, a mist, and you cannot understand either one or the other. And Timothy was to abide equally in what was of the New Testament, and in what was of the Old.

INSTRUCTING CHILDREN IN THE SCRIPTURES

There is just another point in connection with this subject, beloved friends, that one cannot help noticing in passing, and it is that these holy Scriptures which God gave by personal communication through the Holy Ghost to the prophets of old, that Book with all its holy splendor, with its profound and illimitable wisdom, could be communicated to a child. “From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures,” and I now ask you whether we have not to-day a responsibility in this respect. What was true of the Old Testament is true of both Old and New; and if Timothy derived an incomparable advantage from the instruction he received in his most early childhood—instruction in the Scriptures—ought we not to see to it that the children of this day, our children particularly, the children of our families, of our households, are in like manner instructed in the truths of Holy Scripture?

Beloved friends, it is a grand mercy of God that such a book as the Scripture, which is so profound that the most agile mind is baffled by its instructions and revelations, can, as we gather here, be taught to a child, while by teaching it to a child we are conferring upon it a priceless boon. And, looking to the fact that all around us is a sea of confusion and error, and that in public and general schools that which is not of God is communicated, along with, if not instead of it, ought we not to be the more careful that the children who are under our particular care should be instructed in what is true and what is of God? What is of God is true, and the communication of truth is the best preservative against error.

There are some persons who say, “Let the children grow up; let them get to years of understanding; there are parts of the Scriptures which I do not understand myself, and how then can I communicate them to my children?” But, beloved friends, here we have the fact that these holy women of old, Eunice and Lois, took the little babe Timothy, and they sowed the seeds of life, while they communicated to him those holy writings which when he was advanced to the superior knowledge of Christianity he had not to surrender, but still to maintain. They were still to be a guide to him. Therefore we ought—and it is our serious responsibility—to instruct our children in the truths of Holy Scripture, since they are able to make them wise unto salvation.

WISE UNTO SALVATION

One may notice, further, that the apostle does not assume that Timothy was already wise unto salvation. Why is this? Because, I think, he needed, as we need, the wisdom for the moment; the wisdom that we had last year is not enough for to-day. We are continually finding ourselves in fresh predicaments, and in these predicaments we want something that will instruct us for the occasion. “Able to make thee wise.” What does this mean? A wise man is a man who not only acts rightly—it must be that he acts rightly, of course—but the wise man is he that acts for God; the wise man is he who is controlled by the mind of God. What is the wisdom of the world? It is the wisdom that in its prospect and retrospect is bounded by this world; it never looks beyond the confines of this present age. What did the wisdom of this world do? It crucified the Lord of glory. They looked at Him, the despised Nazarene, as of no worth; indeed, as a danger to the state and to their religion, and they crucified Him. This was the wisdom of the world. They looked at the Lord Jesus, and this was all they saw!

What is the “hidden wisdom”? What is the wisdom of God? It is the wisdom that comes from above; it is the wisdom that enables us to look at the petty things of this life with the eyes of God, that is, as revealed in His holy word. It is a great thing to be able to do this; it is a great thing to have the heavenly light upon the earthly path, and, beloved friends, herein is the value of the Scriptures. Why do we make mistakes? I think, if we were honest and sincere with ourselves, we should confess that invariably each mistake which we have made in the past was made because we did not carry out the simple instructions of scripture. We go wrong because we act according to the light of our eyes. Beloved friends, there is nothing in a man’s life—you know this as well as I do, but allow me to remind you of it—there is no slight circumstance in our daily lives, whether in the home or in business—there is nothing but we may have the light of God’s truth upon it.

The Holy Scriptures are able to make us wise unto salvation, and that salvation, I take it, means more than the salvation of our souls. Do not let us narrow down the large words of scripture, nor take these grand and comprehensive terms, and just whittle them down to some little miserable definition to which we are pleased to reduce them. No, beloved friends, we want to have the exact words of God as given to us, and as we meditate upon them and consider them we shall find that we comprehend in them things that we have never dreamed of before. We need salvation every day; we need salvation from the tendencies in which we find ourselves, and into which we thrust ourselves often through our own folly. What dishonor we sometimes bring to the name of the Lord Jesus through our wanton foolishness, because we did not think soon enough, because the suitable text of scripture did not come home to our souls, nay, because we acted before it came home; we were in too great a hurry, and did not wait. Beloved friends, do not let us be in a hurry; hurry is not of God; hurry is of the world. When we leave the turmoil of the streets and find ourselves in the peace of the sanctuary, how all there is calm and quiet; not a footfall there in the presence of God; all is holy hush; all about us are signs of the greatness and majesty of Him in whose presence we are. No, beloved friends, there is no haste there; and “he that believeth shall not make haste.”

FAITH IN CHRIST JESUS NEEDED

The Scriptures are able to make us “wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” Now I think “Christ Jesus” is the key to all our difficulties. There are many persons who burden themselves with immense trouble because of the difficulties they find in the Scriptures. They have a long catalog of them, and they are always dwelling upon these difficulties. When you meet them they confront you with such a long list of questions upon this, that, and the other, that you feel you want a big encyclopedia to consult, and that then you would not find the answer to their posers. They ask you, and you say you do not know, and they ask somebody else, and they do not know, and so they spend their time feeding upon these husks. No, beloved friends, there are always difficulties in Scripture, and there always will he. A man who has not found any such in the Scriptures is a poor specimen of a Christian indeed. Of course my difficulties arise because this is the word of God, and because of my little mind, my little heart—oh, my beloved friends, you cannot put the ocean in a teacup—and the word of God is altogether beyond me and my feeble comprehension, and there will therefore always be difficulties. But there is a golden key which unlocks a great many of the more practical difficulties, and this key is Christ Jesus—as it is put here, “faith in Christ Jesus.” It is not, of course, the personal faith for salvation, but the faith that sees Christ Jesus, and the honor and glory of Christ Jesus in connection with the things of this life. Why am I here in M—? Why am I doing this, that, or the other, if it is not that faith in Christ Jesus is the prompting motive?

Depend upon it, there is never wisdom in our conduct, and we are not wise in being here to-night, without that faith in Christ Jesus which will enable us to solve the difficulties of this life. I do not say of scripture, but of this life—that is, difficulties as to where we should be and what we should do for God. There are always new vistas opening before us, and they look, oh, so pleasant from a distance, and the question arises, are we to go there? There are so many allurements; there is even the name of Christ outwardly connected with it; there is a great field of service connected with it; there are many holy things and associations connected with it; it all looks, oh, so pleasant and inviting. Is it that distance lends enchantment to the view? What may I do? What is it that will give me light on the way in my difficulty when there are so many voices calling me in every direction, and many using the name of the Lord? What am I to do? There must be personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ for the guidance of His word.

[W. J. H.]

(To be continued)

Continuance in Divine Things: Part 3

Guidance in the Assembly

There was one question of this nature asked here this afternoon. It was how a person might know in the assembly whether he was directed by the Spirit of God to take an audible part. I think that this principle we have here solves the difficulty: it is “faith in Christ Jesus.” When we are together in assembly the Lord Jesus Christ is there; He is Lord, He is Lord of all, and how much more when in our midst. Beloved friends, He is the Lord of the blasphemer; is He not then our Lord? The day is coming when the scoffer shall bow to Him; ought we not to bow to Him now? and if I am in the assembly and I know the Lord is there, this very fact, which can only be realized by faith in Christ Jesus, this very fact will bring me to my proper place and cause me to assume that right and reverent attitude in His presence which becomes both brother and sister.

There are a great many brothers and sisters who think that in an assembly meeting it is only the brothers who have to be led by the Spirit. This is quite a mistake. Brothers have to be led by the Spirit to open their mouths, but the whole assembly must be led by the Spirit to open their hearts to the Lord, and the Spirit is there to produce in the hearts of those assembled all that which is suitable to the occasion.

There is one infallible guide whereby we may know that which is of the Spirit. If the “Spirit is truth” (1 John 5:6), and if “thy word is truth” (John 17:17), there can be no contradiction between them; so that what is of the Scripture is of the Spirit, and what is done to the glory of the Lord who is in the midst is of the Spirit also; and Jesus Himself is the Truth (John 14:6).

THE INSPIRATION OF EVERY SCRIPTURE

We now come to that which is general (vers. 16, 17), but our time is gone, and I can only refer to it briefly. But do not let us forget the previous exhortation; here we have what is true of the Scriptures as a whole and of its parts. The apostle had already mentioned the holy writings which were of Old Testament times. Now he comes to that which is general, because at that time there were some of the New Testament scriptures which had not yet been written. They had not then been communicated in the way of writings, and therefore these were not yet “scripture.” Hence the Spirit of God caused the apostle to write that which should be of the greatest comfort to us in these days.

“Every scripture,” he says, “is inspired of God.” Now we know that it is a common article of the creed of Christendom—at any rate, it was so once—that the Scriptures, are inspired of God. But, beloved friends, we must not think only of the general fact that Scripture is given of God. We need to have the truth about it in our hearts, and the truth about it is that in the Scriptures we may be absolutely certain that we have the voice of God to our souls. There are many persons who have tortured their minds and the minds of other people as to an adequate definition of what inspiration is—where it begins, where it ends, what it really involves, and so on. Beloved friends, we can afford to leave all these inquiries and confine ourselves to the single fact that when we open our Bibles and read our Bibles, there we have that which is of God. God has infused into it that which is of Himself, and which gives it a character which nothing else has.

We may see an illustration of it in the formation of Adam. God formed the body of the first man out of the ground, and there was a shapely form—not of some hairy uncouth savage, as many persons think nowadays—but of a handsome man, a man that God had designed to occupy a place of sovereignty in His world below. But there it was, a dead, inert mass, beautiful to look at, but a thing without life; no motion, no sound, just simply a part of this lower world—dust, a grand and beautiful body of dust, but dust only. Now God communicated from Himself to that inanimate mass; “He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” Thus were the soul and spirit communicated by the direct inspiration of the Almighty, and thus man was placed at a tremendous distance from the rest of the world. The beasts that perish have their soul and spirit; they return to the dust from which they sprung. Man received his originally from on high. This constitutes the difference between man and the lower creation.

And it is even so with this holy Book. People will tell you that the works of Shakespeare, as well as the older writings of Greek and Latin poets and philosophers, have their measure of inspiration, and so they put the Bible a little way above such books, but only just a little way. By and by they bring it to the same level, and presently it goes into the waste-paper basket—no use at all.

The great truth is that we have something here which is different in kind and nature from every other book on the face of the earth; and the essence of the difference lies in this: it is inspired of God; and though I may be the simplest person on the earth I can come to it and get divine direction. I may be only a little child just able to prattle, but I can be instructed in my measure in the truths of Scripture. That blessed and holy Visitant from heaven above, the Lord Jesus Christ, when He was here, was pleased to take the babes in His arms and bless them, and the heavenly light and radiance in Him did not distress or awe the infantile minds.

Oh, beloved friends, it is a great mercy of God that we in this day of great errors have our Bibles, that we have that which is inspired of God, and nothing can wrest it from us. We have it; but the crucial point is whether we make that use of it which we ought to make. It is profitable—profitable in a fourfold way—but as declared here, particularly to Timothy, it is so especially “that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto every good work.”

THE MAN OF GOD

Now, you notice that this term “man of God” occurs here, and also in the First Epistle. I think it is a word we might retain in our minds as a term to meditate upon, and to consider what is its special significance in the connection in which it is used. We find the term also in the Old Testament. We see that at a particular period it was applied to the prophets of Israel. It was used at the time of their declension, their national declension from the worship of Jehovah, and when they had been carried away into the baseness of idolatry, and the whole ten tribes were involved. The prophet of God is called the man of God. Why? Because he was the man who stood for God in the midst of the mass which is characterized by error. He stood for God, and, if necessary, stood alone.

There is, according to prophecy, a man coming who has an evil title, “the man of sin,” who shall sum up in himself impiety in all its worst forms. He is the man that will stand for sin. But we are called to-day, every one of us, like the prophet, and like Timothy, to stand for God. Oh, beloved friends, it is a privilege surely to be on God’s side, and to know that we are in the current of God’s thoughts in a day of general departure and declension. We can see error all around. Some persons say, “You should not talk about these things; they do not create any pleasant feelings in our minds.” Of course they do not, they are not intended to awaken a pleasant feeling; they are intended to arouse in us the very reverse—a revulsion of feeling so that we should never be ensnared by the evil tendencies.

There are those who are entrapped. You do not want to be entrapped, do you? Be, on the contrary, a man of God. Do you ask how you can be a man of God? Only by cleaving simply to the scripture. Do not attempt it in any other way. There are persons who look round upon the divisions of Christendom and they throw up their hands in horror in view of the number of the sects. Some persons we know have been the evil instruments of making more sects. Cannot we reduce them? If there are, say, five hundred, can we not make four hundred and ninety-nine by bringing two sects together, or even reduce them to four hundred and ninety-eight? Beloved friends, even in such a case we should not do very much good after all. No, we are not called to do this. It is not for you—if I may still keep to the figure five hundred—it is not for you to select (say) number four hundred and number four hundred and five, and join these two together and let the others go their way. If you wish to do the work of reunion you must aim to bring all the five hundred together. This you will never do; it is too late in the day to attempt it.

How to Consult the Bible

What we have to do is to be men of God, and the only way in which we can be perfectly instructed in these perilous times is by having the word of God before us, and by coming to it as an inspired communication to our souls. Depend upon it, the reason why we do not profit by the word of God as we might is that we do not come to it in a practical way. By a practical way I mean coming to it for light upon particular points of conduct or service or association. There are persons who, having a difficulty, say, “I will lay it before so-and-so, he may help me.” They write, or wait till the brother comes, who sends it on to another, and so the question goes round, and when it returns eventually, the question is exactly where it was before. We should, of course, seek to help one another. I am not saying a word against that, but, beloved friends, you will never get useful help from other persons unless you go directly yourselves to the word of God.

It is an absolute necessity in these days to have direct recourse to the word of God. It may be upon a personal matter, or it may be upon a church matter, and we ought to remember the distinction between the two things. We have a personal relation as children of God, and the Scripture gives us light for that. But in the face of the terrible confusion and the wreck and havoc that have been wrought in the outward testimony of the church of God, we still remain members of the one body of which Christ is the Head. Now, as members of that body, have we not a particular responsibility? Is there anything that the Lord, to whom we are attached by this loving tie, is there anything that He would have us try to do for Him while we wait for His coming? I know of no other means of obtaining the answer to such a question save by reference to Holy Scripture. There you have that which is inspired of God, which will teach you all that is good for you to know, and which will instruct you in all good works. May God bless His word to this end.

W. J. H.

(Concluded from page 155)

The Dealings of God With Peter: 1. In the Gospels

My object, as you know, is not to enter into all the particulars that might claim our attention and our interest in such a scene as I have now read, but the Lord’s dealings with Peter—the special teaching of God’s Spirit in that which concerned His servant on this occasion. Now, on a previous one, the Lord had manifested His gracious power in a kindred scene—not, it is true, in a storm, but in the very neighborhood of the shore, after a fruitless night of labor where they had toiled much and caught nothing. And the Lord had then shown not only His absolute power on behalf of His own people, but His perfect knowledge. For it was not merely that there was a shoal of fishes caught, but there was the direction of the Lord. There was the telling them to cast on the right of the boat; and it was found therefore, as Jesus had said, and as the apostle (he who was about to be an apostle) now learned, “at Thy word.” It was against all appearances, in the face of an experience which would have made him utterly doubt the possibility of such a thing; but it was the Lord, and it was the Lord honoring His word—the Lord who showed boundless resources, and that these resources were not only at His command, but according to His word to His own people. And this, accordingly, was the starting-point of Peter as a fisher of men.

Here we have another scene, not by the shore, but on the lake, which was now a scene of boisterous wind, and, as it is said, “the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves; for the wind was contrary.” It is a picture of what the world is for the servants of the Lord in His absence. He was on high on the mountain. He was there in prayer—just what He is doing now. He is in the presence of God interceding; and, meanwhile, His servants are here, and all is against them—all outward circumstances—for there is one who is in power allowed for a season, and his uniform effort is to oppose and thwart the servants of the Lord. Hence, therefore, they, being exposed on the lake, were an object against which Satan raged. “And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled.” The very thing which if believed in is the spring of the deepest comfort, when it is merely a question of sight, even if it were Jesus, is turned into an occasion of fear! So little can we trust ourselves, so infinitely are we indebted to God and His word. I say that the word revealing Jesus is a totally different thing from our own thoughts, our own sight, even if it were so. So we know it was when the Lord was here below; not perhaps terror as on this occasion, but certainly indifference, stupid wonder sometimes, at the miracles that He wrought, but always only one feeling of the heart after another. There was no divine link. The only spring of divine association is the word of God.

Well here there was nothing of the kind. They “saw him walking on the sea,” and “were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them.” Here was His word. “Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer, it is I, be not afraid.”

This draws out Peter, who showed what, alas! he often showed—he showed confidence in his own feelings about the Lord. He was right, of course, as to the Lord; utterly wrong in acting upon his own thoughts and feelings. So now, when the Lord had brought out this comfort, nothing seemed to him a more simple thing—with that fervor and readiness that was his character—to act upon it. So he says, “Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.”

Now there, I need not tell you, it was what man never ought to venture—a going before the Lord. All blessing and power, in acting where the Lord leads, but what a thing, after all, for man to wish to lead the Lord! It was really this which Peter, through his haste, was doing. “Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.” The Lord acts, however, upon His word. He would test him. It was needful for Peter. And it is exactly what the Lord is doing now with us. It was what He did with Israel in the wilderness, but then He shows what is in the heart. It is not merely a question of evil, but there may be that which seems ever so good, for what could be better than to go out to Jesus? Yes, but there is all the difference whether it is the Lord, who, from His own heart, bids me come, or the Lord who acts upon my own impetuosity, and who puts me to the test, if it is my own thought, my own haste. It was so, certainly, with Peter, and this, accordingly, was what Peter had to learn—the blessedness of waiting, the danger of dictating, of drawing even upon the Lord according to his own thoughts. So the Lord answers him: “Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water to go to Jesus”; for undoubtedly that word “Come” for the moment filled his heart. It was faith. It was faith to act upon the word of the Lord, but inasmuch as it was not only faith, it was mingled. It was Peter’s word, and not simply the Lord’s word. “If it be thou.” Was that simple faith? “Lord, if it be thou.” Assuredly not.

With the faith, the unmingled faith, that God gives a soul, there is no such thing as “If it be thou.” There was clearly, therefore, the mingling of Peter’s own mind, Peter’s own thoughts. A question was involved in the very way in which he speaks to the Lord: “Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee upon the water.” Was it His will? He had not thought of that. It was Peter’s will; but, nevertheless, there was reality in Peter, and this is exactly what we find on the occasion. It is a mingled scene; it flowed out of a mingled source.

And this is one thing that we have often to learn, beloved friends, of one another. It is the commonest thing possible, especially in the younger days of every Christian. And it is precisely where we have to take care of our thoughts and our theories. “There may be reality of faith, but there may be much more than faith, too, and it is wisdom never to disown faith. But, on the other hand, it is wisdom also to discern that there is something besides faith.

So in this very case. There is faith in so far that Peter does go at the word of the Lord, and does, therefore, walk on the water. There would have been no such thing if there had not been faith; but still, I repeat, it was not unmingled. There was enough of Peter himself to enfeeble his walk on the water, and this shows itself quickly, for when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and, beginning to sink, he cried, saying, “Lord, save me.”

Now there at once an unskilled soul, in dealing with another, would say, “There is no faith there whatever. There you see he is sinking. He is crying, ‘Lord, save me.’ He never knew that he was saved. He never had faith.” It does not follow by any means, but it was quite evident that there was this trouble in the heart of Peter, and, accordingly, the Lord dealt with what was simply of Peter, while at the same time He stood faithful to His own word, for He had bid him come, and He would not revoke it. He does not change, but inasmuch as Peter had been too forward, and his own will was concerned in it, the Lord would judge the will, but He would strengthen the faith. And so He acts in the perfecting of His own grace. For He allows Peter to learn the folly of being before the Lord. He allows him to prove that even His own word, “Come,” was not enough unless there was faith in it. Peter could say in his First Epistle, “Kept by the power of God.” Yes, but “through faith.” And supposing there was something besides faith at work—feeling, desire—for, no doubt, Peter thought that nobody else in the boat could go out but himself; well then, I say, there was something to judge, and this was in the very fullness of the love of the Lord Jesus to Peter. For Peter would have to do with others as a fisher of men, and if Peter had walked bravely on the water, and there had been no sinking, do you think that Peter would ever have known the weight of his own word, “kept by the power of God”? Certainly not.

This then was an incomparably valuable lesson, a lesson that he learned from the Lord personally, but a lesson that was only better known when the Lord was no longer there in person, when the Lord was away. Indeed, it was particularly for that time, for the whole scene in its force rather refers to the absence of Jesus. No doubt there is a linking on of the present with that which will be by and by, and I suppose that the end of the chapter shows most clearly that view. Taking the scene as a picture of what is coming, no doubt it does show us our Lord when He rejoins those from whom He has been separated; when He comes back again, and not only joins Peter on the sea, but joins the others in the ship. There will be a coming to the “desired haven.” There will be the return of the Lord. There will be the blessedness that will follow His return. “And when the men of that place had knowledge of him, they sent out into all that country round about, and brought unto him all that were diseased, and besought him that they might only touch the hem of his garment, and as many as touched were made perfectly whole.” No doubt there will be this, not merely in a little testimony as then, but in power when the Lord returns in His kingdom, and He will be welcomed in the very place from which, on the contrary, He had been rejected. For it was at this very spot that there had been the desire expressed, and expressed strongly too, that He would depart from their coasts. It is the return of the Lord, then, which finishes this part of the chapter.

The eighteenth chapter takes up another line of truth, but it brings us, as far as a figure can, to the return of the Lord by and by. Only we have evidently a very great advance in the position of Peter. When Peter left the ship we have what, as nearly as possible, shows the place of a Christian; what ought to be the pathway, indeed, of the church as a whole. That is an abandonment of every prop of nature, and the going out to Jesus where nothing but divine power could keep him. But I repeat that is only through faith. Now that is the grand lesson, that it is not even Jesus only, but it is through faith. And where therefore Peter allowed other things to occupy his mind, when he saw the wind boisterous, that was not faith. “When he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid, and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.” Certainly that is not the triumph of a Christian man. A Christian man is characterized always by this, “receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.” A man who does not maintain with simplicity and with constancy the happy enjoyment of the salvation of his soul, so far gives up the principle of a Christian man. Of course I do not the least mean that there are not very true Christians who have been bewildered and perplexed and misled as to the salvation of their souls. I am very far from saying that they are not Christians if they have not that constant enjoyment, but I do say they are off the ground of Christianity. I do say they have never known it, or that they have let it slip as Peter did here. And the source is the very same thing, for people have tried to have the joy of salvation by thinking of salvation. They never will, never! It is by Christ before them, by Christ as one that we are entitled to look upon and rest in and enjoy. And indeed this characterizes, as we find afterward, in this very Gospel, not merely Christ as an object now, but Christ as an object of hope by and by. “They went forth to meet the bridegroom.” That is what we are called to, that is, from the very beginning, and that is what God now has brought back again. We go forth to meet Him. We do not belong to an association. We do not belong to a society, and nothing on earth, no person, no thing upon earth, has a right to us. Jesus only. Consequently therefore if He says, “Come,” we go, and if this fills the heart it does not matter whether there are the waters or not. And it makes not the slightest difference that the waters are boisterous, for I need not repeat the remark, familiar to many, that the waters might have been as smooth as glass, but they would have been just as difficult to walk upon. It is not, therefore, in the least a question of smooth or rough, but of Jesus; and of Jesus (I repeat) as one that the heart was occupied with Jesus again, as I have said, as one that is coming back, for we have that too. It is not merely as one now, but as one that is coming, and coming to receive us into His own glory, into His own joy.

Here then we have this most weighty lesson impressed upon the soul of Peter—that even in the presence of Jesus, where the circumstances of trial and of danger, instead of the word of Christ, filled his mind; his heart was utterly powerless, and he was in far more imminent danger than those that were in the boat. No doubt he despised them! They did not dare to go out to meet Jesus! But where was Peter now? Hence you see he was, after all, comparing himself. He was looking at these things, and looking at himself upon the water; he had forgotten Jesus really, and therefore in this agony he cries out, “Lord, save me,” and the grace of the Lord at once meets him. “And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith.” Ah, there was faith then, but it was little faith, and this little faith now became manifest. He thought he was a man of great faith. Now here was exactly the lesson that Peter had to learn. “O thou of little faith.” It was himself. It was not Thomas. I do not say that Thomas’ faith was not very little, but still, it was not Thomas, it was not John, it was no other, it was Peter. He never thought of it. On the contrary, he was quite sure that he was a man of great faith, and now he has this most wholesome lesson. How humble he would be! How tender with others! He would remember that there was One who had searched the heart and the reins, who had said, “O thou of little faith.” And I have not the slightest doubt that the very fact that the Lord pronounced, “O thou of little faith,” was the means of his growth in faith. For the thing that hinders us, brethren, at least one great source at any rate, is our conceit of ourselves. We do not think we need to grow; we forget that. We forget our lowliness, and I would speak now, spiritually too, for that was the point. It was not little in any circumstances that belonged to Simon Barjona. It was the little faith of Peter. And so the Lord shows also that which characterizes little faith—doubt. There is not a word in the Bible to create a doubt, not one. The Spirit of God never put a doubt into the heart of man. Doubt is of Satan, or of man himself under Satan, if you please, never of the Spirit of God. There is everything to search, everything to humble, to exercise, but to exercise faith; because, beloved friends, what is the root of doubting? Depreciating Christ. Do you think the Holy Ghost ever depreciates the grace of Christ towards even the man of little faith? Here you have the contrary. To whom did Christ manifest His grace more? To the man of little faith most of all. “Wherefore didst thou doubt?” They come into the ship, the wind ceases, they arrive on the other side, and, as I have already pointed out, with that result of blessing in the very place of His rejection. [A. T. K.]

(To be continued)

The Dealings of God With Peter: 10. In the Acts of the Apostles

Acts 3-9

We have had the remarkable discourse of the apostle which followed the gift of the Holy Ghost. There we found not merely the proof of Jesus as the Messiah, instead of being weakened by the cross, confirmed; and that rejection, and, consequently, His departure to heaven, instead of being a stumbling-block, contrariwise the fulfillment of the most distinct and weighty prophecy in the word of God. But now, in this third chapter, we have the apostle not so much explaining what was new and essential to Christianity, but showing us a remarkable dealing of God—the tender mercy that still yearns over Israel. For this fresh discourse of Peter is strictly suitable to one that was not only an apostle of the church, but an apostle of the circumcision. This the Lord indicated long before, and it becomes more and more manifest that Peter was peculiarly one in whom God was mighty towards the circumcision. He that was to manifest the power of God to the uncircumcised had not yet appeared. Hence a striking miracle wrought by Peter and John his companion, and wrought, too, in the temple itself, gave an opportunity for the apostle to open out an appeal to Israel; and it is strictly so.

There is nothing now in this chapter about the gift of the Holy Ghost; there is nothing at all about their being baptized when they took the place of confessors of Christ; but he explains to them with great care that it was by no power or wisdom of theirs that the great deed was done. It was God putting power upon the Man whom they had despised and the nation abhorred. Solemn circumstances! A terrible fact to face! The Jews, the people of God, and the God of Israel, were totally opposed; and they were opposed not merely about something in their own moral ways; they were opposed about the One that God had raised up—raised up and sent to bless them. How awful, therefore, must their guilt be, that it was not merely failure. Even those that are most faithful fall, but here it was a blank and distinct rebellion against God, and rebellion against God when He had raised up the Messiah. Hence, the very object of it was to arrest the conscience of the Jew, but in doing so there is a most characteristic appeal of the apostle Peter which I cannot but say a little upon in passing.

He charges them with denying the holy and the just. What, Peter? Had not Peter denied the holy One and the just? The very thing he had done himself! Now, of two things one must be true. Either Peter was a man extremely insensible and dull in the matter of his own sin; or, on the contrary, God had so completely purged away that sin that Peter could speak as calmly and as triumphantly as if he had never been guilty of it. And that is exactly what God does, and I have no doubt that God was using this very thing—that God was bringing out that great truth which we know as an essential one of Christianity, but which was of peculiar moment to bring out for a Jew, because a Jew, having the law, would always be in danger of thinking that there must necessarily be some painful remembrance of what had been done against God by the law’s knowledge of sin; and, accordingly, there would be, as they must have reasoned, a continual keeping up of the remembrance of delinquency, even if forgiven.

Now there is another thing that God is occupied with, and that is, not man and his sins, but Christ and the perfectness with which He has blotted them out from before God; nay, more than that, the perfectness, too, with which He has purged the conscience of the believer so that it is not hardness or insensibility for a man to speak calmly of the very sins he has been guilty of himself; but it is the triumph of faith to be able to look at them without a blush—to be able to speak of them without a blush—to be able to declaim against, and to charge upon the conscience of others, without the smallest wincing, the very thing which had been once his own shame, once his own sin, and that publicly before all, and that not very long before.

Now that is the fact as to Peter. You know very well that his ardor and, I must add, self-confidence had encouraged him to follow the Lord when He was apprehended, and to find his way among the servants, public and private, of the high priest; and there it was, when they detected by his language, if by nothing else, that he was a Galilaean too, and charged him with being one of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, that Peter there and then fell, and fell repeatedly, and fell, too, in the most solemn manner. And yet, beloved friends, that is the very thing that he here speaks of, and puts upon their conscience, as if he had never been guilty of it along with them.

I refer to this as a beautiful illustration of, what the apostle Paul calls in the Epistle to the Hebrews, “the worshippers once purged having no more conscience of sin.” Of course that does not mean that conscience did not feel, but that now conscience is clear—so completely clear that one could speak with this perfect freedom and, in fact, lay it at the door of other people. Surely Peter would not have denied it himself for an instant, but Peter was bound there and then not to be speaking of what he had judged himself for already, and what he was completely clear of before God. Now he had to do with them, and he had also to do with them as a witness of Jesus and of His redemption.

Well, this discourse of Peter, which we have before us now, does not merely bring out the power of the blood of Christ, but further, there is another thing that I must draw your attention to, and that is, the manner in which he presents the coming of the Lord Jesus. He never speaks about the Lord taking us to heaven. It is His coming to the earth that occupies Peter. Indeed, this is the way in which, habitually, the coming of the Lord, wherever it is treated in the Acts of the Apostles, is named. For instance, in the first chapter that same Jesus should “so come in like manner as they had seen Him go into heaven.” That does not mean His taking us there, but His coming thence Himself. It does not bring forward our accompanying, but it is the very same time; it is when we do accompany Him; when we follow Him out of heaven. In short, it is His coming into this scene—the world—His coming back again. So here, in addressing the Jews, he puts that before them. He says, “Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.” We are all familiar with that change— “so,” not, “when.” “And he will send Jesus Christ which before was preached unto you.” Mark that. “Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things.” That is the point. It is not the removal of the saints to heaven, but it is the restitution of all things on the earth.

Now you must not suppose that that is any defect in Peter. Not only was it no defect, but it was exactly the right doctrine at the right time. You see that he was addressing not the children of God that were looking to follow the Lord into heaven, but he was speaking to the Jew, and he was showing that the coming of the Lord already—His humiliation, His suffering here below, His cross—had not taken away in the least degree the hope of Israel. Here is the hope of Israel. It is as fresh as ever. It is as fully maintained by Peter as by Isaiah. It is even more clearly presented by the apostle now than it had ever been by any Jewish prophet before. And you see the propriety that the apostle of circumcision should follow in the steps of, but should, at the same time carry forward the hope of, the prophets of the circumcision. All is harmonious in the word of God. He that was called for another work, who is to be taken out of Israel for the purpose of making the grace of God so much the more conspicuous to the Gentile, will come before us later on. I do not say that I shall take up his doctrine and his history in this course, though I may just look at it in passing. Our proper theme is Peter. I am merely now showing the consistency of the preaching of Peter with the place which we have seen assigned him by the Lord Jesus. I am showing, too, how he was being guided of God as being the foremost man at that time in file testimony of God here below. But how blessedly and simply, too, but convincingly, he was made the instrument of bringing forward exactly the right word of God for that time and place.

He tells them to repent and be converted, and this has always a great place as said to Israel; not by any means that repentance is withheld by the great apostle of the Gentiles. It would be a terrible lack if they had been called to repent, and we had been called only to believe, but it is perfectly true that faith gets an exceedingly marked place in the call to the Gentiles, and that repentance has an equally strong and prominent place in the call to Israel; only you must remember that he who repents always believes, and he who believes always repents. Still there they are—in the one case repentance being the prominent thing, and in the other place faith. And why so, seeing that they were both found in both? The reason was just this: the one had had the favored testimony of God, and had been false to it; therefore they are to repent. The other people had had no testimony at all, and they are called to believe. That is not that they were not called to repent, for I repeat again that there is no soul ever brought to God without repentance. It is not merely without faith, but without repentance. That is to say, that Gentiles are just as truly sinners as the Jews, only there is this difference—that we are never called “transgressors” like the Jews, nor are the Jews merely called “sinners” like us. “Sinners of the Gentiles,” “transgressors in Israel.” This you will find to be, if I may so say, the technical or the great difference between the two; and it is connected with this very point that I am now pressing; that is, that repentance has a conspicuous place in the call to the Jew, and faith has a conspicuous place in the call to the Gentile. Only, I repeat, both elements are in every soul that is born of God.

Well, this discourse has another point in it which I would say a word upon, for I am obliged to choose in so large a subject. It is not strictly correct that the apostle presented our Lord as God’s Son, as in our common version. It is said, for instance, in the 13th verse, “The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus”; and again, in the last verse, “Unto you first God having raised up his Son Jesus.” In both these places it ought to be “Servant.” He does not mean Son. It is the word that is translated “servant” in the Greek version of Isaiah. “My elect, my servant, in whom my soul delighted,” and so on. It is not the proper word for son. I shall show the importance of this presently. It is Messiah; that is the point. And, as Messiah, the Lord Jesus is not prominently mentioned as Son. I do not the least deny that Son is recognized. For instance, in the second Psalm, “Thou art my Son.” That does not mean servant. It is Son, and therefore it is perfectly true that we do find the Sonship of the Lord Jesus connected with the Messiah, but it is not at all the characteristic way of speaking of the Messiah; whereas, when the apostle Paul comes forward we shall find that “Son” is the very foundation-stone. Indeed, it is because Peter in the Lord’s ministry had confessed Him to be the Son of the living God that the Lord Jesus said, “Upon this rock.” I was right, therefore, in saying that it is the foundation-stone—the foundation-rock on which the church is built. And, immediately after, he reveals His intention to build the church.

Well now you see it is not a question of the church being brought out clearly yet. For that, Paul was raised up. Peter is still pleading with the Jews. He is still calling upon the nation to repent, and he is telling them that if they do repent God will send His Son, His Servant, His Messiah. That is the meaning of it. He would raise up His Servant, this Messiah, who would bless them, and he would bring in a new covenant and all their blessings. They refuse this, and accordingly this is what I am about to trace—the history of the refusal of the testimony of the Holy Ghost, as the Gospels show us the history of the refusal of the Lord Jesus.

When Peter was still preaching to them on this very occasion— “As Peter and John spake unto the people, the priests and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead.” All their system of thought, their unbelief, properly speaking, was in danger, for at that time the prevalent notion among the leaders of Israel—not the Pharisees—was that there was no resurrection. Those that took the lead at that time were Sadducees, and they felt most deeply the proclamation of the truth that there was a man risen from the dead and gone to heaven. It overthrew their whole system. They were moved, therefore, that they preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. It was not only the resurrection, but it was aggravated by this—a resurrection that had brought the power of God into the world as it is now. A man was raised from the dead and gone into the heaven in the midst of them. Why, it was clear that if that was the case it brought the power of God very close to them. Where had this mighty deed been done? In their midst—in Jerusalem itself, in their own day. It was not done in a corner; it was not done in some recess of the earth; it was not done where nobody had seen it and nobody had heard anything about it. It was in the midst of an armed band. It was in the midst of a nation that had been fully warned against it. That deceiver, as they said, had told them that He was to rise in three days. They were, therefore, fully aware of what they were to expect. All that made the miracle so much the more mighty as a testimony of the present power of God in dealing with this very world. He had risen from the dead, we may say, before their very eyes, although they did not see it. But still, there they were, guarding the very spot, and if it had been possible to see it, it must have been seen. But no, it was of that character that God would not give it to be seen except by chosen witnesses. They saw the Lord after the flesh; they never saw Him after He rose from the dead. Well, but still there was the fact. They were grieved about it; and hence they come down and lay hands upon the apostles, and put them in hold until the next day. This did not arrest the work of the Lord.

Many believed. The number of the men was about five thousand.

Well, on the morrow we see they hold their council. They were gathered together; “Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest, were gathered together at Jerusalem. And when they had set them in the midst, they asked, By what power, or by what name, have ye done this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost.” It is clear that Peter was the man of that time. He was the man that God was using at that hour. Filled with the Holy Ghost, he said, “Ye rulers of the people and elders of Israel, If we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is made whole, be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead.” And you will observe that he does not qualify it here. Now that he has these guilty leaders before him he does not say, “I wot that through ignorance ye did it,” for now you see they were making it most palpable and manifest that there was a will—a wicked will. Accordingly he does not allow of any excuse, and it is always so with God. When He meets souls at first He meets them as they are, with nothing but grace, and when they proceed in rejecting Christ it is no use denying that there is a rebellious will. And so it is here. “Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole.” And he quotes the well-known 118th Psalm, “This is the stone which was set at naught of you builders, which is become the head of the corner.” It was only accomplishing their own scriptures. But he adds, “Neither is there salvation in any other.” Here was the One they were rejecting above all! “Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” And the Lord had brought in that great truth that it is in vain to look for salvation above the heavens. It is under the heavens; it is here on earth. The Son of man has on earth, as Christ says, power to forgive sins.” That is what He brought down from heaven, and here it is that this name continues to go forth. The Holy Ghost gives it currency and power to go forth here alone. It is not there, it is here, that a man must lie saved if saved at all. “So when they saw the boldness of Peter and John”

[W. K.]

(To be continued)

The Dealings of God With Peter: 11. In the Acts of the Apostles

Acts 3-9. (Continued)

But mark another thing which is very interesting. Although Peter was filled with the Holy Ghost, although he spoke with this most convincing power, they could see that he was an unlearned man. Inspiration did not give the appearance of learning. Inspiration gave divine power and kept perfectly from error, but it did not hinder the character, the style, of the man who was inspired. This is of immense importance to us, because unbelief builds a great deal upon a certain style. For instance, you find the style of James, you find the style of Peter, you find the style of Paul. To be sure we do, and that is the perfection of inspiration. Inspiration does not mean God speaking to men. Inspiration means God speaking by man to men, and therefore you see that it is not only that you have God speaking, but you have God speaking by the man, and the man gives his own style to the word of God that is spoken. It is never called the word of man; it is the word of God, but still it is the word of God by man, passing through a human mind, a human heart, and a human mouth, it may be, to men.

Well, accordingly, there is a certain style which is impressed upon the word of God, only the Spirit of God takes care that there shall he no error; and so it was upon that day. They saw the boldness of these men, but further, they perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men. It was not that they were ignorant of the truth. They were ignorant themselves. It was not that they were unlearned in the Scriptures. It was Caiaphas and Annas and these others who were unlearned in the Scriptures; but still, judged by the mere standard of education or letters among men, undoubtedly Peter and John were ignorant and unlearned men; and their being filled with the Holy Ghost, I repeat, did not in the least set this aside. It did what was infinitely better. It showed the power and the grace of God, so to speak, made perfect in weakness. It showed that, although there was this ignorance and want of learning after a human sort, there was what manifested the Holy Ghost; and they were being used with divine power both for the blessing of the believer and for the conviction of the conscience of the unbeliever. “So they marveled,” it is said, “and they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus.”

But then there is another thing. There was the very man that had been made strong, and they could not get rid of this evidence. They had him before them, but he was there who was the witness of the power of God. “Beholding the man that was healed standing with them they could say nothing against it.” You see it is not ignorance which is the terrible and damning thing in men’s hearts. It is will that desires to expel the testimony of God, the grace of God, and the power of God, if they could, out of God’s own world. That was their case, then. But God made them feel it.

“When they had, therefore, commanded them to go aside, they conferred among themselves.” And they let out their conviction of the fact. There was no doubt of the miracle, “but that it spread no farther let us straitly threaten them.” So we see the blindness of unbelief following, for how absurd to suppose that God had wrought in this way, and that it should be kept hidden, or that the persons who were the instruments of the power of God should conceal such a thing, or that that power was not to work in other ways similarly. “Let us straitly threaten them that they speak henceforth to no man in this name. And they called them and commanded them not to speak at all, nor teach, in the name of Jesus.” But this only brings out the divinely given courage and wisdom of the servants of God, for “Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God.” What a position! And these were the servants of God! These men claimed to have God’s own authority in the world. “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God” —that is what it came to “judge ye; for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” All that then remained was to threaten them further, and to let them go. And when they did go we find a new thing. They went to “their own company,” and there it is for the first time that anything of that kind is mentioned in Scripture. And it is a very important truth, too, that now Christians had their own company. Before the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus, there was nothing of the sort. Their own company would have been the Jews. Now there was their own company separate from the Jews, and the people who were most opposed, most hostile, to their company were the Jews; so it was clear that God had wrought in some entirely new way on the earth. He had given a new relationship, new affections. What was the center of this? Christ; that was what made the difference. Jesus, the rejected Jesus, the exalted Christ.

There, however, they find themselves, and they raise their voices to God with one accord, saying, “Lord, thou art God which hast made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is; who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things.” They applied the 2nd Psalm. “And now, Lord, behold their threatenings, and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word.” And so they did. After that they had prayed there was an answer given of the most conspicuous kind. “The place was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and they spake the word of God with boldness.”

You must distinguish, therefore, between the gift of the Holy Ghost and the filling with the Holy Ghost. The gift of the Holy Ghost, once given, was forever given. The filling of the Holy Ghost depends upon circumstances, and upon this circumstance above all others—that nature is denied any place practically. When that is the case the Holy Ghost fills the soul that is emptied enough of self to look to God to fill it. It is our own thoughts, our own will at work, that hinders our being filled with the Holy Ghost. But now here they had learned how completely it was a question of God and of God’s grace; for what were they? And yet they could see now what were the high priests, what was all Israel. Enemies of God; enemies of Jesus! They therefore felt how Christ was everything to them, and the consequence is that they were filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness. That was the effect of it.

“And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul.” There seems to be a fresh impetus given to all those spiritual affections that had been found even before. There was a fresh start. “Neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus; and great came grace was upon them all. Neither was there any I make that remark because it shows the great among them that lacked, for as many as were possessors of land sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles’ feet, and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.” There was a remarkable form that the grace took as an outward sign. It is in the very thing which a Jew would have been as unlikely a man as any in the world to part with, for the Jew certainly has never been considered remarkable for this kind of readiness to lay down all that he has in the world. But that was exactly what the Spirit of God wrought within them. He had come to give men another being, another relationship, and that was the effect of it. The earth was nothing and the things on the earth were nothing.

And you must remember, along with this having things in common, that all the Christians in the world were there together in that one city. When God extended the testimony to other cities we never find anything of the sort. There never was what was commonly called community of goods when God began to work in the cities of Juda, and still more among the Gentiles. It is when they were all in Jerusalem. We all understand it. They were a family; they felt that they were one family; but when it came to God’s working here and working there it is clear that the day for community of goods was passed, and so there was a modification entirely of this remarkable display of the grace of God when the testimony extended to other places. Otherwise it would have been mere independency.

Now, there is no principle more opposed to the church of God than what is commonly called “independency” and “congregationalism.” Nothing. There is no one thing more opposed to it, because the having, in our own little circle, that which is the boundary of our affections and our duties cramps the church of God and hinders our sense of oneness, which is the essential truth of the word of God. There is “one body” all over the earth. We see therefore that, while the members of that one body were all in the one city, a state of things was suitable in the hands of the Spirit of God which was quite unsuited when Christianity became propagated and found in other places also. I make that remark because it shows the great folly of those that think, “Oh, how nice a thing it would be to have community of goods now.” The same kind of thing has entered into the heads of people at various times. It is true that they have carried it out in a very imperfect manner. There is another thing, too, that ruins it, and that is, making a law of it. Now there was no law in Jerusalem. Nobody asked them. It was a thing spontaneously done, and it was done, too, only by those who really had faith to do it. And it was there that Satan hindered. He put it into the heart of a man and a woman there to pretend to give up all their goods when they did not do so. And the story of this is the next thing that comes before us.

We have seen the hostile power of the world, and the world was defeated, but now we have to face another thing. Evil creeps into the church. But is there not power to meet it? There was ample power then, and so it was that the moment it appeared it was met by the superior power of the Holy Ghost. That is what I am going to show you as the great feature of the fifth chapter of the Acts. It is power of every variety meeting the effort of the devil to hurt the church of God. Now the first and most serious thing of all was the corrupting of some that bare the name of the Lord. And what showed the serious character of it was this: it was not merely an impulse, it was an agreement. It was deliberate deceit, and it was deliberate deceit of the very worst kind, because it was deliberate deceit to get the credit of superior grace without reality. This is what comes out, then. A certain man named Ananias —and this is confronted with what particularly marked a good man just before, Barnabas, that son of consolation—that man who in word and deed comforted so many desolate hearts—and a Levite too. No doubt things were only confused, too, because it was a strange thing that a Levite should possess lands and houses. And no doubt lie felt it; and accordingly it was such a happy opportunity to lay them down for Him who had died for him; to lay them down for those who were dear to Him. And so he did. He brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

“But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession, and kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it.” They had time, therefore, to think what they were about. They were perfectly aware. It was no sudden impulse; it was a design. Just as if God were not looking upon it and quite aware! God was there; not now merely God in heaven, and not merely God in a vague way upon the earth, but God come down in special grace in the person of the Holy Ghost, to take His place with His people here below. It was an entirely new thing. It was not merely the vague sense of God delivering earth, but there was the dwelling of God—the special dwelling of God—in the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, who had now come and made the church His dwelling-place. So this aggravated the devil. “Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?”

I will make this remark, which I think to be one of practical moment, that all sin now, properly speaking, is sin against the Holy Ghost. I know there are many people who are dreadfully afraid of that term— “sin against the Holy Ghost.” They very often think and fear that they have sinned against the Holy Ghost. The fact is that every sin which a Christian commits is sin against the Holy Ghost—every sin. You will tell me, then, what a dreadful case that makes out. It is a very serious thing, but what you probably have got in your own minds is not sin against the Holy Ghost, but blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Now the moment that you distinguish between sin and blasphemy it at once delivers you from a great deal of uneasiness which has no foundation whatever. What is the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost? The blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is the sin of a man that not only gives way to utter unbelief, rejects Christ, rejects the gospel, but imputes it all to the devil, imputes it to Beelzebub, that is, denies the Holy Ghost to have His part in that which is all part of that wonderful working of the spirit of grace founded upon redemption in our Lord Jesus Christ. If I impute the word of God—because it is all a part of the same great system of divine grace which He has now wrought in Christianity—if I impute the word of God to the devil it is clear that I am given up to the most hateful and abominable rebellion against God, and therefore it is plain that I am destroying all possibility of salvation for my soul. This is what people forget to be that which is meant by blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, and it is plain that persons who are so found are lost. It is plain that they cannot be forgiven.

But this is clearly the last result of unbelief, and never can be found in a Christian person or anything like it. A person may be troubled with bad thoughts; that is another thing altogether. But these people were people that were not troubled at all. They were people that gloried in their wickedness; gloried in it; had no conscience about it whatever. They had got fully hardened and seared by Satan. I repeat that no sin now is what it was to a Jew. A Jew’s sin was sin against the law. It was transgression of the law. But that does not define a Christian’s sin. A Christian’s sin is sin against the Holy Ghost, because the Holy Ghost has taken up His abode in the Christian, and, consequently, whatever sin he does is a disrespect to and a grief to the Holy Ghost. Hence a lie now is not merely a lie. In this case it was a very formal and deliberate one. Peter, therefore, brings out that which made its character to be awful: it was a lie against the Holy Ghost. “To lie to the Holy Ghost and to keep back part of the price of the land.” And the consequence is that he laid this upon him—that it was not to man he lied, but to God. God was there, and he had acted as if God was not there. So Ananias, on hearing these words, expires, and great fear came upon all.

What added to it was this: the wife came in not long after. The young men, in fact, had only returned from burying the husband when the woman came in, not knowing what was done, about three hours after; and Peter said to her, “Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much. And she said, Yea, for so much. Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? Behold the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out.” So she fell down also, “and great fear came upon all the church.”

(To be continued) [W. K.

The Dealings of God With Peter: 12. In the Acts of the Apostles

Acts 3-9. (Continued)

This is the first time, certainly, when the expression “the church” is applied. At the end of the second of Acts the occurrence of the word is doubtful. It is very probable that it is not correct there. In that place “the Lord added together,” is the true reading. I make this remark because it will show the great importance of having as correct a translation of the Scriptures as possible. I think that those who desire intelligence in the word of God ought to possess such a translation for their own private reading. I do not say that they should have it for use in the meetings, as the less said as to points of this kind, especially at a worship meeting or anything of that kind, the better; but I conceive that here I have the object and purpose of seeking to help the children of God to know the truth as much as possible, and therefore I do not scruple to speak of this, though I do not like it. If we all had the truth of God presented to us in the correct and hest form there would be no need to dwell upon these things, but, unfortunately, we have been accustomed to an imperfect translation, and consequently it is necessary to show, in certain cases, what is really the truth. In the second of Acts, then, the expression is, “The Lord added together such as should be saved.” Those persons composed the church, but now He calls them the church. “And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things.” It was not their own company—those that were destined to salvation, going on in unbelief, and despising the testimony of God; but those that bowed to it, and had repented, and had believed the gospel. Now they were brought together, and by the Holy Ghost they formed this dwelling-place of God. They are called, therefore, the church.

“And upon as many as heard these things.” It is evident the power of the testimony affected many outside. “And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people. And they were all with one accord in Solomon’s porch. And of the rest durst no man join himself to them.” You see God guarded them, kept off those that ought not to be there. “But the people magnified them.”

“And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.” They were not afraid of multitudes, you see; they rejoiced at it, and indeed I often marvel how those that love the saints of God seem to think that there is some peculiar virtue in what they call “twos and threes.” Now do not misunderstand me. I think it is an exceeding mercy when God has only two or three, but I cannot sympathize with the feeling that prefers two or three to two or three hundred. I should have thought that love would have desired the best blessing upon the largest number, and that love would have desired that those who are as dear to the Lord as ourselves should not be wandering about like poor sheep without a shepherd in all kinds of sorrow and trouble. Do you think that we are the happier because other people are strangers? Do you think it is a Christian feeling to desire that we should have a little less trial? No, I believe not. I believe that love likes the trial of those that it loves; that love has pleasure in bearing and forbearing. It may be tried at a time, of course, for we are poor and imperfect creatures; but still there is something very sweet in sharing the sorrows of those that God loves and that we love; so that while we are thankful that there are two or three here and there, still I think we ought to rejoice more than all in that He not only saves, but gathers and puts in the true place. Do we think it is the true place, or do we think it is only the true place for ourselves? If so, then you are a sect at once; but if you believe that it is God’s place then it is God’s place for all God’s children. We may not deign to use any improper means, or trouble ourselves because people do not come, for that is the Lord’s matter; it is the Lord’s great work, not merely ours. We are under Him; we are mere journeymen. He is the One that carries on the work. I say, then, we ought to rejoice the more that there is divine blessing whether in saving or gathering.

And so it was here. This multitude of men and women, I have no doubt, were a great comfort to those that had the feelings, the sympathies, the grace of the Lord, strong in their souls. And what is more, there was mighty power that accompanied it this time, and one remarkable fact which I do not think is mentioned about any other person is that the shadow of Peter healed. just think of that! We never heard of that about the Lord. We never heard that the Lord’s shadow healed people. Perhaps you think that I am exalting man against the Lord. I am exalting the words of the Lord, who said, “Ye shall do greater works than these, because I go to the Father.” Now I say that that does exalt the Lord, and exalts Him particularly because people may have thought that the Lord was only, so to speak, like a great magnet that could affect only what was near it. Not at all. Because He went they did greater works than His. That is to say, it was the power of the Lord showing itself perfectly superior to everything of nature. Distance and time had nothing to do with it. It was Christ.

And this, accordingly, fills the high priest and his party with great indignation. The more that grace and truth wrought, the more they hated; and they laid their hands again on the apostles and put them in the common prison. But as this is not very particularly said to have happened to Peter till the latter part of the chapter, I need not dwell upon it. Still he was one, but it is only in the latter part that he comes out distinctly.

They put them, then, in prison, but the Lord stretches out His hand. The Lord sends His angel, who opens the prison doors and brings them forth, saying, “Go, stand and speak in the temple all the words of this life.” The effect of that is increasing boldness, for now it was made extremely simple. Before that, the apostles had acted on their confidence in the Lord’s will, but now they had got the positive word of the Lord. It was not merely an instinctive consciousness of what He wished, but it was a certain, positive word. The Lord sent His angel and said, “Go and speak in the temple.” The very place was given. “Go and speak in the temple all the words of this life” —unrestricted testimony of what was needed by souls. “And when they heard that, they entered into the temple early in the morning.” And quite right. “They entered the temple early in the morning and taught. But the high priest came and they that were with him.” They met too. “But when the officers came, they found them not in the prison.” And when they were troubled at hearing the tidings, one comes and tells them that the men whom they were seeking were standing in the temple and teaching the people. So they come and bring them before the council, who put the question, “Did not we strictly command that ye should not teach in this name? and behold ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.” Thus it was. There was the burden of a wretched and guilty conscience.

“Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said.” Not now, “Judge ye.” Now he judged. “We ought,” says Peter, “to obey God rather than men.” Now there is an uncompromising declaration of their obedience to the word of God. “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom ye slew and hanged on a tree: him hath God exalted at his right hand” —(oh, how blessed) — “to be a Prince and a Savior” —not a Prince and a Judge. That He will be by and by, but, meanwhile, “a Prince and a Savior, for to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are his witnesses of these things.” But there was another witness. “So is also the Holy Ghost.” I draw your attention to the manner in which the Holy Ghost is spoken of as a living divine person that was there, not merely in them, but with them. So is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey Him. So they were exceedingly wounded with this, and they were only stopped from violence—from the last act, I mean, of violence—by Gamaliel, the teacher of Paul, a remarkable man who at any rate speaks the words of sobriety.

I would just rehearse in a few words the substance of the chapter. Here you see we have divine power in the church the Holy Ghost adequate to all evil. The offenders fell dead on the spot. We have providential power in the angels, superior to the power of the world. And here we have God’s indirect working by men in the world to arrest what was contrary to His will. Thus, you see, there need be no fear whatever where the church walks in the fear of what is unseen. God guards, God acts. This is what we have to build upon and go forward with. We need not be in the least afraid. God has His Gamaliels now, as He had then, in the midst of wicked people, surely, and although there be not a putting forth of the same kind of miraculous power as we find in the angel’s opening of the prison doors, still God knows how to do a similar kind of thing and to bring about the same result in a way suitable In the present state of His testimony. But, above all, there is the exceeding comfort that the highest and deepest of that power is ours now, as surely as then—the Holy Ghost dwelling in the church of God.

I need not dwell upon what follows. I shall pass over it, and say only a few words upon another scene. We need not speak of the choice of the seven men. Peter is not particularly mentioned. Still less need we speak of Stephen’s discourse. Now a new witness comes forth. I may observe, therefore, that the title of this book is clearly a mistake. It is not the acts of “The Apostles.” It is the acts more particularly of two great apostles, and besides that of one of the deacons, as we see one of the seven men, quite as much as any of the apostles. Not even James figures as much as Stephen. I mention that, not as a criticism on the word of God. You must remember that the titles of the books are not inspired. Those titles that we read at the beginning—as, for instance, “the Epistle of John,” “the Epistle General of James” —were not given by the Holy Spirit. That is merely what men have said. I make that remark because we are perfectly free to criticize what men have said, though we must always bow to what God has said. Therefore you see the book takes in more than the apostles, and by no means the acts of all the apostles.

But coming to the eighth chapter, we have a very special scene. I pass by Philip’s work. We have a good deal that he did. It is not merely Stephen, but Philip also, who was another of the seven men, and Philip was a true evangelist, and, what is more, too, Philip had not lost his place of evangelist when we find him very late in the book of Acts. That is an important hint that those who begin as evangelists should not lose that place later, and should not grow weary of the work, or give it up for another. Philip is still called an evangelist later on. Indeed, it is then particularly that he gets the name. Well now he is evangelizing, and great was the blessing. Why, whole towns of Samaria were won by the gospel. What had never been done by any of the prophets —what had never been done by the twelve apostles when they went forth during our Lord’s ministry, or by the seventy—was now done by that one, single-handed, and yet Philip had been set apart by the laying on of hands merely to take care of the tables and to look after the poor in Jerusalem. But God called him to another work, and this was his work. Indeed, it was a great time of evangelizing. The church scattered abroad were preaching, and the Lord was with them. But Philip was peculiarly blest, and he baptized. I observe that he baptized men and women. We do not hear of his baptizing others, but he baptized men and women, and we do not read farther.

We read of another thing, for certain, and that is that the Holy Ghost was not yet given. Now that was very striking—men converted, men baptized, but not yet having received the Holy Ghost. What a mistake to confound the gift of the Holy Ghost with their being born of the Spirit. I do not know anything of more consequence in its place to note than that fact. There was the very reason why the Holy Ghost was not given them. Samaria had always been a kind of rival of Jerusalem, and if they had got the Holy Ghost apart from the heads of the work in Jerusalem they might have tended to become independent and to say that they were just as good as the church in Jerusalem. We know very well that that is a sufficiently ready tendency, spite of the plain word of God against it. God will make known fully that it is one body and one Spirit; and so when the church at Jerusalem heard of this mighty work at Samaria they sent down Peter and John—two of the most honored men there—and when they came, they prayed, and the Holy Ghost was given. There was a reason as we see, therefore, for that peculiar act. In other cases there was nothing of the kind. There was no laying on of hands or praying on the day of Pentecost. There was down at Samaria.

Well, but another thing occurred. There was a man that Philip had baptized, and when he saw the Holy Ghost given he offered money. There was nothing that he valued so much as money, except that it was to gain influence in order to gain more money. So he thought he would give a little to get more, and he considers that, because he valued money, so would Peter. But that very thing detected the state of his soul, and that which Philip had failed to find out, Peter saw at once. But you observe that it was not any special power. You must not confound what is called the discerning of spirits with this. The discerning of spirits has to do with detecting had doctrine—what is taught. But Peter waited till the conduct of the man and the language of the man showed that he had no part or lot in Christ; and accordingly here we find him, then, betrayed, and the apostle pronounces the most solemn judgment—I conceive even more solemn than that which befell Ananias and Sapphira. Ananias and Sapphira were judged in this world; it was “sin unto death.”

Simon Magus was judged for eternity. Simon Magus was judged in terms that left no hope for his soul at that moment. I do not say that God might not interfere afterward. He, at any rate, asked them to pray for him, but it is quite evident that he had no confidence in God. It is not a question of looking to God about his soul. He looked to them, and you will find, often, that people who have no confidence in God have great confidence in the prayers of God’s servants. It is a common thing in unconverted people. They have not confidence in Christ, but they would have a great deal of confidence in your praying for them. That, you see, finds its example in these early days.

I need not, then, do more than just glance at another thing, and that is that Peter has been found in an active testimony at the end of the ninth chapter, where he raises a dead person and heals a sick man, and is most diligent in visiting the saints. But the next opportunity will afford me occasion for bringing out a still more wonderful account that the Holy Ghost has given us of that which was allotted to this blest servant of the Lord.

(To be continued) [W. K.]

The Dealings of God With Peter: 2. In the Gospels

Well, this is the first great lesson that followed the public call of Peter. I shall now take you to another and different scene in the end of the sixth of John, where the Lord had brought out Himself, and Himself, too, in a very wondrous way—as the bread of life come down from heaven in contrast with the king that man would have liked to make Him; for they thought He was just the one for them, a king that would provide bread for his people; and so they caught at it at once.

They might have quoted scripture for it. For had not scripture declared that Messiah would feed His people with bread? Yes, and it would have been such an excellent thing for them—bread without working for it! and so they thought that this was the king that would do for them. They therefore sought to make the Lord a king, and the Lord therefore goes away from them, because, although He was born King of the Jews, and although He was proclaimed King of the Jews a little after, and although it was impossible for him to deny and not confess that truth, let it be who it might—Pontius Pilate even, that asked, without the least concern as to the reality of the answer—nevertheless, the Lord showed that He knew from the very beginning that He was come, not to reign, but to die; to reign, no doubt, by and by, for there is no truth of Christ but what will be verified. There is no seed but what will really produce fruit, even though it fall to the ground and die first; but still in that very way it is so. It all must go through death and resurrection.

And so the Lord Jesus shows here that it is not first bread, but first suffering. Hence therefore He expounds a grand truth of His person, and what He had come to do, in contrast with Jewish thoughts—that it was not to reign as they expected, although His was the title and He was really the King of that people. But then His own would not have Him— “his own received him not.” His own received Him not, because they were sinners, and after all it was impossible that He could reign over a realm of sin and of sinners. Thus one can see the perfect suitability of it that so it should be, but nevertheless God allowed it to come out as a matter of human responsibility. They would not have Him, not that He would not have them, but that they would not have Him, and it turns out after all that there was a moral unsuitability—total unsuitability—between such a king and such a people.

Well then, what does the Lord lay down? He was come to be a servant, and consequently He comes down. He comes down from heaven, He becomes a man, He is incarnate. But that is not all. When they stumbled at that, He says, “I am come to die,” and He puts this too in the very strongest way, for He says that it is not only that He must be accepted as thus coming down from heaven, and becoming a man to serve, but further—that except they ate His flesh and drank His blood they had no life in them; and yet further, that whosoever did eat His flesh and drink His blood had eternal life, and He would raise him up at the last day. Clearly not that which men have been talking about of late—a question about sacrament or mass or anything of that kind. It is Himself, beloved friends; it is Himself; but then it is Himself dying! And there, indeed, is the great delusion of men—using something that is a mere sign of Christ to do the work of Christ Himself—an idol made out of an institution of the Lord, and consequently it becomes a “saving sacrament,” call it what you please.

No, there is but one Savior, and this is what He really came for, and this was worthy of God and of His Son—to be the Savior first. He will reign by and by, but He would save men from sin; for what would be the good of the kingdom first, and then men turned into hell afterward? No, He would save them from sin first. He would save them from hell, and then reign; and so He will, and this is the way. Accordingly then, He substitutes Himself, coming down and dying for sinners in this world, giving His life, as He says, for the world. It was not merely a question of the Jews, but He gives this life for the world. He substitutes this for the earthly expectation of Israel that He was to reign over them now. Not so; this was His real work, and He closes it all by His going up to heaven as the Son of man.

And it is a singular thing that these are the two things that a Jew cannot endure. He does not believe either in God’s coming down, or in man’s going up; he denies both. It is precisely what tests all the thoughts and feelings of a Jew, and I expect that it will test Christendom too very shortly, because they are rapidly falling into the same pit of unbelief that Israel has fallen into already, and they will very soon, to their own eternal ruin, give up as a public profession, through Christendom, either that God came down to the earth, or that man has gone up to heaven. That will be the apostasy when it comes. But this chapter is full of it, and the effect of bringing this out was that from that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him. Is it not so? “Many of his disciples.” It was not merely the multitudes, but many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him. And what had the Lord done, and what had He said? He had brought out His incomparable grace. He had brought out an infinitely deeper truth than if He had brought in the kingdom and given them to sit one on the right hand and the other on the left, if it had been possible to give the best place to every soul in the kingdom, which, of course, could not he. If it had been possible, I repeat, for every man of them to have the best place, what was that compared to His coming down and dying for sinners, giving eternal life, and raising them up at the last day? Nevertheless, it was such a shock to all their expectations that many of His disciples, from that time, went back and walked no more with Him.

“Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?” And who answered? Simon Peter. And now, you see, he that was of little faith had become, I may say, of great faith. The lesson was learned, and he showed it, for when the question came the answer—the ready answer of his soul—was, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” He does not now say “I.” He does not now say, “Lord, if it be Thou.”. “Lord, to whom shall we go?” There is no “if ‘‘ now. “Thou hast the words of eternal life.” No hesitation in his soul. Ah, there is faith. There is not little faith now. There is no mingling of doubt now. There is no question. before Peter now, and what is more remarkable too, there is no such thing as that egotism that mingled with the former case, but he says, “We believe and are sure.” He puts them all with himself, “We believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.”

I am sorry on such an occasion as this, beloved friends, to bring in a little word that must correct our English Version. You must carefully remember that the English Version, after all, is not the word of God in the fullest sense, or strictest sense, of the word. That is, you must always leave room for an occasional spot or speck where man’s carelessness has a little obscured the fullness of the truth. Now, if you look at any careful, any exact, presentation of the true text and translation of the N.T. you will find it to be this, “That thou art the Christ, the Holy One of God.” “The Holy One of God” are the true words, as I believe, in this particular place. I do not think, therefore, it is the same thing exactly as we have in Matt. 16. It is a different confession of our Lord Jesus, and I will endeavor to show the great beauty and appropriateness of that which Peter says here; for mark, beloved friends, there is no anxiety now. There is no such thing as, “Lord, save me”; no such thing now. Now he is filled with Christ. He has not a thought of himself or anything else, and this is the true way in which souls enter into perfect peace with the Lord.

And again, if there is any one thing that is terrible to a sinner it is the holiness of God—and the holiness of God where it is brought fairly by faith before the soul—where it measures the believer, because the believer alone truly feels what is in those words, “The Holy One of God.” I grant you, it is not only believers. What will help to make it a little more distinct is this. We have others that say, “The Holy One of God.” It was the confession, if I can call it so—it was the expression at any rate—of the demoniacal man, the demoniac that first met the Lord when He began His public ministry. This ministry of our Lord was, as you know, first entered upon at Nazareth, where, according to His wont, He entered into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and there was given Him the book of Esaias the prophet, in which was the scripture that showed that He was the One according to prophecy that was to bring in the acceptable year of the Lord; and He shows, therefore, the exceeding grace of God. It was no question now of judgment, no mingling of the two that man so much likes, but that it was to be unmixed grace.

But then there is another thing. Satan has got power here. Therefore there follows in Luke, when he gives the ministry of the Lord, His confronting the man with the unclean spirit in the synagogue at Capernaum on the sabbath day also. It was to be brought evidently before man—the power of Satan in this world, the power of Satan in man and over man. And then we have in the fourth of Luke (I may just refer to it for a moment in order to compare it) the demon crying out with a loud voice, Let us alone.” Mark it well. “Let us.” It is a very solemn thing how a spirit, whether it is an evil spirit or the Spirit of God, identifies himself with the man in whom he dwells, just as he who has the Holy Ghost has Him adapting Himself in grace to the man. So, though it be His own guidance, it is, nevertheless, the man’s guidance. Although it be He that works all that is good and sweet in the man, it is the man’s work. It is what the man does after all. All the in which we find this man, the demon, does; but fruits of the Spirit are not merely the fruits of the Spirit, but they belong to the man. They characterize the man, so much so that we are ourselves said to be “in the Spirit.” As the apostle says, “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.” That is, He characterizes us so completely that it is no longer the flesh but the Spirit, if the Spirit dwell in us. Well, just so here. The man says, “Let us alone; what have we to do with thee.” It is not, “What have I,” merely; “What have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to destroy us?” That is what they felt. That was the dismal fear that was produced. And mark how Jesus is addressed. “I know thee, who thou art, the Holy One of God.” Nothing more awful to contemplate, nothing that so brings their utter and everlasting doom before them, for they at least believe—and with what effect? The demons believe and tremble.

Now that is not at all the intention with a soul that is born of God. Faith is not intended to make us tremble, but to make us happy; to make us at perfect peace, because if I see Jesus by faith I have Him as my life. I could not have Him by faith without His being my life also, and I could not have Him as my life without having His righteousness now. I speak, of course, supposing now the work done: that is, the Christian has all that he sees in Christ. Everything that is in Christ is in his favor. What He is as the Son of God, what He is as the Son of man; everything is in his favor. He could not do without one single thing that he knows to be in the Son of God. If He were not the Son of God it would not be eternal life; and if He were not a man it would not be righteousness. But you see the whole thing then—all that Christ is in His person and work—all descends in blessing upon the head of a believer. In his case, therefore, we find the very reverse. “We believe and are sure.” Was there any trembling there? No, when Peter was not occupied with Jesus, as we saw, when he looked at the danger, the circumstances in which he was, he was full of anxiety; he was afraid. But not so now, and yet, beloved friends, he confesses Christ in the very same terms in this latter case it was awful alarm. It was the pangs of coming judgment that filled the soul, “Art thou come to destroy us?” You see, the power of Satan was to drag down the man into his terror, just as the Holy Ghost would lift up man into His sense of what grace is now in the Lord Jesus Christ. So Jesus rebukes the demon, turns out the demon, and the man is settled in peace and deliverance. But in Peter’s case we have the very same thing—the Holy One of God confessed—and yet instead of an anxiety it is the very thing that fills the heart with joy.

If we had only the sense of our Lord Jesus as the gracious One, there would still be something lacking for our souls; if we had no thought but “the day is coming when I shall see Him as the Holy One. What will it be then?” Nay, but I know that I cannot separate it. It is the holy One just as much as the gracious One now. He is the one that never admitted—always refused—evil of any kind; and that is my comfort, that it is the one who loves me best, the one that sees me through and through, the one that caused others, it may he, to doubt; at any rate, they do doubt, because there were such words of grace as never were heard before, for the Lord had never given utterance to words so full of grace as in this very discourse at Capernaum, because of which His disciples—many of them—left Him. But Peter, as now showing the simplicity and growth of faith, instead of trembling, instead of being enfeebled, instead of his going along with those that had departed, on the contrary, confesses Him that He is the Holy One of God at the very time that he says, “We believe and are sure.” There was no flinching, there was no hiding, there was no danger that that Holy One would detect or which he would cast them out from His presence. The very reverse. Peter had said, even before, “Thou hast the words of eternal life.”

Now this then is the next thing that I believe the Spirit of God would have us to see in His dealings with Peter. That is, that now, when he has Christ Himself before him, and Christ Himself in the very character that fills the demon with the sense of coming destruction, Peter stands before Him without a doubt. There is nothing so awful as divine holiness where there is sin, and sin without grace to meet it; but here the very contrary. The Lord had been bringing out all His grace, and for that very reason Peter stands in the presence of all His holiness, and he stands there with not a doubt upon his soul. He stands there confessing Him, and confessing Him with words of unusual strength.

Further too, there is a grace that takes in others, for instead of merely confessing himself, he joins others in the confession of the very same truth. Indeed, Peter knew that he had not Christ for himself; that if he had Christ, the others had also. The Lord, it is true, at that very time cautions him. The Lord brings in the solemn thought that he may have gone a little too far there. “Jesus answered, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for he it was that should betray him.”

The Lord therefore does show not merely that there was eternal life for those that believed, but that Peter did not know that one of the twelve was no believer at all. But as far as the strength of Peter’s words went, it was all right and all true; that is to say, that those that believe have this blessed portion in Him, and that, even as for His being the Holy One of God, so far from its being a question, or an anxiety, on the contrary, it is coupled here with the strongest and fullest confession of faith that Peter had made up to that moment.

Now we will go to what I may call a kindred confession, but not the same, and we must return to the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew for it. It was a time when unbelief was coming out, only here it is not the disciples; it is not that circle only that is judged; but the chapter shows us unbelief everywhere until we come to the disciples; and the Lord Himself put the question, “When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremias, or one of the prophets.” That is, there was the usual answer of men, the uncertainty of human opinion. “He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?” because the very uncertainty of men brings out the faith of God’s elect, and therefore there is no time at all that is not turned of God for good to the believer. When things are bright and happy, how happy for the believer! When things are most dark, how happy for the believer! Of course, not the darkness of the time, but the preciousness of having Christ in the darkest time. I say then that it matters not what the time of uncertainty may be. If the soul is simple, it is always well. And so here. “Whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

The Gospel of Mark also gives this confession, but there it is merely “the Christ.” He does not say a word about His being the Son of the living God, and this helps much to show the force of its connection, because where He is only confessed to be “the Christ” there is not a word said about building the church; not a word. But where he adds to “the Christ” that He was “the Son of the living God,” the Lord answers, “Blessed art thou.” Peter could bear now to be personally and peculiarly blest. He had shown that by the grace of God he had risen above occupation with himself, and drawing attention to himself. And it is precisely when one is thus delivered from self, as far as it goes, that the Lord can put particular honor. Not otherwise. “Thou art the Christ,” says he; and the Lord’s answer is, “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” Could Peter have borne that on the night on which he sank in the water? No, not at all. But Peter was no longer “thou of little faith.” Now the Lord could tell him that this was the very special revelation that the Father had made to him. He could bear it. But He adds, “And I also say unto thee.” It is not only that the Father had revealed that, but the Lord adds His revelation also to Peter. For it is not, “I say also,” but “I also say.” Indeed, that is the true, real force of the verse. My Father hath revealed it, “and I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”

What was that? It was Christ confessed, not merely as the Christ, but as the Son of the living God, so that where the Son of the living God is not brought out there is no building up of the church. Where the Son of the living God is confessed, He says, “Upon this rock I will build my church.” And so indeed it is. Christ was the One in whom the promises were to be accomplished. “The Son of the living God” is the one who is proved to be so by resurrection of the dead. I do not deny that by that very same resurrection the promises are secured, but this I do say, that what proved Him to be the Son of God, even before the promises are accomplished, was this personal glory that broke through the last stronghold of Satan—death—nay, that which was God’s judgment upon man, upon the first man. Now there is another man, but He is much more than a man. Man simply and as such could not conquer Satan. There was always one who was more, although He was to become a man. The seed of the woman no doubt should bruise the serpent’s head, but then that seed of the woman was to be the Son of God. All scripture will show it, but there never had been in any scripture a confession, on the whole, so full as this very one that Peter had pronounced. “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

It was a great epoch spiritually in Peter’s soul, for the Lord knows how to bring out and how to own what His own grace produces. It was the fitting time. He had said this word, and it was a word of which the Son of God Himself took most especial notice. He does not say, “Oh, it is only the Father.” Yes, but it was His Father that had done it through Peter’s lips, and the Son therefore owns this as a most weighty thing—that before the resurrection, before the death, there was the confession of that power in the presence of the Son of God that would break through death, and so, accordingly, lay a groundwork for another thing that does not belong to this creation at all—not merely an individual blest—not merely that. Individuals had been blest before, but there was to be a divine building, there was to be a new thing formed upon earth, founded upon death overcome, founded upon resurrection-power that had broken through all that Satan could do—yea, even God’s judgment; deliverance (mark it well), deliverance from the judgment of God in this world. Now that is the church. The church is that body which owes its existence to this glorious person and fact that the Son of God, in order to the giving the church a being, has broken through the power of Satan in death, and the consequence is that the church is intended to live in this constant confession of victory—victory over death and judgment, and victory only through that one person, the Son of the, living God.

Well, “upon this rock,” says He, “I will build my church,” and nothing can be more solemn than that. The very thing in this world that Satan has forged, and which takes its stand upon this verse more than any other, is of all things most distant from it. For there is no one thing, as you well know, no one body under the sun bearing the name of Christ, that has so completely denied this very truth as that dreadful imposture, that spurious woman and most corrupt that makes the earth drunk with the wine of her cup, and that has stained herself with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. No doubt, because they have found that it answers their purpose; no doubt blinded by Satan’s power, they have given up this truth, and they make the thing a question of merchandise, a question of masses and money, of priests and ordinances, and after all no salvation, no victory over death or judgment, but the very contrary, the constant sound of wailing and lamentation, and everything that would betoken fear and anxiety and question, to keep souls in thralldom and bondage, if peradventure there may be a little more money. Nothing can be more thoroughly opposed to the truth of God than that very body that has attempted to take its stand upon this very verse. I mention it as a singular instance, though, indeed, the same thing is true of all scripture. You will find that whenever men boastfully take their stand upon anything without Christ there is nothing that more completely opposes them, and nothing that they more completely mistake, than the very scripture which they misuse for their own purpose. And hence you will always find, if you have to do with those who are not led by the Spirit of God, that the scriptures that they adduce are the very best answers to their pretensions. Take the scripture that they misuse and you will find that it is the most powerful engine against themselves. And so here with popery which I have just been referring to.

There are other scriptures, but this is the grand point for our own souls. Peter takes his stand upon this, and a remarkable thing, too, is the manner in which Peter brings out the church. Although he does not call it the church in his own epistle, what he speaks of there more nearly answers to this than, perhaps, to what you will find in any other part of the New Testament. When the Lord says, “Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” it is clear that although it be not the body as such, upon the other hand it is not that which man builds. It is what Christ builds, and there is that peculiarity of it, because when in scripture Christianity is presented under the figure of a house or a building you get, as a usual thing, what may be corrupted; you get what does not necessarily suppose life. But that is not the case with what the Lord calls “My church.” Nor is it the case with what Peter describes in his epistle, “To whom coming as unto a living stone, ye also as living stones.” He does not suppose a dead stone to come. He was evidently filled with this truth that the Lord gave his soul upon that very day, “Upon this rock will I build my church”; for it is evident that what Christ builds always must come to its fulfillment according to the purpose of God. “Upon this rock,” then he says, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” so that although it be the building, it is only the building viewed as built divinely. It is not the responsible thing that man is occupied with, and where man’s weakness comes in by building on the foundation what is not worthy and not suitable.

Here it is very different. “And I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” So He did. Peter opened it on the day of Pentecost to the Jews, and afterward to Cornelius the Gentile. It is the same thing. “And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Peter had this place, though not exclusively. As we find in the eighteenth chapter, the disciples bind and loose. I do not say the apostles, but the disciples. But the disciples had not got the keys of the kingdom of heaven. No, nor the other apostles either; not at all. You remember that it is not the key of heaven. There is no more profound mistake than to confound “the kingdom of heaven” with “heaven.” The kingdom of heaven is the rule of heaven over the earth, and therefore there may be all kinds of mistakes and all kinds of things that are not according to God. We must not confound the kingdom of heaven, therefore, with Christ’s church. The kingdom of heaven is what He governs. The kingdom of heaven, therefore, is the scene of profession, and consequently there may be all sorts of things there that are far from Christ; tares as well as wheat. And so Peter, I say, opened that kingdom on the day of Pentecost. But the other part was not exclusively Peter’s, though Peter has it put here in a personal form.

Then Christ charged His disciples that they should tell no man that He was the Christ. That was no question now. There was no question of His being Christ; He was going to die.

W. K.

(Continued from page 196)

The Dealings of God With Peter: 3. In the Gospels

Matthew 17:1-8, 24-27

No man, after such a blessing as the Lord had just pronounced upon Peter, ever received a sterner rebuke. “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona,” so soon to be followed by, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” So serious the place of a Christian—of a believer at least! so true the One who watches over us in love! Whilst there is the fullest value even for that which nothing but His own grace had given, and the deepest encouragement, yet how stern and unsparing is the Lord in letting Peter see what his thoughts, what his feelings, were; what Peter’s heart was thinking about! And what was it that had drawn it out? Peter had owned the glory of His person. It was of God, God’s teaching, without question, and the Savior owned it at once; but that very Peter would turn Him away from the cross! Should that be? “Get thee behind me, Satan.” The Lord Jesus came to die, and to die, too, in all the depths of it. For as to all the externals of the cross, they were indeed—deep as they were—but the outward form of that which only God could estimate. They greatly err who look only to what man was the instrument of in the cross of Christ—most true, most real as it was. But here the Lord was particularly looking at the cross as rejection; yet the path of that rejection led straight into the glory in which He was coming by and by. And the Lord accordingly, in the beginning of the seventeenth chapter, would give a view of the glory, and amongst others, to the very disciple that would have stopped His way into, as Peter thought, a suffering that was unworthy, but in truth that which was the foundation of His glory. For we are not here to look at His glory as Son of God; there was no foundation for that, it was its own foundation. That was truly divine, essentially divine. But here it was conferred glory. It is the kingdom; it is what God has given. As it is said in another place, “Wherefore God hath highly exalted him,” so, by and by, He will be exalted in the kingdom; and the Lord would give a view of it that it might be not only a prophetical testimony, but, as the apostle Peter says, and he is the one that does say it, “We have the prophetic word more confirmed,” that is, we have what was said by the prophets shown out in a reality. It might he only one that passed away; but still to have the sight of all the great elements of the kingdom brought before them in this life was an immense support to faith, an immense cheer, especially to one who must have felt deeply the rebuke that His Master passed upon him.

So “after six days, Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them; and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. And behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him. Then answered Peter.” And this you know is the particular object that I have before me now—the dealings of the Lord with His servant, as manifesting His own grace and truth (no doubt bringing out the need of it on our part, bringing out weakness, wretchedness, pettiness, vanity, pride—the carnal mind in so many forms, but) the grace and truth of One that had unfeignedly met every failure of His servant; One therefore that would encourage our hearts and instruct us and strengthen us against the very same things in which he had broken down. Do we think we need it not? We are upon the very verge of similar failures. There is nothing that so surely brings a fall as the unbelief that does not believe it possible.

“Then answered Peter and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here.” And was not this then, a pious thought and sentiment? “If thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.” It was a disciple’s way of magnifying his Master, but there is only one that is trustworthy—God’s way. It is not enough to have God’s end; we must learn God’s way. Now there was exactly where Peter’s haste betrayed his weakness, and where we are apt to fall precisely in the same way. “Let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.” He evidently thought it was no small honor for his Master—a man—though the Son of God. But he thought it no small honor for his Master to be on common ground with Moses and Elias, the head of the law, and, we may say, the chief of the prophets. Doubtless He was the Messiah. But were they not glorified? At once, “while he yet spake, behold a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud.” For this was no ordinary cloud—not a dark one, which is an ordinary one—but a bright one: it was the cloud of Jehovah’s presence. “A voice out of the cloud said, This is my beloved Son.” It is not merely a question of the kingdom. The kingdom alone would always leave the soul, as the law would, with thoughts altogether short of what is due to Christ. If I look at the law, I think of duty, and I see the Lord merely as a fulfiller of duty. If I think of the kingdom, I see glory, but a glory that others share along with Him. But the Father would not permit it. He breaks the silence from above, and says, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”

Now, it is not merely that the Father was thus maintaining the glory of the Lord Jesus at the very time when one who ought, most of all, to be exalting Him was really depreciating Him—most unintentionally, because there is no putting of the Lord with any other that would give Him His just place. The very thought of placing any, however excellent, on a level with the Lord Jesus is reprehensible. Certainly Moses and Elijah were most incomparable among (I will not say the sons of men, but) the children of God. Elijah that had gone up to heaven in a chariot of fire! Moses whom Jehovah had buried, about whose body even the archangel had fought with the devil! Certainly, the man that had been with God without food for forty days and nights, and the man that had closed his career on earth thus to be in heaven, these were men to speak of, if of any. But this very thing brings out the supreme glory of the Son; and this I will say, beloved friends, that a more instructive principle there cannot be. You will find, if you search, that almost all failure, both in doctrine and in conduct, is attributable to this—low thoughts of Christ. I do not mean now thoughts that are evil, thoughts that are untrue, but I mean that the power of faith is always the taking in and subjecting our souls to the glory of the Son of God. This is the faith that overcomes the world. It is not merely that He is the Christ, that He is the King of the coming kingdom. Perfectly true; but He is the Son, and if the kingdom brings in the heirs of the kingdom, and those that enjoy the kingdom, the Son brings in God, and God as He, the Son, knows Him, and as the Father knows the Son; and there is none that comprehends the Son but the Father. And it is remarkable He does not say, “To whomsoever the Father will reveal,” but, “Neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal.” The Father does not reveal all He sees in the Son. And I am persuaded that the reason is this—t hat there is a depth in the very fact of the Son of God having taken manhood that transcends all possible knowledge, except of God the Father; that there is therefore a depth in it, and a secret, too, that He will not have broken. And there is where the prying mind of man loses itself. He desires to know that secret, and, consequently, unable to loose the knot, he cuts it in some violent method of his own mind—the source of all heresy. But I was not speaking of it merely in reference to heresy, but also as to the appreciation of Him day by day; for what a strength it is where His glory is before our eyes, and where each question that arises just exercises our hearts in answer to the Lord—Himself the answer to all difficulties—the Son of God!

Well now, that was where Peter failed. He thought to exalt and enhance the glory of Christ, but he was altogether beneath God’s thoughts.

“This is my beloved Son”; and how did He show it? He says, “In whom I am well pleased.” It is not merely He. Peter was thinking of his being so pleased with the Son that he would like Him to be with such wondrous men as Moses and Elias. It is, “In whom I am well pleased”; and why so? Why so? Just because He is His beloved Son; that is, it has not any connection with Peter at all, but with God Himself in this relationship out of all time, that is, infinite as God Himself is. “Hear ye him.”

And there comes in another point, beloved brethren, that I wish to trace, and that is that this is really what was about to be unfolded in the New Testament. What is the New Testament? The New Testament is the evolution—if I may say so—of this little word, “Hear ye him.” It is God unfolding the glory of the Son to us. All that He was, as revealed in the Gospels, the Epistles, or whatever part of the New Testament it may be, is precisely this very thing that was summed up in these few words, “Hear ye him.” That is, whatever might be the blessedness of Moses and Elias, of the law and the prophets, they have their place, but their best place was to bear witness of Him. And now it was not merely a witness of Him. It was Himself; He was come. And one, therefore, who had an adequate sense of the glory of the Son of God would not care to be listening to the servants about Him, now that he had an opportunity of hearing Himself. “Hear ye him.” Accordingly, “when the disciples heard it they fell on their faces and were sore afraid; and Jesus came and touched them and said, Arise, be not afraid. And when they had lifted up their eyes they saw no man, save Jesus only.” There it is, that the Father leaves, as it were, the disciples in the presence of Jesus only; and the greatest possible honor, and also the proof of the value of Moses and Elias was this, that they bring out the superior glory of the Son of God; they make way for it. They are finger-posts to direct to Him, but then there is no greater mistake than to be occupied with what merely directed to Him; it is Himself. The New Testament, then, is the revelation of that which the Father has to tell us of the Son—not all that He knows, but all that which is for His own glory in making known His Son to us.

The foot of the mountain showed a very different thing. There was the power of Satan, and such a power of Satan that baffled the disciples. We have this accordingly brought out very clearly in the man that they presented to the Lord. “I brought him to thy disciples,” said the poor father, “and they could not cure him.” And the Lord utters words of unusual severity. “O faithless and perverse generation! how long shall I suffer you?”

My object is not to dwell upon any of these intervening portions. I just touch them as I pass along, but still it is most serious to observe this as we pass—the inability, and I do not know anything more characteristic of our weakness, and that more shows its character at this present moment than the same thing—the inability, not of Christ, but of the disciples, to avail themselves of Christ for what came before them. And why was it? What was connected with them then? Unjudged power of nature, confidence in self. “This kind cometh not out but by prayer and fasting.” “Prayer and fasting” is evidently used as expressive of the nothingness of man, but the nothingness of man that expects God and counts upon God. “How long,” said the Lord, “shall I suffer you, or be with you? How long shall I be with you?” Unbelief, and particularly in the disciples, is of all things the greatest pain to Christ. We often think of the unbelief of the world. There is another question nearer home. What do we think of our own faith? What have we to say about it; our power of bringing in Christ to solve every difficulty? I do not know a more distressing thing at the present moment than the mass of unsolved difficulties everywhere; and the very persons that make the difficulties most are the Lord’s own disciples. It is not merely evil. There is always power superior to evil, but when the disciples themselves fail to look to Christ, and have objects of their own that complicate the bringing in of Christ to meet the difficulty—oh, how sorrowful! The Lord gives it as a reason for leaving the world. There is but one comfort that I know, and that is that this is to us, or may be to us, so much the greater token that the Lord must soon undertake all Himself, because there is so little power to bring Him in. And if that be comfort in the thought of Christ, what a condemnation of our little self-judgment, and consequently of our oftener making difficulties than solving them!

Well the Lord is now seen in another point of view, but also Peter is seen too; and indeed, it is Peter who gives occasion for the Lord to show Himself in a new way, and in a new dealing with His servant. “And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute-money came to Peter and said, Doth not your Master pay tribute?” Now here again he was jealous for his Master. He was jealous for his Master when he thought it would be an excellent thing, and a most suitable, to make three tabernacles—tabernacles for Moses and Elias as well as for Him—a tabernacle for Him along with them. And so now he, as it were, said to the collector of tribute that his Master was much too good a Jew not to pay tribute. He said “Yes.” What does the Lord do? Before he says a word about it, the Lord lets Peter know that it was all known to Him. How little he had thought of that. How little the Godhead of Jesus had penetrated the soul even of the man that said, “Son of the living God.” How little he knew of his own confession! That is often the case. It is humbling if we think of ourselves, but at the same time it is a ground of encouragement and patience with other people. You must not expect people to know, though it is often a very startling thing how little we enter into the patience of our Master, and we are surprised that persons should so little understand, for instance, the very place where they are, the very worship into which they are brought, the very truth that they are supposed to live for. But here I find the same thing. Here I find that it is all full of it; but the fact is that we are not conscious ourselves that it is precisely in the same way that we break down, not perhaps in the same particular, but in the same principle. And you will observe that it is a very different thing to judge another’s trial where we are not ourselves tried at the same time. Wait till we are. We shall see how far we know how to bring Christ in ourselves. I do not say it to make light of such a thing. It is a very grievous thing, but it really is the grand secret: that is, the readiness to answer from self instead of from Christ, instead of from God’s side of Christ. We look at our side. Peter was jealous lest his Master should be thought not to pay the tribute. The Lord shows him He knew it all; He was God.

“Jesus prevented,” or “anticipated him” —that is the meaning, for of course this is in old English— “saying, What thinkest thou, Simon: of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? Of their own children or of strangers? Peter saith unto him, Of strangers.” What an answer! Was the Lord a stranger?—for this is the temple tribute. Who was the Master of the temple? Was Jesus a stranger to him? “Of strangers” the kings of the earth take tribute. Of whom therefore does Jehovah take it? “Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free.” Not the Son. No, He does not say the Son. He says what is infinitely better, at the very time when there had just been this overwhelming conviction on the mount. Peter in his zeal for his Master was after all depriving Him of His just title, forgetting His divine glory. How slowly we learn the lesson! “Then are the children free.” For this, beloved friends, is really what Christianity means, and what the Lord was to bring out still more clearly before long—that the grace that sent down the Son of God did not merely send down one to be a propitiation, or even to be life, but that we too might acquire a new relationship according to His—that we might know the place of the children of God. “Then are the children free.” He does not merely, therefore, claim it for Himself. He did not need. But He asserts it for those that are His. How astonishing to Peter! He had forgotten it; he had no thought of it. Yet was he born of God, and he was slowly learning what it meant; about to learn it far more blessedly soon when the hindrances should be taken away by the grace of Christ, and the place of deliverance was about to dawn upon his heart.

“Notwithstanding,” said He, “lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast a hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money.” The last place in the world to find, except for God! And that is the very thing He showed—that it was One who had the power of God as well as the knowledge of God; that it was One who was very God, although He was here a man upon the earth. Let Peter’s soul be filled with this. How his heart would turn back to it another day! know it far better when he looked back upon it, when he read it as the word of God, than when it was merely passing then before his eyes! There is no greater mistake than to suppose that if we had been living in the time of our Lord we should have understood our Lord’s words better than now. The very reverse. The written word in this, as in other respects, has a higher place than the spoken word. Just as the written word has a mightier testimony, so also the written word has a permanent place of correcting our thoughts, of deepening even what is true as well as correcting what is mistaken, and the Spirit of God is pre-eminently with it. Hence, therefore, I do not hesitate to say that, far from being worse off, we are better. Peter himself was better off when Peter was not merely regarding the words he had listened to, but when he read them as inspired of God for his use and ours.

Well here, then, I say, we have just the very same thing: that is, we have human thoughts of Christ corrected by divine, and at the same time in the doing of this a marvelous outburst of the divine glory that shone upon Peter’s soul more fully than had ever been the case before. We have had, then, the kingdom. Here we have what much more belongs to Christian relationship—the children.

[W. K.]

(To be continued)

The Dealings of God With Peter: 4. In the Gospels

(Continued from page 234)

The chapter that follows, as the one before, shows us the church, the one founded and the other in its practical operation. I do not say the body, but I do say Christ’s church. He says, “On this rock I will build my church.” But I only refer to it to show how all these three things are brought here together, and are quite distinct. The church is as distinct from the kingdom as both are from Christianity and salvation. Christian relationship is involved in this very scene.

“Then are the children free” —the place of association with Christ in a common relationship before God; always remembering that, while He has brought us by grace into it, He has that relationship in His own eternal right, and that He is not merely one that is born of God, and He is never said to be so. We are. He consequently is never called a child of God. He is called Son. We are called sons, too, but we are called children of God in a sense in which it is never said of Christ. John’s great point, I may observe, is that we are children of God. Properly speaking John never calls us sons of God. There are one or two places in the epistles or in the gospels where our version makes us out to be the sons of God in John’s writing, but it is a mistake. Our translators did not understand the difference. They thought one word as good as another. They were mistaken; there was a very great difference. A man might be adopted as a son without being a child in the family. We are not only adopted sons, we are children of the family. We are born of God; and here you see, as connected with this, the Lord Jesus shows us this place of sharing His own exemption. But then look at the grace in it. He that had this divine power said, “Notwithstanding, lest we should offend.” And there is one great point of our weakness. We do not know how to carry our privileges. We learn, for instance, about a church, we learn about grace, we learn to talk about both; but I would ask this—have we, and do we, carry with us, especially in the time of trial and grave action, the spirit that becomes those that are brought into such a place?

And more particularly now, when it is not only the church unfolded, but the church recovered, when we had basely forgotten it, when we had shared the sin of Christendom in going after all the institutions that they were pleased to make out here below—things fashioned according to the will of man for man’s own purposes, if not for man’s own glory. God has graciously recovered it, but have we not used it to adorn ourselves; and have we not used it oftentimes with a hard spirit towards those that have not had one hundredth part of the advantages that we possess? Is that grace? I do not believe it, and I am persuaded, therefore, that there ought to be a lowlier tone while holding fast the depth of grace that the Lord has shown to us, but a deeper sense of our own shortcomings, for the Lord surely judges us according to what we know, and not according to the ignorance of others. And do not we feel, beloved brethren, that there are many children of God at this moment that walk more faithfully and more humbly, according to their little light, than we do according to our much greater light?

And ought we not to be humble? I am sure we ought.

Well, here now was one in whom there was no question of failure at all, but there was failure in Peter, and he would show Peter, too, that the very fullest consciousness of glory, the very fullest consciousness of nearness to God, goes along with a consideration of others, and of other’s ignorance, too. They did not know the glory of the Son. They saw that He was a man; that He was a Jew. Well, the Lord did not stop to argue it, or to prove it with them. It is grace giving the knowledge of it to those that have faith; and now Peter was in the secret of it, and Peter was given to know that he, too, had a little of it, for the Lord was not making it known for His own glory. He had it from everlasting to everlasting; but now He was letting Peter know a little of it, and at once He shows the grace in which this glory acts here below in the midst of an unbelieving world. “Lest we should offend them, give them all they claim.” The Lord did not come to assert His glory, or to claim the obeisance of those that had not faith, but to teach those that had faith to walk in the power of His own grace as those who behold His glory. This then will suffice for the seventeenth chapter.

On the eighteenth I need not dwell, though there is just one point of importance that may claim a moment. “Then came Peter to him” (ver. 21), “and said, How oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Seven times?” He thought a great deal of that, but Jesus enlarges the sphere infinitely. “Jesus said to him, I say not seven times, but seventy times seven.” Here you see it was not merely grace with unbelievers who do not see his glory, but with a failing brother—the very thing in which we are apt ourselves to fail, because how often one hears, “Well, if he were not a brother one could understand better.” But this is a brother, and a very offending one too. What is the measure? What is the limit of grace? “Till seven times?” Until seventy times seven. It has no limit.

In the nineteenth and twentieth—the connection of the two the Lord throughout is vindicating the relationship of nature. By “nature” I mean the relationship which God has established here below. The Lord had suffered men to derange it somewhat. It was not true, as they said, that Moses commanded a bill of divorce. It was constantly used when a poor unhappy Jew wanted to be rid of his wife. “Moses suffered this,” He said, “because of the hardness of your hearts.” That is, the law was a state of things where man was on suffrance. It was not perfection; it was not the image of the mind of God at all. Christ is. Man was made after it, and soon failed. Christ really is the image of the invisible God, and Christ alone. And Christ, accordingly, brings out God’s glory in these things, and He shows how it was at the beginning. God did not make a man and two women, but “male and female created he them.” It was evident, therefore, from the very formation of man what God’s mind was.. And so another thing. He takes up the case of little children, slighted constantly by rabbis. They did not like the trouble of them, but the Lord paid special attention to them. I do not know anything that brings out the tender grace of the Lord more than this. He laid His hands upon them, and rebuked the disciples because of their spirit about them. And, further, He appreciated a fine character—the young man—even the man that did not follow Him, but liked his possessions too well. Yet the Lord looked upon him, as we are told in Mark, and loved him.

Well now, I say there we find nature in various forms, and the Lord’s feelings about it; but the whole point of the chapter is something superior to nature. It is not, therefore, that a Christian ought to speak slightingly of anything that is of God even in the creation. There is no reason for it—no ground whatever. You constantly find that when men are on a ground of rivalry they abuse one another; but if you are brought into an entirely different and higher ground altogether it is no question of finding fault—you are completely out of the scene. Well, that is the place into which the Christian is brought now. It is not lowering the relationships of nature, or speaking unbecomingly of anything of the kind; but you are brought into a new place altogether. So the Lord shows at the close of the chapter. He said, therefore, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven, which astonished these disciples who had regarded riches as a great sign of God’s favor. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” But then, He explains, when they ask, “Who can then be saved?” because they thought that a rich man had far less temptation than a poor one. A poor man might be covetous, a poor one might forget God in the extremity of need. They thought a rich man would not have such temptations. No doubt it was a very poor and low view. “Who then can be saved? But Jesus said unto them, With man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

This then is the real truth of salvation, as it is, I may say, of everything Christian; for if it is not of God it is not Christian. The whole thing is founded upon what is not of nature—what is divine, what is heavenly; and that comes out far more in the epistles than even here. But the Lord brings it out as far as they could bear it themselves. “Then answered Peter, and said unto them, Behold, we have forsaken all and followed thee; and what shall we have? And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, that ye that have followed me in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne”: that is, it is not following—in the regeneration, but it is “in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” The regeneration means that new state of things that shall he brought in at the coming of Christ. The washing of regeneration now is in view of that state; that is, it is really a new condition, only not now brought in. It is only testimony; it is the washing; it is the word of God, and that which belongs to the word of God connected with it that supposes a new state of things; but it will be only displayed then. Well, when that new state shall come— “When the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” That is, you have the Lord fully acknowledging all fidelity. No man has ever done anything for the Lord for which the Lord will not—if I may say so—pay him back the capital with the best interest. “Surely every one that hath forsaken house, or lands, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake.” He does not here say, “For the gospel’s sake”; but it is so in Mark where it is wanted. There He brings the most comforting thing. He says that, instead of the gospel being a lower thing, it really is bound up with Himself. Here He says, “For my name’s sake,” and there He says, “For the gospel’s sake.” It is of all importance to bring in what Mark does—the word; but here it is the Christ, it is Himself. It is the Son of man, the rejected Christ; for that is the point of it. Those that follow Him in the day of His rejection will be with Him the sharers of His glory in the day of His power; “in the regeneration when he shall sit on the throne of his glory.” They shall receive a hundred-fold and shall inherit everlasting life.

Do we believe it, beloved brethren? I do not say that when our souls are fairly brought in contact with it we do not bow; but what I mean by believing is this: have we it as a living truth before our souls every day? No man, then, that has lost for Christ’s name sake but shall receive a hundredfold and shall inherit everlasting life.

“But many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first.” There is a solemn word. “But many that are first shall be last”; and I will tell you who particularly: those who think much of their losses and talk much about them. They are the very men that get weary of this trial, and the reason is plain. If they were filled with Christ they would not be talking about what they have done, and what they have lost; and I say that such persons, though they may not have been first, shall be last. But, thank God, He will always fill up. “The last shall be first.” A serious thing for both sides—blessed in one, but very humbling in the other.

But then the Lord adds another, because that would not give the full truth, and there is nothing more remarkable, beloved friends, than this in the word of God—the care to keep us from being one-sided. There is hardly a more common, or a more serious, danger, and I shall be so if I am occupied with that which clearly Peter was. “Behold,” he says, “we have forsaken all and followed thee. What shall we have therefore?” It was clear that Christ was not all to him at that moment. He was thinking about himself. But the Lord brings in another word. “For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, which went out early in the morning to hire laborers in his vineyard.” And then we find him hiring at different hours of the day, on which we need not particularly dwell now. “And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour they received every man a penny,” or what we should call a shilling, if I may so say. That is, it was at that time a sort of day’s wages. That is, what was supposed to be necessary, and what was given for a day’s work of this kind. “When the first came they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it they murmured against the goodman of the house, saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us which have borne the burden and heat of the day. But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong; didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way; I will give unto this last even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?”

There is the secret. It is not merely a question, therefore, of righteousness in God. God is righteous, and He is not unrighteous to forget the work of faith and labor of love, but He always reserves the sovereignty of grace. He claims to be good, for He is good, and He knows therefore where to show this goodness; and further He will ask no man’s leave to show it. He will show it because He is God. If He is God He is good, and so He condemns these men. They were found out—the covetousness of their hearts. They were thankful to get their day’s wages for their day’s work, but the covetousness was stirred by men that had only labored for an hour. And why so? Because they could not enter into God’s title to be good—not merely to be righteous. The Lord stands to His righteousness as a question with them, but the Lord stands to His goodness as a question of whom He pleases. So He says, “Is thine eye evil, because I am good.” “So the last shall be first.” You see its reference now. It is not the first last. There was man’s breaking down, and man’s breaking down because he was a little presuming; but here is grace triumphant. “So the last shall be first, and the first last; for many be called but few chosen.”

Thus it is that the Lord meets what was in Peter’s heart, first bringing out the righteous ways of God, the full remembrance of everything, let it be soever small, that has been done for His name’s sake, even to a hundredfold repayment. But God never renounces His own title to sovereign grace. We have these two things—the one as a reward for labor; the other sovereign grace that will show the goodness of God where He pleases, when He pleases, and how He pleases. And may our hearts delight that so it should be, for He that delights in goodness will have his own heart formed accordingly. He that rises not above the reward will find that he has made but a losing bargain for his own soul. I do not speak merely of the future, but I do say that it is to take the very least and lowest way of God in His dealings. No doubt God acts always worthily of Himself, only our Wisdom is to enter into the deepening views that the Lord, and the Lord alone, could give at that time. Afterward God forms others according to Christ, and we have it wonderfully in His blessed apostle Paul, and in Peter too, but I do not enlarge now.

May the Lord bless these lessons of His own grace, and His own truth, for Christ’s sake.

[W. K.]

(To be continued)

The Dealings of God With Peter: 5. In the Gospels

John 13:1-11

What I hope to present to you tonight I may characterize in two or three words, the instruction and the warning. Here we have the instruction—the most weighty, practically, that the Lord had as yet set before Simon Peter. Undoubtedly there was that which was needed previously. His personal glory had been dawning more and more upon his heart. Correction, too, there had been before now, but here it is more the positive instruction that a saint wants as such upon the earth, and Simon Peter gave occasion for the Lord’s bringing it out just because he was so ready to give his opinion. Now, our opinions are always wrong. We never rightly can give an opinion, especially when we think to Whom, as in this case, we are giving it. Giving an opinion to Christ! Yet it was really that. No doubt it flowed out of a human sense of what seemed to him the incongruity of the Lord’s stooping down to wash his feet; but the truth is that it was always a question of the Lord’s stooping down. That was no new thing. That was just what characterized all His work here below. His appearance in the world, His coming here, His presence, His whole action—what was it? It was the service of love. No doubt it was here being brought out in a very distinct and evident manner. The service of love is always in action. It is not always so manifest; and it was the manifesting of it to Peter. Little did he know that he needed it, but. the Lord brought this all out—the depth of the need, and also the character of the need, for there is exceeding instruction in these few words of our Lord Jesus. But then we must have it settled in our souls as the first great lesson that comes out in this instruction of the Lord, and that is, that all our blessing flows from distrusting our thoughts, our words, our notions of what is suitable to Christ. All our blessing, I may say, is in appropriating Christ’s words. There is spirit, and there life; and what we are just learning now is to value them principally, to have perfect confidence in them, and to judge, therefore, all that rises from ourselves, all that comes from another, by this only standard.

Well, it is introduced in a way that is exceedingly striking. We see at once that it shows that it is the character of what belonged to the whole ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ in this world. “Before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. And supper” —not “being ended,” for it was not begun. We must remember that this is not the thought. I daresay some of you are familiar already with it, but it is well to state it now, for no doubt there are a great many here that have never thought about it or its importance. It is really, “Supper time being come.” That is the true force of the word. Their feet were not washed after supper, but before it. Any one can see that upon the very face of it. It was always the custom, and the Lord did not depart from that. The only thing that was so singular on our Lord’s part was not that the feet were washed, but that He was the washer. That, indeed, was singular—that it should be He. If He had been only the master and they the disciples, it would have been different; but we learn who He was: “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God and went to God” —Himself the Holy One, as holy when He went back from a world of sin as when He came into it from God.

And this was just exactly what filled His heart—the last resort of the devil, the last depth into which man’s heart could be drawn by sin, being before His eyes. “The devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him.” There was what Satan was goading on the hapless man to do. But here was what filled Christ at that very time. “Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them to the end.” He was going, but He was going in the same unspotted holiness that belonged to His nature as divine, and which was suitable to the One to whom the Father gave all things; for we have both His intrinsic glory and His conferred. “He riseth from supper and laid aside his garments, and took a towel and girded himself. After that he poureth water into a basin.” For you must remember that what is referred to here is the washing of water by the word, and only this. Washing by blood is a most important truth, but it is not here. It is supposed at the end of the chapter at least the work is supposed on which the washing with blood is founded. But in the early part of the chapter there is no allusion to any washing whatever but the washing of water.

Now I dare say that it may, perhaps, have not occurred to all, because we have been too apt to think that there is just a distinction between being washed with blood at the beginning and being washed with water afterward, but that is only part of the truth, for the fact is we are born of water just as much as we are washed with water. When we are first brought to God we are born of water and of the Spirit, and this is alluded to as the groundwork of what the Lord was doing now. Of course, it was not a question for the disciples to be born of water. They were already clean, as the Lord tells them, but not all. There was one that was not born of water; the very one of whom Satan, therefore, took advantage, and the more so because he was so near Christ. For there is nothing that so precipitates man’s destruction, who has not got life from God, as being near Christ; for when one ventures into the presence of Christ not to receive life, but to prosecute one’s own will, one’s own plans, one only becomes the prey of Satan, and in the form too of direct antagonism to the Son of God. That was the case with Judas Iscariot. He had no such intention, but the truth is—man is never master. The very time that man seeks to be his own master is when he is most of all a slave of Satan. It is simply a question of whether God is master of me, or Satan is, but I am never master, never, nor intended to be. Contrary this is, of course, to all truth before a man is converted, but still more that which one’s soul abhors when one is converted; because, if I am converted, what is it to do? It is to serve the living and true God. It is to be a servant, no doubt, to be a child, to be a son, but only the better to serve. There is no such service as the service of the child. Here we have it in all its perfection in our Lord Jesus Christ; and so now, out of this intimacy of love and this height of glory, He takes the basin and begins to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded.

Well, Simon Peter was astonished, but why? Simon Peter, will you never learn? Will you never learn to be quiet? Will you never learn to distrust yourself? Now is not that one of the great things, beloved friends, that we have got to learn? Is it not a thing in which we have constantly to challenge ourselves, because this is the very thing in which we have been so often wrong? Yes, just because we so little know what it is to walk in the consciousness of the presence of God. We are in the presence of God; we are brought there; we are walking in the light; but it does not follow that we are consciously there. And there is just the very difference, and there is where spiritual power depends upon it, because levity in the thought of our being brought into the presence of God to me is much worse than the case of the poor Christian who does not know that he is brought into the presence of God. For a man to take up the idea that to be brought into God’s presence and to be walking in the light is just a mere sound, a mere privilege, a mere thing about which to say, “How near I am, and how blest I am!” —what a wretched state! No, it is meant to exercise the soul before God. It is meant to be a thing to recall us to what we are doing, what we are saying, nay, what we think, what we feel, because God necessarily notices all, and God will have us to take notice of all. It is the effect of the light of God consciously felt that we take up for the Lord, in desire for His glory what passes within us.

Was this so with Peter? He had no thought of it. No doubt he is much more excusable than we, because he had no such knowledge, and, as yet, no one had. The fact is that it is redemption that brings to God in the way of which I have been speaking, and it is the Holy Ghost given since redemption that gives us the consciousness of it. “At that time ye shall know,” as the Lord says, “that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” And so it is as to this consciously walking in the light of which I have been speaking.

So Peter, then, turns to the Lord with this word, “Lord, dost thou wash my feet?” It did seem such an inversion of all that Peter thought natural. To be sure it is. It is super-natural, and we should get that settled, beloved friends, in our souls; that we are brought into what is supernatural every day, that it is not merely for a little moment on the Lord’s day morning, if even then it is realized, but that we are brought into this atmosphere habitually, and that we are intended to be acting upon it when others, perhaps, only know that it is a Christian man acting righteously. But it is not that. A Christian man will not act righteously by merely intending to act righteously. A Christian man only acts according to God when he is acting upon His holy principles. Now it is not merely a question, therefore, of righteousness; it is a question of Christ. A Jew was bound to act righteously, but we—we have Christ, and, more than that, we have the Holy Ghost, now that Christ has died and risen, to give us the consciousness of this association with Him. But Peter did not know this, only it was certainly a forgetfulness. I am bound always to assume that whatever the Lord does, whatever the Lord says, is the only right thing, the only thing that is worthy of Himself, and there was where Peter was wrong. It was not a mere question of intelligence, but surely there ought to have been this, just as in ourselves who are still more inexcusable if we fail. But even Peter ought to have started with this. I do not say it proudly, and God forbid that we should speak disrespectfully of Peter, because you must remember that we are just as much called upon to have respectful feelings and language about the dead as the living. I have not the smallest sympathy with persons that talk slightingly of those that the Lord has put honor upon, no matter where or who they are.

Well now Peter ought to have said, “If the Lord stoops down to wash my feet, it must be because His love is concerned, His glory is concerned, the will of His God and Father is concerned, and, more than that, it is needful for me”; because all our wants only give occasion to bring out the Lord’s grace and to manifest His glory, and who, then, would wish to be without that? It is not, therefore, a question of whether it suits me. I am sure I need it, but it is not a question of whether it suits me, but whether it suits Him. “Lord, dost thou wash my feet? Jesus answered, and said to him, What I do, thou knowest not now.” Peter had not learned his lesson. The Lord was instructing him. “What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.” But still he is dull, and he is guilty of what is even worse now, for he could not wait. There is where we fail most of all as Christians—that impatience, that haste, and yet, beloved friends, it is not for want of God’s telling us. “He that believeth shall not make haste.” This is not merely a New Testament truth, but an old one that ought to have been very familiar to Peter. It was familiar enough in the scripture, but it was not familiar to his soul. He did not apply it to himself. He forgot it where he ought most to have remembered it; where it was Christ that had him in His presence. He therefore says, “Thou shalt never wash my feet.” Rash man! Christ—Christ bend down to wash his feet! And Peter say to Christ, “Thou shalt never wash my feet”! Did not the Lord know better? Why should Peter hinder? Did Peter know? Clearly not. The Lord had just told him, “Thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.” As a humble man he surely ought to have bowed.

But that is where we fail too, and I do not believe that we judge sufficiently our failure to take in the light of the word of God. For God constantly speaks to us, speaks to us every day it is to be supposed, and we read His word, and what is that but that He is speaking to us in His word, and are we not brought sometimes to this very thing? No doubt it is so, without out uttering words, for we would not say that we find any fault in the word of God, but still, we constantly show our want of reverence for the word by turning away from that which we do not enjoy, instead of looking up and remembering that what we do not know now we shall know hereafter. The Lord is teaching, and the very portions too that we turn from sometimes in our stupidity and want of deference to the Lord—want of confidence and thorough faith in the value of every word He has written—may be the very thing I most want in conflict with Satan. Certainly, it was what Peter wanted, and wanted very soon, as we shall see. He says, “Thou shalt never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I wash thee not thou hast no part with me.” At once he turns round, and from having wished that his feet should not be touched by our Lord, should not be washed by Him, Peter now says, in a kind of despair at what he had said, “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.” But the Lord puts everything in its place in the next few words. “He that is washed” —and He changes the word. This washing is not exactly the same thing as washing his feet. “He that is bathed” (as it is familiarly known), “He that is bathed” (washed all over—the whole person). Now that is when we are born of water and the Spirit: that is the mighty work of God. But when we are converted it is not merely that we receive Christ, or rest upon His blood—that is perfectly true—but the word of God enters our souls and deals with us as altogether unclean before God, and consequently there is a new life that is given that judges the old.

Now that is the bathing that is referred to here. The old man is dead. It is not merely dealing with a particular sin, but it is the whole life of sin; nay, more, it is the whole state of sin. The man is born again. He has got a new life, and this is so true that the old one he is in due time taught to regard not as himself at all. That was himself, but now, “Not I, but Christ.” He is born anew, born afresh, and this so completely that he is entitled to treat the other as a thing only to be dealt with, to be mortified, indeed, to treat himself as dead to it; for you see this word that enters is a quickening word. It is Christ Himself, and not merely Christ’s blood. It is Christ Himself judging whatever is of Adam, whatever is of man. It is Christ Himself therefore giving a life that is according to God; that can appreciate, that can understand, God; that can feel according to God. Consequently, it is the root of all that is according to God, on which the Holy Ghost acts afterward in the Christian; that new nature which is begotten of God.

This then is what the Lord refers to here, “He that is washed.” But then He goes farther, “Needeth not save to wash his feet,” and whether it be the bathing of the person, or the washing of the feet, you must remember carefully, and it never was of greater moment than now to remember it, that it is water and not blood. The blood is most true and absolutely necessary, for “this is he that came by water and blood, not by water only, but by water and blood.” The two are most true, but here you have only the bathing on first being brought to God, and next the application of water afterward by the word to deal with whatever impurity there may be acquired in our walking through the world.

Hence this is what our Lord was insisting upon with Peter. Peter took the ground that, because he was of God, he did not need to have his feet washed by Christ. Christ, on the contrary, insisted that unless He washed him—washed his feet, that is, even as a believer, as a disciple, as one that had new life, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.” I refer not to the original washing, but to that which is done day by day in our passage through this world; that is, it is not merely a question of life, but of having a portion with Christ. It is not merely a question of having it by and by, but of having it now. He was going on high, and there is one of the wonders of Christianity: it gives the believer a present part with Christ. No doubt that is just the token and loving pledge of an eternal part with Christ; but I do not think that it is merely the eternal that is referred to here. Rather it is the letting us in now, and the making good now of what is eternal in its own character and consequence. And that again is another truth that characterizes Christianity very much more largely than this particular part of it—that is, that we are even now, according to its own nature, associated with Christ before God. He has gone there, but He would not go there till our sins could be forgiven by virtue of His blood.

But more than this, He would secure our having a present enjoyment, a present fellowship and communion with Himself where He is gone into the presence of God. And I do not believe that we ever have the proper measure for our walking, the standard of what we are to cultivate, unless we enter into this, that it is not merely a cleansing for our heart—the Jewish people will have that by and by in the millennium, and will have such a cleansing as will suit them as God’s people on the earth; but that is not what characterizes the Christian—it is the practical cleansing, to have communion with Him where He is gone, suitably to God and His presence while we are here on the earth. That is the meaning of the washing of the feet, and the object of it. “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.” It is not exactly “a part in me,” for that he had. Life is, as far as that goes, a part in Christ; but the Lord will give us more than that. In virtue of our having life, or along with it at any rate, He will also give us this proof of His own perfect love and desire. For there is nothing that shows the perfection of love more than this—the One that loves us entering the highest and most glorious place that is conceivable, and fitting us for present association with that place where He is gone; and this is what Christ would give us the sense of while we are passing through this world. No wonder Peter could not understand it then. His fault was impatience, not his want of intelligence, but his want of confidence in the Lord and of waiting to learn.

[W. K.]

(To be continued)

The Dealings of God With Peter: 6. In the Gospels

( John 13:1-11 Continued)

This then is the great instruction that the Lord was giving His servant at this time. “He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit,” every whit; and that cleanness every whit, I repeat, is not merely the effect of being washed with blood. Washed with blood meets what our sins are; what we want as having sinned before God—before God. But it does not meet all that we want as giving us communion with God, and there is where the word comes in, and the importance of the word, and of the Holy Ghost’s applying the word. Because God will bring us to a common mind with Himself, and a common hatred with Himself of the evil that characterizes ourselves. God will give us a settled sense of it so that we hate it according to His own hatred of it, and that we, too, consequently, have an entrance into the good into which Christ has gone, because that was the effect of it. It is all founded upon the going in there where there is no evil, and we are brought into association—in short, have a part with Him now—by this very cleansing which deals with every impurity that is contracted every day.

Now this has, as I might almost say, dropped out of Christendom (I dare say there are some here that know a little of what is commonly taught), for I really could not tell, and I have read not a little on these subjects, but I really could not tell of any person, or of any work, that has ever set forward this most important truth. In short, the great mass of God’s children at the present day are just where Peter was then; that is, they have not the sense to see, they have not the sense, by the Spirit of God, to see the greatness of the love of Christ in giving them a portion with Himself where He is now. They have no thought of it. Consequently, you find that they are very little fitted for it by and by. This, on the contrary, falls in completely with what we find in the Epistles; that is we are “made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light.” But supposing there comes in something that is inconsistent. Well there is the washing of the feet.

There is the dealing with whatever is practically inconsistent with it, and bringing our souls back, restoring us to communion, that is, that there should not be an inconsistency between our standing in Christ and our practical walk here below; nay, nor our thoughts or feelings, because there is power. Quite granted that our hearts naturally are a fountain of all evil; but then there is such a thing as the heart being purified by faith. There is such a thing as the Spirit of God filling the inner man with the thoughts of Christ, and it is in this way. It is not by changing the evil, it is not by removing the evil yet—that will be at the coming of Christ; but it is by giving power to the good. It is by strengthening the new man, and feeding and filling the new man with God’s grace, God’s truth, with Christ, in short, practically. It is all this that fills, and, consequently, strengthens the new man.

And so it is that one is divided, as the apostle says, into “spirit, soul, and body” —constituting the whole man. It is not, I repeat, the extinction of evil, or the disappearance of it, but it is judged. Our old man is crucified with Christ, and a person knows the force of another word of the apostle Paul—that is, if Christ be in you, what then? Why, he tells us that in that case—in the eighth of Romans—there is this treating ourselves as “dead because of sin,” and “alive because of righteousness.” The Spirit is alive, you see, as he says; that is, the body is dead because of sin, and I am entitled to treat it as a mere instrument. If I allow the body to be active, and to have its way, it is always self, because then it guides me, then it takes possession of me, carries me off with itself, so to speak; and that is just what one is not to do if Christ be in you. “If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin.” If I do not act upon my being dead with Christ, but allow it activity as a living thing, then it works its own way and serves sin, because that is not changed. And, on the other hand, if I do treat it thus as dead, the Spirit is life. It is not only that I have got life in Christ, but the Spirit is life. The Holy Ghost acts in practical power, and He is life because of righteousness, and it is only thus that there is this practical working either in the having done with sin or of the righteousness of God below.

Well here, then, we have this great instruction from our Lord Jesus. At the end of the chapter we touch upon what I shall a little unfold from another scripture—the warning. The Lord introduces it after He has brought out His own death. When Judas is gone, the Lord has the whole scene before Him. “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him.” It is not merely the Father, but God, and God, as such, being glorified always supposes sin judged. It brings, therefore, the death of Christ in the judgment of sin—the solemn judgment of sin—before us. “If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him,” which He did by setting Him at His own right hand directly after His death and resurrection when He ascended to heaven. Instead of waiting for the kingdom and bringing in the Jew, He glorified Him straightway. All this, you see, is essentially connected with what is peculiar to Christianity. And then He tells them, “Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me; and, as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go ye cannot come, so now I say to you. A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

Peter again, too, quick to speak to the Lord, says, “Whither goest thou?” Jesus answers him, “Whither I go thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterward.” How gracious! How gracious to tell him of his incapacity before His death, and of that following which will be a most sure consequence, brought by the gracious power of God and made true to his soul. “Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake.” It was not that he was insincere. I doubt whether there ever was a sincerer soul than Simon Peter. And it is not in our insincerity, it is not there that our folly lies, but the very contrary, because we trust self in some shape or another. “Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied me thrice.”

I will turn, then, to a further warning—a truth that the Lord presents to us of very great moment —that we may have it fully before us. In the 22nd chapter of Luke, and the 31St verse, “And the Lord said, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for thee.” You observe the change. “Satan hath desired to have you.” It was not merely Simon, although he addresses Simon, but he desired to have them all. “But I have prayed for thee.” Why “for thee”? Why not merely “for you”? Because Satan was making a dead set at Simon, and what gave Satan the opportunity was this—Simon’s self-confidence. Confidence in what, beloved friends? In his natural character? Not at all; no, but in his love for the Lord. If his confidence had been in the Lord’s love to him it would have been a very different matter. Had that been actively—been distinctly —before his soul, he would have weighed the Lord’s warning; but he really was so sure that he loved the Lord so much, that, no matter what the trial was, he could go through it. He did not believe the others could. We may be tolerably good judges of others, beloved friends; we are very had judges of ourselves. Cannot we see that in Simon? Can we see it in ourselves? “I have prayed for thee,” said He who had all truth and whose love was going out, and most of all, for the man that was most dishonoring Him. Why so? Was dishonor a light thing? No, but His love was great and most real. And by whom and for whom is love most brought out? Where there is most need—the deepest need. “I have prayed for thee.”

And mark, Simon Peter heard it from His own lips before he went astray. If he had not, we have no right to say that he would have been restored as he was. We know that he was, restored, but God uses means, and one of the great means of restorative power for our souls is the love that we knew before we went astray. There is nothing that gives the heart more of rebound back to the Lord, and of horror at ourselves, than the very fact that the Lord told us so fully, so distinctly, before we went astray. “I have prayed for thee.” Do you think that Peter forgot that— “I have prayed for thee”?—because it would not have done if He had said, “I have prayed for you.” That is all true about you generally, but it is “thee” — “I have prayed for thee.” No, he never forgot it. He never forgot it in the hour of his need. I do not say in the hour of his wanting it; I do not say in the moment of his sin; but I do say that, when the horror of the sin filled his soul with despair, these words would he, and no doubt were, brought up by God’s Spirit before his soul. “I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.” Neither did it. His faithfulness did, but not his faith. We have no reason to believe, beloved friends, that he wavered as to the Person, or that he wavered about Christ’s great love to him, but—Peter was occupied with man. This we shall see another evening, for I am only going to speak of the warning, to-night.

“That thy faith fail not,” then, is the word; “and when thou art converted,” that is, turned back again to the Lord. It is the very same word that is used about one’s first turn, only Scripture does not limit it to that. The word “converted” is very much, in our common language, applied to the first turning to God, but we must remember that in Scripture it has a larger force, and means the turning again, even if one has gone astray, and that is exactly the meaning of it here. This is, therefore, what we commonly term restoration of soul, rather than conversion, but it is the very same word which applies to both. “When thou art turned to me” (if you please, or any word that would express that, just to vary it from our common usage) “strengthen thy brethren.”

The very fact of his being an object of such grace, and that power which drew him back again, would give confidence not only to him, but to them. He would be an instrument suited to the Lord, so little is it true that God does not restore a man—that you are not to trust a man who has once broken down. Why here is the most honored of God. We must not suppose, beloved friends, that saints are like horses. If a horse once falls he breaks his knees, no doubt. But is it possible that I have such a poor conception of divine grace as to think that? I dare say the figure has been very often used just in the opposite way. One would have thought that these words of our blessed Lord would have arrested the lips that said so. Not so; not so. Peter not only broke down then, but he broke down in another sense as seriously, for he failed as completely about the Gentiles after he had had a special commission to open the door to the Gentiles. He failed as completely about that as he failed here about Christ; but, for all that, there was no person—unless it be the apostle Paul himself—that was more used of God in strengthening his brethren. I think it a serious thing to weaken the spring of confidence in a soul that has slipped aside. I do not say that in order to weaken the gravity of slipping aside; but I do say that we must be zealous for the grace of God, and we must be faithful to the word of God; and we must take care that we do not, therefore, enfeeble a manifest truth of God that comes out as, for instance, in this very case. “When thou art converted’’—or, restored— “strengthen thy brethren.”

Now that is pre-eminently what we find in the Epistles of Peter—all through them both, I should say. Of course, they are not confined to that, neither does it refer to what he wrought, but it is a general reference to the character of his ministry. It was not only a confirming ministry; it was not only one that converted souls, but, as far as his brethren were concerned, it was one calculated eminently to strengthen, and this most clearly from the way in which God had taught him the grace of the Lord Jesus. No doubt it is a better thing to be strong in the grace of the Lord Jesus, so as not to slip aside; but the next best thing is that we have so profited by a slip, if we have been careless and unwatchful, that we have drunk more deeply into the grace of God than we ever did before. And surely, out of that, we are able to strengthen one another. So it was here. “He said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison and to death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter” (for here we resume from where I left off in John) “the cock shall not crow this day before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me. And he said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye anything? And they said, Nothing. Then said he unto them, But now he that hath a purse let him take it, and likewise his scrip.” It was no longer to be miraculous power, or miraculous opening the door of any one for them. There was no longer to be that. There had been that in their previous testimony. I do not believe that sending them in this new form of testimony was lower ground. There was less of wonder about it, but I do not believe, beloved friends, that the walk of faith is less because it is not clothed with miraculous power.

Why, look at the Corinthians. There were plenty of miracles there. Were they spiritual? Far from it. It is, therefore, a complete delusion to suppose that miracles of themselves show spirituality. I should say, on the contrary, it requires a great deal of grace to carry the power or miracle, so to speak—a great deal of grace—and that is precisely what I should gather from it, and I have no doubt that it is one of the reasons why the Lord did not continue miracles long—because the state of the church would not bear it. He, at the same time, did show that even in that state, a bad state in a particular quarter did not hinder miracle; but certainly it in no way implied spiritual power in the use of miracle. It was, therefore, a very good reason why, and 1 have no doubt there were moral reasons which God, of course, could alone adequately judge of, why He withheld them longer. But, however that may be, now they were to be cast upon God’s caring for His people in more ordinary ways. It was to be no longer a going in the name of the great King, and the disciples armed with power in every possible way as the vouchers of the King’s presence—the Messiah’s presence. They had had that. “But now,” He says, “he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip; and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.” But to guard against any thought of this being meant in a mere literal way—to show that it was meant only as the sign of the ordinary safeguards and means of daily life—this comes out. “And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.”

Now that very thing shows that He did not mean it literally, because two swords would be a very poor provision or eleven disciples—that is quite evident. If it had been eleven swords one could understand, but the fact of the Lord saying that two swords are enough shows at once that it was quite a mistake to interpret it in the mere literal sense; and we see that those who took it literally made a very bad use of it in a little while, and Peter is the very man.

But that is not what I am going to draw your attention to now, but this—that when the Lord leads them out to the mount of Olives, and the disciples follow Him, when He was at the place He said unto them, “Pray that ye enter not into temptation.” This is a very serious thing. It is just as true as another word that we might not be able to put along with it, and that is, “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation.” No, it is blessed to fall into temptation, but it is never blessed to enter into temptation. There is all the difference between entering into temptation and enduring temptation. And there was exactly what Peter had to learn most bitterly—to enter into temptation. Now the man that endures temptation is the man that prays before the temptation comes. He does not enter into it. When it comes he is blest; he endures. Peter did not. Peter entered; that is to say, that the entrance into temptation shows that there is a want of sense of danger—a want of sense that I need God, that I need God now. No doubt there is. But if the Lord tells me that temptation is at hand, and I do not pray, it is evident that I am not depending upon God; and so, instead of falling into temptation, the temptation, on the contrary, if I may say so, falls upon me, and, more than that, I enter into it instead of enduring it. The endurance of temptation is when the person suffers, and suffers because he does not yield. The entrance into temptation is when he does yield because he does not pray; because he is not in. dependence upon God, for there was exactly what was now coming out. “Pray that ye enter not into temptation.” He did not pray, and he did enter into temptation.

How different was it with the Lord! “And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down and prayed, saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will but thine he done. And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.” Now there was the Savior — “And being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly” the only one that it might have seemed temptation could not affect, temptation could not ensnare. And so it was most true: there was nothing that was assailable by temptation inwardly, nothing whatever; but, for that very reason, He knew what it was to suffer being tempted. Peter did not. Peter, on the contrary, gratified himself, as we shall see, when I come to show his fall; but that must remain for another night. I am only going to speak of the warning, as well as the instruction—the instruction that was so soon before, the warning that so soon followed. I shall show that the fall just as quickly followed, and the restoration in due time. But in the Lord’s case there was the depth of entrance—not into the temptation. He did not enter into temptation, but the Lord weighed it all, felt it all. The Lord had all the bitterness, all the sense of it, but a thing outside. And how? Because He took the gravity of it. He felt the reality of it in His own spirit before God. He always did, no matter whether it was a question of a temptation that was presented to Him by the adversary. And He had gone through that before. There had been temptation in the pleasant form. There was the temptation to seek that which God had not given, and the Lord refused. But now there was temptation in a totally different form—the endurance of what was most painful. And what was anything that could befall Peter compared with that which was before the Lord? For it is the greatest mistake to suppose that it was merely death. It was such a death as He alone could know, and the Lord therefore does go through the whole scene in spirit with God.

“And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was at it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow.” But this was not the sorrow of grace: this was really selfish sorrow. They were sorrowing at what they were going to lose; at all this distress that was coming on. It was not the true sorrow of grace that felt the seriousness of the moment, and that took warning from the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. “He found them sleeping for sorrow, and said unto them, Why sleep ye? Rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. And while he yet spake, behold a multitude, and he that was called Judas, one of the twelve, went before.”

Now it is not my intention to-night to go farther than that which I have now presented to you; but I believe that we have here the very thing that resulted in the speedy fall of Peter. We shall see the character of that—the way in which grace met and surmounted it, and restored this beloved one to God, and that will close the discourses that I am about to give upon this subject.

[W. K.]

The Dealings of God With Peter: 7. In the Gospels

Luke 22:50-62

I have chosen the account that is given in the Gospel of Luke rather than that of Matthew or Mark, because the Spirit of God presents it very particularly in its moral links. In John, on which I shall dwell afterward, all turns upon the person of the Lord Jesus, and we shall find, I think, this difference, when we come to look at it. But here the human heart is opened more; there the glory of the One who was making Himself known. Now the results of what we have already had before us begin to appear. The temptation has come, and Peter enters into it. We always do enter, where we are not found in prayer before the temptation. Then we are surprised. The Lord, on the contrary, had been in prayer, and He only makes the difficulty and the trial, when it came, an opportunity of manifesting the grace of God. Hence, therefore, when one of the persons that came to take the Lord—one of the servants of the high priest—presented himself, he became an object for one of the disciples. This was Peter. His very love for the Lord—his indignation—broke forth. It is not that the others were not just as ready to fall as Peter, for that is the solemn thing that appears. Our very love for His person, our very fervor of spirit, instead of being a preservative power, where there is not self-judgment, exposes one to go farther astray. Here it was, first of all, in the shape of violence. “He smote the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear.” Thus the Lord’s warning fell entirely powerless upon Peter; and in such a state of mind—and that is the importance of it—one perverts the word of God.

I do not doubt myself that Peter thought the sword was in his hand for the purpose. Had not the Lord spoken about taking a sword? And so, you will find, we are as dependent upon God for the use of His word. We cannot do without it. just as much as we need the word, so do we need the Spirit of God; but this is never given unless there be that dependence upon Him that goes forth in prayer, and, I repeat, in prayer not at the moment. Indeed, the moment was come for action or suffering. To Peter it was a question of action: to the Lord it was suffering. The Lord bows. It was no question now of any action, except, indeed, of repairing the mischief that Peter had done. This the Lord always does; and so He touched the servant’s ear and healed him. And this is a statement admirably finding its place in the very Gospel from which I have read, because Luke shows us the heart of man, or even of a saint, that is searched and found wanting where there has not been self-emptiness, where there has been self-confidence; and undoubtedly this was the case. And further, too, I am not in the least denying spiritual feeling and affection. They were sleeping for sorrow, but why? Why sleeping? The sorrow was all well, but why sleeping for sorrow? They ought to have been praying in sympathy with our Lord. They ought to have been in fellowship with Him. Not so; they found a sort of resource and relief in going to sleep when the Lord was calling them to watch, if it was only for the one hour. But there was no watching at all, any more than prayer: they went to sleep.

Now, when the Lord goes forth, in the calmness of one who had gone through the trial with God before the trial came, He is perfect calmness. Yet we know what was before Him. We know how He had felt it. There was the One that had been in the agony. There was the One that had been sweating, as it were, great drops of blood. Not a trace of it now. He had gone through with God. Satan now was to go through with Peter. Satan had carried completely away in the case of Judas. I do not mean that he was to carry Peter away as he had done Judas, but certainly it was to sift. As the Lord Himself said, Satan desired to have him that he might sift him as wheat; and this was now going on, so that Peter shows out himself. His way of sheaving his love for Christ was by taking a sword to cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant. Poor Peter! Not an atom of fellowship with the mind of God at that moment, nor, indeed, at any moment, as far as the Lord Jesus was concerned. It was entirely out of the current of the thoughts of God, and yet we cannot doubt that he might have found a sort of reason for it, as I have said, in a misuse of the very word of the Lord.

And this is a solemn lesson to us that the word of God itself will never guide a person aright until the spring of self is broken; until a person has judged himself before God, and is found, above all, with the loins girt with truth before he takes up the sword. When it is taken up afterward it is the sword of the Spirit, and not a material one to cut off an enemy’s ear.

Now here, then, we see the difference, first of all, but there was a far more solemn one afterward; for they go a little farther. When the elders and captains and the rest take the Lord, and lead and bring Him into the high priest’s house, Peter follows. We are told in the Gospel of John that he was not alone. Nay, John tells us; and it is beautiful that it should be so. How lovely are these traces of grace! He had seen the One that was full of grace and truth. What was the effect of it? A spirit of grace in himself. But it is John that tells the story of his own folly, his own selfishness, his own worldliness, for John went there rather in the capacity of a friend of the high priest—an acquaintance at any rate than as a follower of the Lord Jesus. That does not come before us here; indeed, it was reserved to himself to tell it. Now, was not that like the way of God? It had been a long time. Why tell a story that was so old? Perhaps there was not a single person in the whole world that knew it then—none but John. But John lived long enough to bring this out himself in his own word.

Here, however, we have the story of Peter pursued. “Peter followed afar off. And when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall, and were set down together, Peter sat down among them.” It was a little of that same spirit that we have the Lord warning against eating and drinking with the drunkard; that is, it was an association with the men of the world when they were set upon deepest enmity against the Lord Jesus, and with motives, in some respects, a little like themselves. I do not mean as regards the Lord, but all that was secret in his heart towards the Lord was entirely unknown. And who was the person that concealed it? Peter. He feared the world. He feared the men among whom he found himself. It was the spirit of the world. There is nothing that so destroys confession as fear of the world, and it is evident that this was the case. He had got with the world on its own ground. He wanted, no doubt, to see what was going on. I do not say that there were not deeper and better things at the bottom of his heart, but he did it in concealment. He was off the ground of faith. Here was another fruit of his not watching even one hour—of his failure in prayer when the Lord called him to pray.

And so the trial came—a new kind of trial, not now of patience; but here the question was, Would he confess? The occasion soon came. “A certain maid beheld him as he sat by the fire, and earnestly looked upon him and said, This man was also with him.” Now there was nothing violent; there was no strong language; but it was too much for Peter. It was—what? beloved friends. Association with Christ? He was ashamed of his Master. Oh, what a solemn thing! It was not that he did not love his Master, but he feared even this servant-maid. So mighty is the spirit of the world when we are off the ground of faith, and when we have failed in prayer before the temptation comes.

So he denied, saying, “Woman, I know him not.” It was not only a failure in confession: it was a lie! I know there are many Christians who think that a believer never can tell a lie. I pity them! One’s feeling always is, You are going to fail in that which you think impossible. You are going to fall into a lie yourself, and just because you do not believe it possible. “Woman, I know him not.” Nor was this all. “And after a little while another saw him, and said, Thou art also of them. And Peter said, Man, I am not. And about the space of one hour” —for God did not permit all to come in a few moments. No, He will have it made most plain. He would have the awful consequence of neglecting the word of the Lord in prayer. He would have a total humiliation of His servant; and so it was, for now it is bitter aggravation that, although, of course, conscience must have been at work, he must have known perfectly the sin against his Master, and the lie, as a mere question of morality. “And about the space of one hour after, another confidently affirmed, saying, Of a truth this fellow also was with him: for he is a Galilan. And Peter said, Man, I know not what thou sayest.”

Oh, beloved friends, what are we apart from Christ? The worth of every Christian is just the measure in which he has Christ, practically, as his life. I am not now speaking of a person being brought to heaven by blood. No doubt the two things go together; but I do say that all that is precious in a saint of God—all that one can speak of as giving pleasure and satisfaction—is that which gives pleasure and satisfaction to God. And we must remember this. It is no question of character: you cannot trust flesh. Character you may count upon in a man of the world, but never trust it in a Christian. God will not allow character to reap the praise. God will not sustain a person according to his character. Who would have expected this from Peter? Peter may never have been guilty of anything of the kind in his life, even about the common transactions of the world, or about other persons. It is quite evident, from what we see of him in his ordinary ways, that Peter was in no way a man of deceitful character. If one looks at Rebecca, one is not surprised that the sister of Laban should be full of her plans and tricks and ways. And one is not surprised, again, that Jacob should savor of the family character. One sees that there were ways that were unworthy, bearing a most suspicious resemblance to his mother. Well, there, I say, it is his natural character; but not so with Peter; and I think that these two things are of great importance; that is, that natural character has a great deal to do where it is a question of the enemy, but natural character is a very small thing with the Spirit of God.

[W. K.]

(To be continued)

The Dealings of God With Peter: 8. In the Gospels

LUKE 22:50-62 (continued)

Now, there is an immense comfort in this, because, supposing I know that my natural character fails in this way or that, there is a ground to take care; there is a ground where I have got peculiarly to watch it. On the other hand, there is the greatest comfort in knowing that, whatever may be one’s failure, what Christ has formed is not merely a question of developing one’s character, or patching up what is wrong. It is the forming what is entirely new. It is the new man that the Spirit of God is occupied in bringing out, and in exercising according to the will and word of God. And, hence, therefore, whatever might have been one’s defects, whatever might be the horrible evil of one’s nature —I am speaking now of that which one may painfully know in one’s natural character—it has nothing at all to do with the Spirit of God. He is above it. He is sovereign. He forms what is utterly wanting, and makes a person remarkable for the very opposite of what he is naturally; so that, you see, one gets a double advantage in this way—all the comfort of what grace can do on the one hand, and all the profit of the humiliation of what we feel ourselves to be, and what exposes us to the enemy.

Well, then, there is another thing, and that is that, when a man is a Christian, one never can tell what Satan will try, where one is unwatchful — to drag one down in the last thing that could be expected. There you cannot predict, but this you may safely predict—that Satan will throw a person down in the very thing in which he thinks it impossible. There never was a man that had greater confidence that day than Peter—that it was impossible for him to deny his Master. His Master had told him that he was to do it, and solemnly warned him. He did not believe Him; therefore, he fell. And, not believing Him, he did not pray—there was another thing, and the outer failure is always the manifestation of the inward one. Everything that is blessed in the Christian is the fruit of prayer with God in secret. I am speaking now not, of course, of how souls are brought to God: I am speaking of the way in which God manifests the traits of grace in those that are His. Hence the all-importance of the word of God and prayer. In these very particulars Peter had broken down.

But mark, now, the beginning of his restoration. We have seen his fall. I have now a happier task—to trace the ways of grace in restoring the soul of Peter.

“The Lord turned and looked upon Peter; and Peter remembered the word of the Lord”; for it is always the point of failure that is taken up, and the first part of Peter’s failure was that he slighted the word of the Lord. He really did not believe Him about himself and about his danger, although he did believe in Him as to His own glory, and had given various proofs of his faith in Him, but he did not believe in Him practically, that is, as to his own peril at that moment. Now he realized what a fool he had been. Now he realized, in a little measure—for it was not anything like complete how profound the sin and shame that he had put upon the Lord Jesus. “And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.” It was repentance, but it was only the beginning of repentance; for repentance, beloved brethren, does not merely mean sorrow, however genuine, for one’s sin. Repentance, in a Christian particularly, goes a great deal more deeply into the matter, and we shall find that the Lord, in his very love to Peter, would have it deep. He meant it to be a work never to be forgotten. He meant the fruit of this to appear by His own grace. He meant other souls to be blest; for what cannot grace do? Out of the eater, as we know, comes forth meat, and out of the strong sweetness. That is, grace is always sovereign, always free. Hence the Lord delights at just the very last moment when we could expect it. But what you expect is not grace. Grace is always above any inference that can be drawn, except, indeed this—if I have learned what God is, I have learned, it may be, to infer that God must always act worthily of Himself.

Well, I do not call that, of course, mere reason. Reasoning is the other way. The reasoning of man is from himself—it may be to God—and hence it is always wrong. The true way of reasoning is from God to man, and not from man to God. Well, this is just exactly where we fail; but, grace being in God, one ought to start from this, as a believer—that God will always prove that He is never overcome with evil. Why, He calls us not to be. He says, “Be ye not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.” That is what He does Himself. That is what He is always doing as the God of all grace. And so now the Lord looks out of this spirit of grace. I quite admit that there is nothing which judges sin so severely as grace. There is nothing which produces such deep shame before God. There is nothing which makes the vilest see all his failure —his denial (for really it was that)—his denial of the Lord Jesus. What a Lord to deny! What a Savior He was! What love was in that look, but, at the same time, what grief! And grief over whom? For Himself? Over Peter—Peter. The love of the Lord, as well as the sense, no doubt, of the sin, filled Peter’s heart. There was more to be done still, but that will follow.

John 20; 21

Now I turn, then, from this to the Gospel of John, where we have the further dealings of the Lord as to Peter, and the completeness of the work in the soul. We see Peter on the resurrection day—the resurrection morning. “The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulcher, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulcher. Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulcher, and we know not where they have laid him.” What was the effect of this upon Peter? “Peter, therefore, went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulcher. So they ran both together; and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulcher.” But he did not first enter in. There was a need in Peter’s heart which at that moment carried him farther than even the affection of John; for, although John came first to the sepulcher and stooped down, and, looking, saw the linen clothes lying, he did not go in. But “Simon Peter cometh, following him, and went into the sepulcher, and seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin that was about his head not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. Then went in also that other disciple which came first to the sepulcher, and he saw and believed.”

Again, our souls may well admire the grace that tells such a story—not to his own credit, “for as yet,” saith he, “they knew not the scripture that he must rise again from the dead.” They believed the fact, but they knew not the scripture. It was not a truth to them, bound up with God’s character and God’s word. It was a fact. They saw that the Lord was risen, but the connection of the resurrection with God’s glory and with their own deliverance did not yet cross their minds. “Then the disciples went away again unto their own home.” Not so Mary. But I do not pursue her story. My subject is Peter.

Well, now, what I should draw from the story that is brought before us here, more particularly followed up by what is mentioned in the last chapter of the Gospel of Mark, is this. Peter was a true man. He knew that he had dishonored the Lord, but the first impulse of his heart was to see the Lord. But was that all? It was the grace of the Lord’s heart to see Peter. The Spirit of God was truly at work in Peter in this desire to see the Lord, even if he were alone to see the Lord. He wished to have it all out with the Lord, but the Lord wished it too, and wished it for Peter’s sake; for there is nothing that would more damage a soul than an unsettled question between it and the Lord. Hence, in the Gospel of Mark we are told that the Lord said, when He gave the word to the women—or rather the angel speaking for the Lord— “Go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee.” Why Peter? Why is he the only one that is named? Because he was the one that most needed it. Love always goes out most where there is need most. “Tell his disciples and Peter.”

What a joy to Peter’s heart that it should be so, in spite of his scandalous and his repeated lying—for indeed it was most shameful. It was not simply a failure to confess; it was a denial of his Master, and this repeatedly; and remember, this was only a very short time afterward. He experienced how infinitely the ways of the Lord are above ours. Could we have thought such a thing possible? Just conceive it now. Conceive a person guilty of a flagrant act, and a public one, too, and a repeated one. How slow any of us would be to think that such a person could possibly be a believer. And this is an apostle; and did not that make it a great deal worse? Even the law always laid it down as a principle that the sin of the ruler was a more serious thing, and could not be dealt with as the sin of one of the people generally. There was always that which required a deeper purgation before God; and so the very fact of Peter’s being so specially honored would to us have been so much the greater shame and evil. But to the Lord it was an opportunity for judging it thoroughly out of fullness of His grace. He was to be a strengthener of others, and this, too, as he had not learned what it was in secret with the Lord. Now he must learn by his own public sin, but where sin abounded grace did much more abound; and, unless it be the apostle Paul, where was there such a preacher of grace as the apostle Peter?

Now turn again from this to the fifteenth of 1 Corinthians—for I must just refer to that for a moment. The proofs must be taken from different parts of scripture. We know that the Lord did appear to Peter. Indeed, we need not leave the Gospels. The 24th of Luke shows the very same thing; for when the two disciples came in from Emmaus, and reported to the assembled disciples in Jerusalem that the Lord had spoken to them by the way, what are they told? “They found the eleven gathered together and them that were with them, saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon. And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.” But He had appeared to Simon; and, you will mark, to Simon alone. Now I do see unspeakable grace in our Lord in that it was not only an angel that gives the comforting word, “Tell his disciples and Simon Peter,” but here is the fact that the Lord met Peter alone. I am not aware that He met anybody else alone. He met two disciples. I am not speaking of Mary Magdalene, of course, when He sent the message, but as far as the eleven were concerned I am not aware of His appearing to any one of them alone except Peter. Why so? Because He felt for the heart of the disciple. He felt that there would be a burden, that there would be a cloud, and He would remove it. He had given the certainty that there was nothing between Him and Peter, so that Peter might have nothing between his heart and the Lord. That was His object, and this, too, He accomplished in this very way—he appeared to Simon. [W. K.]

(To be continued)

The Dealings of God With Peter: 9. In the Gospels

John 21

Well, then, we find a further step in the twenty-first chapter. “Jesus showed himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, and on this wise showed he himself. There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other of his disciples.” Now, I do not say that the work was very deep. It was real, but there was a want of depth. “Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, We also go with thee.” The ways of one who has a pre-eminent place, and his words too, are surely of great moment to us here. How readily saints fall in with the word of any one who takes the lead! “They went forth and entered into a ship immediately, and that night they caught nothing. But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore.” He turns this to his own account. “But the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No. And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord” —always prompt of action— “he girt his fisher’s coat unto him (for he was naked), and did cast himself into the sea. And the other disciples came in a little ship (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits), dragging the net with fishes. As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now caught. Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three; and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken.”

Now I have no doubt that all this was a typical scene—that it was in direct connection with the wonderful effects of the work of the Lord in a day that is coming, but not yet come—that, in short, it is the picture of the millennial scene when there will be no failure whatever as far as the work of God is concerned. There will be failure in man outside, but not as far as the work of God is concerned. It will be one of the peculiar characteristics of that day. And so, you observe, for all the great catch of fish the net is not broken. It is in contrast with the picture of the work now, and with that which had been said to Peter. You may remember that, in the Gospel of Luke, there is the picture of Peter and the rest called to be fishers of men. Well no doubt they catch fish and plenty of them; but the nets are broken, whereas in that day there will be nothing of the kind; there will be no breach. The work of God will be fully accomplished, not merely grace overruling as now, not merely God doing it as far as His own secret purpose is concerned. I am speaking now of the public work in the world. Well, that will be an immense change, but there is another thing that comes before us here of more importance for my present purpose, and that is, the dealings of God still more fully pursued with Peter’s soul—the restoring dealings of the Lord.

“When they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?” Now that was a very searching question. It told the whole tale. “Lovest thou me more than these?” That was the root of his failing. Peter did not give the other disciples credit for being willing to go to prison and to death for Jesus’ sake; but he believed himself. He was confident that he loved the Lord as nobody else did, and now the Lord turns upon Peter. He had carried the work on in his soul. He had looked upon him and sent him out to weep when he remembered the word. He had seen him alone, but now He would carry on the work at the same time that He would publicly reinstate His servant; for the very point here was that, while the work was carried on more deeply than in others, it was in presence of others, that they might know the entire restoration of communion between Peter and the Lord—nay, more than that, that they might know the confidence which the Lord reposed in Peter now. He had never done it before.

He had never entrusted his sheep to Peter before.

Oh, what grace! The very time when men would have said, “Never trust Peter again! A man that has so denied the Lord he may be a saint! I hope he will get to heaven—but never you trust that man! Why, did any one ever hear of such flagrant, repeated denial? “Well now, you see the Lord does it all before them, and the first question really probed the heart, though He carries it still deeper every time. “Simon, son of Jonas,” for that was the point—he trusted himself “lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee.” What does the Lord say? “He saith unto him, Feed my lambs. He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep. He saith unto him the third time.” Peter had denied Him thrice, and it is in the most pointed reference to this that He puts it the third time; yet Peter did not feel how deeply the Lord was going, for He had not alluded to his denial; but now he understands. He thought it was all settled, but the Lord would have it settled not only publicly, but divinely. And you see here was the thing that was wanting. He had judged his failure, but had he got to the cause of the failure? Had he detected the root of it? I do not believe he had. We may be very, very grieved because of our sin, and feel it deeply before God; but have we really reached what exposed us to sin? What was it in Peter? His confidence in his own loving the Lord—that he could go where nobody else could—that he loved the Lord more than any one more than these.

Well now, you see he feels that the Lord was alluding to his threefold denial. “Peter was grieved, because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee.” How humiliating! Peter is reduced to cast himself upon the Lord’s perfect knowledge—what the Lord Himself knew. Everybody else in the world would have said that Peter could not have loved the Lord to deny Him so, and that unless the Lord knew to the bottom of his heart he could not have given him credit for love. “Lord, thou knowest all things.” Oh, beloved friends, what a comfort it is to have to do with One that knows all things, and, in consequence of knowing all, can see a love that nobody else could see—can give credit to that which all appearances might contradict; so that, instead of the Lord’s perfect knowledge of all being a thing that we have need to be afraid of, it is the very thing that is in our favor where there is reality; and there was reality in Peter. It was not that there was any question of love: the failure was not there. It was not that there was not love, but that he considered that his love would preserve him in the hour of danger. It never does—nothing does. But the self-judgment that comes out in prayer to God and in total distrust of self before God. It is not, therefore, the protective power of the love of Christ that keeps people. There must be that, but there is more than that wanted, and the more than that is the very last thing that a man lacks: it is to believe his own badness, to believe that he is such a poor, weak, unworthy creature; and Peter had never got a deep sense of it before. Now it is brought to him. “Lord, I admit that all the rest would say that I do not love you a bit, but you know everything to the bottom of my heart, and you know, after all, that it requires divine knowledge to know that I love Thee.” Not a word now of loving more than anybody else. That was furthest from Peter’s heart. You may depend that he never said it again, never thought it again. I do not mean that he did not fall in other ways, but he was thoroughly broken, at any rate, in this conceit of himself. “Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep.”

Now you see there is a distinct word of the Lord, for it is not merely that the Lord was thus bringing Peter to judge the root of the evil that had exposed him to fall, but the Lord was now reposing public confidence in Peter—in His servant—for the work that He was about to open to him. He was about to have a very special charge, and I suppose that the sheep which are referred to here refer rather to the Jewish ones. It would seem so from the context and from the fact. We know that the circumcision were handed over to Peter, as the uncircumcision to Paul; and it would appear that this is what the Lord refers to here. At the present time you must remember the only sheep that were accredited were the sheep that were there. Others no doubt there were, but that does not seem to enter into the special line of this part of the Gospel of John.

However, that may not be of so much importance. The great thing I wish to press is the evidence that scripture gives us here of God, in His wonderful way, restoring our souls fully only when we have got at that which exposed us to sin, and not merely the sin itself. This is of so practical a nature that I must dwell upon it, therefore, at more than usual length. But it is not all, for the Lord, when He restores, always restores what was not taken away—gives more than was ever possessed.

Now there was one thing in which Peter had expressed his confidence—that is, to go to death or judgment or prison—anything for the Lord. Well now, the Lord takes this up. “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake he, signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when he had spoken this, he saith unto him, Follow me.”

Thus then, I think, we have the unspeakable grace of our Lord Jesus Christ meeting the desire of Peter’s heart. He had done wonderful things for him already, when He committed what was most precious to the man that had failed so publicly and so repeatedly; but He goes farther. Had not Peter desired to follow the Lord to prison and to death? Certainly. “Well now,” says the Lord, “I will give you all the desire of your heart.” And look at the Lord’s way! Look at the way of grace! When he was comparatively young he failed. When there was all the fervor and impetuosity, I must add, of his natural character, he completely broke down. The Lord puts no honor upon that; rather the contrary. He must bring it to nothing. It is what flesh would glory in. “But he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” And so the Lord gives him good ground for it, for He tells him, “When thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands.” It was not only that he was to die, but, “This spake he signifying by what death he should glorify God.” Peter was to have his wish gratified to the very fullest. Peter was to suffer like his Master. I am not referring now to the tradition. I do not know whether there is any truth in his being crucified with his head downwards. Scripture says nothing of that kind. We are told so. It is a pretty story, and that is all one can say about it. It may be true; it is more likely to be false. You never can trust the stories of men in the things of God. I have never known a true story told by men in what concerns God, and where the spirit of man reigns. There is a fatality of error of the most extraordinary kind in the old ecclesiastical historians that touch upon these matters. Why, they cannot even tell correctly what is in the Bible, still less what is not. I say, therefore, that I do not believe that these stories are to be trusted. But this is to be trusted: he is to die like his Master, at any rate. He is to be crucified, so that the Lord would not only give him then to be led away a prisoner, but to suffer upon the cross. Peter would have what he desired, and more than he desired; but he would have it in pure grace; there was no strength. He would have it given him by the Lord; nay, farther than that, to “glorify God.” No longer Peter’s love; no longer glorifying Peter in any way. “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”

I do not know, then, beloved friends, a more touching proof of the way in which grace not only restores, but triumphs. And, remember, that is the measure for us. We are put in this wonderful place of glorifying God. Is that only for Peter? Nay, for all the redeemed. “We are bought with a price; therefore,” he says, “glorify God in your body.” So it was in Peter’s case. It was not the cheap and easy way of thinking that it is a mere matter of feeling. It is all-important that our affections should be right, but God does give opportunities that the feeling shall be a manifested one. God does give opportunities that the heart shall have its desire. Where we have wrong desires, it is the greatest mercy of God that He crosses them, but when we have a holy desire, though it may be taken up in a spirit of self-confidence, and comes to naught for the time, yet what is divine always survives. This is what we find here. Peter, when he was broken, therefore, in all his own power, finds the power of God strengthening him even beyond what he had thought, for I do not suppose that when Peter spoke about following the Lord to prison and to death he thought of the death of the cross. None of them could say that till the cross came. They never contemplated such a thing as their Master suffering so, although the Lord had intimated it. But it is astonishing how the disciples forgot the word of the Lord, and how little impression it made. Are you surprised at that? You ought to know it from yourselves. I ought to know it from myself, and I do know it too well—how we slur over the word of God, how we are caught continually in the midst of a chapter that we have read ever so often and never understood before—expressions, even those that we have cited, it may he, and used; and yet suddenly the light of God shines through them. Well, how is this, beloved friends? Why, it is just because there has been a hindrance in self. There has been something of our own that has been an obstruction to the Spirit of God, but God brings down the self and causes the light and grace of Christ to shine, and all is clear.

And now, beloved friends, I have desired to help you to follow to the end all the dealings of God with Peter in the Gospels. If the Lord will, perhaps there may be another opportunity of tracing him in the Acts of the Apostles, or the Epistles of Peter; but I do not hope for that just now. May the Lord bless what we have said. May He give us more simplicity to read that we may understand; for simplicity, after all, is exactly what the deepest understanding brings us to. If we are growing rightly, we are growing more simple. I am sure, beloved friends, that that is the true lesson for all our souls—to appreciate the word and to apply it, to learn how to use it, not only for others, but for our own souls.

[W. K.]

Enduring Temptation and Entering Into Temptation

James 1:2, 12; Matthew 26:41

There is manifestly a vast difference between “falling into temptation,” or “enduring temptation” (James 1:2, 12), on the one hand, and “entering into temptation” (Matt. 26:41), on the other. We do well therefore to have it clear and settled in our souls; for, as the one is blessed, the other is the utmost possible danger for the soul. There is nothing more strengthening than to “endure temptation”; nothing more perilous than to “enter into” it. There seems little difference in the words, and people might easily slur over the difference in their thought. But the difference is complete; for in the one case it is an honor that God puts upon us, and in the other a snare that Satan presents to us.

Which or these two things do we know best? How far do our souls that are here round the table of the Lord Jesus know what it is to fall into divers temptations, or to endure temptation?

For blessed are we if we do. Falling into temptation, or enduring it, is that which God delights in. In Gen. 22 we find that Abraham was in a condition in which God could try him; and He loves that we should be in such a condition that He can try us. But this is not so when we are not governed by the sense of the presence of God, as well as happy in Him. It is not so where flesh is not judged. Are we then brought to this point in the ways of God? For it is this that He looks for from every saint of His. Are we then brought into communion with the Father and His Son in our Lord Jesus (1 John 1)? Have we not the same Savior, and the same salvation of God?

Still, in Christ salvation is not merely an incomparable favor such as God has shown to us in the depths of our need, but it is also assuredly inseparable from the dealing with self in the presence of God; so much so, that where this is not learned at the beginning it must be more painfully taught in the course. And then what dishonor to God! how grieving to His Spirit! Such failure, to teach us what we are, is not enduring temptation, nor is it in the least the same as God’s trying us. In such a state the Lord has rather to buffet us for our faults, as those who bear the name of the Lord Jesus after an un-comely sort.

How grievous that those who have in the Savior such a salvation, based on the utter judgment of the flesh, should so little have used it to deal with self, the most hateful of all things to God; for so one need not hesitate to call it. I admit there is a greater daringness and pride and subtlety in Satan; but it seems to me that for that which is low and base and mean, there is nothing so had as self; and yet this is the very thing that every one of us carries with us. The question now is, How far has grace acted upon our souls to lead us to judge it out and out in the presence of God? Where this is the case, the Lord can try us; that is, He can put us to the proof by what is not at all a question of evil of any kind, because God does not tempt by evil any more than He is tempted by evil things.

When God then was pleased to ask Abraham to give up his only son, this was in no wise evil, but a most blessed trial. It was proving whether Abraham had such perfect confidence in God that he would give up the object that was dearest to him, in whom were centered all the promises of God. And by grace Abraham could. Of course he did it with the perfect certainty that, if Isaac were then to die, God would raise him up; for Abraham perfectly well knew, before the sacrifice was asked, that Isaac was to be the child of promise; and he knew that it was to be that Isaac and nobody else—not another son—so that he was certain, if Isaac were offered up, God would raise him again from the dead. It was therefore really the good of God’s own heart that was reflected in what He asked of Abraham’s heart; and Abraham was brought into greater communion with God in that which was in its measure the counterpart of the gift of His own Son.

Just so is it with the trials that God is pleased to try us by, speaking now not of our had trials, but of our good ones; not of such sorrows as Lot passed through, but of those like Abraham’s. It is a proof of the greatest confidence on God’s part if there is in us such a groundwork of walking before God, and in the consciousness of His presence, that He can try us with something that is like Himself—some prize to give up, some suffering to endure in grace—whatever it may be that is according to His own mind. It is in this sense that temptation is spoken of in James 1:2, 12.

After this (vers. 13-15) we immediately turn to temptation spoken of in a had sense, and this connects itself with the verse I read in Matt. 26 I shall not dwell long upon either, though both are words of most salutary character for our souls. The Lord had looked for His disciples to watch with Him. Alas! He had not found it. And the Lord had gone Himself alone, and had prayed to His Father in deepest suffering. Then He comes back to the disciples, and, finding them sleeping, He says to Peter, “What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” No, they could not watch with Him one hour! The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.

Nov it would be very unworthy for us to take this as an excuse for our own failure; this would be reading scripture to the positive injury of our souls and the dishonor of God; yet I am afraid there are many who do so. But we must remember there is this difference between our standing now, and that of the disciples. Flesh had not been thoroughly exposed and judged at that time; it was before the cross of Christ, and so before the Holy Ghost was given. There was divine life, but divine life, in itself, always goes in weakness.

It is the Holy Ghost that acts in power; and you never can have power without Him. But we are always responsible for the power of the Holy Ghost, because He is given to the believer, and forever abides in him. This time was not yet come; but the Lord does say in view of it, as well as of the state in which they then were, “Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.” For remember this, it is not any power conferred by the Spirit of God that keeps, even though He be the Spirit of power—it is not energy in this or that which keeps, but dependence; it is the sense of weakness that watches and prays, and thus has the power of Christ resting on us. His strength made perfect in weakness.

There is nothing that so tends, where it is severed from Christ, to destroy dependence, as a large knowledge of the word of God. And that is where our danger lies. The greater our knowledge of the word of God, where it is separated from the sense of utter weakness, and consequently from the need of watching and praying, the greater the danger. This is a solemn warning for our souls. There is no doubt plenty of knowledge of Scripture, and of what is called intelligence of truth; but do our souls keep up this sense of our need and weakness, and the expression of it to God? “Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.”

What does our Lord mean by “entering into temptation”? The will that goes into a scene where nothing but a judged will in one who goes at the bidding of God and leaning on Him can be kept; that is, the will goes in where failure is inevitable, just because it is will at work. So Peter himself soon proved. He went where Peter could not stand, unless the Lord had called and kept him by faith. He entered into temptation. He did not suffer. There was no such thing as enduring temptation; but he entered into it, and fell.

And let me just say that it is all well in the midst of the saints of God to confess our Lord Jesus Christ; but it is not so easy to confess Him truly and humbly where, instead of saints sympathizing with us, shame and contempt, or death even, may be the consequence, as in Peter’s case. He would have endured, had he gone in by grace, obedience, watching and praying, instead of trusting in his own willingness to go to prison or even to die for his Master. When our Lord says, “The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak,” He is looking at nature in man; and nature is incapable of such a trial. None but God can sustain, and therefore it would require God’s will expressed in His word to lead us rightly into such a scene of temptation, and His grace sustaining in faith to keep us in it; otherwise it would be but our own will, and we should fall. It would have been an abomination in Abraham to sacrifice his son, unless God had spoken the word. But faith, where self is judged, strengthens the soul to endure temptation. One enters not into temptation where one abides in dependence and self-judgment. Then when we fall into various temptations, we count it all joy; and as we did not enter of our own will, so we do not fall in them, but by grace endure.

The Lord give us to watch and pray, so much the more because He has blessed us with such a knowledge of His word and of Himself in the Lord Jesus Christ.

W. K.

Errata

(In last number)

Page 209, col. 1, line 21 from bottom—For The read They.

Page 220, col. 1, lines 13 and 14 should be transposed.

Errata

Page 323, 4th line from bottom, For Israel read Syria.

Page 324, line 1, For house read history.

Existence Between Death and Resurrection

Letter to a Millennial-Dawnist

Dear Sir,

It is only now that I can find time to commence a reply to your letter of the 12Th instant. The subject matter of your correspondence is of a very serious nature: and bear in mind, that deeper even than the question of doctrine is the personal one for yourself, as to whether or not you are standing arrayed in antagonism to the Lord Jesus Christ. Solemn thing, Sir, if you should be found at the last guilty of counterworking His interests and building in wood, hay and stubble all to be destroyed!

I would recall you to my previous letter, to which yours is a reply. My letter takes you up on just one point—the existence of the soul between death and resurrection—the denial of this is the key-stone of your fanciful system without which the whole arch tumbles in. Upon this I presented you with simple but ample proofs from Scripture.

I gave you Stephen’s prayer— “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” —and you reply,

“You seem to think Stephen has been in existence for the last nineteen hundred years.”

I should rather think I do! I have not yet got down to believing that a man such as Stephen was at that moment, “full of the Holy Ghost” as he was stated to have been, could ask the Lord to receive his spirit when he had no spirit to be received!

You then say that devout men “carried Stephen to his burial,” and ask, “When did he rise again?” The answer is: He did not rise again: no one says he did. The contention is that his spirit went to the Lord, there to await the resurrection. And that is what you have to disprove, not his resurrection. You assume that because his body has not been raised his spirit is not in existence; but as the logicians say, the assumption of the thing which has to be proved is valueless.

You are kind enough to suggest that I “should search the Scriptures as to man,” but such Scriptures as I have in memory are quite sufficient to refute your false doctrine, for you say, “Man is a Unity; and only as a unit is he dealt with as a man in Scripture.”

Without disputing the first part of this statement, the latter is disproved by 1 Thess. 5, for the apostle Paul there speaks of “your whole spirit, and soul, and body,” The very Scripture we are dealing with, Acts 7:59, itself confutes you, for Stephen, in articulo mortis, calls upon the Lord to receive his spirit, while Stephen himself, that is the corporeal Stephen, as which alone he could be taken cognizance of by men, was carried to his burial.

But there is further scriptural proof. The Lord Jesus, about to die and leave His body on the cross, commends His spirit into the Father’s hands. Again, the apostle Paul, in Phil. 1:23, refers to dying as being “to depart and to be with Christ.” Again, in 2 Cor. 5:8, he describes it as being “absent from the body” and “present with the Lord.” Again, the Lord tells the dying malefactor that that day he should be with Him in paradise (Luke 23).

Again, Peter speaks of the body as a tabernacle, and also of his putting off his tabernacle (2 Peter 1:14). So also Paul speaks (2 Tim. 4:6) of the time of his departure being at hand.

I have now shown you and proved by Scripture the separate existence of the spirit after death. It is proved by:

1. The Lord’s words respecting His own spirit.

2. Ditto respecting the spirit of the dying thief (Luke 23)

3. By the dying utterance of Stephen.

4. By Paul’s description of death in 2 Cor. 5

5. By ditto, in Phil. 1

6. By ditto, 2 Tim. 4:6.

7. By Peter’s description of dying in 2 Peter 1:14.

Well, dear Sir, you are loud in your profession of attachment to Biblical teachings and profuse in denunciations of what is “unbiblical.” If this is anything more than an empty boast, I call upon you to acknowledge your error as to the separate existence of the spirit of man at death. If you really reverence God’s word you will do this frankly and honorably; and further, according as you are in a spiritual state, you will, in that proportion, humble yourself before God, for having gone about propagating such evil doctrine as that in question.

You say, “What did Peter’s argument in Acts 2 mean?” Why it meant what every person who heard him would understand it to mean, namely, that David had not yet partaken of the resurrection of the body. That it did not relate to David’s spirit is proved by another scripture, for David says, when referring to the death of his child, “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (2 Sam. 12:23). Scripture rebukes your doctrines at every turn! According to you, the child was not in existence for David to go to, and David, on dying, would be no more in existence to go to him!

II.

My letter cited Luke 20:38 as a proof of the existence of the spirit after death, and your reply is, “You read Luke 20:38 in one way; I read that Christ taught the resurrection; and Paul teaches the same glorious truth.” Permit me here to make a general remark. Your views, both original and quoted, are extremely narrow-minded and one-sided. But I must not use these terms without justifying them, or as terms of abuse—far be it from me—but in their proper significance. A “narrow” mind is one which sees only a section of a subject. That section which it does see it may apprehend with great clearness. In fact there is nothing more common with that class of minds than speaking with superlative emphasis of that part of truth which they do see, while other persons, who see not only that, but much more, they regard as quite in the dark. Now to justify the application of this to yourself: you get hold of the unity of the being of man, but your mind seems to have one eye shut, so that you are unable to see that man is also tripartite (1 Thess. 5). And another instance is the passage we are now dealing with Luke 20:38. That passage teaches resurrection, but it also demonstrates the separate existence of the disembodied spirit. The former truth you can see, but the other truth your half-vision excludes. The Lord taught that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were living (their spirits of course) in the time of Moses, because God calls Himself their God, and that He is not the God of the dead; so that they were not dead at that time in the sense in which you speak of being dead.

You go on to say, “Christ taught the resurrection, and Paul teaches the same glorious truth.” Of course, Christ taught the resurrection, and, of course, “Paul taught the same glorious truth.” Who doubts it? Here again is the blind eye, for Paul not only taught the resurrection but he taught the separate existence of the unclothed spirit, as I have proved.

With this, dear Sir, I conclude. Nothing would be easier than to go through the whole of your letter and to take it to pieces line by line as I have done so far. But you have now been presented with quite sufficient proof from Scripture to deliver you from your erroneous views, if only you are morally in subjection to Scripture. If you are, you will how to the force as well as to the authority of God’s word. If, however, you are not subject to God through His word, your doctrines might be proved wrong a thousand times, but you would hold fast to them all the same. The holding of false doctrine is only partially an intellectual matter; it is in large degree moral. A man may inadvertently drop into error, but if he be truly godly he will retrace his steps the moment it is shown that his views are contrary to Scripture.

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to labor through the whole of your voluminous letter if I thought it would lead to your eyes being opened. But if you are irretrievably wedded to your system of notions it would be a waste of time which might be better employed. In the present case, having confronted you with Scripture, I must leave the matter between your conscience and God—a solemn responsibility.

I remain, dear Sir, yours truly,

E. J. T.

Fragment: 2 Timothy 3:16-17

“Every scripture 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” (2 Tim. 3:16, 17).

Fragment: Christ the Test

“Christ personally—the written word as the standard of truth—is the test for everything that can be said or written now, in the hands of all that fear the Lord, whether it be those that minister or those that are ministered to.”

Fragment: Coming to the Father

By receiving Jesus, by believing in Him, and only so, we come to the Father. Christ is the way, and there is none other. Besides, He is the truth, the revelation of every one and of everything as they are. He is also the life, in which that truth is, by the Spirit’s power, known and enjoyed. In every way Christ is the only possible means of our entering into this blessedness. “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

Fragment: Full of Faith, Grace, and Power

We may, in a measure, be so accustomed to what we may call the ordinary ways of the Lord, as to be forgetful of His special interventions whether in blessing or in judgment. But if our expectations of His grace were but simple and livelier, would we not know more of sudden—not always immediate answers to our prayers? Oh, that, like Stephen, we might be “full of faith and of the Holy Ghost,” “of grace and power”!

Fragment: Latitudinarian Unity

Latitudinarian unity it may be painful and trying to keep aloof from; it has an amiable form in general, is in a measure respectable in the religious world, tries nobody’s conscience, and allows of everybody’s will. It is the more difficult to be decided about, because it is often connected with a true desire of good, and is associated with amiable nature. And it seems rigid, and narrow, and sectarianism to decline so to walk. But the saint, when he has the light of God, must walk clearly in that. God will vindicate His ways in due time. Love to every saint is a clear duty; walking in their ways is not. And he that gathers not with Christ scatters.

J. N. D.

Fragment: Quickened With Christ

Christ comes and, in grace, dies for my sins; and, if I am quickened, I am quickened with Him, and they are all left behind and forgotten; but I am quickened, not to live to myself at all. Now you will find that will cut to the root of many and many a thing. You say, What is the harm of it? I say, Is it living to Christ? What do I find in Christ’s life? Why, that He never did a single thing for Himself. “He died that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again”; carry that into everything, and, if you can say about anything, It is for myself, then it is not for Christ. Where Christ is all, as He is in all, then He is the object. The claim that He makes is not a legal claim that comes upon me, but that He died for me.

J. N. D.

Fragment: Service of and Communion With Christ

O my brother, be it ours to fill the little while separate from the world, and above fleshly ease in the devoted service of Christ. Nothing so good and happy now, and nothing so appreciated on high and through all eternity, unless it be the communion with Himself and the worship which accompany it. W. K.

A Full Christ for Empty Sinners: Part 1

Well does the writer remember the effect on his own mind of the perusal, now many years ago, of a paper in the first volume of the “Christian Witness,” on “The distinct characters of the several writings of the New Testament.” if not the first, it was among the first means of leading him to read Scripture in the light of the characteristic subject and aim of each distinct portion of it. But, while leaning on God’s grace as the only efficient cause of true instruction, every attempt to impart to others what has been so precious to his own soul, has served more deeply to convince him of the truth of one remark in the paper above referred to, viz., that, “The expression of one’s own thoughts, and the acting so as to awaken similar thoughts in others, are two very different things; and the latter is a rarer and more self-denying attainment than the other.” It is not as attempting much more than the former, that the following thoughts are submitted to such as bring all they read and hear to the test of the word of God itself.

Much that at that time had to some of us all the vividness and freshness of truth newly discovered to the soul, has long, as to the letter of it, at least, been familiar to all who are likely to read these remarks. The way in which the same blessed Person is presented in Matthew as the Messiah of Israel; by Mark, in active service as the Minister of the word; by Luke, in the fullness of that grace, in which He, the Son of man, came to men as such, to seek and to save that which was lost; and by John as the Word which was in the beginning, which was with God, and was God, but which was made flesh, and dwelt among us; all this the reader has doubtless read and heard again and again, until the words remain in the memory, whether they be understood and enjoyed through divine teaching or not. The peculiar character of John’s Gospel has been dwelt upon by many. Many have pointed out how the glory which passes before us in that Gospel is the glory of Christ in His highest divine titles and relations; “the glory of the Only—begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Sweetly has it been shown, moreover, that while no other Gospel so freely unfolds this highest Godhead—glory of Christ, no other shows the sinner in such immediate contact with Him, receiving of His fullness. These and other leading features of the book, though never losing their interest, have yet to numbers become familiar truth. What the writer would now suggest may bear no comparison in importance with these chief characteristics of this Gospel; but nothing is lost which contributes in ever so small a degree to acquaintance with the precious record of the glory of Him of whom it is said, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”

In perusing any book, inspired or uninspired, if we find certain words occurring often enough to awaken attention to the fact, and then, on examination, discover that they are thus used throughout the book, we immediately conclude that they either express its great theme and object, or at least that which is very closely related thereto. Reading thus the Gospel of John, certain words can scarcely fail to impress the mind with the frequency of their use; while a comparison with the other Evangelists confirms the conviction that the words in question do really bring out what is in closest connection with the great leading subject. For instance, the word life meets the eye almost at the beginning of the book, reappears most prominently in chap. iii., and afterward, indeed with such frequency as to awaken the inquiry, Can this be one of the leading words in this Gospel? Can it have a characteristic force? Let us see.

But, before comparing this Gospel with the others in this respect, we do well to remember that there are more words than one in the New Testament rendered life. One, ζωή, means life, in the strict, absolute sense. I speak only of the use of this, and other words, in the New Testament. Another, ψυχή, soul, is frequently represented by the word life; but it is not the natural, ordinary use of the word; and if it were, it is as often so given in John as in any other of the Gospels. The word βίος, used for life, in the secondary sense of living, or way of living, does not occur in our Gospel at all. It is to the first word, life in its absolute sense, that our inquiry relates. It occurs in Matthew, seven times; in Mark, four times; in Luke, six times; and in John, thirty-six times. Its force and bearing, as thus characterizing John, may be estimated by such passages as, “In him was life”; “Not perish, but have everlasting life”; “Passed from death unto life”; “The resurrection of life”; “I am the bread of life”; “I am come that they might have life”; “That he should give eternal life”; “That, believing, ye might have life, through his name.” Is it nothing that in the midst of this world of death, the One who has life in Himself has been here to manifest it in His own person, and to impart it to us who were dead in sins? Nor has His rejection by the world, and His ascension on high interrupted for a moment this outflow of life from Him to dead sinners. He is glorified of the Father, who has given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as the Father “has given” Him.

But let us turn to another word—love. Here, also, we have two words, ἀγαπάω and φιλέω, each with its shade of meaning, rendered to love in the English New Testament. Taking both these verbs, with words immediately related to them, such as the noun love, we find one or other of them in Matthew twelve times; in Mark, five times; in Luke fifteen times; and in John fifty-six times. Nor can we doubt the force of such words as characterizing this Gospel, in view of such passages as the following: “God so loved the world”; “Now, Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus”; “Having loved his own which were in the world”; “One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved”; “As I have loved you, that ye also love one another”; “If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him”; “That the world may know that I love the Father”; “Thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me.” LIFE and LOVE! Precious words! Life the gift of love. Divine love, in the person of the Son, bestowing a life, not only eternal in its duration, but of such a nature that the love wherewith the Father loved the Son can now rest on those of whom He said, addressing the Father, “And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

But in what sphere does the revelation of this love take place? True it is that none profit by it vitally and everlastingly, but they in whom the native opposition of the heart is overcome by almighty grace, in the positive communication of life. But is it only among God’s ancient people Israel that such persons are found? Are they the only inheritors of this blessedness, so immeasurably surpassing their fruitful land, the covenanted portion of their tribes? Let us see. The word world is quite as characteristic of our Gospel as either of those which have been under consideration. We stop not to notice the word αἰών, sometimes translated world, but intrinsically referring more to duration than to the world itself, absolutely considered. “The times which pass over it,” the world morally viewed, is what it signifies. The word χόσμος-, the world literally, including both the earth and its human inhabitants, occurs in Matthew nine times, in Mark three times, in Luke three times, and in John seventy-nine times. How it is used, the reader may judge from such instances as— “God so loved the world”; “The Savior of the world”; “I am the light of the world”; “Now is the judgment of this world”; “I came not to judge the world, but to save the world,” “The world seeth me no more,” “The prince of this world”; “I have overcome the world”; “I pray not for the world”; “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world”; “The world hath not known thee.” Could it be more evident than it is, that when the Eternal Word—the only-begotten Son—was made flesh and dwelt among men, the question was one which concerned not Israel alone, or Israel more than others, but the whole world! It was towards the world the love of God was shown in the gift of His only-begotten Son. It was as the Savior of the world that the blessed. Lord Jesus appeared, and as the light of the world He shone; and now that He has left the world, and returned to the Father who sent Him, He has left the world under the solemn responsibility of rejecting Him, and of not knowing the Father of whose love He was both the messenger, the gift, and the expression. If He had tears for Jerusalem, and said, “How often would Ι have gathered thy children together... but ye would not,” with what feelings did He bid farewell to the world, towards which such love had been shown, and by which such love had been repulsed and trodden under foot?

But there is one other word in its comparative use illustrative of the difference between this Gospel and the others. It is the word πιστεύω, to believe. We have it in Matthew eleven times, Mark fifteen times, Luke eight times, and in John ninety-nine times. Nor does this amazing disparity exhibit the whole amount of the difference. Six out of the eleven occurrences of the word in Matthew give it in connection with miracles, or in reference to false prophets, or in the lips of ungodly scoffers. So of eight passages in Mark, out of the fifteen that it contains. But in John, the vast majority of cases in which the word is employed, are those in which it expresses the believing in Christ Himself unto life eternal. “That all through him might believe”; “To them that believe on his name”; “That whosoever believeth on him should not perish”; “He that believeth on me hath everlasting life”; “If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins”; “Dost thou believe on the Son of God? Lord, I believe.”

It is added by the Holy Ghost to the last quotation, concerning the man that had been blind, “And he worshipped him.” May we all have his simplicity of faith, and more of the deep joy which filled and overcame his heart in gazing with his new-found sight on the One whom he now beholds by faith as the “Son of God.” It is to faith alone that the discovery is made of His glory and His grace; and faith counts the One whom it receives as unspeakably more precious than all attendant blessings, privileges, and favors, vast and unutterable as these may be. “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name.”

Thus have we seen the life revealed in Christ, and bestowed by Him as the gift of the Father’s love in Him, not to any class or nation privileged by descent, but to all to whom it is given to believe on Him throughout the wide world. To that world itself, indeed, was the coming down to it of God’s well-beloved Son, the expression of a love on God’s part, which has no measure but the gift that it bestowed. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Never, till at the moment of now perusing it, had it been noticed by the writer, that in this one verse all our four words are found—life, love, world, believing! Thus does it gather, as into one focus, the light shed throughout the book from the person, mission, and work, the life, death, and resurrection—victory of the Son of God. [W. T.]

(To be continued)

A Full Christ for Empty Sinners: Part 2

In turning to chap. 6, one point it is important to consider; that is, the contrast between the way in which Christ is presented here, and in the previous chapter. Life, in its communication by Him, and its inception by us, is the theme of both chapters; but in the fifth He is seen in full Godhead—title and glory, as the Source and Dispenser of the life sovereignly imparted by Him to us. The recipient of the life is regarded as entirely passive, and called into life by the almighty, new-creating, voice of the Son of God. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.” Here, there is nothing in the case of the sinner but the powerlessness of death itself, till the deep silence is broken by the voice of the Son of God, who never thus speaks in vain. His voice makes itself heard in the soul, till then dead, but no longer dead as it hears the voice of the Son of God. It lives. “They that hear shall live.” But we read here of no exercises or feelings, no desires or sense of need, of which Christ is the object. It is Christ in divine title and competency, as the Son of God, who speaks; and the soul, till then dead, hears and lives.

But in this chapter 6., our Lord is seen in the place of humiliation He had assumed as man, “come down from heaven,” and the object thus of those desires, and of that sense of need, of which the quickened soul is conscious, but conscious, mark, because of the sin and ruin which it knew not till the voice of the Son of God broke in on its deep sleep of death. It is not always, perhaps not often, that these things can be distinguished in fact. The discovery of Christ in the soul, awakens, perhaps, the first sense of desire after Him, producing thus the hunger and thirst which He only, in further discoveries of Himself and of His work, can appease. But though this may be true in principle, as it surely is, the soul, while going through this passage in its history, is too much occupied with itself to distinguish very accurately the order of its experiences. What is of infinitely greater moment is the truth by which, instrumentally, they are produced; and this, blessed be God! we have in all its fullness and variety in the scriptures under review, and in other portions of God’s holy word.

In the early part of our chapter, we find our Lord fulfilling, in the midst of Israel, the predictions of Psa. 132, where, in connection with Jehovah’s choice of Zion, and placing David’s son upon the throne, we read, “I will abundantly bless her provision; I will satisfy her poor with bread.” But though Jesus be thus manifested as the heir of all the glories prophetically unfolded in the psalm, He is not here taking that place. Israel and the earth were as yet unfit for this; and God’s time for it had not arrived. Hence Jesus retires before the urgency awakened of His own act in this feeding of the multitude. When they would have taken Him by force to make Him a king “he departed again into a mountain himself alone.” Indicating thus that He would be on high during the postponement of His kingdom, His absence was continued until His disciples were in great trouble through a storm by which they were overtaken in crossing the lake. Jesus rejoins them with words of comfort, “and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.” This episode does not so much refer to the church, or to the saints composing it, as to the Jewish remnant in days to come. The return to them of the now absent but exalted Messiah will both hush the storm which will be threatening their total overthrow, and conduct them at once into the haven of rest. The heavenly saints will be taken from amid the whole scene of trial and of conflict, to be with their Lord whom they meet in the air.

All this, however, is but introductory to the great subject of the chapter, which is linked with these details by the inquiry of those who next day followed our Lord to the other side of the lake. They seem to have been swayed by the most sordid motives with which they are pointedly charged by the Lord. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled. Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you; for him hath God the Father sealed.” If they would come after Him, and this was all the “labor” they had performed, He would have them come for that which would endure. Not the perishing sustenance of a life which shortens each moment of its existence, but the imperishable food of an imperishable life, which it was the great errand and business of the Son of man to give. Son of man He is, blessed he His name, and not simply Son of God; but in this place of humiliation to which He had stooped, how had the Father singled Him out from the whole race of mankind, setting upon Him alone the seal which marked Him out as the object of the Father’s perfect approval and infinite delight. Believers are now, since the resurrection and ascension of the Lord, sealed; but it is in Christ that they are thus distinguished. “In whom, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.” Christ was sealed because of His intrinsic perfections; we, through our identification with Him in the place He has taken as having accomplished redemption. But the verse under consideration brings us to the Son of man as giving “meat which endureth unto everlasting life.”

They who could follow Christ for loaves only, seek to excuse themselves for the neglect of this better gift. “What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?” is their next question. In what lovely, patient grace does the Lord reply, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” Is He the One who, of all that ever trod this earth, was counted worthy to be sealed of God the Father? How evident, then, that to believe on Him is that which God must approve, and without which nothing else can be accepted in His sight.

The only answer of the people is an inquiry after signs, with a reference to the manna in their fathers’ days, which seems intended to depreciate, by comparison, the miracle of the day before. It is as though they would say, “If you would have us believe in you as the sent One of God, you must show us greater works than these. You have fed five thousand once; our fathers, in Moses’ day, ate manna for forty years”: as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” Then did our Lord begin to unfold the great subject of the chapter. The reasonings of Jewish pride and unbelief gave Him the occasion; but, dealing with these in the most unsparing way, how does He, at the same time, present Himself as the Object on which any hungry, thirsty, fainting, perishing one might feed and live forever. “A full Christ for empty sinners” indeed. These Jews were not such, and so went away. But how many fainting ones, perishing with hunger, have here been regaled, and found in Jesus the bread of life!

The remainder of our chapter affords us a threefold view of this blessed One. Christ incarnate—Christ slain—Christ ascended. May we have grace to listen, to receive, and to worship.

“Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.” How simple, and yet how weighty and conclusive His answer to their unexpressed thoughts about Moses, as though Moses were shown, by the miracle of the manna, to be greater than our Lord. “Moses gave you not that bread from heaven.” He was but a receiver of it, like the people themselves, who subsisted on it for forty years. It was God’s gift, and despised, alas! by those who lived on it, just as “the true bread” was now being despised by their descendants. Our Lord does not pursue the subject of the manna. He does not say, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven, but my Father did. No; He would not speak of the manna in connection with the Father’s name, as though the import of that name were disclosed by the gift from heaven of bread for six hundred thousand men and their families for forty years. Was this more, in reality, than His feeding all His creatures every day and every hour? “Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.” So vast are the Creator’s stores, and so easy their application in Providence to the creature’s need!

But the Father’s name is linked with deeper wonders far. All the riches of grace are told out in the revelation of that name. “My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.” What was that? The answer is at hand. “For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.” The Father’s provision for a dying world was to send from heaven His only begotten Son. His appearing here was as the lowly Son of man. The fact was of worldwide interest. All alike needed this bread from heaven, and all alike were welcome. Not to Jew or Gentile, as distinct and privileged, but to the whole race as perishing, was this bounty sent. “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him” (1 John 4:9); “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them” (2 Cor. 5:19). But the world would not be reconciled. It had no taste, no appetite for this “bread from heaven.” There might be the momentary movement of the affections by His gracious words, leading some present to cry, “Lord, evermore give us this bread”; but it was only to make their rejection of Him more manifest and decisive when they came to understand His meaning. But let us listen to His words.

“And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” Dear reader, do you understand these words? Has your soul-hunger been appeased by this “bread from heaven,” this “bread of life”? Has your soul-thirst been quenched by receiving in Him and of Him the water of life? Or is it possible that one who reads these lines should fall under the condemnation of the words next uttered by Christ? “But I said unto you, that ye also have seen me, and believed not.” No language so cutting as that of rejected mercy, repulsed and slighted love! Here was this blessed One; His errand to this world nothing less than to be the expression of His Father’s love, and the Savior of lost men! He bore His credentials in every gracious word that fell from His lips, and every action of His perfect spotless life. One of these, the miracle of the loaves, had attracted after Him the multitude, who from selfish motives had followed Him across the lake. They confessed thus that they had “seen” Him; but, alas! they “believed not.” When they understood that He was the bread of life, they show plainly it was not for such food that they had come. They would have had another meal such as on the day before; but for the One who gave it they had no heart. He had come to save them, if they would, from a worse death than that by hunger, but they had no sense of their danger and need in this respect, and therefore had no heart for Jesus as their Savior; and they would not receive Him. Nor would any, with Christ shown to them thus and nothing more.

These men were not worse than others. Their unbelief was manifest and declared; and He treats them, therefore, as unbelievers, as rejecters; but this is what would be the result in every case, were we left to our own thoughts of Christ, when thus seen as “come down from heaven.” Thank God, there is something more. Christ had not only come, as bringing life and love so near to the world, to men as such, that only by refusing the life and repelling the love could they hold on in their sins; He had come to fulfill the counsels of His Father’s love in the sovereign gift of life, as shown in chap. 5; and of this He now proceeds to speak, though still as “come down” and here in humiliation, the Object for faith to receive and appropriate. Such faith, it was evident, had no place in man’s heart; but God could give it, and would sovereignly in His grace. All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out.” [W. T.]

(Continued from page 329)

(To be continued)

A Full Christ for Empty Sinners: Part 3

How humiliating and heart-breaking for us, that, in the presence of incarnate life and love in the Person of the incarnate Son of God, no one would have come to Him, no one have been benefited by His mission, had there not been those who were given Him of the Father, and on whose coming therefore He could securely reckon. Man’s will would, in each individual, have held out against Christ, had not the Father resolved that He should have some as the trophies of His victory, and the reward of His coming down from heaven. Alas, that our deadness to such love should have called forth such sighs as seem to breathe in these words of Jesus. Is it not as though He were accounting to Himself for the marvels of human unbelief?—as though saying, After all, it is but what I might have counted on? Nothing will affect man’s stony heart, save where My Father’s grace effectually intervenes, and on that I may securely count. All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me. And, then, to see how perfectly He fills the servant-place He had taken. For any now to come to Him is the proof of their being among those given to Him of the Father; so He may well declare of such that He will cast none out. The heart to come to Jesus is the sure sign to Him, had that been needed, of His Father’s gracious working; and, therefore, He is but obedient to His Father’s will in receiving, without question as to the past, all who come to Him. “Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out.” Precious words! Rich has been the comfort they have yielded to many an otherwise desponding one; but how greatly is their value enhanced when the coming to Christ is seen, not as an act of man’s fickle will, but as the effect of the Father’s drawing to Jesus of one given to Him in the counsels of that Father’s love before the foundation of the world.

Then, too, as we have just seen, the reception of such a one by the Savior, irrespective of every consideration beside, is not merely the fruit of His compassion for the sinner, but of His grateful obedient acceptance, as the servant of His Father’s will, of the one sent to Him, brought to Him, by the unseen drawings of that Father’s love. All thus rests, not upon any fancied good in the sinner, but upon the Father’s choice and the Son’s obedient love. “For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will; but the will of Him that sent me. And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.” How He thus discloses that a far deeper and more important work had been entrusted to Him than that of satisfying Israel’s poor with bread; no less a charge than that of raising up at the last day all given to Him of the Father, without losing one. Blessed Lord! to whom besides could this charge have been entrusted?

But, while disclosing, as above, that His real errand was one not depending for its issues on man’s will, known already to be so perverse as in every case to reject the Savior—an errand, too, embracing the safe production by Christ in resurrection blessedness of all given to Him by the Father—It is touching to find how solicitously He leaves wide open the door to anyone anywhere who is disposed to enter. He may not, as yet, be able to account for the change in his own condition, as we have seen it accounted for by the Savior; he is not the less welcome, or his final safety the less certain and unfailing. “And this is the will of him that sent mc, that every one which seeth the Son and believeth on him, may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”

The great stumbling-block to the Jews at that time was His professing to have come down from heaven, just as afterward, in Paul’s day, the doctrine of “Christ crucified” was “to the Jews a stumbling-block.” And for precisely the same reason, their pride disdained the being indebted to One so lowly; and they were so self-satisfied as to see no need for One to come from heaven, and much less for One to die upon the cross to meet their case and be their Deliverer and Redeemer. Their case, as they thought, was by no means so desperate as this. They could not have denied their national subjection to the stranger’s yoke; and, a “great prophet” to have stirred up the people to crowd around the standard of some great commander who would have led them on to victory over their Roman oppressors—this would have been a Messiah to their mind.

But for a plain, homely man, reputed to be the son of a carpenter of Nazareth, to profess to have come down from heaven and to speak of Himself as the bread of life, engaging to raise up His followers at the last day; in other words, for the lowly Jesus to present Himself as the Savior of their souls and the giver of everlasting life, this was a deliverance and a Deliverer of which they felt no need, and for whom they had no relish. They did not hunger for such bread; they did not thirst for such life-giving drafts. “The Jews then murmured at Him, because He said, I am the bread which came down from heaven. And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that He saith, I came down from heaven?” They could understand that a heavenly existence prior to His being a man on earth was implied in this language; in other words, that it was divine glory, veiled in His lowly place and condition as Son of man, which was in these words declared by Him as His. With this implied claim they contrast what they suppose to be His origin, and inquire, “How is it then that He saith, I came down from heaven?”

In answer to all such cavilings the Lord only again retires into His own consciousness of how the case really stood. “Murmur not among yourselves. No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw Him: and I will raise him up at the last day.” No one hungers for the bread of life so as to come to the Savior except as drawn by a sense of urgent need which exists in none but those whom the Father draws. The prophets had declared of all who should inherit Israel’s promised blessings in the latter day, “And they shall be all taught of God.” This scripture our Lord quotes, and again consoles Himself with the assurance, “Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto Me.” All in Israel who had inwardly heard God’s voice, not only came to Jesus, but were overjoyed to do so. Take Nathanael for an instance (John 1:49). It was these dealings of God with the soul under the fig-tree, these humbling discoveries of self and sin leading to guileless confession of total ruin, that accounted for any coming to Christ. But, as it were, excluding the sense which might have been put on His words, the Lord adds, “Not that any man hath, seen the Father, save He which is of God, He hath seen the Father.”

What treasures do these few words unfold. However souls may be taught of God, drawn of the Father, and consequently come to Christ, it is not that the Father is immediately revealed, so as to be seen. There was no incarnation of the Father, as of the Son. He abides in unmanifested Godhead; and, only in the Son, who stooped to “come down from heaven” and be here a Man upon earth, is the Father to be seen. “Not that any man hath seen the Father, save He which is of God, He hath seen the Father.” Infinite distinction between this blessed Son of man and all men on the earth, whither in grace He had humbled Himself to come. He had seen the Father. In the depths of that eternity in which the Word had been “with God,” in which the “eternal life” was “with the Father,” had He, who now humbly speaks of Himself as “He which is of God,” “seen” what no creature can — “seen the Father.” What unfathomable secrets of love and blessedness and glory are wrapped up in these short simple words!

Tread softly, Ο my soul, for surely this is holy ground. And here He was, He who had seen the Father, He was here to make Him known. He had become incarnate for this very end. He had taken flesh, came down from heaven, or He would still equally with the Father have been beyond the ken of mortals, beyond the creature’s sight. “No man hath seen God at any time: the Only Begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” Who else could? And how else could we ever have known Him? How else could the light of the Father’s love and grace have beamed into our dark hearts, and shed its luster on our whole upward path to the abodes of which the Savior afterward said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you; I go to prepare a place for you.” When there with our adorable Jesus, and privileged to behold His glory, how will there be connected therewith the witness of what He had known and enjoyed there from all eternity! “For thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”

From these depths He returns, and with what perfect case and grace, to the simplest presentation of Himself as the bread of life. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life.”

How simple the way in which the Savior is received! Just as a hungry man, with bread before him, asks no questions, makes no demur, but eats and lives, so the Savior, with a hungry soul before Him, needs nothing to commend Him to such a soul’s grateful, adoring reception. But where are such? Alas! it was the lack of all taste for Christ, the self-complacency which felt no need of Him, that prevented these blinded Jews from receiving Him. And where is there an appetite for Him now? Precious bread of life He doubtless is — perfectly adapted to nourish and sustain divine life in man, even if that life be in its most infantile stage, the very earliest moments of its communication by grace to the soul.

But without this what is there? Death! A corpse has no appetite — it neither hungers nor thirsts. No more does the soul that is still dead in sins, dead to God. It is of the woman who seeks her happiness on earth that the word is spoken, “She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth” (1 Tim. 5:6), but it would surely be as true to say that he who thus lives is also dead.

Dear reader, if fashion, wealth, or pleasure —the world in any of its forms—be all we wish, all we seek, what can the bread of life be to us in that state? Insipid and distasteful indeed in our esteem! Christ will not help us to win the prize in any race of ambition or pursuit of pleasure. He who passed by the nature of angels, and all the gradations of human rank, to be known on earth, as these Jews tauntingly designated Him, “the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know”; or as some in Mark vi. 3, “Is not this the carpenter?” — He is not one in whom pride can find its food. And as to pleasure, what can they who seek it find in the One “who pleased not Himself” — who tells us in this very chapter, “For I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me”?

And yet, solemnly as the fact begins to declare itself, that between this incarnate One and those who surrounded Him there was not one thought, feeling, or motive in common, how graciously He continues to urge every consideration which might be adapted to produce in them an appetite to awaken desires after Himself, the Living Bread! They had referred to the manna, and covertly to Moses as the giver of it, in order to depreciate Christ. He returns to that subject now, to press on their attention the contrast for themselves. “Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever.” Wondrous words!

The manna, testimony as it was of God’s power and grace, and type indeed of Christ Himself, in its actual use did but nourish for a few years that poor, fleeting, feverish, forfeited life, which begins at our birth and ends at our death. A taper wasting from the moment it begins to shine; “a vapor that appearth for a little time, and then vanisheth away” —is it for this, or the support of it, or for the brief pleasure that it affords, that men toil, fret, weary themselves, despise heaven with all its glories, refuse or neglect Christ and His great salvation?

Yes. It was so in our Lord’s day on earth. It is so still. Oh that His words (thank God, “they are spirit and they are life”) may reach the heart of some one who cons these pages—the words in which He contrasts with everything in this poor, perishable life, that interminable existence in unutterable peace and joy, that “everlasting life” which all receive who receive Him! Hungry soul, can you not feed on Jesus? As you would appease your natural hunger on the suited food, can you not find in Jesus what meets your entire case, what satisfies your every wish? Here is an undying life—an unwasting one; to “live forever” is the effect of feeding on this bread from heaven. “That a man may eat thereof and not die: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever.” Has the worldling anything to compare with this? Do his most feverish dreams of happiness on earth embrace the element of unending continuance? It is just for him the one element wanting, the lack of which spoils all the rest.

How passing wonderful, that the One who stood before these Jews as the lowliest and poorest of men had the full consciousness then of having a life to bestow, to communicate, which death cannot touch, and which is, in its own proper nature, everlasting life! He is no longer here in humiliation, speaking such words of grace and truth as these; but He has not ceased to be the giver of this life, Himself the fullness of the life He gives. “As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.”

To gather up a little what has been under review, we have here “the Son of man,” One who is really partaker of flesh and blood, a Man conversing with the men who had followed Him across the lake—we have this Son of man, the Sealed One of God the Father. He is the Sent One too, and the first thing for any one who would please God is to believe on Him whom He hath sent. He has, moreover, meat or food to give, which endures to everlasting life. In the conversation with the parties just adverted to, the mystery of His presence here is declared, and many of the moral traits of that life of which He is the full expression, and which He was here to communicate, are either stated in words, or come out in practical display. He was from heaven, the incarnate One. He was the Father’s gift, a character in which He delights in this Gospel to speak of Himself. He was the true bread—the real and only nourishment for divine life in man, had it only been there.

What perfect adaptation to man’s need is this bread from heaven. He who is that bread gives life, moreover, as well as sustains it where it is. But where is it, alas! save as sovereignly bestowed, when all would equally have treated it with disdain. They had seen Him and had not believed. There is the heartiest welcome, an open door, none refused; he who comes is no more to hunger, he who believes is no more to thirst; but the Savior has to take refuge from universal rejection by mankind in the certainty that all would come to Him who were given to Him of the Father. The outflow of His own love in receiving all such, and casting none out who come, is thus seen as the perfection of obedience to His Father, whose will, not His own, He had come from heaven to do. How the heart bows in contemplation of such obedience! He who could speak of raising up His people at the last day as though it were as easy and simple an act of obedience as any that He performed while here, speaks of Himself as having it in charge not to stop short of this. “This is the Father’s will... that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.”

Blessed Jesus, how safe, to be confided thus to Thee! But more than this, this safety appertains to all who see Him and believe on Him, “the last Adam, a quickening Spirit.” Though it may be of His resurrection-place that this is spoken, such is the fullness of life in His person that the eye that rests on Him receives, with the beams of His countenance, that life which these beams impart. To believe on Him is to have everlasting life. The drawings of the Father, His secret teachings, secure that they shall come to Him who are the gift to Him of the Father’s love. The Father Himself, undisclosed save to the Son (“He who is of God”), draws to the Son by that sense of need which is met by Him alone. He is the bread of life—not a perishable life like that of which even the manna in the desert was the food—but everlasting life.

What unfathomable wonders these few verses disclose! The infinite grace displayed in the fact of the incarnation—how little is it pondered by our careless, frivolous hearts! And then the perfectness of this blessed One in the place of humiliation to which He had stooped—the absoluteness of His obedience, and the delicacy of His self-hiding, self-consuming service! To these Jews He had to speak of Himself, for they challenged His claims, and invidiously compared Him with Moses, and His miracle with that of the manna. He answers as feeling the reflection on His Father, not on Himself. “Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.” Blessed Savior! grant us daily and hourly to feed by faith on Thyself in all the perfectness in which Thou wast displayed to the eye of God while sojourning in this vale of tears.

[W. T.]

(To be continued)

A Full Christ for Empty Sinners: Part 4

But our attention is claimed by deeper wonders still. The incarnation is one marvel and mystery and glory of the gospel, the cross is the other. Any third miracle to compare with these the records of eternity afford not. There has been none such in eternity past; there can be none such in eternity to come. The Word made flesh! The Holy One made sin! But why was this? Was it not enough that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him? Had this been all, not one sinner of Adam’s race would have been found on high to sing the praises of his Savior-God. Christ the incarnate Word, had there been no deeper mystery of love, would have shown, more than anything beside, man’s hatred to God, and the utter hopelessness of his case. The blessed One well knew this when He came into the world, but now the proof was before His eyes. The more His intrinsic excellence, His moral perfectness was displayed, the more manifest it became that between Him and fallen man there was not one moral quality in common.

It is not, as others have observed, a question of degree, a race in which one immeasurably out distances another. No; it is contrariety—contrast—of the most absolute kind. All that men value and seek He declined and shunned. For all on which His heart was set they had no relish whatever. Men seek their own glory; He sought His Father’s alone. Men do their own will; His Father’s was His only business. Men love those who resemble themselves, and such as love them; He loved where there were no qualities He could approve, and where there was hatred to Himself that thirsted for His blood. To think of One who for the three and thirty years of His sojourn on earth never did one thing to serve Himself, spare Himself, exalt Himself, but for every moment of His life was and did, spake and, thought and felt, exactly as the Father would have Him! Let a man’s eyes be opened, as they are when his ears are unstopped by the voice of God’s Son; let his opened eyes rest on THIS BLESSED PERSON as the divine records set Him forth, and what is the result? “Woe is me,” he exclaims, “I am utterly hopeless now! Hard and vain have been my struggles to win life by keeping the law; but now, as I look on this moral picture, every trait, every line, convicts me of being exactly the opposite. I admire His ways, I could sit and gaze on Him and wonder; and if I could be like him—alas! every attempt deepens my conviction that it is all in vain. If Christ be what God delights in—and He is—He never can delight in me, for His ways and mine are farther than east and west asunder. What is to become of me, wretched man that I am?”

What, indeed, must have become of any of us, had Christ only glorified His Father in coming down to sojourn here as a living man? But this was not the whole; He Himself assures us it was not. “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

As come down, as incarnate, He was the bread of God, His Father’s gift; but there was bread which He Himself would give, even His flesh, which He would give for the life of the world. Now this giving of His flesh was the laying down of His life, the yielding Himself up to death, that He might become to sinners—to fallen, perishing men—what bread would be to a crowd of persons perishing with hunger.

It is in a slain Christ alone that sinners can now find what meets their deep and solemn need. Well may our need be met where God has been perfectly glorified about our sins! Convicted, by His life, of total contrariety to Him in every moral trait, whither shall we turn but to the cross, where this same blessed One gives His flesh that we may live?

Did His love go even to such lengths as these? It did. When nothing less than the death of a sin-atoning victim of infinite value could meet our need as guilty ones exposed to the wrath of God, or justify God in justifying us, His love was found equal to the emergency, and He gave His flesh for the life of the world.

That such is His meaning comes out more emphatically in His reply to the next cavil of those who stood round about Him. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” was their carnal, foolish inquiry. He stops not to explain, but repeats and amplifies His previous declaration. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” Evidently, for the blood to be apart from the flesh, so as to speak of eating the one and drinking the other, the blood must have been shed in death. So that we have here, in the fullest way, the death of Christ, the shedding of His blood, set forth; and, at the same time, the most solemn testimony of ITS ABSOLUTE NECESSITY FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL, and of the equally absolute necessity for ITS INDIVIDUAL RECEPTION. “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” Who besides could have thus provided for our perishing souls? What other life would have had in it the atoning value, the saving efficacy, at once to meet the highest claim of God’s moral glory, the glory of all His perfections, and reach down to the lowest depths of our need as guilty, ruined, hopelessly undone sinners?

And yet it is as Son of man that He here speaks of Himself. How could He have suffered death had He not become the Son of man? How this links together the mysteries of Bethlehem and Calvary, the Incarnation and the Cross! The one was in order to the other. He came to die. “Once, in the end of the world, hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” It was “for the suffering of death” that He was “made a little lower than the angels.” And it is by His death we live.

Though He had life in Himself, and though, anticipatively of His atoning work, He gave life at any time to any poor sinner, it was only on the ground of that work that life could flow from His person to any who heard His voice and believed His words while here; and the actual shedding of His blood as that of the great and all-atoning Victim for our sins, was the only way in which the flood-gates of mercy could be thrown open to guilty, justly condemned sinners. How widely they are flung open now! How completely has Christ’s precious sacrifice removed all the obstacles to our salvation presented by the character of God, His holy nature, the majesty of His throne, and the faithfulness of His word! “The righteous Lord loveth righteousness”; and while this perfection might surely have been displayed in the endless punishment of the whole guilty race, how then would the love of God have been exercised or shown? Where is that love so manifested as at the cross? and where besides is God seen as so inexorably just? The flames of hell are not so glorious a vindication of His righteous claims as the agonies of His spotless, immaculate Son. God’s holy hatred of sin could not go further than the averting His countenance from the Son of His love when drinking the cup for us.

Who will not tremble before this holy Lord God, who, sooner than tarnish His throne, or break the word which had gone out of His mouth, that sin should have death for its righteous punishment, gave up to death—the death of the cross—the One who had been in His bosom from all eternity? And then to think of that One voluntarily yielding up His life? In obedience to His Father and in love to us He drinks the cup of wrath, that in Him, the Slain One, we perishing sinners may find all we need. Life flows to us through His death; and the soul that finds its hunger appeased and its thirst quenched by what Scripture tells of Christ on the cross, has not only life in Him, eternal life, issuing in the resurrection of life at the last day, but a present fullness of nutriment and refreshing, of which the Savior witnesses in the words, “For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” Continuing to feed on Him as the slain as well as the incarnate Christ, we abide in Him and He in us. “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.”

This language assumes, though it does not mention the fact, that He who used it would rise again. And with Christ as risen, they who feed on Him as slain, are so identified that He here for the first time in Scripture speaks of our dwelling in Him and He in us. Dwelling in Him we participate in all that is His; and by His dwelling in us we become vessels for the manifestation of what He is.

Nor is this the whole. Christ’s own life as the Son of man was a life of entire dependence on the Father. And ours is one of dependence on Christ Himself. But the one is presented as the model for the other. “As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.” Blessed Jesus, teach us thus to live in hourly dependence on Thyself! It is at this point that the Savior sums up the whole subject of which He had been treating. “This is that bread which came down from heaven; not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead; he that eateth of this bread shall live forever.”

But the native sphere and home of this undying life is not earth but heaven. To all intents it is an exotic here. Perfectly was it manifested in the three and thirty years’ sojourn on earth of the Son of man; and, as we have seen, this display of divine life in man, in the person of Christ, is one great leading subject of this Gospel. But the One in whom this display took place was a stranger here. The Book witnesses this fact throughout. We have not far to read before we find the words, “And the light shineth in darkness: and the darkness comprehended it not.” And then more plainly still, “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.” Even His own people, the Israel of Jehovah’s choice, had, as we have also so largely seen in this very chapter, no heart for Jesus. “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” Thus rejected by those among whom He came, He makes no secret of whence He had come. To Nicodemus He says, “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” Who so competent to tell as He to whom these things were familiar, and the mystery of whose Person still made heaven His home, though as man He had come to sojourn below? “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.” Such were His own words to the Jewish rabbi; while in the same chapter (3), the Holy Ghost by the Evangelist’s pen delightedly bears witness to Him as the heavenly Stranger here. “He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that corneal from heaven is above all. And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth.” Alas that He has to add, “And no man receiveth his testimony”!

Our own chapter bears abundant witness to His having come down from heaven. This was what so provoked the opposition of the Jews; an opposition which became so open and so fully declared as to force from the Savior’s lips the most solemn statements as to the contrast between their origin and the sphere whence He had come. “And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above; ye are of this world; I am not of this world” (chap. 8). No; He was from heaven. A true, real Man; veritably partaker with the children, blessed be God, of flesh and blood; partaker, as He has been telling us, of a life which He would give in the shedding of His blood, that there might be the link between Him and all who receive Him of an undying life. But all this could not constitute Him a native of this world, a denizen of the earth. He was a stranger here; and when many of His disciples began to say inwardly to themselves, “This is a hard saying, who can hear it?” He, knowing their thoughts, replied, “Doth this offend you? What and it ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?”

Thus does He give, somewhat obscurely indeed, as suggesting much more than was spoken, the first intimation of the third great fact of which our chapter is the witness. Christ incarnate, and thus come down from heaven; Christ slain, His blood shed for sinful men, becoming the suited food of a life, the first movement of which in us is in the sense of our need as sinners, a hunger which can only thus be appeased; and now Christ ascended, involving of necessity His resurrection, but including much more than this. The eternal life which was with the Father before all worlds —the eternal, uncreated, all-creating Word which “in the beginning” was “with God” and “was God” —had come down, and become in that act of deep humiliation “the Son of man.” He was now returning to that sphere of unmingled blessedness, of highest glory, whence He had come forth to Bethlehem’s manger and Calvary’s cross; but He was returning thither as Son of man. Thenceforth He should be seated as man on the throne of His Father. Heaven, not earth, becomes thus, from the moment of His session there, the home of all who, by eating His flesh and drinking His blood, become partakers of His life. Earth becomes a wilderness, a place of exile, to all such, just as it was to Him while here. He is our life, and this associates us necessarily with heaven and all that is native to that abode of purity and joy. As another once remarked, “If sin has opened to man the place of woe never designed for him but for the devil and his angels, grace has opened to him that heaven which is peculiarly and distinctively the dwelling-place of God.” “The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s; but the earth hath he given to the children of men.” So the Psalmist wrote, and such indeed was the only inheritance which could have descended to us, even from unfallen Adam. The earth was given to him (Gen. 1), but when his sin had opened hell to the finally impenitent and unbelieving, grace opened heaven to all who become willing to enter there in the value of Christ’s blessed Person and atoning work.

What He but obscurely hints to His disciples in our chapter has since become accomplished fact, and one of the great foundation-facts of Christianity. Christ has gone up on high. The Son of man has ascended up where He was before. His request to His Father (John 17) has been fulfilled. “And now, O Father, glorify thou me, with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” Nor would He be there alone. “Father, I will [or, 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 foundation of the world.” Heaven is now the revealed home and sphere of that eternal life which, if absolutely and perfectly displayed on earth in the One of whom we read, “In him was life,” is also derivatively enjoyed by all who believe. “What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?”

It was for other lips and another pen than the beloved disciple’s to unfold this subject in detail. The place in heaven in and with Christ, bestowed on believers by the grace which reigns through righteousness by our Lord Jesus Christ, is Paul’s distinctive theme. The manifestation of divine life on earth, perfectly in Christ, and really though derivatively in us, is the theme of John’s Gospel and Epistles. It is, of all themes, the most vital, essential, fundamental. But deeply interesting it is to find such links as our Lord’s words last quoted, and those from chap. 17:24, evincing that whether Paul or Peter or John be the instrument of communication, it is one vast circle of truth which is revealed, of which the center and fullness are found in the Person and Sacrifice and Exaltation of the Son of God and Son of man, Christ, the Word incarnate, Christ slain, Christ ascended; “a full Christ for empty sinners.”

Many who had for a season followed Christ drew back from the time when this discourse was delivered. This did not surprise Him; but it afforded Him the occasion of challenging the hearts of those who still surrounded Him. To them Jesus said, “Will ye also go away?” No one wonders that Peter was spokesman for them all; and he might not yet have measured himself, as afterward through grace he did when he went out and wept bitterly. Nevertheless there is a warmth, an energy, a decision about his words that we may well covet, and as to which we may challenge our hearts, dear Christian reader, whether we could reply thus. Go away! “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”

May our hearts repel thus, and disown, every thought of any other than this blessed Christ of God. “To whom shall we go?” To whom indeed? Oh, to abide in Him! May we have grace to cleave to Him with purpose of heart, and may He be glorified in each of us, for His Name’s sake. Amen.

(Concluded from page 363)

W. T.

Hebrews: Its Aim, and for Whom Written? Part 1

When the will is engaged in any doctrine it leaves one but a faint hope of its being given up by him who holds it. Still, I would not abandon that hope, altogether, as regards the author of the “Remarks on the Intercession of Christ,” and at any rate the inquiry into the truth on the subject may be useful to many souls. I confess I have been surprised at the statements in the tract. If anything had been needed to convince me of the totally unscriptural and unfounded character of the doctrine, this tract would have supplied it. Scarcely a single principle or statement is scriptural or sound. But God’s grace is almighty, and I can only heartily desire and pray for the clearing up the mind of one of whose Christianity I should not hear to doubt.

The theory is, that The Epistle to the Hebrews is for the remnant after the church is gone, not for us Christians. And that Christ’s intercession is simply His presence before God for us in the worth of His work; nothing active. That there is no exercise of any priesthood after the pattern of Aaron’s on the part of Christ. I could hardly have thought any one could have made such statements. But they are made. “The only priesthood of Christ is Melchisedec, and that is for blessing, not intercession. The intercession, as I have before said, is his maintaining us before God in all the value of His own person and work.” “Israel will be in the land of unbelief, keeping the commandments of Moses—this epistle takes them up on that ground and tells them Christ is the end of the law,” etc. “Christ is indeed on the right hand of God—He is there by right and title; but He is there also for us, and so He is there presenting Himself as the Head and the representative of the redeemed. It is His presence intercedes or avails for us.” “Some who would not say quite so much [that Christ had a double priesthood], yet say that though Christ is a priest after the order of Melchisedec only, yet He exercises it at present after the character of Aaron... Thus they make the word of God of none effect by their tradition.”

Referring to Christ’s work and the Spirit’s, the writer says, “Still, one is a finished work abiding before God in all its finished perfectness—the other is that which is carried on from age to age in the world; and from day to day in the heart of the believer; and the two works, for they are two, are effected by different persons and differ greatly in character; one is completed, the other not; and it is because one is completed, and not to be added to, and is ever in its completeness before God, that the other is being carried on by that other person.” “And certainly if we take the testimony of the book itself, it is clear that it is the world (or, habitable earth) to come whereof we speak, and that is assuredly connected with Israel, not the church being gathered.” Again, “Melchisedec priesthood is prominently presented, and from Psa. 110 we know that to be coincident with the rod of strength out of Zion.” And, quoting from me as to this priesthood, he says, “It is blessing and refreshment after and consequent upon the destruction of all enemies it is not that which Christ the Lord now exercises.” “And the way in which they [these matters] are here treated... shows that it is not the church as being gathered that is contemplated, but that which follows after the church is caught up to meet the Lord in the air.”

My purpose is to go through The Epistle to the Hebrews sufficiently to see what its true aim and bearing is, and then I will take up particular statements to show how utterly groundless they are. But before I do this I have one remark to make, and that is, that the notion that our church position as such is the whole or even the highest we have, is quite unfounded. Mistakes connected with this I will note in their place. I only notice the principle now. Our union with Christ casts its preciousness on every part of our blessings, and the last thing I should be inclined to do is to compare these where all is sovereign grace. But in itself this is not a relationship with the Father. With Him we are individuals, we are sons. Christ owns us as brethren, is the Firstborn among many brethren. Our union with Christ, though divine, is with Him as man, as made Head over all things. See Eph. 1:22, 23, and so Eph. 2. And all our relationship with God and the Father is developed before that, and this in the epistle where church privileges are peculiarly taught, and many of the most precious exhortations to practice are on this ground. See chapter 5:1 for example.

We speak of what belongs to the church, according to the common use of language, when we really mean what belongs to those who compose it. And this has no great practical harm when it is not used to make the idea, exclusively as such, our only blessing. I might say, The corporation are very good men, when I mean the men that compose it. But when an idea newly acquired gets hold of the soul, men are apt to be exclusively full of it. It shuts out other important truths. If anyone has been filled with the sense of the importance of the doctrine of the church, I think I may say I have; but conscience is individual; justification is individual; sonship is individual; communion, in perhaps its most important and certainly necessary part, is individual. Take all the writings of the apostle John, and, unless one allusion to a local body, you would never know that a church existed. I never lose, or at any rate never should lose, the consciousness of being a member of Christ; as I have said, it throws, when have it, its light on all. I add the idea of unity in the body to union in the family. I am one with all those who are my brethren. But surely there is a vast flood of unspeakable blessing in John, in whose writings the thought or name of the church never comes. I speak of the gospel and epistles. All is individual there. Those who enjoy it belong to the church, and do not put themselves out of the church mentally in enjoying it; but it is not, for all that, the less individual.

This principle will be found to be of large application. Thus justification is not found in Ephesians. That speaks of the new creation according to God’s counsels. The sinner has to be justified, not God’s new creation. Yet every word blessedly confirms the doctrine of Romans—Galatians also; but the subject is taken up differently. Romans deals with man’s responsibility, and the Ephesians with God’s counsels. They meet in Christ and in the cross, and nothing can be more deeply instructive to heart and soul, but they are distinct.

But I turn to Hebrews. Now I fully admit, and have often stated, that the epistle has the Jews as a people in view, Christ having died for the nation; and it is interesting to inquire in its place as to the bearing of this on the remnant, after the church is gone. I will try and touch on it briefly; but our present inquiry is, Does the epistle apply to Christians?

The Epistle to the Hebrews at the time it was written was written to somebody? To whom? Either to Christians who at the same time were Jews, or to unbelieving Jews who rejected the Savior. The answer to this question is an answer to the whole theory. No doubt therefore interesting and important details to consider after it is answered. But if it was written to Christians the whole theory is proved false. I have not to inquire as to my use of it and to whom it may apply. I have learned to whom it did apply. To Christians, and though specially addressed to Jewish Christians, for such there were, Christians jealous of the law and frequenting the temple, and offering sacrifices, and adapted to their case; yet available for all Christians, in the doctrines by which it acts on these Jewish Christians, though not as to the circumstances in which they were found, for we are not in them. Though we may be in very similar ones, when the professing church has Judaized.

I repeat then my question: To whom was it addressed when written? Were the unbelieving Jews then “partakers of the heavenly calling”? If not, it applies to Christians. Had the unbelieving Jews taken joyfully the spoiling of their goods, knowing that they had in heaven a better and enduring substance? Had they to consider the end of the conversation of their departed rulers whose faith they were to follow? Who had an altar which they had no right to eat of, who served the tabernacle? The unbelieving Jews? Why they are in express contrast. Christians, Christian Jews, were therefore to leave the system which they up to that time had been walking with. I ask any sober person to read chapter 13 through and say, Was the epistle addressed then to Christians or not? If it was addressed to Christians, as Christians, and because they were such, the question is answered and set at rest. Most interesting for Christians to inquire its import and value for themselves, but as belonging to themselves and addressed to themselves.

But I anticipate a little the details, and will inquire now regularly what proofs the epistle gives of being addressed to Christians, though not speaking of church privileges as such. The writer places himself amongst those he writes to. This is not denied, and is clear from the beginning of the second chapter. Was the writer among the unbelieving Jews? For it was addressed to some one then. Those addressed had received the teachings of the apostles. There was danger of letting them slip; but they had heard and received them. He speaks of the world to come, but was not in it, for Jesus was sitting at the right hand of God, all things being not yet under His feet. But he speaks for himself and those he writes to: “We see Jesus... crowned with glory and honor.” This last is an important point. Besides His divinity—it is that which the first chapter insists on—it is characteristic, specifically characteristic of the whole epistle. I mean that Jesus was sitting at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. Not after the destruction of His enemies a priesthood of blessing on His own throne. Thus, in the wonderful statement in chap. 1:3, the groundwork of the epistle, the place Christ is found in is, having “by himself purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.”

The position which makes the basis of the whole epistle is Christ’s present position, not his Melchisedec position, but a heavenly Christ sitting at the right hand of God on high. So when the writer has gone through his doctrine on this subject, he gives the summing up of it. “We have such an high priest who is set at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens.” When His position is considered in reference to His manhood, as we have seen, all things are not put under His feet. He sits at the right hand of God till they are. We see Him crowned with glory and honor. He suffered being tempted here, that He may be able to succor those that are tempted. Neither the position nor the service has any possible application to a Melchisedec priesthood on earth. Temptation and conflict will not exist then. The Melchisedec priesthood, the writer agrees and insists on, is, in its exercise, after the destruction of all enemies. Satan will then he bound. Antichrist’s time is not the time of Melchisedec’s priesthood; and the exercise of Melchisedec’s priesthood is not the time of temptation. Further, the object in view is bringing many sons to glory. The remnant are not the object of this purpose. The place of Christ, the service of Christ, and the object of God all refer to the saints at this present time, not, as such, to a Jewish remnant to be blessed on earth, or to a Melchisedec priesthood in its acknowledged exercise as such.

Does the third chapter teach us any other doctrine or the same founded on the same truth of Christ’s heavenly present glory? Christ is as son over God’s house. That is the position in which the epistle views Him, not in a Melchisedec one. And note here, He is the High Priest of our profession, compared to Moses and Aaron; that is, according to the doctrine of chaps. i. and ii. Whose profession? The unbelieving Jews’? An unbelieving remnant when the heavenly saints are gone? A Christian, more than a Christian, we are told, writes the epistle, and says, “our profession” —and that means unbelieving Jews, or an expectant remnant.

[J. N. D.]

(To be continued)

Hebrews: Its Aim, and for Whom Written? Part 2

But I prefer at present to follow out the direct teaching of this Epistle, which makes all clear, if anything can, if there is spiritual intelligence. Further, then, in this chapter it is said, “Whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” To whom does this apply? For whom is it written? Are unbelieving Jews, however inclined to listen, the house of Christ as the exalted Son of God?

Are they to hold fast their profession, the beginning of their confidence and rejoicing of hope, firm to the end? The Jewish remnant is not, further, a partaker of the heavenly calling, but of the earthly. In a word, thus far we have Christ, not as Melchisedec priest, but as sitting at the right hand of God, the High Priest of our profession; and those addressed are “partakers of the heavenly calling,” and are to hold fast their first confidence. We, says the writer, are His house if we do. “Made partakers of Christ,” which in English might embarrass a soul, offers no difficulty, but the contrary. It is final partaking with Him in glory, according to chap. 1:9, where “fellows” is the same word. Some remarks on how far this chapter may subsequently suit the remnant in its use of the wilderness history I will make when I refer to that point.

In chap. 4 it is said, “For we which have believed do enter into rest.” Does “we which have believed” (οἱ πιστεύσαντες) apply to unbelievers? and this of the rest of sons whom God was bringing to glory? Again I read, “Seeing then that we have a great high priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.” Whose? Whose then? The unbelievers willing to listen, or even the Jewish remnant after the church is gone, have no profession to hold fast which a Christian could call “ours,” when he referred to having a high priest in the heavens. This priesthood, moreover, a present priesthood which “we have,” has nothing to do with a Melchisedec priesthood; it is a priesthood for the time of need, a priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, tempted in all points like we are, except sin; so that we can come boldly to the throne of grace for mercy and help in time of need. This is priesthood, and not Melchisedec priesthood, after enemies are destroyed; but what enables us to come boldly to a throne of grace for mercy and help.

In chap. v. the “For” of this first verse shows that the Aaronic priesthood was founded on this very principle. It is not Christ’s priesthood itself, as the fifth verse very clearly and positively shows; but it takes the Aaronic priesthood as a sample of the thoughts of God in priesthood, clearly not Melchisedec priesthood. It was different from Christ’s, inasmuch as the Aaronic priesthood had sympathy while in, and because they were in, the same weakness as the others who drew nigh to God; whereas Christ’s priesthood is exercised in the heavens. The partaking of the sorrows, when here, fitted Him for it, as chaps. ii. 18, iv. 15, 16 show, and v. 7. But THESE took place in the days of His flesh before He became a priest. He became that when perfected on high, for “we have a great high priest that is passed into the heavens.” This makes the place and nature of His priesthood as clear as possible. He was tempted and suffered here below, as we suffer, to be fitted for it, touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but He exercises it on high. These two points are the fundamental and essential ones of the doctrine of the epistle, while it clearly states that it is for us. He is the High Priest of our profession. He is the author of eternal salvation to all those who obey Him. That those whom the apostle thus addresses were Christians will appear in the strongest light from what is here and afterward said of them: Christians in danger of being led away by judaism and of apostatizing.

“For the time ye ought to be teachers” (ver. 12). What had time to do if they were unbelievers or Jews? or how could the writer say to the Jewish remnant after the church was gone, that they for the time ought to be teachers? Ye ought to be teachers. Who? The unbelieving remnant?

And now let the reader remark here what lies at the root of all this question.

We have seen as clearly as Scripture could make it, a priesthood based on Christ’s being exalted at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens on the one hand, and on His having been tempted, and having suffered, and having learned obedience here below in the days of His flesh on the other; the priest of our profession who has the heavenly calling, a priest, as we shall see, who is entered into the heavens as our forerunner; and able, as having suffered, to help those who are tempted; and this priest is the priest according to the order of Melchisedec. (See chap. v. 7-10). We have the whole process of His perfecting for priest and then He is saluted of God a High Priest after the order of Melchisedec.

Is it not perfectly clear that, though, personally, the priesthood be not after the order of Aaron, but a new one, the exercise of the priesthood is not after the similitude of Melchisedec? Save what belongs to the person, not one clement of Melchisedec priesthood is here found. The priest is in heaven, and profits by sufferings experienced here below to succor a tempted and suffering people. So that we come boldly to the throne of grace. I add to this, that it is after He has perfected the work of propitiation, chap. 1:3 to chap. 2:17, where “reconciliation” should be “propitiation” (ἰλάσχεσθαι)—but His priesthood, wholly and expressly on high, and He is on no Melchisedec throne, no throne of His own at all, but on the Father’s throne, on the right hand of the throne of God; not after His enemies are all subdued, but expecting till His enemies be made His footstool. His priesthood is this; not Melchisedec priesthood in its place or exercise. I remark further, that though the application of every blessing, all the work of God in good from creation on, is by the Spirit, yet that that truth is not taught here. The person who feels for us has had experience, so as to be able to feel for us. “Who is able to succor the tempted” is not the Spirit here, but Christ, and Christ as priest. And this is a most important thing. For the heart of the Christian, Christ is an object of affection, which the Spirit—though we are indebted to His working for every blessing—cannot be.

I pursue my inquiry into the contents of the epistle. They for the time ought to be teachers; and (chap. vi.) the writer will not go back to Jewish elements. How does he speak of the responsibility of those he addresses? He will go on to perfection (that is, the estate of full age: it is the same root-word as in chap. v. 14, “full age”) with those he addresses. “For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again to repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God.” Is that the state of Jews disposed to listen then, or of the Jewish remnant in the last days? Falling away from having enjoyed their privileges is the thing contemplated. But these two categories of persons had never enjoyed them at all. And this is the aim of the whole epistle—to guard against falling away. The nation had crucified Christ—they might be forgiven it as an act of ignorance; but these, after the enjoyment of Christian privileges, did it for themselves; then there was no help. But in spite of this so solemn warning, he hoped better things of those he addressed, for they had brought forth fruits of grace. He could not think they could fall away from their privileges; for fruits of life had been shown. Only he desired that every one of them might show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope to the end. Is that addressed to a then unbelieving remnant, or to Christians who had received all fullness of privileges, and whose fruits made their teacher fully hope they would not abandon them? What was falling away from unbelief? The best thing they could do was to give it up. What was the same diligence to be shelved to the end in unbelievers? And what was the hope that belonged to them? It entered in within the veil whither the forerunner was entered for them, even Jesus. That is not the hope of the remnant, no more than the beginning of the chapter was the state of the remnant. Their hope is deliverance. The forerunner is for us entered within the veil. We hope to be with Him in heaven. Jesus is gone in: we are to follow Him there. Yet this is He who is made a High Priest after the order of Melchisedec.

The inspired writer then unfolds this priesthood of Melchisedec; but of the exercise of the priesthood not a word. All relates to His person, and the setting aside of the law by the setting up of another priest. There is large allusion to the history, or to His person and personal dignity; but not a word as to what He did. But we have the bringing in of a better hope, by the which we draw nigh to God. Who? the unbelieving Jews ready to listen? Of whom does the writer say, “We draw nigh unto God”; and “He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them”? Here we have an ever living priest, by whom we draw nigh to God, able to save through and through to the end (not because He has perfected us by His offering, infinitely precious, unspeakably precious, as that is; not because He has died for us, though that be the ground of all, a ground even for the Father’s love of Him; but) because He ever lives to make intercession for us. Appearing in the presence of God for us is another thing, and otherwise expressed in this epistle (chap. ix. 24). And really “ever living to appear,” has very little sense. He is able, since He ever lives, to do something which requires activity, is plain enough; but “ever living to appear” is not a sentence which could commend itself to any sober mind taught of God.

But ἐντυγχάνειν does not mean that; it means “to intercede.” If he who has given occasion to this paper likes to take the dictionary sense given by his correspondent as a general idea, I have no objection. “Talking with, or getting to the spirit of another”; that is, activity; not appearing before another, but talking with that other, getting to his spirit, if we are so to express it. And I insist distinctly, that the use of it in Rom. 8 is a very distinct and plain proof of its meaning. The Holy Ghost in us does not appear before God for us. He is active in us, and makes us groan, and God recognizes it as His activity in us; finds the mind of the Spirit in us; for He makes intercession for the saints. This is activity. It is talking to another, even to God, in a groan; and, if I am reverently to use such an expression, “it gets to His Spirit.” God apprehends His mind when even we cannot, and recognizes it as His, accepts it. He talks to another, and it gets, as far as we may venture to use the words, it gets to His Spirit—it reaches God’s mind and heart. Christ ever lives to intercede for us on high. I say “for us,” not as sitting in heavenly places, but as coming to God by Him. I say “us,” “for such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens.” “Became us” because we belong to heaven—go in spirit into heaven in our coming to God. We have not to do with a priest on a throne on earth, or on His own throne anywhere; but with one who is now made higher than the heavens.

Such is the priesthood of Christ always in this epistle, a present priesthood, a priesthood in heaven, a priesthood on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens, exercised there; a priesthood, not after the order of Aaron as to person or descent, but our Lord, priest on high after the power of an endless life, personally similar to, and after the order of, Melchisedec, but never introduced as exercising His priesthood after the pattern, or in the place of, Melchisedec; always, from chapter ii. and iii. as compared with and contrasted with Aaron’s, to lift Jewish Christians (for they were Jewish Christians specifically), then from Jewish habits of association with that which was on earth, in showing a present priesthood exercised above the heavens, and to preserve them by grace from falling away from the heavenly things to what they were used to; and I may add, to bring them out from what they had hitherto staid in, the camp—outward association with Israel and a judged system, and by teaching which, for us, is based on the truth, in its continual exercise, that He ever lives to do it, now as then. It is the exercise of a continual priesthood after He had offered up Himself once for all.

It is well that the reader should remark, that though the sacrifice has been stated (it is spoken of in the very first chapter, so in the second, as it is again here), we have not one word as yet of being made perfect in fact or in conscience, but the priest’s fitness for tempted exercised souls down here; a priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. He is gone on high, but we have no perfecting by sacrifice, no appearing— as yet in the presence of God for us. Though the value of His priesthood for tried ones, and its fitness, is fully stated, as yet it is not our perfectness before God, but help for the feeble and tried, who need help and mercy. It is to this last that priesthood is applied, and priesthood at the right hand of God, on the right hand of the throne of Majesty on high, not at all on any Melchisedec throne. And this application of the priesthood of Christ to our infirmities and help in time of need is the more remarkable, because, when the author of the epistle comes to speak of perfectness through His offering and His appearing in the presence of God for us, he does not speak of Him as priest at all; the reference to His priesthood is wholly dropped. Though contrasted with the Jewish priesthood, infirmities, help, intercession, ever living to make it, and these alone are identified with His priesthood—save the fact of propitiation in chap. ii., which is admitted to be an exceptional case, in which the high priest represented the people (not a proper act of priesthood, though of the high priest on the day of atonement)—and on the other hand, when our perfecting by His offering of Himself, and His appearing in the presence of God for us, is spoken of, priesthood is wholly dropped. There is distinct and marked contrast. That is not priesthood, intercession is, according to the Epistle to the Hebrews.

[J. N. D.]

(Continued from page 188)

(To be continued)

Hebrews: Its Aim, and for Whom Written? Part 3

In chap. 8 we have the whole doctrine of the priesthood summed up before the unfolding of the worth of the sacrifice and His appearing in the presence of God for us are gone into. We have an high priest set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary, a purely heavenly one. None of this belongs to Melchisedec. The priesthood spoken of is solely while Christ is on high. It is in the sanctuary—that is, in heaven itself—exercised in that of which the tabernacle man pitched was the shadow, made according to the pattern of things in the heavens, a heavenly priesthood in a heavenly sanctuary. This is so distinctly the case, that if He were on earth He would not be a priest (of Melchisedec’s exercise of priesthood on His throne no trace or hint is found); there were priests who served to the example and pattern of heavenly things; we have to do with the heavenly things themselves. And Christ has obtained a more excellent ministry. When and where according to this chapter? What is— “But now hath he obtained?” What, as to the priesthood and ministry of Christ, “replaces here”? The heavenly things, and a heavenly service, and a heavenly sanctuary as a present thing, or a Melchisedec priesthood after all enemies are put down on earth? Is that shadow and pattern according to which it is exercised, the sanctuary set up by Moses, or the Melchisedec service? For a calm and straight-forward mind there can be but one answer. It may be said he speaks of the covenants. He does. But to what end? Solely HERE to show that the old is passing away and ready to vanish, that the Jewish Christians might not hang on to it. The new covenant is surely not made with us at all. The basis of it is laid in Christ’s blood, as the institution of the Lord’s Supper shows, and we have all the advantages of it; but a great deal more, and Paul was a minister of it.

But this allusion to the pattern of heavenly things has led the inspired writer to the whole order of the sanctuary; to unfold the worth of Christ’s work and sacrifice. And here let me make a remark not without its importance in the study of the Hebrews. The mention of the temple is carefully excluded. That was connected with royalty; with the establishment on earth of what was practically Melchisedec rule and priesthood, the rule of the Son of David. The tabernacle only is mentioned. That was the pattern of heavenly things; the temple is never given as such, whatever analogies there may be; the tabernacle is. Even when he speaks of the system as having still its standing (chap. ix. 8), it is the tabernacle, not the temple. It is the camp they were to leave, and come outside. The analogy of Christ’s service is distinctly, definitely, and declaredly after the similitude of the Aaronic service in the tabernacle, not after any Melchisedec service. The pattern is what Moses gave, but it is in heaven, and in heaven only and specifically. It is a present thing, specifically a present thing, as He is in heaven now; not a future thing as Melchisedec is. He is entered in, not come out (chap. 9:12). The veil is rent, the way into the holiest is open, and the blood of Christ purges the conscience. And the apostle speaks to those to whom the epistle is ing, and can say, He is the High Priest of our addressed, who are partakers of the heavenly call—profession. The heavenly things themselves are in question. Christ is entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. In this, as we have seen, though compared with what Aaron did, there is no mention of priesthood. It is another matter. In chap. 4:14 we have the analogy strikingly stated: “a great high priest that is passed through [not into] the heavens,” as Aaron through the court and holy place into the sanctuary. But here we have no priest but Christ appearing in the presence of God for us. He has appeared, not to restore Israel and the world, but to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. He has been once offered, not to redeem Israel, but—in contrast with death and judgment, man’s portion as a child of Adam—to bear the sins, not of Israel, but, of many. Does this mean that He did not die for the nation, or that the remnant will not be restored on the ground of this sacrifice? Surely not. But the passage speaks of other things.

In chap. 10, still in express comparison and contrast with the law, the application of Christ’s sacrifice is gone into; but it is fact and efficacy — no priesthood now. It is application; we are sanctified. It is taught as that which is known by him that teaches it, a present thing. The position of Christ is still the opposite of that of Melchisedec. He is expecting till His enemies be made His footstool. It is not a reign and kingly priesthood after they are destroyed. It is only heavenly; He sits at the right hand of God. The sanctified ones, already spoken of, are perfected forever. He is not, as Aaronic priests were, standing ever renewing inefficacious sacrifices; but sitting at the right hand of God, because His is complete, and those having a part in it perfected forever; that is, not merely for eternity, but in uninterrupted and unbroken continuity, just as He sits there. It is those who have part in it while He is sitting there. And the Holy Ghost is a witness of it to the writer, and those he writes to, as a present possession of peace. And mark the consequence. We brethren have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. When and where? Jews under Melchisedec? And now we come back to the High Priest. Where? In the holiest in heaven, or in the house of God, whose house, we have read, are we if we hold fast, I suppose what we have got.

It will be remarked, that with chap. x. 18 the doctrine of these two chapters ends, and exhortation begins. We are to draw near with full assurance of faith into the holiest, having a High Priest over the house of God. I will suppose for the moment, what clearly could not possibly be, that this exhortation was addressed to unbelievers disposed to listen, which is the theory of the deniers of priesthood as to any present application. I ask, Was not that into which they were brought the Christian position? Those living men could not be brought into the residue position in the last days; they could be brought, if anywhere, among Christians. That, then, to which they were called, was where Christians were: a rent veil; access into the holiest by it; a purged conscience; full assurance of faith; and a great High Priest over the house of God. I do not believe that this is the position of the remnant in the latter day at all, but I leave that aside. It is the position of Christians now, for it is what the then listeners, according to the theory, were called into.

When we go on with the chapter it becomes evident, beyond all possible question, that it is the Christian position. “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith.” Does the writer of the epistle identify himself with unbelieving Jews in the profession of a common faith? What were the unbelieving Jews to hold fast? “The profession of our faith” in the mouth of a Christian must be Christian faith; and if it be “our” he must write to Christians. We (who?) are to provoke one another to love and to good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together—who is that? Was it a Jewish assembly, or Christians and unbelieving Jews together? Besides, it supposes that the knowledge of the truth had been received, and, as in chap. vi., if the Spirit, whose presence distinctively characterized Christians and Christianity, was received in vain, so here, if the one sacrifice which characterized it was departed from, there was no remedy, no room for repentance. Only judgment remained. They were Christian professors, and enjoyed the advantages of Christianity, and if they cast them away there was nothing else to come but judgment. What distinguished the remnant is that there is deliverance to come, because they have not had these privileges, and had not cast them away. What characterized any Jews disposed to listen then was the same fact, they had not had them. What characterized those to whom the writer addressed himself is that they had. They, if they departed from the faith, drew back, had trodden under foot the Son of God, counted the blood of the covenant wherewith they were sanctified an unholy thing, and done despite to the Spirit of grace, there was no remedy left. Are unbelieving Jews, however disposed, as to their position, sanctified by the blood of the covenant? What does ver. 32 mean? “After ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions”; and “knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance”? What the confidence they were not to cast away? In a word, they were not of those—the writer hoped—who drew back to perdition, but of those who believed to the saving of the soul, and certainly had the privileges from which they could draw back.

Bible Treasury: Volume N8

Table of Contents

Two Letters on 1 Corinthians 9:27

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 1-8, Continued

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 1-8

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 12-15, Continued

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 12-15

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 17-22

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 18

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 19

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 3-8

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 9-15, Continued

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings: Chapter 9-15

Actualities of the Rapture

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The So-Called Apostles' Creed

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

The So-Called Apostles' Creed

Atonement

The Bible

Biblical Deluge and Modern Science

Brotherly Love and Love

Building a House for Jehovah

Christ: Not Judaism, Nor Christendom

Christ the Truth

Christ the Way

Continuance in Divine Things: Part 1

Continuance in Divine Things: Part 2

Continuance in Divine Things: Part 3

The Dealings of God With Peter: 1. In the Gospels

The Dealings of God With Peter: 10. In the Acts of the Apostles

The Dealings of God With Peter: 11. In the Acts of the Apostles

The Dealings of God With Peter: 12. In the Acts of the Apostles

The Dealings of God With Peter: 2. In the Gospels

The Dealings of God With Peter: 3. In the Gospels

The Dealings of God With Peter: 4. In the Gospels

The Dealings of God With Peter: 5. In the Gospels

The Dealings of God With Peter: 6. In the Gospels

The Dealings of God With Peter: 7. In the Gospels

The Dealings of God With Peter: 8. In the Gospels

The Dealings of God With Peter: 9. In the Gospels

Enduring Temptation and Entering Into Temptation

Errata

Errata

Existence Between Death and Resurrection

Fragment: 2 Timothy 3:16-17

Fragment: Christ the Test

Fragment: Coming to the Father

Fragment: Full of Faith, Grace, and Power

Fragment: Latitudinarian Unity

Fragment: Quickened With Christ

Fragment: Service of and Communion With Christ

A Full Christ for Empty Sinners: Part 1

A Full Christ for Empty Sinners: Part 2

A Full Christ for Empty Sinners: Part 3

A Full Christ for Empty Sinners: Part 4

Hebrews: Its Aim, and for Whom Written? Part 1